White Wolf is Live!

It's live!! 

This series has been a long time coming for me, and I'm so thrilled to finally kick things off with book one. This is one of those action-adventure, get-obsessed, geeking-encouraged series that I hope you'll all enjoy as much as I already do. 

You can get it here:

Kindle

Nook

Kobo

*paperback coming later in the day

And if you haven't already, come join the Sons of Rome readers' group on FB for deeper discussion.

Happy Halloween, and happy reading! 

One More Week!

Just one more week to go until one of my favorite holidays...and the release of White Wolf! 

Here's what you can expect:

- White Wolf is definitely not a standalone. Each book in the series has its own storyline, which will be wrapped up for the most part by the end, but the series as a whole reads like a fantasy saga, with an ongoing plot that unfolds slowly as the series progresses, with characters growing and changing throughout. While the romantic storylines play an important part, the books are not couple-centered, and the love stories continue to evolve over time. This series is for anyone who really wants to sink his or her teeth into a series with plenty of action, intrigue, and complicated relationships of all kinds.

- The Sons of Rome series is definitely intended for adult audiences.

- Comps? Think along the lines of Underworld, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and even Supernatural. Unapologetically paranormal, but grounded in the real world, with a major emphasis on interpersonal relationships. Heavy influences include Dracula, real world vampire legends, and the collected works of Poe and Irving. 

- About half of the book, clearly marked, takes place in 1942, but the ongoing storyline that will continue into book two will take place in the present day. 

- The short story prelude, "The Stalker," will be included in the paperback version of the novel, for everyone who likes to read the real thing.

White Wolf releases one week from today! I can't wait to share it with you all. 

Two Weeks to Go!

These are the things that we know:

On December 30^th 1916, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was murdered by a group of nobles led by Felix Yusupov, husband of the Tsar’s niece. His body was found a few days later in the Neva River. He’d been shot in the head at close range, according to autopsy reports.

~*~

In the wee hours of the morning on July 17^th 1918, in the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia, ex-Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, ex-Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children were roused from sleep and escorted by guards out of the home, across a courtyard, and into a basement. Nicholas carried his ailing son, Alexei, in his arms. In the basement, Bolsheviks read Nicholas his death sentence, and then murdered the entire family.

~*~

In 1924, after the death of Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin became the leader of the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union.

~*~

June 22 1941, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, invading the Soviet Union. The Red Army was able to hold Moscow, and the operation failed.

~*~

July 1942, the Nazis bombed the Soviet steppe city of Stalingrad, kicking off one of the longest, bloodiest battles in human history: The Battle of Stalingrad.

~*~

These are the things that we know.

We also know that amid the bloody chaos of war, individual stories of bravery, and sacrifice, and great loss are often buried amidst the stacks and stacks of battle statistics. Sometimes, in the dry recitation of wins and losses, we forget that men and women lived these wars. They fought and bled and scrapped and killed to stay alive. They saw things. Terrible things. Some more terrible than others.

This is a war story. Like all war stories, it is a story about men…and monsters.

Sometimes, the monsters come down on the side of the angels.

Tread carefully, dear reader.

~*~

White Wolf releases two weeks from today! 

Vampire Stories are Human Stories

“Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

I think the reason I've always loved the paranormal genre is because it's one that is rife with possibilities. And of all the paranormal creatures, vampires have always been my favorites. Like all book and movie monsters, they serve as dark looking glasses through which to view the human psyche; a way to examine our own wants, needs, hearts' desires, and even kinks in a way that is shocking, thrilling, and, in the case of vampires, monstrous and monstrously charming. In the vampire, we have a being who is both as refined and cultured as we could hope to be - and as base and violent as we sometimes fear we might be. There's a cleverness to good vampire stories, a perfect blend of suggestion and explicit statement, the erotic and the horrifying. 

In her introduction to Dracula, Brooke Allen writes, "If there is a moral to Dracula, it might be that simple goodness is not adequate to fight evil. One must bring brains and moral strength into the arena as well." This is true, especially given the context that in Dracula, and all resultant fiction inspired by it, as well as earlier works, the vampire is not presented as a mindless, slobbering beast, but something mostly human, with the ability to reason, to lie, to seduce, and confuse. 

Though we'll meet a variety of paranormal beings in my new Sons of Rome series, I was most excited to explore vampires and vampirism, and to create my own mythos about them. So much beautiful work has been done in the genre already, and I wanted to make sure that my spin had its own flavor, while paying homage to the original legends. I wanted to write stories that, at their hearts, are saying something about human nature, and the ways longevity and experience can shape and, sometimes, warp it. 

There are several central characters in the series who are vampires (including Vlad Tepes!) but my favorite would have to be Valerian, who we get to meet for the first time in White Wolf, and who will be the focus of the third book.

**

"This is about one thing: power. Everyone craves it, and only a few can hold it. It’s the one lasting tenant of this world that survives century after century: the craving and pursuit of power.”

Sasha swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” He arched a single brow, smile mocking.

“Why would you tell me all of that anyway?”

He shrugged and sat back. “I’ve always liked wolves, myself. Couldn’t stand the mages – crafty liars, all of them. But wolves have a certain rough honesty to them. They’re emotion, and instinct, and so rarely have machinations of their own.” He smiled up at the sky, almost wistful. Then glanced back at Sasha. “Consider it my good deed of the day.” He snorted. “Better make that decade.”

“Are you a vampire?” Sasha asked.

“Yes,” the prince answered, just as simply.

“Is [redacted] like you?”

“He’s nothing like me.”

In the silence that followed, Sasha heard his wolves approaching, their breath and heartbeats, felt their curiosity and wariness. They couldn’t smell the prince either, but could sense their alpha’s distress.

Finally, the prince got to his feet and dusted off his pristine breeches. “I better be going, then.”

“Wait!” Sasha said, and it came out a shout.

The prince gave him an amused glance.

“What’s your name?”

That earned him another fang-flashing smile. “I always tell my friends to call me Val,” he said, winked, and then was gone. Vanished into thin air, as if he’d never been there at all.

White Wolf

Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Gilley

Friday Fluff: The Party Part One

Remy

Everyone knew Remy Lécuyer was in love with Lucy McCall…except for Lucy McCall. Or, he thought darkly, maybe she knew, but didn’t return his sentiments, and thought the kind thing to do was pretend she didn’t notice that he stared at her too long sometimes, and always found a way to sit next to her.  Because she was nice. She was the kind of genuinely sweet, soft spoken, thoughtful person who mailed handwritten thank you notes, who remembered shopkeeper’s names and thought to ask after their ailing relatives. Who didn’t mind pitching in even when her eyelids were flagging; who tutored children and volunteered at every single club charity event, smiling at everyone she encountered.