I am giddy with excitement! I am jumping up and down! I am scaring my coworkers! My novel has both a title and a cover, and I am so very pleased. To celebrate, I am hosting a Cover Reveal on Facebook on September 11th from 1 PM PST to 7 PM PST. Stop by for chapter excerpts, character discussions with original artwork, and contests. I will be giving away copies of some pretty great books! Here is the link to participate.
For months I have kept quiet about my upcoming novel. I was terrified of posting anything about it because 1. I didn't want to annoy people with advertisements (especially for something that isn't available yet) and 2. I was afraid it still wouldn't happen. The second reason isn't very rational, but we'll chalk it up to this being my first published novel. Or my neuroses. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I'm a spazz. Blame it on all of the coffee, chocolate, and unicorns. All the Pretty Bones is my debut novel and will be available around October 15th. After ten years of living in the shadow of her stalker, a diagnosis of terminal cancer pushes Olivia Kardos to take matters into her own hands. Her final days will not be spent isolated from the world nor hiding like a hunted animal. It’s time for Mark Porter to die. Going against a trained killer alone would be foolish, but the handsome arms dealer who offers to help her has a dark secret of his own. Homicide Detective Sean Howard has tried to push his ex out of his mind, but his next case brings her crashing back into his life. A woman is found exsanguinated and brutally stabbed in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood and she could be Olivia’s doppelganger. As more women are murdered and the similarities grow, Sean can’t shake the feeling that Olivia is next. In a world where demons and vampires lurk just beneath the surface, what you don’t know can kill you. In addition to the Cover Reveal, I will have additional promotions and even release free chapters to my email list subscribers. To subscribe, please go here. I look forward to seeing you at the Cover Reveal party!
0 Comments
by Camela Thompson I am officially hooked on the new series, The Strain. The vampires are visually interesting, departing from the ongoing trend of the sexy vampire. While beautiful vampires make sense from an evolutionary standpoint (as Z.D. Gladstone pointed out), sometimes it's refreshing to see them portrayed as an effective and hideous predator. Throughout the beginning of the season the word "strigoi" is brought up repeatedly, which prompted some research. Slavic mythology was the foundation for the modern day vampire, although vampire-like creatures predate hieroglyphics. The Western European vampyr became very popular with Bram Stoker, and his writing relied heavily on Romanian mythology and Vlad II of the House of Drăculești. A super brief history on Vlad the Impaler (for more I recommend the short documentary The Real Count Dracula): Vlad was a ruthless but very successful strategist. He was known for his cruelty, which may have stemmed from spending a large portion of his youth as a hostage of the Ottoman empire. When Pope Pius II called for a crusade against the Ottoman, Vlad raised his hand and aligned himself with Matthais Corvinus. The Ottoman sent an envoy to demand tribute and Vlad responded by nailing their turbans to their heads and shipping their bodies back. He used surprise attacks and constructed a forest of impaled bodies to intimidate his Ottoman foes. Unfortunately these tactics and his heavy hand as a ruler led to his own people turning against him and death. Vlad the Impaler was just a man, albeit a man with a horrific mean streak. The legend of the strigoi has also changed over time. As I've mentioned, vampire-like beings are not a new concept. Blood has been viewed as the source of life and consumed going as far back as hieroglyphics. At least. The legends continue to morph as they appear in our writing, graphic novels, movies, and television. Today's story tellers are still perpetuating the original myths. The strigoi are said to date as far back as the Dacians and are troubled or evil souls. There is a living form (strigoi viu) which are cursed people born with some kind of "sign" (red hair, the seventh sibling born of a single sex, any birth defect, or born with a caul). They may or may not have magical abilities but are buried with caution for fear that they will return as a strigoi mort and risk eternal damnation. The strigoi mort are cursed spirits that have risen from the grave. In The Strain it is said that the strigoi mort first returns to those it loves most. This is in keeping with the myth, however, the strigoi raises in poltergeist form to make mischief in their family home. After a period of time (7 days in most of the documentation I've found), they can take their original physical form and wreak havoc. Each evening they have to return to their graves. If they are not exhumed, beheaded, and burned within seven years, they are no longer tied to their grave and can travel at will. At this point, their souls are also lost. Strigoi have the ability to take on animal form, invisibility, and the ability to drain the energy from their victims. This doesn't appear to have been explicitly through blood, although the myth has evolved so that the strigoi mort are now considered immortal vampires. There have been documented cases of strigoi as far back as 1672, but "vampire hysteria" really hit in the Slavic countries in the 1700's and still continues in some regions where people are buried with great caution. I have a theory that The Strain ninjas who made an appearance in the last episode are actually the moroi, or the Romanian mortal vampire, but that's another topic for another day. Jure Grando was the first documented case of a person being listed as a strigoi. He was buried in 1656, but terrorized his village until 1672. The priest finally had enough and they exhumed the body. It was said that Jure looked as alive as the day they buried him and only screamed when they went to cut off his head.
|
Camela ThompsonFreelance writer and Dark urban fantasy author featuring vampires with bite. My BooksCategories
All
Archives
July 2020
|