News from Me

Hello, my pretties. How are you all today? I've been busy with my usual Saturday stuff, and now I'm back in my office, and I need to work. But first some news.

First off, if you are into vampires and love free things, I want to send you over to Carole Gill's Official Author page. She has the prequel, "Dreams of a Vampire", to her book "House on the Blackstone Moor" up for free over on smashwords, plus if you wish to win her book you only need to leave a comment there. Get all the information on her giveaways at the link above.

I had the opportunity to read Carole Gill's book "House on the Blackstone Moor, and found it refreshingly different in a sea of cookie-cutter vampire novels. Set in Gothic England, a tale of madness and how a young woman thinks she has escaped it, only to be swept up by even more evil than she had ever thought possible, and also, amazingly, finds love. I enjoyed the book very much!

If you did not know it, Carole and I have teamed up on a sister blog called Bloody Good Vampires.

If you have not stopped by as yet, do so. I have only just begun blogging there, but it is filled with great flash fiction and other tidbits on or about vampires. Everything vampires is our motto! We each will be doing what we call our "Tales from the Vampire Vault". This will be our flash fiction pieces, so do drop in to see what we dig up.

I have other news. I am just pages away from finishing my third novel's edits, and will be sending it off to publisher in a week's time. I've also settled on a title.

Are you ready?

Vampire Nocturne.
I chose the word "nocturne", because it basically encompasses the novel's over-all feel. NOCTURNE means "a romantic or dreamy musical composition/thought appropriate to night." It is my steam punk/vampire novel which has more of a romantic slant to it than the first two. I hope to get this to my publisher quickly so that they have plenty of time to work on line edtis, etc, and you will be reading it before Christmas!

Hope your weekend is great. Ta, for now. 

Mid-Week Check In ~ Tribute to Dark Shadows/Jonathan Frid

Hello, my pretties. Just to keep you guys up-dated, I have a post over on Bloody Good Vampires, along with my blogger Buddie, Carole Gill. Together we did a tribute to Dark Shadows, marking the passing of Jonathan Frid who played the original Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows (1966-1971). My post is first and Carole's is under it. If you are any sort of fan of the Dark Shadows original show, or are curious, you'll want to check this link out. We've both posted some links there that will definitely be worth your while.

And come on back weekly for more of our take on vampires, and anything to do with vampires, and dark Gothic horror!

And lastly, I want to thank those of you who have voted in my lame (but fun) poll "Is Nicolas Cage a Vampire?" If you have not voted, well, what are you waiting for. Poll ends in 2 days! I have only 10 votes so far and I will post the results next week.

I have finished the first draft of the short story, "Mother Knows Best", and I'm going back to edits on my 3rd novel. But I wanted to drop in and say hi to everyone and leave my messages and where to find me.

Power Outage & Smart Tornadoes?

There's nothing like a power outage to make you realize just how much you depend on electricity. We've had no rain for weeks, and finally this large weather system came in last night. And we got our rain! We had the usual lightning storm--nothing major. At 12:39 a.m. the lights/power went out after something went BOOM!. We got up, I made sure everything was alright with my computer. I even unplugged it. I still don't trust my surge protector 100%. Anyway, we didn't have power come back on until 8:20 a.m. which means we were out for 8 hours. We even went out in the park and pumped water into pails--not an easy task, believe me! And were about to put the camp stove outside to make ourselves some instant coffee--and TADA!--ELECTRICITY!

We made coffee (OMG! it was so good!), and some breakfast. And we put things back into refrigerator, having packed them into the coolers.

When the ComEd truck came by this morning around 6:00a.m., and we saw that the guy was checking the transformer and things in our yard, we at least knew they were looking for the problem. It wasn't here, but obviously they found the problem. Outages were all over the county. 30 people in our area were affected by it.

The news from the mid-section of the U.S. was much worse. Five people died when a tornado hit the town. The tornado actually hit the tower, which supplies the electricity for the sirens. It was almost as if it aimed for it--I know that's impossible, but the sirens didn't go off to warn people. I sometimes think these storms/tornadoes have become smarter, and more ruthless these days.

Tonight will be our turn as the cold front advances after the warm front that will boost our temperatures to at least 80. Things will get rather "dicey" according to meteorologist.

I actually wanted to bring you something more interesting, and will, once I'm able to work on this (research it), about Nicolas Cage possibly being a vampire from the Civil War era (tell me if you've heard this one). I'll try and get my post set up for later in the week so please keep checking in. Hopefully a tornado won't end my ability to do this for ever. If you are concerned, thanks. And if you see me posting both my Monday Coffee Klatch and Tuesday Teasers, you can rest assured we have been spared. These have been some deadly tornadoes lately.

And I'm joining forces with author Carole Gill on her blog Bloody Good Vampires. Once we get things figured out, my books and links will be on the side bar, and we will both make posts on it, plus we plan on a corresponding group on facebook where people can join up--for both authors and readers of vampire, horror/Gothic horror, and the supernatural. More on that as we get things built up.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Buffy Second Season: Spike & Drusilla

Spike and Drusilla are introduced in the second season. The definitely add a bit of spice to the series.

Spike and Drusilla are a happy couple who have come to Sunnydale to find the Hellmouth—it tends to be the siren call to all evil creatures. Their hope is that they might find a cure for Drusilla's weakness. Eventually they do, and find it in a book that was taken from Giles' library. I'm not sure how they knew what to look for, but they do have one of their minions purloin the book.

It culminates in episodes 9 and 10 “What's My Line” Part One and Part Two.

Within the book is the incantation and rite to bring back a vampire's strength. Thing is, it's difficult to translate unless you have a key. Thus, during the next few episodes, they eventually figure out where to look. Eventually, through Drusilla's ability to read Tarot cards that seem to have figures and such that tell her what exactly she needs to know, they go to a mausoleum and find this key. It is actually a reliquary where religious items were kept of the very author of this book they found. Odd that this author would be found right there in Sunnydale California, but we'll give the writer a break on this.

When they figure out that she needs her maker, who is Angel, then we get to the nitty gritty on this. They are help;ed out by Slayer #2, Kendra, who shows up in town sent because her Watcher has been notified that the last Slayer was dead (Buffy: “I died, just a little bit”), and was sent to the hot spot of Sunnydale because of the Hellmouth activity. And together they join forces to save Angel from Spike and Drusilla who initiate the deadly ritual which will bring Drusilla's strength back.

RANT: I Can't Leave Comments At My Favorite Blogs!!!

Yesterday, I went to T.C. McKee's blog, and wanted to leave a comment that I loved her new writing space. I would have made a nice comment, say some encouraging words and so forth.

But NOOOOOOoooo!

I can't leave comments any more on places I used to come to. The only way I can is to use the Anonymous button, and leave my name inside the comment. If there is no Anonymous button, I can't leave any comment. This is very frustrating. This has been on-going for more than a month now.

Not only that, but I can't FOLLOW anyone new. I also can't SEE my own followers. So, I don't know who you are. I've waited for a few months and this hasn't straightened out at all. I'm just frustrated that I can't leave comments mostly.

So, if you wonder what happened to me, why I haven't been by and you actually miss me, I'll leave a comment to your post weekly, HERE and try to do it on Thursday. I'll place your name or name of your blog in the label list below.

T.C. McKee: I wanted to tell you that I love your new writing space. That desk is great. I don't know what to do about the dog, however. it was funny about the slobber trails.

Carole Gill of Bloody Good Vampires: I'm sorry I have not been able to make any comments over on your blog any more. I think I agree with you pretty much all the time on your rants. I just can't comment. I feel like I'm looking in on a party going on and no one is able to let me in. ]=

Ranting about this problem hopefully will get every ones attention, because there are other people I used to leave comments on their blogs, and they probably think I'm just no longer stopping by. I can't think of all of them, but as the weeks pass I'll write my comments right here and post them and put your blog/name in the label line.