Interview + Giveaway: Chaos Unbound by Brian S. Leon

UFI welcomes Author Brian S. Leon. Thanks for Joining us!!

What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?  

At one time I was one of the world’s leading experts on an obscure group of animals most people don’t even know exist. They are so obscure that in the 17 years since I left academia, not much has changed with regard to what we know about them.

What do you enjoy doing on your down time? 

 Fishing. Recently, over the last year and a half, I’ve taken up Kendo. It’s fun to hit people with sticks!

What is your Favorite part of writing?  

Research and creativity. I like discovering things I didn’t know and I hate writing about real stuff unless I can twist it somehow.

Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?  

Not really. I do have to write in order though. I cannot write one part, then skip ahead and write and then go back. I have to write in order, then I can go back to tweak things.

What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Genres? 

 I suppose saying Jim Butcher is too obvious, but he’s the reason I write in this genre. I also like Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman and Kevin Hearne.

How would you pitch Chaos Unbound to someone who has not heard of it before?  

Well the first book in the series, Havoc Rising, was described as Tom Clancy meets the Iliad. A friend described Chaos Unbound along those lines as Jason Bourne meets Harry Potter. I’ll take either.

Can you tell us a little bit about the world that Chaos Unbound is set in?  

This world. The one we know and live in. Except there’s more to it—the myths and legends of the world are real and there are any number of non-human beings that share the world with us. Some are native to this world, like us, and some are not. Some are hostile towards humans and some are ambivalent. Diomedes, hero of the Trojan War and favorite of the being once known as the goddess Athena, protects us from those creatures that would do us harm. And he has been doing that as a soldier for 3200 years.

Do you have a favorite scene in Chaos Unbound ? 

 I am very partial to the scene that takes place during the Battle of Sirte in Libya. I like the action and the interaction between the characters. I also like the scene with the vampire coven in Coronini.

Which one character out of all your books was your favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about? 

I really really like Diomedes. Since I didn’t make him up and there was already quite a bit about his legend out there, that meant I got to build on it. I like the idea of who he was in the Iliad—a serious tactician and an honorable soldier who was a feared badass. The Trojans actually prayed to face anyone, even Achilles, rather than face Diomedes on the battlefield. And since he’s been alive since then, I have 3200 years of history to play with. The hardest for me to write is Sarah Wright. First, she’s a woman. A tough, capable one, but still a woman. I want her to be able to keep up with Diomedes—sort of what he was before Athena and without his special abilities—but she has her own issues. And of course she didn’t grow up in a time of myths, gods, and legends like Diomedes did.

What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you? 

More book in the Metis Files series for now. Book 3 is with the publisher and should be out next year. And I’m working on Book 4 right now. Same main characters—Diomedes, Duma, Sarah, Abraxos and the crew.

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Brian S. Leon is truly a jack of all trades and a master of none. He writes just to do something with all the useless degrees and skills he’s accumulated over the years. Most of them have no practical application in civilized society, anyway. His interests include mythology and fishing, in pursuit of which he has explored jungles and museums, oceans and seas all over the world.

His credentials include an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and a master’s degree from San Diego State University, plus extensive postgraduate work in evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied animals most people aren’t even aware exist and theories no one really cares about anyway.

Over his varied career, Brian’s articles have been published in academic journals and popular magazines that most normal people would never read. They can be found in The American Society of Primatologists, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Proceedings of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the like.

His more mainstream work came as an editor for Marlin and FlyFishing in Salt Waters magazines, where he published articles about fishing and fishing techniques around the world. He won a Charlie Award in 2004 from the Florida Magazine Association for Best Editorial, and several of his photographs have appeared on a number of magazine covers—almost an achievement of note, if they weren’t all fishing magazines.

Always a picky reader, Mr. Leon enjoys stories by classical masters like Homer and Jules Verne as well as modern writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, David Morrell and Jim Butcher. These books, in combination with an inordinate amount of free time, inspired him to come up with tales of his own.

Brian currently resides in San Diego, California.

Find Brian and his books

Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook

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Chaos Unbound 
The Metis Files #2
Amazon     Red Adept Publishing

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Framed for the murder of a high ranking member of the Unseelie Court of Fae, Steve Dore–also known as Diomedes, Guardian and protector of mankind–goes on the run. He’s determined to uncover the real culprit and clear his name.

But the assassination may be the beginning of a more sinister plot that involves not just the Fae and Humankind, but all the races of the world. And what if the real assassin is a boogeyman even the Fae don't believe is real?

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/6EuijTcbjns

 Excerpt:

Chapter 1

San Diego, September 2011

Selkies. Thirty-five miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean, and I’m dodging freakin’ selkies in my fishing boat. It’s like they’re seagulls, and I’m dropping French fries at the beach. Man do they screw up the fishing. Worse, when they appear, bad things tend to follow. And it’s just my luck. Of all fae to show up randomly, it had to be these shapeshifters—the kind that could transform into seals and even into sea lions, which scare the crap out of the fish. Every pile of floating kelp we’d fished around so far had one of these fairies under it. Every kelp except the paddy right in front of the boat.

“Captain Dore, look! Another seal,” the woman said, reaching for her camera.

And that selkie made it a perfect five for five.

I couldn’t help but hang my head. My clients—a simple Midwestern family of Mom, Dad, and Teenage Son—considered it endearing to see a seal poke its head up from inside the kelp, but I could see their true bulbous heads, seaweed-like hair, and pudgy gray-green humanoid forms. Their giant, shiny-black eyes fixed on me as if they knew exactly who I was.

The creepy shapeshifters were part of the Unseelie Court—fairies that are decidedly unfriendly to humans—and the fact that we kept encountering them was starting to unnerve me. Encountering one in the Pacific was rare. In fact, I couldn’t recall one off Southern California since an entire tribe of them showed up around Catalina Island in the 1980s. That appearance had led to a spate of unidentified submerged object and alien sightings, not to mention a few mysterious plane crashes around the island and a heap of sunken boats.

“Hey what’s that big fin?” the father asked, pointing at the rapidly approaching triangular object sticking out of the water and heading straight at the paddy from the opposite side.

“Shark,” I said with a sudden smile. “Damn big one, too. Great white, from the looks of it. Rare for us down here in San Diego.”

“Oh, swim, seal! Swim!” the mom said as all hell broke loose around the paddy.

“Wow, really,” the kid said. “It’s like a real National Geographic moment.” He whipped out his phone to video the event.

I was the only one on the boat rooting for the shark. If they’d known what that shark was really chasing, they probably would have thought it was more like a National Enquirer moment.

Knowing the selkie-shark conflict would ruin the fishing within a mile of that paddy, I pushed farther out, always on the lookout for signs of life other than selkies. As long as we could avoid them, we found lots of small football-sized yellowfin tuna while we trolled, and I’d even managed to convince the anglers to release the little guys, in hopes of finding bigger ones. The small fish kept me blissfully busy until we made it back to the dock at around four in the afternoon—so busy, in fact, that I forgot about how screwy the presence of selkies was until I realized my buddy Ned was storming down the dock toward my boat as I pulled in.

As usual, Ned was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with colors usually reserved for Las Vegas neon. The fact that he resembled a derelict version of Santa Claus usually drew people’s attention. It was either that or the fact that he always smelled like beer-soaked seaweed washed up on a beach. It could be worse given that Ned was in fact the Titan God of the Sea, Nereus, in self-imposed exile.

As I secured the boat to the dock, my cellphone, stashed inside my captain’s bag within the console, chirped the unique ring my buddy Geek had helped me assign to Sarah Wright. I felt guilty for avoiding her over the past two weeks. Despite scrambling to reach the annoying device before the call went to voice mail, I wasn’t quick enough. I tossed the phone on the console, thoroughly disgusted with my wishy-washy-ness regarding our relationship—or whatever we had. I was pretty sure we both wanted to take things to the next level, but I was conflicted about what that would mean for both of us since my situation wasn’t exactly normal.

I’ll call her back as soon as I can. I sighed, watching my three clients stumble off the boat, trying to adjust to sea legs on land after a full day on the water. They chatted excitedly about sharks and sea lions as they went. Ned stood down the dock, waiting, staring intently at me with his hands on his hips and one flip-flop-clad foot tapping away. The trio barely managed to get past him before he charged the boat.

“Diomedes, dude, glad to see you made it back okay.” Ned’s shoulders dropped a bit as he exhaled heavily. “Now get yer ass off the damn boat and back onto land.” He dipped his head slightly and glared over his sunglasses at me, his brow deeply furrowed.

I stopped taking rods out of the rod racks under the gunwales and stared back at him. Something had him on edge, and that was saying something. Normally, he made people on Prozac appear edgy. In over a thousand years, I’d never seen him like this before.

“Now, dude. Now!” he said, raising his voice and gesticulating wildly.

The myriad of seagulls and pelicans gathered around the boat awaiting leftover bait and fish carcasses took off in a sudden deafening and chaotic commotion.

“Whoa. Relax, Ned. What’s got your panties in a bunch?” I said, getting back to my after-charter chores. “Sheesh. Besides, I think the dad left a few beers if you want them.”

Normally, Ned’s first question to me would have involved the possible presence of abandoned beer. Instead, he fixed me with a withering stare. His hands were back on his hips, and his foot again tapped on the dock. When we’d first met a few thousand years before, he’d naturally emanated an aura of power. Though he’d since willingly given up most of his other-dimensional essence, the preternatural blue glow was now visible.

“Dude, which part of ‘now’ ain’t you understandin’?” He spoke through a clenched jaw and pointed at the dock forcefully, like a parent demanding a child’s immediate presence. Over his sunglasses, his eyes darted everywhere, keeping watch around us.

“Okay, okay,” I said, eyeing my fish-slimed gear and all the sardine scales and scuff marks marring the deck. “Who’s gonna clean all this up? You know if I let it sit, it’ll be even harder to clean later.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Ned replied. “Just get yer ass off the water. Right. Now.”

“Fine.” I kicked at my rods like a petulant child. “Let me get my damn gear bag, and I’ll leave.”

I grabbed my captain’s bag and stormed down the dock in a huff, glaring at Ned. I didn’t even bother to take off my grungy gray rubber fishing bibs. He avoided making eye contact as I passed him, which only pissed me off more. Instead, his eyes continued to dart around the marina. Whatever.

I got to my truck, threw my gear bag in the bed, then stripped off the rubber bibs. While hopping around on one leg like an idiot, trying to get the bibs off over my deck boots, I worked myself up from a huff to a tizzy. Who the hell did he think he was ordering me around like that? Athena? Throwing my bibs into the bed with the rest, I glanced over my shoulder, toward the dock.

Just as I was about to get into my truck, a more pressing question hit me: Why? Ned actually yelled at me. In over two millennia, I had never even witnessed him raise his voice. What’d I do to him?

I instantly felt like I owed him an apology, without even knowing what I’d done. I headed back down to the dock.

As I approached the top of the gangway, Ned was in a heated discussion with something in the water on the other side of the dock from my boat. I couldn’t get a clear view of who or what Ned was talking with, or hear what was being said. The only things evident were the loud and freakish sea lion-like barks and Ned’s wild and very uncharacteristic gesticulations. Instinctively, I searched for something to use as a weapon—a boat hook was leaning against the fence next to the gate down to the dock.

Then a putty-colored round female head covered in thick yellow-green hair popped up just above the dock and peered directly at me. Ned noticed me, as well, and all at once, the creature disappeared below the water’s surface creating a wake that tossed the floating dock and rocked the boats tied up nearby. She was definitely one of the selkies I had encountered earlier offshore.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Ned shook his head and stomped toward me, which couldn’t have been easy in flip-flops. His eyes were ablaze—literally. His awakened aura pulsed from white to blue like a lightning storm.

I shrugged and raised my eyebrows as his gaze fell on me. The temperature began to drop, and the water around the dock changed from a drab green to black and turned rough, as if it were about to boil. The disturbance bounced the moored boats against their bumpers and the dock, and the rigging on the sailboats began to clang. Even the remaining birds evacuated—only noiselessly.

“Boy, who did you piss off this time?” he said at me more than to me in a voice that reverberated through my skull. It wasn’t loud, but it was insistent in its tone.

“I… um… I, ah… what?” I asked, vapor trailing from my mouth in the cool air.

I couldn’t recall having done anything to anybody since chasing down that witch, Medea, a few months back, and as far as I knew, everyone I could have pissed off doing that was dead.

Ned continued up the ramp from the dock toward me, somehow appearing larger than normal. His face, especially his eyes, darkened. “Don’t play games with me. You got selkies chasin’ yer ass all over the Pacific, and they had to travel around the world to get here to do it. Nytrocyon herself is here to find you.” He pointed back down toward my boat. “She says Mab wants you. Says you killed Lord Indronivay.”

“Nytrocyon, ruler of the selkies? Seriously?” My teeth started to chatter, and my jaw muscles clenched in the frigid air. “Wait… she said I killed who? Lord Indronivay, Mab’s warmaster? Are you kidding me? Why the hell would I have killed that uptight belligerent asshole?”

I’d never even met him, but his reputation as a jerk was legendary. Even as a Guardian and protector of humanity, I knew him only through stories that suggested he was a giant at nearly eight feet tall and was about as friendly as a shark with a toothache. All I really knew about him was that he personally ran every major war and military campaign Queen Mab of the Unseelie Court had waged for tens of thousands of years. Hell, the guy might have charged into battle against Queen Titania of the Seelie Court on the back of a triceratops.

“You’re sayin’ Nytrocyon is lying?” Ned’s voice boomed through my head, shaking me back to attention.

I shrugged again. “Now why the hell would I do something like that? Honestly?”

Ned’s shoulders dropped slightly, and his pulsing aura faded. Though his face brightened and his bushy beard and mustache split, revealing his white teeth in a broad smile, the rest of him remained rigid. “Good. I didn’t think you were dumb enough to attack a member of one of the fairy royal courts. That’d be grounds for war. Only problem is then, dude”—he slowly slipped back into his normal relaxed and carefree persona—“you gotta ask yerself one question: why does she think you did?”

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