Introducing THE BLOOD ALCHEMIST, my Fantasy WIP… and Reintroducing Siena Noble(???)

Wow-ee, everyone! Guess who’s possibly kind of back; it’s your favorite(?) procrastinating and self-deprecating romance author!

Now, that’s what I call some clickbait SEO. But before you click away again, I really do have some big announcements that I’ve been putting off for a while since I’ve been busy with my regular day job, grad school, picking myself back up after some major life changes, devoting more time to research and writing for my fantasy WIP, and just like, having ADHD that I haven’t been able to consistently get my medication for. But as you can see, recently I figured that it was high time that I gave this site a long-overdue makeover, revamped my brand as I get more serious about being Leanne Lukacs, fantasy author in-progress, and figuring out just what the hell I’m going to do with this space. Hell, I’ve even somehow managed to get drawn back into my Fifty Shades Revisited recaps, and partially as a result of that and partially as a result of being in a post-Succession funk, I’ve also been more wistful than I have been in the past two years to return to another piece of unfinished business, that being my Risky Business romance trilogy.

It almost feels inevitable that this would happen; after all, when I officially announced around this time last year that I was retiring the Siena Noble pen name, even then I was reluctant to say that I was permanently unpublishing High Risk and abandoning the series for good. And to be honest, for as attached as I’d gotten to the characters, my decision to shelve the books was due in equal parts to 1) not having a clear idea of how to wrap things up in a satisfying way in book three, and 2) worrying after I’d started watching Succession that I’d accidentally created certain characters and plot points that were too similar to ones in the show. Like, I couldn’t stop myself from picturing my supposed romantic hero Caleb Martin as Kendall Roy, and it kinda took a lot of the romance right out of it. Not to mention what I was writing was starting to feel pretty silly and unrealistic, with morals that were too black-and-white for the world of wealthy elites I was dealing with.

That didn’t stop me from missing it and wavering on my decision periodically over the past couple years, though. Every so often I’d reconsider just finishing the damn thing already and republishing it, or posting in on my blog in serialized form and just letting the story go completely off the rails, or completely overhauling it from the ground up and somehow rewriting it as a full-blown paranormal romance with vampires or something. I had no idea how I’d make that work, though, and I only really had vampires on the brain because of my current urban fantasy/historical fantasy crossover novel project that I kept telling myself that I had to leave High Risk behind and focus on, that being…

The Blood Alchemist, book one of the Alchemy and Artifacts series (or the Immortal Artifacts, it’s still very much a working title). For fans of True Blood, Penny Dreadful, The Historian, and A Discovery of Witches, The Blood Alchemist is a twisty paranormal history-mystery with dark humor, LGBTQ themes, and elements of gothic horror. A little preview blub (because I tend to write blurbs when I’m creatively stuck in the middle of a book and it helps me to put some of the puzzle pieces together):

Scarred by her past, archaeologist-in-training Alexandra Horvath is desperate for a fresh start. Starting over from scratch at 27 isn’t easy, but at least no one on campus knows that she was once Teresa Bodnar, onetime runaway bride of dark and dangerous business tycoon Kellan Wakeham. With her Ph.D. studies finally underway, things are looking up for “Alex”… until she finds herself embroiled in two murder mysteries: that of her professor, and her own.
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​Now a vampire and in possession of a medieval manuscript she doesn’t remember stealing, Alex is begrudgingly taken under the wing of biology instructor and fellow undead Dr. Elizabeth Csaszar, alias of none other than the infamous Erzsébet Báthory. As the so-called “Blood Countess” recounts a life story filled with war, forbidden love, obsessive alchemical study, shocking betrayals, and horrific tragedies, the truth behind her alleged crimes turns out to be far more complicated than the history books would have it. Yet for every truth that Erzsébet reveals she hides countless more secrets, including just how much she knows about the mysterious manuscript and its connection to the strange artifacts Alex’s professor had been studying–artifacts that may also be linked to a string of other murders. Together, they could unlock some of the biggest mysteries of the Bronze Age… or have devastating repercussions should they fall into the wrong hands.
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It’s only a matter of time before the fledgling vampire attracts the attention of the wrong supernaturals. With her bloodlust barely under control, vengeance on her mind, ancient mysteries to crack, at least one killer to catch, and her utterly off-limits neighbor looking delicious in more ways than one, Alex needs a mentor she can trust; but can she trust Erzsébet? Teresa Bodnar may be dead, yet her past refuses to stay buried… and the 400 years of bad blood threatening to catch up with Lady Báthory may be more entangled with it than she could have imagined…

So… for those of you who read The Loft series (my sadly now unpublished first two romance books) or the original High Risk, a couple of the names might look familiar to you. I mean, for any history buffs/Hammer Horror buffs out there the name “Elizabeth Bathory” is probably ringing a few bells as well, but that’s a discussion for a later post in which I’ll probably nerd out about my historical research and worldbuilding. Point is, what the hell are Teresa Bodnar (aka “Alex Horvath”), Kellan Wakeham, and possibly also Eric Yun (the “utterly off-limits neighbor,” though his backstory is getting a significant overhaul) doing in Leanne Lukacs’ non-romance dark urban fantasy novel?

Well, for starters, I suppose it goes without saying that this means Whip Smart and the rest of The Loft will definitely not be making a comeback. For various reasons I was very unhappy and not entirely comfortable with a lot of the things I wrote in those early books and although for a brief time I’d brainstormed a major rewrite of the series into a trilogy (complete with new titles and covers), my heart was never fully in it and I was pretty burned out on trying to make it as Siena Noble by that time. But much like with Kiera and Caleb from High Risk, I couldn’t help but miss Tera and Eric and kept finding myself wishing I could still give those characters a second chance at life and somehow incorporate some of the ideas I had for them into a novel. And just a few weeks ago it suddenly struck me that combining my original concept of TBA co-protagonist Alexandra Horvath with Tera Bodnar could solve a few issues I’d been having with Alex’s background and story arc (well, it also created a few new problems, but I’m working those out). And I’d already been calling her kinda-sorta love interest “Eric” as a placeholder name for a while now and personality-wise he ended up developing into a very similar character to Eric Yun in the first place, so I figured, shit, why not just run with it?

I do still feel awful for having pulled the rug out from anyone who had enjoyed Whip Smart and Strictly Business, but I’m hopeful that a few of you are intrigued by the possibility of seeing some of the same concepts and reworked versions of the same characters in a different book and genre. Not to mention the bizarro crossover potential with a certain soon-to-be-republished Siena Noble romance novel…

Which brings me back around to High Risk. Am I serious about this? You bet. After all, the Risky Business trilogy was originally meant to be a crossover with The Loft. Be warned, though, I’m mostly just doing this for me without a lot of concern about writing “to market” as it were for the romance genre; no, I won’t be breaking any sacrosanct conventions like the HEA, but let’s just say for now that given this trilogy was initially meant to be a rather conventional contemporary billionaire erotic romance moving into romantic suspense that now has to exists within the same universe as vampires and literal magic, somewhere along the line things are gonna start to get a bit… weird.

Maybe not in the first book, and I don’t want to spoil any major twists in the second, but it’s bound to happen. Because recently I sat down and thought about all my aforementioned hang-ups about these books and figured, why not just lean into the lack of realism and just be unapologetically post-ironic about it all? I’m sure I’m bound to get more than a few unhappy reviews from readers who come into the trilogy expecting a normal contemporary romance and end up knee-deep in the paranormal realm by the end, and I’ll have to figure out how to mitigate the fallout from what is almost certainly a horrible decision in terms of marketing, but I’m in my chaos gremlin era right now and these are the consequences of unshackling oneself from the self-imposed pressures of trying to fit the “normal” romance writer mold.

So, if any of that sounds intriguing to you, keep an eye on this blog for more updates in the next month or so. I don’t have a re-release date yet on the slightly-updated version of High Risk (hopefully I’ll be able to push these changes to readers who already own the book on Kindle, and since I don’t want you guys to have to buy all new copies if you don’t I’ll put up a temporary free download link), or release dates for books two and three, but hopefully I will soon. The name of the trilogy will probably be changing from Risky Business as well (maybe something like Risk/Reward, or hell even Unfinished Business since I’m feeling cheeky and ironic).

[Edit 6/21/2023: OK, so, I have officially decided to retitle the series to Uncursed (or the Uncursed Duet) and the first book to Drawn Into the Shadows. It’s now also going to be a duology rather than a trilogy, with High Risk and the unreleased original 2nd book Flying High, being combined into one with some substantial rewrites and edits. There will definitely be some supernatural and spooky elements in the first book, but they’ll creep into the story gradually and it probably won’t feel like a full-fledged paranormal romance until the end of book one/start of book two.]

I’m also debating whether to release them as Siena Noble or Leanne Lukacs books, though I’ll probably still retain the Siena pen name for them since they’re still quite different genre-wise from The Blood Alchemist and it’s planned sequels and I don’t want readers to have to read both series to understand them; each of them should be able to stand on their own with the crossover existing as a fun bonus. Besides, while I don’t have any solid plans for future romance books right now, that could very well change and it’ll be nice to hang onto a specific romance pen for that.