Author Melissa De La Cruz guest post w/ contest.

Today VampirePhile has the pleasure of hosting Blue Bloods author Melissa de la Cruz with a guest post in conjunction with the release of her: Bloody Valentine. In her post Melissa touches on the Blue Blood transformation process and some of the complexities involved in finding a mate.

Also, be sure to see the end of the post for details on how to enter for a chance to win a copy of Bloody Valentine.   

Breaking Bonds by Melissa de la Cruz

Blue Blood vampires live as humans until about fifteen years of age. At around this time, they begin to transform into their true immortal selves—a patchwork of blue veins appears on their arms, they crave raw meat, they begin to feel their fangs protrude, and memories of their past lives return. Since Blue Bloods reincarnate – in that they live a human lifespan and then are brought back through a new cycle of expression, they don’t live in the same physical shell forever as traditional vampires do. They are also fallen angels, who were cast out of heaven with Lucifer.

Finding a mate, or their ‘soul mate’ since Blue Bloods pledge their love in heaven, is a process of finding your vampire twin—the twinned soul who is missing. Once a vampire recognizes his or her mate, they renew your bond in the cycle (aka current lifetime) and the bond’s strength strengthens the vampires’ powers. This is their way. Blue Bloods have lived according to the Code of the Vampires since the beginning, although cracks are starting to appear in their culture. The two most powerful vampires of all time, Gabrielle and Michael, broke their bond when Gabrielle bonded with her human conduit and gave birth to a half-human, half-vampire daughter, Schuyler Van Alen. Now Schuyler herself has caused another rift, as her true love, Jack Force, or Abbadon, the Angel of Destruction broke his bond with his twin, Mimi Force (Azrael, Angel of Death), to be with Schuyler.

When I was writing Blue Bloods, I wanted to create a world where breaking a bond had shattering consequences, it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. I wanted to write about unbreakable commitments and also what it means to have these bonds renewed every year, for the rest of your life, and what part new love can play in these situations. Bonds are consecrated in heaven, but Jack reveals in Bloody Valentine, that he was never able to choose his bondmate, that she was chosen for him.

So then the bond is also a curse. It was fun to play with all the angles of this mythology and I love writing about characters whose backs are to the wall, and who have no choice but to break out of the corners immortal life has created for them.

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You can find more information about Melissa de la Cruz, the Blue Bloods series and her other work on her website: http://www.melissa-delacruz.com, as well as her publisher’s website: http://bluebloodsbooks.com. You can also follow Melissa de la Cruz on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MelissadelaCruz.

!!!CONTEST TIME!!!  

One lucky winner will receive a copy of Bloody Valentine. 

To enter and qualify for a chance to win, leave a comment to: What qualities do you look for in a potential mate? or What qualities do you love about your mate? 
If commenting anonymously, please include an email address where you can be reached in the event of a win. Or email your name & email address with comment to: VampirePhile@gmail.com 

Contest is open until 9am eastern on Monday, February 28th (winners will be announced later on that day). Contest is open to US and Canada only.

'Drawn to the Predator' by Raven Corinn Carluk.

Today VampirePhile would like to welcome author Raven Corrin Carluk with a guest post on the subject of the vampire predator.

Drawn to the predator - by Raven Corinn Carluk

 

Hello everyone.  I'm pleased to be here, and a big thank you to Soni.  Always a pleasure to deal with other vampirephiles. 

We all love vampires here, so I'm sure I don't need to tell you they're the coolest monster, or anything like that.  Since there are different reasons to love vampires, however, I will gladly talk about that.

To me, vampires should be a little vicious, a little arrogant, and all predator.  If they're trying to be human, or refusing to drink human blood, then they're just not a vampire to me.

Not that they have to be monsters.  The beasts in 30 Days of Night weren't that sexy, though fun in their own way.

I'm talking about Lestat, or Dracula, or Eric.  They can be romantic, and they all have confidence and sexyness, and they would all hunt a girl to climax.  Without getting all mopey and keeping her safely at arm's length.

How are you to enjoy the best part of being with a vampire if he won't bite you?  One might as well tell a roller coaster enthusiast that watching a film of roller coasters is good enough. Or that a tofurkey is a replacement for turkey.

If a vampire won't drink blood, how are they really a vampire? Aren't they then just a human with a sun allergy?

It's the fact they're predators that draws me to vampires.  Being stalked is very much a thrill, especially when it culminates in a fantastic time.  Not only is there pleasure in the bite, but you can be satisfied knowing that he needs you, and you're giving him the very thing he requires to live.

And there's not much better than that. 

So who's your perfect predator? 

Raven Corinn Carluk writes in the shadows on the path to fame.  Learn about her novel All Hallows Blood on her site, and keep up to date with her on her blog or through Twitter.  She looks forward to hearing from you, and promises not to draw blood.

Essay 'On the Electronic Backlist' by author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

Today on VampirePhile, we have the pleasure of featuring an essay by vampire Count St. Germain creator, author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, about the increasing importance of the electronic backlist for writers.

On the Electronic Backlist

by

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

For the last decade I’ve been saying that the midlist —  where most novels are published —  is in trouble.  Print runs have been reduced, shelf-life has been shortened, in-print status has been cut in half, and back-lists have been decimated.  To make matters worse, many publishers blame the writers for reduced sales, as if their policies have nothing to do with the sales figures.  Those of us who have seen our incomes drop and have found that with fewer sales on record the chances for standard reprints evaporated, have been looking for some means of bringing our out-of-print titles back to the reading public.  I have long hoped that the electronic back-list would become a reality, giving those of us at the midlist a new access to readerships, and at long last, that seems now to be a real possibility.

We’re seeing the first promising steps that may lead to a companion publishing industry to print-on-paper in such devices as the Kindle, and such new markets as Google and Amazon, and the likelihood of expanding possibilities to come.  There are a number of kinks to be worked out of the system, as is always the case with new technologies, but for the first time in many years, things are not looking quite so bleak for out-of-print midlist books and their writers.

Back in the 1990s I published three e-books with Hidden Knowledge, an electronic small press run by Michael Ward of San Jose.  For years they brought in small amounts, usually totaling around $100.00 in total royalties for the year.  But in the last two quarters, the amount has more than doubled, and this, while hardly a statistically significant sample, or a windfall of dramatic proportions, does suggest a trend, one that could indicate that the business is reaching a kind of tipping-point where electronic sales become as much a part of publishing as paper-and-print sales.

Certainly most of the big publishing houses are beginning to see electronic publishing in that light: witness the mad scramble that some of them have undertaken to secure the rights to their long-dormant back-lists for electronic formats.  Contractual language is changing rapidly, too, as the large publishing houses seek to establish themselves in the electronic end of the business as well as the traditional paper-and-print.  That does not mean the end of paper-and-print books, of course, but it does mean that there will be an alternative to books with covers, one that will be welcome to the text book market as well as to the recreational readers.

I can tell you when I realized that the change I had been seeking was underway: early last year a good friend of mine, a professional woman in her forties, went on vacation in Peru, and rather than take half a dozen books in her carry-on luggage, as had been her habit, she had ten books loaded into her new cell-phone.  She’s not fascinated with gadgets and gizmos, she isn’t determined to have the latest of everything, but the electronic books were easier to take with her.  That was the key —   ease and convenience.  It made more sense to have the books on her phone than in her bags.  And that is what tells me that we are nearing the tipping-point. 

In the last year several of my friends have bought various forms of book-storing devices, most of them choosing the Kindle.  The last short-story I sold, three weeks ago, had a clause in the contract for electronic rights, and E-Reads is bringing the first three Saint-Germain novels as well as my long out-of-print fantasy To the High Redoubt into both paper-and-print as well as electronic publication.  The writing is on the wall, and the screen, and for the first time in a long time, the news looks good.

© Copyright 2010 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Reprinted with permission by the author. All rights reserved.

About Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild and is one of only two women ever to be named as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention (2003). In 1995, Yarbro was the only novelist guest of the Romanian government for the First World Dracula Congress, sponsored by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, the Romanian Bureau of Tourism and the Romanian Ministry of Culture.

Yarbro is best known as the creator of the heroic vampire, the Count Saint-Germain. With her creation of Saint-Germain, she delved into history and vampiric literature and subverted the standard myth to invent the first vampire who was more honorable, humane, and heroic than most of the humans around him. She fully meshed the vampire with romance and accurately detailed historical fiction and filtered it through a feminist perspective that both the giving of sustenance and its taking were of equal erotic potency.

A professional writer since 1968, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of genres, from science fiction to westerns, from young adult adventure to historical horror.

A skeptical occultist for forty years, Yarbro has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.

For more information on Yarbro’s many books and interests, check out her website at www.chelseaquinnyarbro.net.

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Announce: Author Nicole Hadaway as Guest this Thursday w/ Contest.

This coming Thursday January 21st, VampirePhile will have the pleasure of hosting Nicole Hadaway author and blog owner of All Things Smart and Scary as Guest. Nicole will be guest blogging on a specific subject (that will be of particular interest to you Blood Ties fans) and there will also be a contest involved (the 1st ever for VampirePhile). 

So stay tuned!

Guest Post by Author: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

VampirePhile is honoured to welcome to you today, author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, on tour for her latest release: Burning Shadows : A Novel of the Count St.Germain.   Today, Ms. Yarbro Guest posts on Saint-Germain's  Rules of Vampirism.

Saint-Germain’s Rules of Vampirism

When I began working on the Saint-Germain Cycle, way back in the winter of 1970/71, I read extensively in the folklore of vampirism; I had studied the subject in college, and had continued to pick up interesting books on the subject — most of them are still on my reference shelves.  Wanting to maintain a consistency of vision in the five novels I intended to write, I made a list of what was believed of vampires the world over.  Since, as far as can be determined, all cultures past and present have at least one vampire myth in it — defining a vampire as an improperly dead person who sustains life by feeding on the living, usually through blood — just as all have a were-beast myth — that being a living person who, under external influences, transforms into a beast when those influences are present, as differentiated from shape-shifters, who are living people who can, at will, transform physically into any living creature.  Drawing on my reading, and my desire to push the Dracula image as far to the positive as possible and still have a recognizable literary vampire, I prepared my charts.

Anything that was held to be true in eighty percent of the cases I took as true.  Of the remaining beliefs, if I found one I liked that didn’t conflict with the majority of the folklore, I kept it.  The rest I discarded.  Those rules have remained with the Saint-Germain stories from the beginning and will, in all likelihood, last until the end.  And here they are:

      1) What the vampire gains from blood is the quality of contact with the person providing it.  Intimate love is more sustaining than erotic dreams, and far more nourishing than fear and panic: the more satisfied and aware his partner is, the more the blood nurtures him.  This makes Saint-Germain and his blood relations very responsive lovers.  Due to being undead, Saint-Germain is impotent, but his female blood relatives can have ordinary intercourse.

      2) Vampires are vitiated by sunlight, and in order to deal with prolonged exposure, Saint-Germain lines the soles of his footgear with his native earth which has to be renewed at the new moon, or it begins to lose potency.  He also lines saddles, baths, foundations of houses, the floor of carriages, the seats of cars, etc. with his native earth, replacing it as it loses strength.  He sleeps on a mattress atop a chest containing his native earth.

      3) Although capable of great physical strength, especially at night, vampires are immobilized by running water — this includes tides and currents.  Even still water can be uncomfortable. 

      4) Saint-Germain and his blood relations do not eat food.  And they do not drink.  Saint-Germain uses the ultimate vampire line, “I do not drink wine” in almost every story, an homage to Dracula

5) Saint-Germain and his blood relations have no reflection, either in mirrors or in water.

If photographed, the image comes out blurred.  Saint-Germain has a waxwork of himself for such things as passport and visa photos.

      6) Saint-Germain and his blood relations die the True Death when their spines are severed or their nervous system is destroyed.  Being undead, they cannot catch or transmit diseases, they cannot drown or freeze.  Since fire destroys the body and the nervous system, it is deadly to vampires.

      7) Sacred or holy objects of any religion have no effect on Saint-Germain or any of his blood relations.  Entering a church or other religious structure does him no harm.  He is not repelled by prayers or other religious rites.

      8) Saint-Germain’s memory is very good, but not always totally accurate.  He occasionally has trouble recalling details more than 500 years in the past.  Saint-Germain’s first 1,500 years of undead life were monstrous.  He is discomfited by his memories of that time and rarely addresses his life during those years.

      9) Saint-Germain and those of his blood have some telepathic power over animals.  It is difficult to do, and requires almost complete rest, but they can use it when needed to influence animal behavior for a short time.

      10) As closely as possible Saint-Germain’s stories keep to what is known about the real man, and the claims he made in his lifetime.  Where there are blanks in his biography, I can fill in as I like, but the historical man’s accounts largely determine the Saint-Germain stories’ settings.

The real Comte de Saint-Germain was an alchemist, claimed to be 4,000 years old and said that he kept his youth by drinking the Elixir of Life.  He was known to sponsor a publishing house in Amsterdam; he claimed he could make jewels and gold; he spoke over a dozen languages; he was ambidextrous and his signature was the same in both his left and right hand; and had traveled extensively.  He wore black and white almost exclusively; was rarely seen during the day; did not eat in public.  He also claimed to have the secret for the sovereign remedy that would cure all illness. 
His servant was named Roger, and he said he had met Saint-Germain in Rome during the reign of Vespasianus.  Roger vouched for all of Saint-Germain’s stories so long as they occurred after they met.  Roger himself disappeared from Europe and all recorded information sometime in 1784 or 1785.  Saint-Germain’s last verified sighting by someone who had known him at the Court of Louis XV was in Genoa in1805; Saint-Germain said he was going to Egypt to continue his alchemical studies.  Since he had been reported dead twice before, some dismiss this sighting as fiction, but it seems so like the man that I hope it’s true.

So far these formulae have held the series together over thirty years. With a little luck, they'll continue to do so for some time to come.


Burning Shadows (St. Germain Chronicles #23, Novel #21) is available now, where good books are sold!

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