Betrayed and left for dead by his lover, North has retreated to a secluded island to nurture his coven of witches and their demon partners. His group uses the magic of starlight to bring as much peace to the world as they can. It’s enough. North has no desire to look for love again.
When an accident on a carpentry job reveals that he is a demon, Alan Holsen is sent to North for training. Alan possesses a rare healing ability―one he might be able to use to close the old wounds in North’s heart. While North teaches Alan magic, Alan teaches North to love again, and they both struggle with the leftover resonance of their haunted pasts.
Just when they dare to relax, North’s old enemy returns―and sets his sights on Alan. To save him, North must enlist the aid of neighboring covens, and he learns he isn’t as alone as he thought. But in the end, only North’s love for Alan and the power of the stars have any chance of saving them.
*First place winner in the 2017 Rainbow Awards gay paranormal romance category
Depth of Return is the second book in the Another Healing series. It was first published in 2016 by Dreamspinner Press, and I’m very excited to release this self-published, second edition. I’d wanted to write another book in the series, and I came up with the idea for the setting first. I love water and canoes and islands. I wanted to write about someone who lived on an island in the middle of a pond in Vermont, and so I started thinking about who that character would be, and why he’d chosen to live there, and what might make him unwillingly leave his little paradise. North pretty much took over the book at that point. I enjoyed following him around. I especially enjoyed meeting Jade, who surprised me as much as he did North. And of course, I think Alan is pretty cool, too.
I really love the covers for these second editions. When I was designing them, I wanted to get away from the concepts used on the original covers (even though I also liked those a lot). I came up with the idea of using images of healing hands for all the books in the series. (Hopefully there will be another one.) The images come from Shutterstock. The one I chose for Another Healing spoke to me because there is a scene in the book where James conjures a ball of light in his hand, and this seemed perfect. The image I chose for Depth of Return spoke to me the same way–North is all about stars and gathering his own magic and releasing it into the night.
My husband and I have made three covers for my M. Raiya novels now, and it’s been a lot of fun learning how Photoshop works. Probably going to stick with writing though, and not go into cover design professionally.
