Author interview: Daniel de Lorne with Beckoning Blood

Welcome to Daniel de Lorne!
Author of the sexy M/M paranormal romance BECKONING BLOOD

I met Daniel briefly years ago at Romance Writers of Australia, where he was pretty much the only guy in the room who wasn't someone's husband or a waiter. But hey, men write romance too, and Daniel has this unique voice and cool paranormal ideas that I'm sure you'll love.

You can check out The Boys Are Coming, Daniel's free prequel story to Beckoning Blood. But first of all, this awesome cover!

Goggle. If this doesn't scream 'hot boy vampires', I don't know what does. That handprint is so cool. This dude will kick your ass.

Beckoning Blood

A gripping, blood‐drenched saga about twin brothers, the men they love, and the enduring truth that true love never dies – no matter how many times you kill it.
 
Thierry d’Arjou has but one escape from the daily misery of his work at a medieval abattoir – Etienne de Balthas. But keeping their love a secret triggers a bloody chain of events that condemns Thierry to a monstrous immortality. Thierry quickly learns that to survive his timeless exile, he must hide his sensitive heart from the man who both eases and ensures his loneliness...his twin brother. 

Shaped by the fists of a brutal father, Olivier d’Arjou cares for only two things: his own pleasure and his twin. But their sadistic path through centuries is littered with old rivals and new foes, and Olivier must fight for what is rightfully his – Thierry, made immortal just for him.

Nom nom. Okay, you lot, enough with the drooling. He had me at 'gripping, blood-drenched saga', but hey, I'm like that.

Here's a few questions I asked Daniel about his book. Leave him some comment love, ask some of your own. Go right ahead. He doesn't bite...

Why do you write about vampires—what's the attraction?

What’s not to love? Their immortality gets me the most. I find something comforting about a being (even a fictional one) having been present through so much of history. They’re also incredibly flexible – in the storytelling sense. You can do whatever you want with them because they exist on the edge of ‘normal’ humanity. Then there’s the power over life and death, and the intense meanings evoked when talking about blood. I could go on but I’m starting to sound like a groupie.

No, no. It's okay. We're all vampire groupies here...
Who's your favourite character in Beckoning Blood, and why?

Olivier. He’s the nastier of my twin vampires {ED: twin vampires, folks. You know you want this book} but he’s got a whole lot more going on than his killer instinct. He is a bit of a jerk but there’s just something about him that draws me in. Everyone loves a bad boy, right?

Totally :) Who would win a fight: your vampires, or Buffy? Explain.

Don’t make me choose! Picturing Buffy dead (again) is too horrible. If it were just Buffy on her lonesome, then I think my vamps would win – though they’d have to really want to fight her. And there wouldn’t be any of that standing around soliloquizing that bad guys always do. They’d get in and get the job done quick. If it’s her and all the sidekicks, then I think my boys would be in trouble.

Your vampire heroes walk into a bar, looking for a late-night snack. Whom do they choose to menace, and why?
a) Any human who smells good. They're not fussy.
b) That weak-ass sparkling vamp over there. He looks like a real loser.
c) A bike-chain-wearing, vodka-swilling vampire rival. Might as well eliminate the opposition while we feed.
d) Each other. Fight's on!

Again with the choosing! Olivier would go for that bike-chain-wearing, vodka-swilling vampire rival. Ain’t nobody going to intimidate him (and seriously, vodka? Is that vamp on a diet?). Thierry would go for a human and make it quick, then leave his brother to the fighting.

(And poor Edward…he’s never going to be able to live that sparkling thing down.)

No. {evil giggle} No, he never will.
Is Beckoning Blood part of a series – what's next from Daniel de Lorne?

I’m working on a sequel, which has a working title of Binding Spirit. I’ve got a first draft already but it’s still early days. Revisions ahead! It’s been fun writing about these characters again, spending more time with them and seeing what I can make them do.


Thanks for coming, Daniel. Sound awesome? Yes, yes it does. And guess what? You can get a free taste of these sexy boys at Daniel's website: www.danieldelorne.com/the-boys

Buy links for BECKONING BLOOD: Escape Publishing ~ Kindle ~ iBooks ~ Kobo ~ Nook

Links to Daniel's social media:
Facebook ~ Twitter ~  Google+

Any questions for Daniel? Tell us why you love vampires or M/M romance or anything with a bloody handprint on its chest? Let's hear it.

Vampires and demon hunting, oh my!

Another new short story release! It's been a big week…

Hunter's Heart is what you might call a good, old-fashioned vampire romance. With demons and violence and juicy smexxin'. You know you want one, right?

Here's the cover copy:

A reckless young demon-huntress longs for the ultimate excitement—but is a powerful shadow demon more than she can handle?

For vampire Colleen O’Hara, work is also play. She hunts demons not just for the paycheck, but also for the thrill of the fight. It’s better than sex, at least the sex she’s had so far. But then she meets Seth, a smoldering-hot shadow demon. With him she feels an undeniable, untamable urge to blur the lines between ally and enemy, predator and prey.

Meanwhile, as the barrier between hell and earth grows weaker, threatening thousands of human souls, Colleen must track down the traitor who opened the rift. Only with Seth at her side can she defeat the villain. Colleen must risk everything—including her soul—to both follow her desire and save her city from impending damnation.

For those of you familiar with my books: Hunter's Heart is in the same series as Hunter's Blood, but with a new romantic couple. The heroine is Colleen, Gina's sassy BFF. The hero… well, he's kinda bad… :D

You can feed it cookies on Goodreads. Or, here's the Kindle link.

Here's a teaser; you can read a bigger excerpt on my website.

~

Such a beautiful enemy.

In his shadow form, Seth drifted above Colleen’s head, a silent breath of blackness in the night. Invisible. Deadly.

And fascinated. The fiery glint of her spell-wreathed knives mesmerized him. Her lean shadow slipped along the moonlit alley wall like a ghost. The power that flashed in the magical bloodstone at her throat made him tingle. If he’d had a mouth right now, it would have watered.

He’d been watching this Hunter every night for a week. Stalking the stalker, tracking her sweet vampire scent through midnight streets, as she killed imps and fleshcrushers, her lethal blades flashing. Her victims were lower-level minions, hell’s dross, mere lumps of flesh and hatred. Expendable, easily replaced . . . yet her grim taste for death intrigued him.

He drifted closer, whispering his shadowy fingers over her braided red hair, and his particles shimmered, aroused. Hellfire, she smelled good, of strawberries and female sweat. She hadn’t detected Seth—but this was no reflection on her fighting prowess. Seth was a shadow demon, ancient and powerful. Just a strange shiver down your spine, a warm whisper on your shoulder, a coil of blacker darkness in the night. It was pitifully easy for Seth to drink human and vampire souls.

Warm weariness washed through him. Soon, it’d be Yule, when the hellflux would be at its lowest ebb. His mistress—Jezebel, cruel demon empress, curse her oily hide to eternities of agony—was amassing her forces for a frontal assault. And these helldamned Hunters were just getting in the way.

Which was where Colleen came in. Her powerful magic-user’s soul would strengthen Seth. Feed him. Sustain his power, make him invincible, and so on and so forth. As Jezebel’s consort—and yeah, that was about as much fun as it sounded—he’d eaten countless souls in his time, both human and vampire. It was getting old, the excitement wearing thin.

Seth sighed, a stirring of shadow. Hells, he was getting old. Couldn’t recall when he’d last properly relished a meal. He didn’t even bother taking corporeal form anymore. Just dived down their throats and sucked the soul from their fleshbags.

But this prey—this juicy lady Hunter—woke something inside him that he hadn’t felt for . . . Mmm. Would she taste as good as she looked?

~

OMG. The suspense is killing you, right? What will happen? Will there be blood? More importantly, will there be nakedness and hot smexxin'?

Well, what do you think?

You can buy this cute little sucker at Amazon. $1.99. What a bargain!

Death! Betrayal! Vampire revolutionaries! Just in time for Valentine's Day...

A new release, yay! It's been a while, so I hope you enjoy this little piece of bloodthirstiness and heartbreak...

Unforgiven is a dark fantasy love story, and I'm stoked that it's been chosen as part of this cool anthology. Look at all these awesome authors.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Eight cutting-edge stories

of the darker side of love.

Tiffinie Helmer ~ Heartless
Alex Bledsoe ~ Tantrabobus
V.R. Barkowski ~ Just A Lie
Erica Hayes ~ Unforgiven
Lizbeth Lipperman ~ Sweepers: A Kiss To Die For
Charlie Holmberg ~ Salt and Water
Coreene Callahan ~ Fury of Fate
S.G. Redling ~ The True Love of Sherry Papers

The premise of this antho was simple: the story had to begin with the words 'love hurts'.

So, y'know. Vampire revolutionaries. Bwahaha. Just in time for Valentine's Day…

Here's the first little snippet of my story, Unforgiven.

~

Love hurts, they say.

Still, I find it an impractical tool. In all my years, I've never extracted a traitor's confession with the threat of a broken heart, for the simple reason that on the subject of love, imagination fails us. We cannot conceive before the fact how excruciating its loss can be. Whereas any torturing scoundrel will tell you that the instinctive human dread of physical pain—a dagger pressed into the eye socket, for example—is often more persuasive than the pain itself.

I poke my blade in a little harder. "Give me a name, monsieur, or by Jupiter, I'll slice your eye in two."

"Don't know what you mean." The boy's in shirtsleeves, and sweat darkens his white linen. The pleasure den's warm gaslights slant my shadow across his face. He's bleeding all over his waistcoat, poor lad, his cupid's-bow lips split and swollen, and it isn't making my job any easier.

A few feet from us, behind the half-drawn curtain, the dance whirls on, oblivious, a riot of silk and brocade, paste jewelry, painted faces, dusty relics of the bad old days. When he approached me at these revels—me, a lady wearing a gentlemen's swallow-tailed coat and breeches, rapier and dirk at her belt, glossy brown curls twisted in a red ribbon—he had more erotic recreation in mind.

Perhaps, so did I. He's handsome, this minion of evil. Delicious. The eye I'm threatening to pierce is ocean blue, bright with belladonna, and the smell of his skin maddens me. Absinthe and fear and a succulent boy's sweat, a toxic reminder of days long gone, when truth and liberty were more important than tomorrow, and my blood raced wild and free.

But I'm a different woman now. A married woman. And though I worship my lord husband with my entire heart, on evenings such as this—with the prey trembling in my grip, warm night air sparkling on my skin, the scent of satisfaction inches from my reach—the interminable emptiness of that tomorrow stretches ahead of me, terrifying.

"Your coven master's name, villain." I slide my dirk under his chin. "Or perhaps you can do without the eyeball. Should I instead slice your throat asunder?"

"Please, don't hurt me. He'll kill me if I tell you." He's sobbing now, begging in the fashion I once enjoyed so ruthlessly, and sweat trickles between my breasts. I'm burning. Eager. Parched inside, as if my soul wastes away for want.

"Yet so shall I, if you remain silent. What a dilemma." I twist his hair in my damp fist. My mouth is dry. I want to lick his swollen lips, taste that shimmering moisture. "Give me his name, minion, or you'll know sorrow."

The boy's eyes harden, the besotted glitter of the Possessed. "His name is master," he rasps. "But he signs himself Charlot."

The syllables echo backwards in time.

I taste them. Mysterious, slightly bitter, like an old wine. Enticing. Just as he tasted, long ago in those restless days of revolution, when he and I were drunk on power and fury and the sheer brilliant bliss of being alive.

Charlot.

My heart beats faster. Fear or excitement? I ought to feel nothing.

I must feel nothing.

~

Cool, eh? You can read a bigger excerpt at my website.

Buy links for the antho: Amazon ~ B&N

New release: Hunter's Blood, a short and tasty vampire romance

Demon-hunting vampires, slaying and hot sex. What more do you want?

HUNTER'S BLOOD, a vampire romance short story.

A powerful young vampire demon-huntress teams up with a legendary slayer to rid their city of soul-munching demons – but he's already broken her heart once. Will he betray her again in his burning quest for revenge?

Gina Santangelo is the toughest huntress in the Guild, unmatched with blade and vampire blood-magic as she keeps the city safe from soul-munching demons. Until she crosses swords with Luka Dragovic, a legendary slayer, the only man who can help her save the city from a fresh demon incursion. But he's also the man who broke her heart five years ago, when he defected to the enemy—and Gina vows that this demon-loving traitor will never best her, either in battle or in love.

Luka can't resist this fiery, defiant adversary—the very woman whose memory kept him alive through five years shackled in hell, tortured by a sadistic demon. Now Luka burns for revenge—but to kill this demon, he'll need Gina's rare brand of magic, which she's sworn never to share, least of all with the man she despises for a traitor. A power Luka can gain only by possessing her, body and blood…


Cool, huh? My first new release in ages! You can buy for Kindle here -- it's only $2.99! What a bargain! -- or download the first Kindle chapter for free. A Nook version is coming soon.

And if you enjoy it? I'd be stoked if you could Like it, tag it, review it, recommend it to your friends. You'd be doing me a favour. Thanks!

true blood. meh. rant.

I just finished watching the HBO series True Blood on my PVR. (Ranty spoilers ahead, for those who don't want to know.)

Hooray! for vampires on mainstream tv. We need more of it.

That's where my delight in this series ended. Two words: WHINY HEROINE.

God, she's awful. I just wanted to punch her from scene 2, ep one, and it didn't get better. I'm sure she can't be like that in the books, or they wouldn't be such a hit.

TV Sookie invades people's privacy and then complains like a squashed skunk when people do the same to her. She complains all the time without a thought for any one else's problems. And even though she's almighty perky (my, is she perky. TV Sookie: hey, bar patron whom I so clearly think I'm better than, can you see how perky I am? No? Can I push my titties out just a little more? See now? No? How's about I wiggle my tush? Get it now? Great. kthxbai) if a guy should find her attractive, that's a mortal sin. What a be-yatch.

TV Sookie is the Thought Police. News flash, Sookie: people are entitled to think what they like, even if it offends your virginal little sensibilities.

Oh yeah. Did I not mention she's a virgin? Riiiiight.

And she's so self-absorbed. Everything has to be about her. Example: ep 2, where Bill tastes her blood for the first time.

TV Sookie: "Do I taste different to everyone else?"

Spew. I was so hoping Bill would say, no, actually, you're common as dirt, girl :)

And what's with dressing up in a white nightie and running out into the forest? What a princess.

However.

The series wasn't a total loss. Redeeming features:

1) Bill. He's a clumsy fool, but he's kinda cool. This actor makes a much better vampire in Ultraviolet, btw. See:

 

2) Eric. Cool, built, wears muscle shirts (!), takes no shit, makes fun of Bill, thinks Sookie is a waste of space, girly hair that I adore. Nuff said.

 

3) Lafayette. Sassy. Alas, he's no more.

4) Rene being the killer. I like Rene. Pity he didn't kill Sookie too. Stay in the grave, Sookie.

Rant over. I was disappointed. I'll get over it. And, I'll probably watch Season Two. Even if just to see Eric in that muscle shirt again.

That's enough outa me -- what did you guys think of this series? Hit or miss?

groovy book trailer...

An unusual live action book trailer, for Alex Bledsoe's vampire horror novel Blood Groove.



Creepy! A From Hell, Jekyll&Hyde kind of flavour. The musical, of course :)

they cast who?

Vampires, right? The stiletto heels of the paranormal. People keep saying they'll go out of fashion as we come to our senses, but it keeps not happening, because they're just too damn sexy.

From way back when, I mean. This isn't a new idea. I still remember puzzling over the abridged version of Dracula when I eleven. I wasn't quite sure what was wrong with poor hysterical Lucy, but it didn't sound all bad.

And then high school, and Interview With the Vampire.

Sigh.

Louis, the vamp who put the e in emo before we even knew what emo was. Baffled, beautiful and bewildered with ennui, he wasn't a vamp because he was attacked by a vicious monster or or bewitched by some blood-fanged hellbeast. He was a vampire because he hated his life but was too scared to die when the opportunity came.

Cue a whole generation of romance heroes with heartbreaking fatal flaws.

Louis was gorgeous and he sparked a tradition of angsty, whining vamps who abhorred this life of death and sorrow, yadda yadda, but for inadequately explored reasons never actually get around to killing themselves. But we forgive him because he's the original and the best.

And because, in 1994, we found out he actually looked like this:



Gulp. Honestly. No one really cared whom they cast as Louis because of the furore over Tom Cruise (I mean, OMG,  like, he's not even blond, are they crazy? etc. etc.). And then River Phoenix died and people cared even less. I don't know what possessed Them to cast JD from Thelma and Louise as Louis, but that limb? I want out on it.

(Okay, so Mr Pitt had done a little more than that at the time. If you haven't seen it, check out Kalifornia. It's fantastic.)

I actually love the entire casting of Interview. It's crazy, but it's crazybeautiful.

IMO Mr Cruise is perfect. You want to punch him, but you admire him too. And everyone who's read the books knows that Armand is a short chubby-cheeked redhead from Venice. Right?

Al contrario.



Need I say more? And recall, if you will, the collective bated breath in the cinema when this (almost) happened:



Mmm. Anyway. I digress :)

Apart from spawning a generation of Louis-clones -- and are we pleased about that or what? -- Interview is notable also for what it didn't spawn, at least not straight away: a generation of vampires like Lestat. The monster hero who's pretty damn pleased to be a monster, thanks very much, and if I'm going to hell (or not?) I might as well have some fun along the way. It's only recently that we've been inundated with this kind of character.

But more than thirty years (can you believe it?) have passed since the release of Interview, and no one has yet out-emo-ed Louis. No one has out-bratted Lestat.

If only Ms Rice had known when to stop.

Like me. Here.