I never was a big vampire fan before I started writing about them. Sure, I understand the sexy mystique—the devouring of the object of your desire, the absolute claiming—but I also couldn’t help but think of them as gigantic parasites, or worse, the literal embodiment of a dysfunctional co-dependent relationship. I also never liked the immortality thing in the context of romance. It makes for great, tortured literary characters, but I could never really buy into a romance where the age difference in the couple spans centuries. I’m too pragmatic for that.
So I certainly never meant to write a vampire romance, but my subconscious did. It took all my objections, processed them, and threw back a solution: a vampire I could love.
As a result, I began to be haunted by snippety little visions of this very young, down-to-earth vampire named Alex talking to his crazy mother about how much he wanted to get married. (His mother? Married? Wha..???)
I ignored these visions as long as I could. I simply didn’t want to write a vampire story. The market was saturated with vampires. I told myself that readers had moved on to exotic shifters and demons and the like. But Alex wasn’t a shifter or a demon or an alien, he was adamantly a vampire—a natural vampire, mortal, gifted in some ways and disabled in others.
In the end, I had to write down his story just so that he and his mother would leave me alone. Thus the Faustin Bros. series was born: three books, one for Alex and then two more for his intriguing big brothers who showed up while I was writing the first.
Alex’s story, Called by Blood, came out 3 months ago and I’m happy and relieved to say that reader comments and reviews reassure me that I have in fact managed to write a worhwhile vampire romance. Paranormal Romance called it a “new and refreshing twist on vampires.” Holly at The Book Binge said “It’s no secret that I took a break from paranormals ages ago….So I’m sure it’ll come as a great shock to you that not only did I read a vampire paranormal romance, but I actually enjoyed it. Quite a bit…” Mrs. Giggles gave in an 87, calling it “humorous yet sexy and tongue-in-cheek romantic urban fantasy.”
The book releasing today. Bound by Blood, is about Alex’s grumpy, workaholic brother, Gregor. He has no intention of getting married, but he’s about to be corralled by fate. Bound by Blood is the funniest of the three books, in my opinion. The chemistry between laconic Gregor and his true love, Maddy—a geeky librarian from Queens—went snap, crackle pop from their first meeting on the page. All I had to do sit back and take dictation. They remind me of those classic bickering couples from old Hollywood.
I loved every second I spent writing this story, and hope you will enjoy reading it as much.
To catch the flavor of the book, check out the first chapter here at Samhain, or see Maddy and Gregor in…uh…action together in another excerpt at my own site.
Also be sure to visit my blog, The Eroticka Revue, for a chance to win a book, and maybe a little something pretty as well!
A quick note on the chronology of the series:
If you haven’t read Called by Blood yet, you can still read Bound by Blood first. Each of the books stands absolutely alone. In fact, the events in Bound by Blood actually happen before those in Called by Blood, so if you’re a stickler for chronology, you should read Called by Blood first.
The third book, the one known around the house as “the twisted one”, is Damned by Blood, the story of the icy eldest brother, Mikhail. That story is coming soon.
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