Today, I woke up late again. I think that’s what this week is going to be like—until the morning the kids wake up to open their presents. Then all the adults will be haggard from lack of sleep. I remember back in the day, hearing children stirring at five in the morning and telling them to go back to bed because Santa still had work to do, and he could still come back and take away their prezzies. 😉
So, I’m trying to work on titles for the next couple of Night Fall books. I liked my first title because it used the word “Knight” and I thought it was a lovely tease for the old series title. The next books will also be reworked, expanded versions of the My Immortal Knight stories that I have the rights back to.
From my previous post, you aren’t too annoyed with Sm{B}ittenfor the title of Emmy Harris’ story. So, I’ll go with that. Now I want to think about the next book. Naughty Quentin’s story.
Here’s the old writeup:
To no-nonsense cop Darcy Henry and her task force, the only good vampire is a dead one. When their leadership seeks expert advice to capture a serial-killing vamp, Darcy is embroiled in a steamy love triangle between her partner, Joe, and Quentin the vampire. Darcy’s unable to resist both men’s relentless seduction or her sensual curiosity about a vampire’s “kiss”.
I’ve been playing with titles, and this list can be added to if you have any ideas… Vote for the ones that don’t suck…
Which titles do you prefer? Choose more than one if you like more than one!
A Knight Living Dangerously (30%, 11 Votes)
When Night Falls (22%, 8 Votes)
Tempted By The Knight (From Stephanie) (14%, 5 Votes)
Bitten by the Deep Blue Sea (This book is set in Vero Beach, FL) (8%, 3 Votes)
Dark Playground (5%, 2 Votes)
Bitten Curiously (From Stephanie) (5%, 2 Votes)
Darkness Times Two (From Shirley) (5%, 2 Votes)
Dark Seduction (From Shirley) (5%, 2 Votes)
Love in the Dark (From Shirley) (5%, 2 Votes)
My Lover, My Vampire (0%, 0 Votes)
A Lick and a Nibble (Okay, so I'm really reaching there...) (0%, 0 Votes)
Playa Del Vampire (Again, really reaching!) (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 15
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And, I’ll be working on my December newsletter today. If you haven’t already subscribed, you’ll want to. I’m including a gift to all subscribers. A free short story entitled, “Drive Me Crazy.” Sign up here!
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Last 5 people who had something to say: Stephanie - Ginger Robertson - Shirley Long - Sharon Chalk -
It’s the 20th! I can’t believe how fast this month has flown! Do you have all your gifts bought? I had one last thing to buy, for my dd, and I decided not to buy anything at all. I have to gift some of my family treasures sometime, so I thought, why not start now? Besides, it’s dreary outside. I want to stay in my office wearin’ my jammies where it’s toasty warm and sip hot chocolate while I work. Sound like the best job ever? It is. 🙂
I wish I’d be writing new words today, but I have some administrivia to finish up today. Cleis Press approved a line up for the upcoming In Vikings’ Arms anthology, so I have to send out notices to the authors. Once I’ve notified everyone, I’ll post the list on Facebook. I don’t have a publication date yet, but at least you can salivate over the authors’ names.
Also, I need to finalize my 2015 writing/production plan. I’ve been playing with it all month. I think I’m close to having a list of projects I’m excited to work on. And about time. I hate to wait until the last minute. I want to start the year the way I intend to work it—with fierce determination!
In case you weren’t aware (and I know, I need to update my website this weekend!), I had a new release this week. Or a new old release? Anyways, a story I published years back, a vampire Christmas novelette, has been reworked and republished. Best yet, it’s only $.99! Here’s where you can find it:
In the aftermath of a terrible hurricane, Noelle Moyaux questions her gift of sight until a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger sets her on a path to save his soul.
Magnus Thornton is a millennium-old vampire who has found evidence of an old foe’s evil at work in the demolished city of New Orleans. Weary of the fight, he decides to greet the coming dawn after a night reveling in his favorite indulgences—a bottle of wine and a willing woman.
What starts as a night of sensual delights ends in a revelation of mutual discovery when Noelle quickly creeps into his heart. The ancient vampire, so jaded from life he never speaks, must now persuade her to flee the city before it’s too late.
The next Night Fall book will be another in the revised series. I’m retitling it and I have this title, it’s a little quirky: Sm{B}itten. The {B} part would be in ghostly, faded gray on the cover. I think it’s fun, but my dd isn’t sure you’ll get the joke. I think it’s perfect for Emmy Harris’s book. She’s a ditzy blonde—me at 20, folks—who enters into the dark world of vampires quite by accident.
What do you think of Sm{B}itten as a title?
Oh! And if you happen to pick up Silent is the Knight to read, would you mind posting a review somewhere or telling a friend? Self-publishing success depends on readers’ word-of-mouth. If the refurbished series does well, I’ll be writing new installments!
* * * * *
UPDATE! I’m pleased to announce the final lineup for my next Cleis Press anthology, SEX OBJECTS! Congratulations to all the authors!
Slap Happy – Rachel Kramer Bussel
As Pretty Does – Tenille Brown
Rushin’ Red – Megan Mitcham…
The Masseur – Flora Dain
Butled – Delilah Devlin
Red Line – Kathleen Delaney-Adams
Erection – Tim Rudolph
Vivify – Cashmere S. Jackson
Charlotte’s New Toy – Lavender Daye
Just One Night – Emma Jay
Hush – Cathy Gold
Potential – Heather Day
Concerto for Cellist and Maestro – Michael Bracken
Game Night – Anne Lange
Dark Circus – Rachel Firasek
Taste Test – Michael M. Jones
It’s time that Jazz Fall gets the spotlight—she’s spent the last few years behind the red carpet at SNAP, the celebrity gossip magazine and I interviewed her recently.
You went to USC. How did you end up in celebrity journalism?
Hmmm, L.A. I majored in film and thought I’d work in the entertainment business. Assistant producer, something like that. When the AA job at SNAP came up, I grabbed it. It’s was a lot of secretarial duties, but I was meeting and working with celebrities and it was just so cool! When Maxie Gwenoch came in as Managing Editor for the SNAP magazine, and I was assigned to her…well, it was a crash course in management.
Is this how you thought your life would turn out?
What? Working at SNAP? Living in Kiev? Having a vampire lover? Probably “no” to all of them.
I loved working for SNAP. It was as close to a dream job as I could get and was a great start for a career. I found out early on that the SNAP empire was owned by a hugely old and ginormously wealthy vampire family. I didn’t ever think I’d be involved with any of them, except as an employee.
It sounds like you made changes. What changed your mind?
Meeting Nik.
Who’s that?
He’s the third-in-command of the Kandesky vampire family, he’s about 500 years old, he’s lived in Hungary most of his life, he handles all the family’s business for their armaments factories. His hair is tousled, streaky-blond, and he has these deep, deep brown eyes. He’s stunning. He’s polite. He’s protective. He works in the night with the bottom feeders of Eastern Europe, selling weapons. He’s overbearing and bossy, he’s sex on a stick and he’s my lover.
Overbearing and bossy?
I’m finally figuring out that he can’t help it. He’s from an age and a culture where roles for men and women were defined and stringent. He thinks I defy him and argue too much, I think he doesn’t even listen to me. We’re both kind of right.
I’m from L.A. Love the sun, the beach, the frantic pace of life. He’s a creature of the dark, hanging around with mobsters. We don’t have a lot in common…well, there’s the sex (she laughs). His other characteristics though…he’s incredibly bright, he’s funny and witty, he has a wonderful sense of style, he has oceans of money, he’s the sexiest and most male man I’ve ever known and—BIG PLUS—he loves me.
Where’s this headed?
I don’t know. It’ scary to think about giving up my world to live in his. I know that I need to be with him. I can change…although I don’t really want to…but he can’t. He’s a vampire. That defines his life.
Would you give up your career?
Not at all. I’m staying in Europe now, at Nik’s house in Kiev. I’m still working for SNAP, and working with Maxie. I was promoted to Managing Editor of the SNAP magazine. Since we cover the world of celebrities, I can work anywhere. I travel a lot, visiting our bureaus in Paris, London, Rio. It’s all good because I travel on a company plane. And the demons take care of things. No luggage, passport, time hassles. I just show up and we take off.
What’s the future look like?
I want to stay involved with SNAP, it’s exciting and so much fun to be on the leading edge of international celebrity gossip. And I love living in Europe, although I miss L.A. occasionally. I don’t know if I’ll stay in Europe, but what I do know is that my future will always be tied to Nik. Now I have to decide if I’ll follow him anywhere.
*~*~*~*~*
Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.
She writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries and the eight-book Kandesky Vampire Chronicles paranormal romance series. The third mystery, Delta for Death is scheduled for late 2014 and the ninth Kandesky Chronicles, SNAP: I, Vampire will be available in spring 2015.
At a mystery writers’ conference last week (yep, I write those, too) I was talking to another author (male) and the subject of what women want came up.
Well, the subject was 50 Shades of Grey. When authors get together they always want to talk about books that sell millions of copies.
If we could figure out the formula, we’d sell millions, too!
The conversation went beyond book sales, though. The guy was truly wondering why millions of women bought and read the book.
“Do women want to be taken against their will? I thought that was rape,” he said.
Whew, this was way beyond my understanding of all women’s psychology and fantasies.
Fantasy is the key here, though. Many women have fantasies of having sex when they have some hesitation. But it’s the wooing, the convincing that matters. The woman’s pleasure is paramount in books like 50 Shades.
This book opened the floodgates for BDSM literature, as well as bringing erotica out of the shadows. And looking at the number of books and oceans of sales, women have wanted outlets for their fantasies for a long time.
I have an acquaintance who looks like someone’s grandmother. She should be rocking in a chair by the fire, knitting afghans and reading to her grandchildren. Instead, she writes erotica—pretty hot erotica—and I always wonder when I see her together with her husband of maybe fifty years.
When I read 50 Shades I was beginning to write The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles. I didn’t want my characters to go down the BDSM route, but I surely wanted my protagonist, Maxie Gwenoch, a regular woman, to have a complete fantasy. She was falling in love with a vampire. She loved his caring, his competency, his money, his lifestyle, his urbaneness.
And the fact that he was five hundred years old, had made love to countless women and knew his way around a woman’s body was a giant plus.
In SNAP: White Nights, the seventh book in The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, the relationship between Maxie and Jean-Louis deepens and a new romance between Nik and Jazz begins. Jazz now has Maxie’s previous job as Managing Editor of SNAP, and Nik is a four hundred year old vampire and a leader of the Kandesky family. Nik’s been with women over the past centuries and Maxie knows Jazz is in for a treat.
My conversation at the conference didn’t resolve anything and the guy went away still not knowing what women want. I couldn’t figure out how to tell him that sometimes we don’t want to be responsible, sometimes we want our partners to (gently) coerce us, sometimes we want romance and always we want foreplay.
A few hundred years of experience would help a fantasy, too.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.
SNAP: White Nights the seventh book of her paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was published March 20. She’s working on the eighth book in the series, SNAP: All That Jazz, scheduled for publication in late spring 2014.
She also writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Edited for Death and Labeled for Death. A third book, Delta for Death, is coming in 2014.
So, I’m trying to work on titles for the next couple of Night Fall books. I liked my first title because it used the word “Knight” and I thought it was a lovely tease for the old series title. The next books will also be reworked, expanded versions of the My Immortal Knight stories that I have the rights back to.
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Well, the subject was 50 Shades of Grey. When authors get together they always want to talk about books that sell millions of copies.
Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.
