Compendium Creature Feature: Vampires

Compendium Creature Feature: Vampires

I think I was perhaps born loving, and being fascinated by vampires. My dad used to let me watch horror movies when I was far too young for them - usually when Mom was out because she really didn't want me watching them. I cut my teeth on Bela Lugosi's Dracula. Had vivid nightmares about Fright Night. I adored everything about Buffy. Especially Spike. Eleven-year-old me had a serious crush on his Billy Idol look. And the accent. (To be fair, I don't think that crush ever really went away. Forever salty about the way things ended for him in the series.)

When it comes to books, I still enjoy dissecting Dracula. I can't help but think that Stoker had a little giggle over readers who thought Dracula was the villain of that book. And my love for Anne Rice's vamps is well-documented. 

The problem, then, was taking a supernatural myth that I love and writing it in a way that I felt did the genre - and the creature - justice. All vampire fiction shares certain traits and themes, but I wanted to create something that was very much my own. The world is full of vampire stories, and it didn't need mine. It was more a case of me needing to tell these stories. And if I was going to write about vampires, I had to create my own vampire mythology. 

Compendium Character Sheet: Trina

Named Ekaterina in honor of her sniper great-grandmother, Trina is the human through whose eyes we first glimpse the paranormal. She's a homicide detective, and with that comes a certain pragmatism and calm. She's confident, but not cocky, comfortable, not trying to prove anything. She's repressing her feelings for her partner, Lanny, for the sake of the badge, and she's more or less okay with that. She's well-adjusted; learning she's the great-granddaughter of a vampire - that vampires exist at all - throws her for a loop. But Trina's superpower is that she can always land on her feet, and make sense of the things unfolding around her. She's the rock of her new little immortal family. The conscience, and the voice of reason. And still very much mortal herself. 

From a writing standpoint: Trina is such an important character for me to have on the roster. Because I'm invested, and want to show her journey, yes; but also because she gives us a relatable perspective when we need to pause, step back from the POV of a prince, or an ancient Roman, or a guilt-riddled former Soviet. She's our baseline; our "what would a regular person do or think?" in this instance. And I love that she's a woman; that it doesn't matter that she's a woman. She's relatable because she's a human.

And it's important that, given the way other characters have been turned and become immortal, she's still human right now. Trina's personal journey is perhaps less flashy than that of someone like Val. But over the course of the series, everything she's ever known will be challenged. Her heart will be challenged; though she and Lanny are together in a romantic relationship, it's a relationship that has a long way to go before it reaches its happily ever after. As a writer, I love playing with the idea that Lanny's vampirism isn't an obstacle, but, rather, something that's served to heighten their differences, and bring out that natural tension between them. 

Trina takes a lot onto her shoulders; she's half-mothering her guys at this point. And knowing the weight she's carrying, it's vitally important to me that she gets a fulfilling journey, with a satisfying ending. She's got a big, fierce family behind her: biological up in Buffalo, and found in NYC. Nobody messes with Trina and gets away with it.

“How about,” Lanny said, “we shelve all our personal shit and figure out who’s eating people in our city, yeah?”

She snorted. “All our personal shit?”

He turned to her then, eyes going wide, the whites bright in the dark. “Well, I mean…” His expression slid into a smirk, the one that doubtless worked on lots of women – it worked on her, at least. “Not all.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.”

“You eat yet?”

“No.”

He slung an arm around her shoulders, heavy, strong, and comforting. He was healthy, now, alive, and vital, and whatever else was going on, she could revel in that fact. “How ‘bout Chinese?”

“Sounds good.” She let him steer her down the steps and toward her unmarked, not even a little afraid of what might lurk in the shadows. The scariest thing of all had an arm around her, right where she wanted it. 

~ From Golden Eagle, due Fall 2019

** Dragon Slayer coming 4/30/19. Preorder HERE.

Compendium Character Sheet: Sasha

Character Sheet: Sasha 

Sasha is, unquestionably, the ray of sunshine in this series. He's sweet, he's friendly, he gives people the benefit of the doubt...but that doesn't mean he won't get vicious when his pack is threatened. 

Nineteen-years-old in 1942, Sasha was born and raised in Tomsk, Siberia, the son of a comfortable trapper and fur trader, who was attending classes at Tomsk University, studying to take over his father's business some day. While Siberians living in the permafrost zone hadn't suffered under the farming collectivization programs the way those nearer the capital had, by '42, casualties in the Red Army were so high that Siberian boys were being conscripted and shipped to Moscow and Stalingrad. In a real-world sense, if not for being selected by the Institute, Sasha would have been a foot soldier, and likely dead. 

(This is what Nik tells himself at night when the guilt eats at him and he can't sleep.)

But Sasha WAS chosen (thanks, Val), and in '42 was turned into a werewolf by the mage Philippe. 

A note on werewolves in this series: as much as I love Lon Chaney Jr.'s The Wolf Man, I've always been struck by the fact that Lawrence Talbot never behaved like a real wolf. A rabid one, perhaps, running wild and wreaking havoc. The first order of business, in writing my own werewolves, was to make sure they behaved like real wolves, and not terrors. Second order of business: despite the growling, clawing, and figurative marking of territory, I wanted our main wolf, Sasha, to defy some of the more contemporary werewolf character tropes. Instead of hulking, and scowly, and brutish, Sasha is a delight...who will still tear your throat out if you touch one of his people. 

Sasha is the heart of his family. He's the voice of reason, and of optimism; the one to roll out the welcome wagon. It'd be easy to think of him as naïve, but he's not; he sees the good in people, but he can see the dark, too. He's secure enough, alpha wolf that he is, to be kind even if someone doesn't necessarily deserve it. 

Philippe told him that wolves didn't have mates, because Philippe was a lying liar who lies, and who was dishonest about pretty much everything. So meeting Fulk and Anna was a revelation for Sasha; he wants to love and be loved. He loves a certain someone in particular. (Golden Eagle!) 

I can't wait for all that's in store for Sasha. Unlikely though he may be, he's the strongest wolf in this series, and nothing but a joy to write. 

Compendium Character Sheet: Nikita

Character Sheet: Nikita

Nik was a character who, despite his reticence, I knew immediately. Deeply. Intimately. In so many ways, he's the character I know best. 

The whole Russia crew were latecomers to the series, in the sense that, unlike Val, and Vlad, and Fulk, and Anna, and Liam, and Lily, I hadn't been contemplating them for years. But I HAD been struggling with finding a firm beginning point for this series. Their connection to Moscow, and Moscow's obtuse connection to Rome, ended up being a tipping point. And then I "met" this group of characters, and I was in love, and I knew they had to be our start. They had to be a part of this misfit family. 

At his core, if you trim away the weight of his personal experiences, Nikita is a naturally quiet, thoughtful, anxious individual. Someone who tends to overanalyze, and who has a bit of a guilty streak - call it self-consciousness, or self-doubt, but he's someone who, regardless of circumstances has trouble seeing his own value. 

When you do look at his circumstances, all these traits are amplified, to a near extreme degree. He feels massively guilty, both for what he's done in a professional capacity, and the ways that - he sees - he's failed his friends and family. He loves deeply, but fearfully, and steels himself always against rejection. He's the "you'd be better off without me" type, even if those around him only want him to look after himself and love them back. 

When the series begins, we meet Nikita walking into the Kremlin to address his superior. Nikita is, at this point, a Chekist: a (pretty antiquated) term used to refer to the Soviet Secret Police. (Antiquated, but used willfully, because something about the sound of the word itself sparks fear in a way that I like playing with on the page.) The secret police were Stalin's thugs; there's no nice way of putting it. These were officers with orders to search for traitors to the state, and they had free rein to do more or less whatever they wanted. And what they wanted, as they pulled up floorboards, and took hidden grain and vodka, and raped girls, and sent Russians to the gulag and the silver mines for crimes such as "facial malfunctions" (smiling out of turn), was to exercise the power given to them; all of mankind's worst impulses made manifest under the reign of unspeakably cruelty. 

It's become a personal challenge, in my writing, to flesh out characters who, at first blush, seem unlikely. Even unlovable. Nikita was to be my biggest challenge yet.

But, though Nik is a Chekist, he's also, secretly, a White: one of those Russians loyal to the murdered royal family. A generation after the Whites failed to save the Romanovs, and were killed, sent to the mines, or escaped to America, we meet Nik and his men, all of them secret Whites, no matter how hopeless, carrying on the traditions of their parents, hating the masters they do unspeakable things for. 

The guilt this has spawned in Nikita is something he's going to struggle with for the rest of his supernaturally long life. Because Nik is now a vampire, made immortal with the blood and heart of the vampire Rasputin. 

Spoilers for White Wolf ahead:

The scene where Nik is turned was the first one I mapped out in the planning stages of the novel. It was this vivid, visceral mental image of the blood on the snow, of the fire, of the ravens; and of Sasha, finally understanding what he was. I could see Rasputin so clearly, holding Nik, killing him slowly. And I knew that Sasha would be the catalyst for his turning; the one to actually complete the cycle and save him. And that Sasha would then carry the worry that Nik resented him - a guilty burden of his own - into the next century. 

Clearly, I'm pretty attached to the guy.

The quick rundown is:

Nikita is a vampire, turned at age 27, in 1942. His sire - vampire maker - was remarkably strong, and passed on not only his physical strength, but his psychic ability to compel also. With a look and force of will, Nikita can get almost anyone to comply to his wishes - a trick he hates employing, and which makes him feel vile. His physical issues, while not lethal, dogged his heels into immortality as well; he's still liable to swoon if he denies himself food, which he does often, much to Sasha's annoyance. 

Sasha is the single most important person in his life, and their relationship is going to be front and center in book four, Golden Eagle. 

Nik tends to hold his own happiness away at arm's length, but this time, finally, his little family isn't going to let him get away with that anymore. 

Compendium: Character Sheet - Fulk and Anna

Sons of Rome Compendium 

Character Sheet: Fulk and Anna 

I've talked before, both on the blog and on other social media sites, about the fact that Fulk and Anna were some of the very first characters designed for this series. They date all the way back to my high school days of scribbling story notes in the margins of my algebra homework, and suffice to say they've gone through several transformations since then. At their cores, though, they've always been them, and I was delighted to finally bring them onboard to this series. 

I gave them a joint post because we meet them together as the series begins. They've been married...a long time. And they are inseperable. Soul mates in every sense of the word. 

Fulk is British; there was a real First Baron Strange of Blackmere, and his name was truly Fulk le Strange, though I admit to my character being a fictional creation. In the series, Fulk is much older -  in an immortal sense - than his wife, Annabel, who is a reluctant Southern Belle whom he met during the American Civil War. 

There have been hints that their initial meeting was not exactly love at first sight:

“Darling,” he said, achingly sweet. “All I’ve ever wanted, from the moment I met you, was to call you mine and keep you safe.”

“The very moment? ‘Cause I spit on you that day. More than once.”

He chuckled. “And tried to stab me with my own knife, if I remember correctly.” 

And in Dragon Slayer we learn that Anna has a sister, Lily, who is a mage. 

She lifted her head and sent a small, uneven smile toward Anna. “Hello, sister.”

Annabel folded her arms and braced her shoulder against one of the (rather creepy) angel statues that had been cleaned up. “Trust you to find the one growing thing here.”

Lily turned her smile on the plant and dusted invisible dirt from her palms. “It was doing fine. It just needed a little help.”

“Help I didn’t ask for.”

A sigh. She lifted her gaze again. “Anna–”

“Why are you here?”

“Why did you seek me out if you just want to argue?” Lily countered, but calmly.



Of all the romantically involved couples of this series, Fulk and Anna are the ones modeled on a classic, Gothic Romance relationship. The stern, dour, seemingly joyless baron, alive for too long, jaded, and cold; and his impertinent, quick-tempered, spitfire lady love. Theirs is a love that has aged like fine wine; characterized by boundless support, and an easiness born of long acquaintance. They're perfectly happy to sit in silence. They do argue, sometimes viciously, but they have one of the deepest bonds of any two characters in the series.

I'm intending to tell the story of their first meeting in Book Five, the title of which I'm keeping a secret for now. Expect to see lots more Fulk and Anna as the series continues.Without giving away too much about what we'll learn in future books: Fulk was turned in his mid-twenties, and Anna was turned at nineteen, almost twenty. Fulk is the only wolf of known record who's ever managed to turn another wolf without the help of a mage, a feat thought impossible by other immortals. He was at one point in possession of "the wolf book," the ancient Latin volume that contains the summoning spell necessary for a turning. In "The Stalker," he tells Dr. Talbot that he sold it to "a Frenchman headed for Moscow," which was Philippe from White Wolf. In this small way, Fulk had a hand in Sasha's turning.

Fulk is considered an alpha wolf, and Annabel his alpha female. In the presence of other wolves, this natural dominance would make them the de facto pack leaders amongst wolves of more timid personalities. It would also mean that another alpha male could be seen as a rival.

For most of his life as a wolf, Fulk served as Familiar to a vampire who was an English duke - who we'll meet in book five. His fellow Familiar, the mage Liam Price, known as the Necromancer in immortal circles, was never a friend, and is now looked upon as an enemy. He distrusts all mages now, perhaps unfairly, and dreads the idea of his wife, always free, becoming any vampire's Familiar.

The quotes used above are from Dragon Slayer, and the wolf couple has a big part to play in the story to come.

First appearance: "The Stalker"

Fun Fact: In my very, very early drafts, Fulk was a demon rather than a wolf shifter. I'm glad I decided to make him a wolf instead. 

The Sons of Rome Compendium

The Sons of Rome Compendium 

Hello, readers, and welcome to the first in a series of *official* posts about my Sons of Rome series that I'm going to refer to as "The Compendium."

While composing my Afterword for Dragon Slayer, I was struck by the realization that, while I've used a few author notes, and have blogged about the series a good bit, I haven't ever designated a space for "word of God" lore and in-universe idea organization. A lifetime of reading fantasy and paranormal has shown me that the behind-the-scenes, worldbuilding notes and character dossiers can be just as entertaining as the source material. This is going to be a blog post series that I build upon as the book series continues to progress. I have some ideas, but reader questions are welcome, and I'd be happy to expand upon whatever curiosities anyone might have. As of right now (3/9/19) there will be some spoilers for the first two books, White Wolf and Red Rooster, and once Dragon Slayer is released, expect spoilers for that book as well. 

Alright. *rubs hands together* Let's begin.

The Sons of Rome

This series is a tale of paranormal action, adventure, and romance. Epic in scale, and leisurely in pace as any fantasy saga, it tells the story of a big, eclectic found family of characters both mortal and immortal, joined together on a quest to save the world from an ancient evil. Ranging in age from newly-turned, to centuries' old vampire royalty, our unlikely heroes and heroines are Romanian princes, and Soviet puppets, and modern-day detectives. Mages wield fire, vampires survive grievous wounds, and wolves prove their unfailing loyalty to the people they love. The overarching narrative is one leading up to an epic showdown finale with the Big Bad, but the heart of each novel is the interpersonal drama between friends, family, and lovers. In a story that spans centuries, we travel back to the formative moments in history for each of our protagonists, and see how supernatural beings have helped to shape the wars and kingdoms of humans. And each immortal being, no matter how powerful, is rendered in an achingly human light, full of doubt, and frailty, and burdened by the weight of forever. Immortal, yes, but accessible. 

The Title

The series has many main characters, but it's named for vampire brothers Vlad and Val, sons of the co-founder of Rome, Remus, who was killed by his twin brother, Romulus. In this way, Vlad and Val are, quite literally, sons of Rome, and Rome, as we will see, is where this story is ultimately heading. 

Creature Feature

We've met three kinds of immortal beings (so far~) in the series: vampires, werewolves (wolf shifters), and mages. While they all can and often do exist independently (though wolves prefer to live in packs or with a mate), when bound together the three beings form a triumvirate of power (back to Rome, again). The vampire is more or less the "master" or "mistress," and can use his or her blood to "bind" a mage or a wolf to themselves as loyal and helpful Familiars. A bond can be forced, but can also be loving and mutually-accepted. In either event, the state of being "bound" is a moral question that is explored within the series. 

Vampires can be born of two vampire parents, and can sometimes breed with humans, though a half-human, half-vampire offspring may or may not possess preternatural abilities. Humans can also be turned into vampires, though are often considered weaker than born vampires, their strength determined by the strength of the vampiric sire. 

Wolves can be born or turned as well, though the way to turn them involves a mage, always. Wolves, in turn, are the only ones capable of waking a vampire that has been so starved or badly injured as to have fallen into a restorative coma. 

In this way, the three immortal beings exercise checks and balances on one another. 

The Road So Far

The series opens with the short story prelude "The Stalker," which introduces us to wolf couple Fulk and Annabel le Strange, a baron and his wife who've been unwillingly pulled back into the world of other immortals. The story was released on its own in July of 2017 to whet reader appetites, and is also included as a bonus story at the beginning of book one in the series:

White Wolf. Book one opens in modern-day NYC, and introduces us to two human detectives, Lanny Webb and Trina Baskin, the latter of which has been suffering strangely vivid nightmares as they begin investigating a grisly string of murders. Through a psychic connection, Trina is shown the WWII-era history of her great-grandfather, Nikita Baskin, who proves to have been not only a Chekist, but a secret White Russian, and a part of a Soviet plan to use immortal beings to win the war against Hitler. The past is dark, bloody, and tragic, but her great-grandfather is still alive, and so is his beloved best friend, Sasha, a wolf. 

Book two, Red Rooster, sends our New York crew on a rescue mission to Virginia, where they cross paths with Fulk, Annabel, our Romanian princes, and possible allies Red (a mage), Rooster (a human), and Rob...who is about as legendary as they come. We also learn more about Vlad and Val, both of whom are being held at Blackmere Manor, one as a weapon, and one as a prisoner. 

Book three, Dragon Slayer, which is expected as soon as I finish edits, takes us back to the origins of our titular sons of Rome; shows us their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as abused princes in 15th Century Romania. 

Ye Be Warned

A disclaimer, if you will. This series is intended for adult readers. It contains blood, violence, mature themes of all sorts, and offers explicit depictions of romantic relationships between M/F and M/M couples. If that doesn't turn you off, then please know that this is my personal love letter to all the fictional monsters I've ever loved. 

The monsters in this series now invite you to love them in turn. It's going to be one hell of a wild and fun ride.