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.

A Vampire a Day: Vampires Rule by Kasi Blake

Like ohmigod, I thought when I saw the title of this book, thinking it was going to be a story about teen vampires in high school or something. As it turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.
The cover is a better clue to the content. It's got that angsty thing going on and despite the kind of cheesy typeface, the image clearly depicts the kind of isolation the young vampire narrator experiences.

The book begins with a very emotional and very effective scene as "a boy with no name' pays a visit to his childhood home and sees that the cheery yellow his mother chose has been painted over with a muted olive green. He nearly panics t the thought that his brother Billy has sold the farm, but as it turns out, losing the farm is not the worst problem facing him.

A Vampire a Day: HEARTBLAZE by Shay Roberts

I don't know about you, but if I see ONE MORE paranormal book where the heroine is a passive little twit, I'm going to throw up my garlic pizza. HEARTBLAZE is a refreshing change.

Right from the start, author Shay Roberts serves notice that this is not going to be an ordinary paranormal romance. Yes, there are vampires and werewolves in the story, but there’s also a richly detailed paranormal world, where there are rules and reasons for what happens. Then there’s the setting—Rhode Island, a place steeped in history that comes alive, particularly in the sections of the book set in Emma’s past life. That past life element is very appealing, especially since there are “real life characters” woven into the tale. (Watch for a great bit involving the birth of the national anthem.)

Written in a briskly cinematic style—we’re plunged right into the action as heroine Emma Rue finds herself acting in inexplicable ways for reasons she doesn’t understand—and told from multiple points of view across two timelines, HEARTBLAZE delivers on all levels. There’s a vampire hierarchy, complicated clan politics among the shifter characters, and a vengeful ghost who has an agenda related to the larger world. And there’s a romance that’s deepened not just by conflict, but by intelligence. Emma is not a silly little girl and her pursuit of the truth about herself, about who she was and who she is, draws us in. And bonus points for the spooky old mansion! Both Gothic and contemporary, this book is a treat for readers who are tired of the same-old/same-old.

Vamprie a Day: Vampyre: Legal Chronicles by C.C. McKenzie

This book caught my eye because I'm a sucker for urban fantasy stories that combine real-world type situations with paranormal creatures. I love Batton Lash's WOLFF & BYRD series and have always thought it would make a fantastic television show. (I love the tagline for the series--"Beware the Creatures of the NIght. They have laywers.") At first I didn't notice that the little red squiggle at the bottom of the cover was a name (MARCUS), I just thought it was part of the design. This book is part one of a three-part series, and all of the volumes are available, both as individual books and as a boxed set/collection. That's always good.

This is actually billed as a vampire romance, but while the writer did a good job with that element of the story, what interested me more was the way the corporate backdrop played out against the magical elements. And it's not just vampires on the loose here, there is magic--true, and DARK magic.

The vampires (the spelling with a Y just annoys me, so I'll use that and not  the spelling the author prefers) have a history and have personalities. Duncan Gillespie, a vampire elder and a vampire prince, is ancient but not entitled, and he immediately stands out in a sea of "alphahole" vampire princes preying on gorgeous young people.

Right from the start, the author gives us bits and pieces of a wider world. Gillespie, for instance, wonders if he's beginning the life transition known as "the Fade." (Even vampires don't live forever.) But we know that Duncan is not one of the people on the cover--the male vampire is presumably the "Marcus" of the title and the woman (despite her less-than-corporate attire) is most assuredly Anais, the ambitious lawyer we're told Marcus has been mentoring.

A Vampire a Day: Daughters of Darkness: Victoria by W.J. May

There are a lot of vampire novels (or in this case, novellas) out there, and I realized I had about a bazillion of them on my Kindle. I decided to see how many I could read in a month. I'm aiming for one a day. Here's the first one.

This is a novella, which is exactly the bite-sized bit of story I was looking for today. I like the setup of the daughters of Vlad being scattered all over the place and so numerous that they don't necessarily know each other. That makes sense to me. After a couple of centuries, it would be easy to lose count of your progeny, particularly if you move around a lot.

The title character is a "hunter," and as the story opens, she's after a girl who's a witch. But complications ensue when she finds out that the witch is actually one of her (many) sisters. And then, it gets really complicated.

Victoria (or "Tori" as her hunting partners call her), is a tough chick in the obligatory skin-right black leather outfit. She doesn't have a lot of patience with humans or half-vampires who can't keep up. (But who does really?)

A lot of this feels like it's been filtered through the UNDERWORLD movie franchise (vampires versus werewolves), but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I like adding the witch element, especially when we find out that the witch in question is untrained and having to "wing it" as her magic is activated with a heavy blood scent. I prticularly liked it when Tori corners her prey and the witchling's newborn powers seem to be fizzling out. Because you could see that happening!

Tori starts out with a little Katniss action (she's armed with a bow and arrow) and then switches to guns, but before the story's over, we get ultraviolet guns and gizmos. It's fun. The writer also gives us a sens eof a larger universe at work, with talk of "the Council."

Not Your Average Post Apocalyptic Novel

The Night Once More: A Wildclown Novel by G. Wells Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The world has changed.
Or rather, the world has Changed…and it wasn’t quite the apocalypse anyone was expecting. Certainly not Tommy Wildclown. This novel is a wild acid trip through a rainy landscape peopled by the walking dead, hell beasts and a floating spirit that can’t quite remember who he is or why he’s here. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma and Taylor—author of the Dracula of the Apes trilogy—is having himself a stylish good time as he plays with time and place and point of view. You don’t have to have read the other novels in the series (this is #4) to enjoy this new book, but if you do enjoy it, it’s nice to know there are other books to discover. At the heart of the story is a noir-ish genre-blender of a mystery that transcends just “who done it” and becomes “what’s going on?” The play of personalities is neatly done and fans of transgressive and slipstream fiction will delight in the way the author serves up the surreal.




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12 Nights of Christmas--Shameless Self-Promotion

My collection of dark short stories based on "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is back, just in time for the holiday season. I've been all about the Amazon in the past, but with this release, I'm going wider. The book won't be on Amazon but you can find it at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Tolino (if you happen to live in Germany), and a number of others.

Some of these stories originally appeared in Dark Valentine Magazine or on the website and it's a pretty eclectic batch of tales. I enjoyed writing them. The cover is by the talented Joy Sillsesen of Indie Author Services.