A Vampire a Day: The Vampire Maid by Hume Nisbet

First of all, don't bother to download this "public domain" novel from Amazon. The type is spindly and hard to read and the formatting is atrocious. (Words like "kind" are split.) But because the story was written in 1901, the good people of Project Gutenberg have made it available online in a much more readable form. (Find it here.)

It's a wonderfully Gothic kind of story that makes me wonder why we haven't heard more about Hume Nisbet. Turns out he was a really interesting guy. He was an artist and a poet who also wrote books on art in addition to lots and lots of ghost stories. He also wrote a fair number of romances.His paintings are all quite moody--his most famous is probably "the Flying Dutchman," and are full of clouds and fogs and so forth.

I really enjoyed this short story and think you will too.

Coming Soon...Bride of the Midnight King

In my spare time I write for fun and profit. I use my own name for my crime fiction and horror, but I use my pseudonym, Kat Parrish for the fantasy stories. I've been writing more and more fantasy lately, and one of the results is a series of reimagined fairy tales I refer to as "Grimm Blood Tales" because they involve vampies.
Yes, I know. The world is full of vampire stories.
the world is also full of fairy tales and at some point, fairy tales and vampire stories just had to collide. (Probably already have, actually, I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the first to think of it.)
I found myself thinking of different ways fairy tales could be woven into vampire stories and the first result is this novella, a Cinderella story in which a mortal girl becomes the bride of a vampire king.
I'm already plotting the next story in the series, Midnight's Daughter, which is a Sleeping Beauty story.
The cover for Bride of the Midnight King was created by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services. The book will be out at the end of June.

Halloween Fiction--Mutton Dressed as Lamb

A short little Halloween story:

MUTTON DRESSED AS LAMB

By Katherine Tomlinson

Vannetti sighed when Bruce knocked on the door of his study. He could tell from the sheepish look on Bruce's face that the reason for his unannounced visit was not anything good.

It was Bruce's first Halloween after his second birth and Vannetti had hoped he was out on the town, making the most of his new status and moving about freely, his pale skin and red-rimmed eyes dismissed as just another costume by the human revelers.

"Yes Bruce?" he asked, irritated by his passive body-language he displayed, more appropriate to prey than to his position as an alpha predator.

"Um," Bruce said, which annoyed Vannetti even more. He hated indecision of any sort and verbal hesitancy drove him mad. He'd been born into an aristocratic Venetian family that had valued intellectual rigor. He'd been thoroughly trained in the art of conversation by his father's courtesans and his mother's priests. Of all the changes that had occurred in the long years since he'd been born into the blood, Vannetti mourned the decline of meaningful discourse the most.

"I have a problem," Bruce said and Vannetti sighed again, which is actually not that easy for someone who doesn't need to breathe but a useful trick he'd found to communicate his emotions noverbally.

"I need to show you," Bruce said as he retreated from the doorway in the direction of the Grand Hall.

Vannetti wanted nothing more than to return to the book he was reading, but he knew Bruce would give him no peace until he attended to whatever drama had been created.

There was a masked woman standing in the Grand Hall.

Her figure was sublime, enhanced by a tight, long-sleeved gown of peacock silk that was wrapped around her like a present.