Driving west on Interstate 10, Ilona Gordon saw a Cinemark cinema and imagined a clash with magic.
“Even from the highway, it’s very open, a wonderful position to start a big battle,” he says. ‘The’ C’ of cinemark had fallen. It looked perfect.
Under the pencil name ‘Ilona Andrews’, Ilona and her husband, Andrew Gordon, have turned Houston into a battlefield for their books ‘Hidden Legacy’, a complete urban fantasy series of familiar places and monuments such as Allen Parkway, Eleanor Tinsley Park, and even a Cajun kitchen in Wilcrest, set in an unknown “world” full of magic. It fixes the result of a serum used to cure a pandemic in the 19th century.
“Houston readers are very specific about your city,” says ilona. “They love it. So we’ve learned to be very careful. If someone goes from point A to point B, we need to make sure they’re on the right track. We enjoyed it because those books are very connected city.”
For “these ebooks,” Ilona refers to the couple’s best-selling ebooks “Hidden Legacy”, which this week hosts a new title, “Emerald Blaze”. This is the fifth e-book in the series (with a short story) that the couple wrote under the name Ilona Andrews, following their urban fantasy series “Kate Daniels” which began in 2006.
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Details: bluewillowbookshop.com
And through Houston readers, it refers to a regional subset of a committed follow-up that Ilona Andrews has built for more than 15 years, thanks to the commitment of the couple’s enthusiasts to their website.
“Our Houston readers are connected to this series,” she says. “They were the component of this.”
The Gordons are a tale of good fortune desirable in fantasy and romance. Ilona was born in the Soviet Union and moved to the United States as a teenager. He met Andrew at the University of Western Carolina.
Ace Books launched its “Magic Bites” in 2007, featuring readers Kate Daniels, a mercenary who runs in a select Atlanta city, where magic and generation paint intermittently.
“For us, these stories communicate what happens when there is a replacement in the dynamics of force in society,” says Ilona. “Often, in our society, there are old tactics to take strength: wealth, of course; technology; dominant space in the market; former political circle of family clubs. We brought magic to this like throwing a wrecking ball into society’s design.
This technique has sent his paintings to various bestseller lists. Ilona and Andrew (who knows Gordon in fan circles) continually communicate about their preference for a life on the island with two young men and several dogs at their Hill Country home, although they paint in a type of writing that thrives through the reader’s interactivity. Before the pandemic, they did their duty by appearing at times and conventions faithful to the books.
His “Hidden Legacy” series was born almost by accident. A friend who writes vampire novels for Avon Books sends them to Erika Tsang, editor-in-chief of Avon Books. Even before they had a fully evolved proposal for a new series, they had a special offer from the editor.
Then they were given the soft green for a story that was not conceived. Romantic Times critic Jill Smith told Ilona she hoped to do something for a family.
“So I thought, “Oh, all right, we do a circle story of relatives, ” he said.
“This is also a wish for us,” Andrew adds. “None of us have a big family. I grew up through an aunt and an uncle.
Ilona adds that her circle of relatives has not completed the selected vocation.
“I have no one to share our good fortune with,” he says. “For years and years, I told (my father) how those books were going. And he sighed deeply and said, “That’s good.” No matter how lucky or how much money we make, I’m still an abject failure until I get my bachelor’s degree. It’s an old Russian mentality. If it’s academic, that’s enough.”
The circle of relatives is therefore in the midst of the novels of “The Hidden Legacy”, beginning with “Burn for Me”, released six years ago. He brought in Nevada Baylor, a detective whose magic we’ll meet when someone lied. Yours is a world with familiar geographical places, but a completely unknown social design based on families and their magic. The circle of relatives proved crucial, either as a source and shock, as well as for later novels. As the series grew, Ilona Andrews transferred Nevada’s attention to his sister Catalina, who stars in “Emerald Blaze”, as the Texas director’s assistant, overseeing the use of magic while worrying about a damaged medium through a Prime (the highest rank of magic user) named Alessandro, who discovers his way back to life.
The novels are also populated by a conspiratorial matriarch, magic owners, monsters and, well, charming and mysterious men with opaque intentions.
“There was a practical element, ” said Andrew. “If Nevada’s eBook worked well, we might do an e-book about one of the brothers. But when we started this, we didn’t think there would be five e-books.”
They liked the concept of hitting their action in Houston, a Houston of choice in a society of choice in which magic created another hierarchy. Andrew cites Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” novels as a source of inspiration for the way they used Boston.
“Places like Houston and Atlanta are an important component of American culture,” says ilona. “They have different moods and arrangements. They have no value, no more or less than London, Boston or New York. Why position these stories in the south?”
Describing Jersey Village’s choice of “Emerald Blaze” is spoiling a nasty surprise.
Just as the couple reinvented Houston in their series, such as Ilona Andrews, the two also recreated the concept of a network of authors/readers. Ilona and Andrew actively interact with their readers through their online page and blog. They also provide new content on the site so enthusiasts can read it for free. They returned to the global world of Kate Daniels with a new assignment called “Ryder” that was made to be obtained for free, one bankruptcy at the same time on their site. “Blood Heir,” the full novel, will go on sale in January.
“When COVID arrived, I had to disconnect and deactivate the email a little bit,” ilona explains. “The task of pain, anxiety and death was so heavy. But we started receiving emails, other people whose parents had died or were in poor health and scared other people, wondering if we would post anything. It wasn’t something we planned to do.
Andrew adds: “Others would tell us that one of our books took them out of those difficult places for an hour. For us, it’s the most productive thing we can do. Get them out of reality.
Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. In the past he helped George R.R. Martin’s editor-in-chief of “Game of Thrones” and then worked on three “majeurs” films you’ve never seen. This brief stint in the film industry led him to write, first as a freelancer and then with Rolling Stone. He joined the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since become a full-time writer.
Andrew doesn’t like monkeys, dolphins and the outdoors. He’s got no animals.