Bride of the Midnight King is free!

In honor of the release of Midnight Queen next week, I have put Bride of the Midnight King on freebie for five days. It's been my best-seller since it was published and has a nice smattering of 5-star reviews.

Happy Valentine's Day

Last year, as a Valentine's Day present to myself, I bought a month's worth of stock photograph downloads to use for book covers and blog posts and the like. One of the photographers whose work I fell in love with is Andrejs Pidjass, who calls himself Nejron. You can find his Shutterstock portfolio here. He stages a lot of shots and provides his models with costumes and his work is just great. He works with these two models a lot and I like the pictures so much they've inspired a new series for me. You should check out his work. Or like him on Facebook. Check out his website. Or browse his portfolio on Dreamstime. Or on Stockfresh.  He's really versatile and I guarantee you've seen some of his work on covers. That's his photograph on the cover of my book Bride of the Midnight King,

The Midnight Queen is (Almost) Here

The Midnight Queen, the conclusion of the three-partstory cycle that began with Bride of the Midnight King, is in final edits. I wrote much of it while sitting by the bedside of my hospitalized best friend, who was mercifully asleep most of the time. (He's fine now.)

 The setting helped put me in the mood to write about witch kings and dark omens. (Hospitals at night are creepy places. There's a reason why Lars von Trier's The Kingdom was so eerily effective. If you've never seen it, check out the trailer here.)

I love my characters in this series and am sorry to leave them behind, but it's time. The book will be out later this month. The cover is by the wonderful people at Indie Author Services.

Bride of the Midnight King

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Bride of the Midnight King is a fairy tale fantasy with a dash of the paranormal. This is a novella set in a fabulous fairy tale land where humans and vampires co-exist. Bride of the Midnight King is based on one of the most beloved fairy tales of all time, melding the romantic/classic Cinderella story and a richly textured vampire mythology to create something unique and fantastical.
And like all the best fairy tales, the story begins with ...

Once upon a time...

There was a land called Eindar, and those who lived there called it “home,” but those who lived beyond its borders called it “The Divided Kingdom” because it was a place where humans and vampires shared the land but divided the day’s hours into sunlight and shadow, and there were only a few whose lives were lived in both realms.
Eindar had once been ruled by a royal house of humans, but that era ended when the last human king—Lorant the Third—took a vampire wife and died, leaving the kingdom in her care. Queen Isix abdicated in favor of her son Adraxus, and the sons of his line had occupied the throne of the Shadow Palace ever since.

The Trilogy is Complete!

Well, almost.  I published Bride of the Midnight King a year ago August, and the sequel, Daughter of the Midnight King in January. Now I'm rounding out the story with The Midnight Queen, which is about Joie, princess of Eindar and the first natural-born vampire in the land. I'm having a lot of fun mashing up fairy tales with my own kind of vampires, but I think Midnight Queen will be the last story in the series. I snagged this cover during the big June sale over at The Book Cover Designers.  It's by Magic Covers. The Midnight Queen will be out in September, just in time to celebrate my birthday.

A retelling of Swan Lake

I admit this book caught my eye when it came up in the "also boughts" section for Bride of the Midnight King. I'm always interested in fairy tale retellings, and especially interested when writers venture away from the same three or four stories that get told over and over. (Beauty and the Beast, I'm looking at you!)

I've never actually seen Swan Lake performend; probably the closest is watching Black Swan, but the story really does have all the elements. This one goes on the TBR pile.

Enjoy a good Cinderella story? Fashionista is Free this week!

Last year I kicked off a series of bite-size, modern retellings of fairy tales. Eventually there will be ten, including Hunter's Kiss (due out in two weeks), a retelling of Snow White, Hero's Kiss (a retelling of Beauty and the Beast), and The Unknown Road (East of the Sun, West of the Moon).

I have a soft spot for this book. Like Bride of the Midnight King, the heroine has an intriguing relationship with her youngest sister, one of the stepsisters. When I write little sisters, I tend to think of my own who was a complicated person I loved dearly, even when she drove me crazy. I miss her and she often shows up in my fiction in various guises.

Fashionista takes place in Chicago, a city one of my best friends now calls home. I had a good time playing around with the fairy tale and if you like that sort of thing, you might like this book. (Did I mention it's free for the next five days?) And if you like the book, would you say a few nice words about it?  Thanks.

Free Frantasy...Bride of the Midnight King

Free for the first five days in June, my vampire version of Cinderella, the first in a three-book series. Check it out here.

Character interview: Yalira of Bride of the Midnight King

Portrait of Yalira by Joanne Renaud

As part of the March Mayhem promotion, artist/rwiter Kat Laurange is hosting a "character interview" with Yalira, the heroine of Bride of the Midnight King. It's a lot of fun to answer questions in the voice of a character you've created, and I hope readers will enjoy it. You can see the interview on Kat's blog here.

The Angel Artifact

Sometimes you get a story bunny that just will not leave you alone, no matter how often you push it aside. The last time that happened to me was when the "Vampire Cinderella" idea pushed me to write Bride of the Midnight King.  I know where this one came from--hours spent refining my entry into the "Be James Patterson's co-author" contest, along with thinking about under-used supernatural beings in paranormal books.
The idea is that a little kid, a girl, I think, finds an angel feather in the woods. It's big--bigger than she is, anyway, and looks like a piece of brushed steal sculpture until you touch it. She brings the angel back home and takes it upstairs to show it to her little brother, a kid with some congenital and fatal disease who is bed-bound. And when he touches it,he's healed.
And consequences ensue.
I figure there are several of these angel feather artifacts scattered all over the world and some have been used for harming as well as healing.
How do you destroy such an artifact? It's not like you can throw it into the fires of Mt. Doom.
And of course, word of this object would get out.
And the government would probably get involved.
Maybe now that I've written this much down, the idea will be happy to sit in the back of my unconscious.
i know there's something there, but not sure what to do with it.

A Vampire a Day: Vampire's Mail Order Bride by Kristen Painter

Like many Kindle owners, I subscribe to the newsletters that advertise free ebooks. Every day. And I scroll through them to see what looks interesting. I've discovered a lot of new writers that way--a free book? You're not risking anything--and I like looking at the covers.

This book caught my eye because of the title. I am not a fan of the cartoony illustration style of chicklit/PNR covers, but I was intrigued enough by this one  to read the product description. (I haven't read the book yet.)

The author has a series called NOCTURNE FALLS and the series seems to be very popular. This book has almost 400 reviews and a 4.6 rating. It is also currently #3 in the free kindle store. That's number three out of millions of books. (To give you an idea, Bride of the Midnight King is currently free and I'm THRILLED to have it ranking 974 in the free kindle store. Number three is amazing. Mad props to Kristen!) I look forward to reading this because it looks like a good time. I'll let you know...

A vampire a day: Taliesin meets the vampires

I first heard of this site when they reviewed Bride of the Midnight King. It was a great review that compared me favorably to Tanith Lee. (Squee!!!) If you're a fan of vampire stories, this site should definitely be on your "to be read" list. They have a newsletter as well, so you'll never miss anything. And speaking of Bride of the Midnight King. It's free between now and the 20th.

A Sequel is born! Daughter of the Midnight King

Not quite eighteen months ago, my novella, Bride of the Midnight King, was published. It was a retelling of the fairy tale Cinderella with a vampire gloss on it. I had a lot of fun writing it and to my surprise, a lot of people had fun reading it. It very quickly became my best-selling work to date. I had intended to write the sequel right away but life got away from me for a while--I moved to another state, I ended up writing a movie, I ghost-wrote a DIY book, I mid-wifed the birth of my best friend's own novel-writing career. So it took me a while. But now Daughter of the Midnight King is finally  out in the world. On to the next project!!!

A Vampire a Day: Blood and Snow by RaShelle Workman

I love re-imagined fairy tales. I love writing them (Bride of the Midnight King, Fashionista) and I love reading them. I'm always pleased when someone comes up with an inventive new twist on an old story, as Christine Pope did with her sci fi Beauty and the Beast novella Blood Will Tell. RaShelle Workman's contemporary paranormal version of Snow White is now a multi-book series that's sold more than a million copies and it's easy to see why. You can get book one free on kindle, and move on from there.

Workman's version of Snow White is a thoroughly contemporary young woman who doesn't own any makeup, is hopelessly out of fashion compared to her fashionista friend, who is prone to bouts of TMI, and generally doesn't think she has much to offer. She's sympathetic, relatable, and likable. And SHE HAS A CHARACTER ARC!!

And the author has worked out a history and a mythos for her vampires. And there are consequences for people's actions.

I liked this book a lot. If you like heroines who have character, and plots that involve real emotion, you will like this series.


Bonus: I really liked the font used for this story. So many ebooks look like they were typed on a typewriter or use some generic font that is just ugly. The font here is very feminine without being overwhelmingly girly/swirly.

For the TBR pile

As I promised, it's going to be all mysteries, all the time soon here at Kattomic Energy, but life has been interfering. For one thing, I've been busy finishing DAUGHTER OF THE MIDNIGHT KING, the sequel to my debut fantasy romance, BRIDE OF THE MIDNIGHT KING. Bride started out as a lark--write a vampire version of Cinderella--and to my surprise, it's turned into my best-selling book. Who knew? The sequel weaves "Sleeping Beauty" into the mix. It's been a lot of fun. But I digress. Coming very soon, I will have reviews of the following:

Eve Paludan and Stuart Sharp's "witchy detective" series, which sounds like way too much fun. Dale Phillips' books A Memory of Grief and Fall From Grace. Fireproof by Gerard Brennan. Fireproof is another book from Blasted Heath, which consistently offers interesting fare. Also upcoming is the first book that my new bookclub--the Bellingham Mysterians--will be reading. It's Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris.

It's going to be a great month for reading mysteries.

Shameless Saturday Self-Promoton--Bride of the Midnight King is Free

In between the crime fiction I write, I dabble in fantasy and speculative fiction. A couple of months ago I got the iddea too set fairy tales in a world of vampires and I wrote a novella called Bride of the Midnight King under my nom de fantasy Kat Parrish. The book has turned out to be a lot more popular than anything else I've published and I'm now in the middle of writing the sequel, which will be published later this year. The cover was done by Joy Sillesen over at Indie Author Services, one of the last she created before going on a hiatus to concentrate on her own work. Friday was my birthday and to celebrate, I've put Bride of the Midnight King on a freebie promotion. From now through monday morning, you can snag the novella free. I hope you enjoy it.

Miranda and Theo

Photo: NejroN/Bigstock

 The photographer NejroN has 155 pages of images uploaded to Bigstock. He also posts on Shutter Stock and Fotolia and Dreamstime, among others, but I stumbled across his work on Bigstock. His website has just the basics--a very short bio, a portfolio of images and three ways to contact him. His work is fantastic--people, places, landscapes, up close shots of leaves and bugs. Concept shots. Models in costumes that don't look cheesy.  I'm using one of his shots on the cover of my upcoming novella Bride of the Midnight King and as I've mentioned, it was a particular photograph of two of his favorite models that has inspired me to create a whole new series. Last night I spent a few hours on the site looking through all 155 pages of images seeing what I could find. (I once found the PERFECT models for several characters in a book and didn't snap up alternate photos of them. And now I can't find them.) I will not do that with the characters I'm calling Miranda and Theo. They are vampires and like all the best vampires, they're incredibly stylish. (Think The Hunger meets Only Lovers Left Alive.)

It's funny, the photographer has paired his male model with a couple of different women, one a lovely redhead, but I am so wed to my vision of these people as Miranda and Theo that looking at those other pictures makes me feel like Theo is cheating on Miranda. Of course that could happen, in a relationship that's gone on as long as theirs has.

I cannot wait to start writing this series and I have to wait because my work is expanding to fill all the spaces of my life lately. But in the meantime, I have my images of Miranda and Theo and I have NejroN to thank. 

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.