Meet Amy Braun

Amy Braun is a Canadian urban fantasy and horror author. Her work revolves around monsters, magic, mythology, and mayhem. She started writing in her early teens, and never stopped. She loves building unique worlds filled with fun characters and intense action. She is the recipient of April Moon Books Editor Award for “author voice, world-building and general bad-assery,” and the One Book Two Standout Award in 2015 for her Cursed trilogy. She has been featured on various author blogs and publishing websites, and is an active member of the Writing GIAM and Weekend Writing Warrior communities. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, watching movies, taking photos, gaming, and struggling with chocoholism and ice cream addiction.

Amy’s current work includes the full length novels Demon’s Daughter, Dark Divinity, Crimson Sky, Storm Born, and Path of the Horseman, and the novella Needfire. She has short stories in various horror and urban fantasy anthologies such as Call From The Grave, Hotel Hell, The Maker of Monsters in Spawn of the Ripper, Survivalism in The Dead Walk: Volume 2, Dismantle in The Steam Chronicles, Lost Sky in Avast, Ye Airships!, Secret Suicide in That Hoodoo, Voodoo, That You Do, Bring Back The Hound in Stomping Grounds, Charlatan Charade in Lost in the Witching Hour, and her award winning short Dark Intentions And Blood in AMOK! Amy can be found online through her frequently updated blog, Literary Braun (literarybraun.blogspot.ca), as well as on Twitter (@amybraunauthor) and Facebook (facebook.com/amybraunauthor).

The final chapter in the praised Cursed trilogy, Damnation’s Door is a 310 page novel that sets its heroes against all odds, testing their trust in one another and pushing them each to their breaking points, forcing them to finally confront the darkness surrounding their lives above it, and either rise or fall before it…

Connect with Amy: Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Facebook

Title: Damnation’s Door (Cursed, #3) by Amy Braun
Publication date: June 7th 2016
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy

Synopsis 

Demons are free. Angels are fallen. Hope is dying…

Constance Ramirez and her adopted sister, Andromeda, have stopped Lucifer’s plan– They have closed the Heaven Gate and kept the demons out. But their choice came with brutal consequences, and now every angel on earth is trapped in their mortal body.

All that remains is closing the Hell Gate and establishing a balance once and for all. That means returning to the city of Constance’s nightmares, which has become a haven for murderers and monsters. But even more dangerous than their hunt is that Andromeda’s powers and instincts are turning darker, and this time Constance doesn’t know how to protect her.

Constance is ready to fight for her life, but her enemies have plans she can’t begin to imagine, and they’re prepared to make her suffer…

Trust is lost and hearts are broken in the epic conclusion in Amy Braun’s Cursed trilogy…

Click to add Damnation’s Door to your Goodreads shelf.

Purchase Damnation’s Door on Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

About Damnation’s Door

The third and final novel in the urban fantasy/horror Cursed trilogy, Damnation’s Door takes place mere weeks after the climax Of Dark Divinity. Forced to retreat to the city that haunts their past, Constance Ramirez, her sister Dro, and their companions– ex-angel Sephiel, psychic Max, and demon slayer Warrick– search for the keys that will close the door to Hell and lock Lucifer and his demons away forever. But the city that Constance and Dro return to isn’t the one they survived in. This new city is darker and bloodier, filled with random acts of terror and violence. Constance. But that isn’t all that she and her friends need to worry about. Constance soon becomes the main target of her old enemies, sadistic bounty hunter Drake and her former lover Mateo. But what they have planned for her is worse than death, a way to finally break Constance and force Dro to relinquish herself to Lucifer, a path that the half-angel, half-demon girl is already started on. Constance can see the changes in her sister, and this time she isn’t sure that she’ll be strong enough to save her.

Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about how stories should end– Happily Ever After’s should only work if you put your characters through Hell, especially in the final book of a series. That’s when the stakes are at their highest, the tensions at their thickest, and the characters at their strongest. I knew right from the get-go that Damnation’s Door had to be grueling. I had to take the knowledge from Demon’s Daughter and the consequences from Dark Divinity into motion while adding new obstacles for Constance and her friends. I wanted everyone to be pushed to the limit, to be faced with situations where they truly didn’t know the outcome. To consider that not everyone might make it out alive.

I wanted to continue with the flashbacks with Constance and Dro, choosing a different route with them to show a time when the pressure became too much for Dro to handle. With that similar line of thought, I wanted Constance’s trials to be on a deeper, more emotional level. She’s already endured plenty of physical trials, but what would it have been like for her to watch her little sister, the girl she’s cared for and loved since she was four years old, turn into someone she didn’t know? Someone who was finally breaking under the pressure and stress of unimaginable powers that threatened all she loved? And what would Dro do that would force her to think such things?

Enter, the setting. I read some chilling history on Ciudad Juárez and while things have changed since I wrote this story, I wanted to use the reputation of the former Murder Capital of the world to really make things difficult for Constance and her friends. Using a setting notorious for being dangerous and deadly would make challenges even more formidable, particularly since Constance is forced to return to the city that twisted her morals and nearly made her lose herself.

Unlike the previous novels, I didn’t need to re-write this story. By the time Demon’s Daughter and Dark Divinity were completed, I knew what route the story needed to take. That doesn’t mean I didn’t search for help, however. One of my best friends brainstormed with me and presented an idea for a truly wicked search. I loved his idea, and I think it adds to the utter bleakness of the story with a twist at the end that I don’t think anyone will see coming.

There were surprisingly few edits that needed to be done between my editor and myself. I think that’s the sign of a strong story, which is especially important that this is the big one, the story that has to end with a bang, the way all epic stories do. While I’m confident with the end result of Damnation’s Door, I’ve definitely got some nervous butterflies floating around my stomach.

I definitely dove headfirst into the promotional aspect of this novel. Since it was released a mere month after my standalone novel Storm Born, I worked hard to send it to other reviewers and blogs to get more exposure. I received a gorgeous cover courtesy of the incredible design team at Deranged Doctor Designs that perfectly encapsulates Damnation’s Door, and was given the chance to participate in all sorts of spotlights, cover reveals, interviews, and other promotions. It was a great experience, since I find self-promotion to be the hardest part of independent writing, next to my personal Hell– proper formatting.

It took close to three years for the Cursed series to finally reach its end, and while I’m a little sad to be retiring certain characters, I’m also really proud of myself. It was no easy task to create three chapters of one long story and release them as a new author is no small task, and nothing if not intimidating. But to know that I achieved my goal, gave the characters the send-offs they deserved, and to make this the first major book series to cross off my list.

And it’s one that I would do all over again.