Showing posts with label Vampires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vampires. Show all posts

Monday 10 October 2016

Sucked In (The Series That Just Plain Sucks Book 1) by Charissa Dufour

I had a lot of fun reading this book. I think it will appeal to the fans of the Language in the Blood series and fans of John Hennessy's vampire books. Basically any one who doesn't take their vampires too seriously. I gave it 5 stars.
Sucked In (The Series That Just Plain Sucks Book 1) by Charissa Dufour on amazon.com


When Ashley Hawn is on date with Isaac; an attractive man she has been dating for a while. She innocently mentions that there were rumours of a wizard in her family’s past. He is suddenly a lot more interested in his date and she painfully finds out what he really is. The next few days see her struggling to hold on to her new vampire life. She is helped by her ‘vampire baby sitter’ Nik as the two struggle to find out who wants to capture and sacrifice her. Despite disliking Nik, Ashley recognises she needs him to stay alive. The banter between the reluctant protector and the hapless but stubborn new vampire is what makes this book so much fun to read. Ashley Hawn, the main character is a writer of vampire novels. The sort of novels I normally hate and in which all vampires are attractive, brooding and uber powerful. Thankfully Charissa Dufour isn’t that sort of writer. She takes the whole genre with a healthy dose of humour and a good pinch of salt. She has created in Ashley a heroine that is flawed but also highly entertaining.  I can’t wait to read more about this hapless new vampire.
 


Monday 7 September 2015

Murderous Little Darlings - A Tale of Vampires - Book One: A Tale of Vampires - Book One by John Hennessy

The book promo is going well, so far I managed to sell about 60 books and the countdown runs till the 9th. The next couple of weeks will reveal the full impact, but it's encouraging. I also reached another milestone in getting over a 1000 twitter followers. I still have to be convinced about twitter. I spend many hours doing tweets and retweets and met some interesting people, but as regards to book sales, well I think it is probably a waste of time. I'll sit on that fence a little longer and tweet on:)
Now back to my cup of tea; vampires. This was an interesting one and some new fresh ideas here. It was a short story, but one that will be part of a seven book series. Five stars.
Murderous Little Darlings - A Tale of Vampires - Book One: A Tale of Vampires - Book One by John Hennessy

What a tasty morsel this was. It was very short and I’ve would have liked to get my fangs into something a bit longer, but the good news is that this is part one of seven. This excellent short story starts a promising series.
John Hennessy very cleverly messes with his readers minds. Firstly his characters are young children; they have the faces of angels but are capable of gruesome and violent acts. Marcus the oldest of the three siblings has fully embraced his vampire nature and tries to get his siblings to follow his lead. His brother is easily manipulated, but his sister objects. Here the author messes with us again by throwing doubt on the assumption that Marcus is a vampire. Is he just a disturbed young boy that thinks he is a vampire? Vampires are just a myth, right? Marcus, despite his young age, is a manipulative character and I found him quite chilling. People who like things clear cut and logical might have a problem here, but I took it as a story told from the perspective of the children. You get three kids in separate rooms and you get three completely different stories and two will be far removed from the truth. (At times this might even be a little trippy.) The ending was unexpected but a little sudden. I do hope that in the next stories we will delve a bit deeper into the lives and backgrounds of the three siblings (or that the reader gets further messed with). A different take on the vampire genre and certainly something I want to read more of.

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Fact or Fiction by History Mystery Books

I've downloaded this book as a freebie during a kindle give-away and that's why it was lucky to get a 3 star review. It was badly written, research was just plucked out of the air without quoting many sources and full of errors. The writer is hiding behind History Mystery books and I haven't found a way to contact him directly, so unusually my editing issues were mentioned in the review.

fact or Fiction by History Mystery Books on Amazon.com

This was a book I was very much looking forwards to reading. I have an interest in vampire myths, especially before fiction got its hands on it. The author has certainly put a lot of effort in researching his topic, going back as far as Egyptian and biblical times to get to the root of the vampire myth. My problem is how it was presented. The writer often mistakes cannibalism as a start of the vampire myth. I also thought some of the views were contradictory, such as the mention that vampires were not really mentioned before the Middle Ages, but then taking it back to the Egyptian myth of Osiris (which according to Wikipedia has nothing to do with vampirism.) I would have liked the author to have mentioned where he found his sources, as he claims to establish whether vampires are fact or fiction. You can do two things with a book like this, be meticulous with your research and really get to the root of the vampire myth,(quoting sources etc.) or just have fun with all that is being said and written about vampires. I think this book succeeds at neither. I also think that the book will benefit from a good edit. The sentences are long and rambling and there are still a lot of mistakes, but this can be amended and has not influenced my rating.

Monday 2 December 2013

The internet part two



If you are writing a book you will often turn to the internet to check facts or look up places. I’m quite a lazy researcher as A. it takes a lot of time and I’d rather be getting on with writing and B. the truth sometimes gets in the way of a good story. If you are using historical facts they will have to be accurate. For book 2 I’ve been turning to the internet again to get answers to some important questions I’ve been asking myself:
Can vampires be tattooed?
Can vampires be recorded on audio tape?

Here are some answers to the first question I found on: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081116184120AAOdO1Ti
(The typos and misspellings etc. have nothing to do with me, I’ve copied these directly from the site) 

I do not believe they can. this question makes me think of The Vampire Lestat, where Lestat's mom Gabrielle wanted to cut her hair and look like a guy. but every day when she slept, her hair would grow back to the length it was when she died. she was very distraught about it. i imagine a tattoo would be the same, like an injury to the body that is almost immediately healed. so heres your life lessons from this: 1) make sure you properly groom yourself constantly in case you become a vampire cause you'll never get the chance to change yourself afterwards lol and 2) go ahead and get a tattoo if you are a vampire cause if yo udont like it tomorrow, it'll be gone lol

As usual there is a bit of vitriol too:

Well duh...theyre not real.There are however a lot vampires in literature,movies and surprise, mythology and folklore.Hence why this question is here.If you have nothing to contribute quite frankly don't waste your time or mine.

And the indignant souls who take it all just a bit too seriously

 Why wouldn't they be able to? The pain will obviously fade away, but the ink is another thing. The ink is like permanent skin paint, it itself is not pain and will not fade away like it would if it WAS pain. That's all their is to it(Besides the fact that vampires really DO exist).
Hope this helps.

When you read fantasy You mind becomes filled with thought of fantasy... For there is no way that any real vampire would expose itself to such danger.... And with you not really knowing what a real demonic vampire is, I can understand your question... First off there are some very serious vampire hunters that exist all over this world and they take joy in the demised of vampires.... So I seriously doubt that they would expose themselves in that manner...... When maintaining there secret is on the top of every vampires list.......

that is a very good argument. I would imagine the answer being no. But i'm not sure. I would think since they are always so clean and beautiful(since they heal so easily) that it would heal immediately but since it is ink idk? and don't some have piercings so it probably just depends on the writer or imaginer.
awesome argument though!

This is probably why I write fantasy, you can make up your own mind and do whatever you want! I’ve decided that Cameron can have his arm tattooed with a Saltire and Scotland underneath.

To my other question, I found a good answer on:

No reflection (often because the vampire has no soul). This sometimes extends to shadows. But it depends on the vampire apparently. In one medium there are several types of vamps who have various weaknesses. In more recent examples this has been 'modernised' in terms of the vampire not being able to be picked up by audio or video recording or transmitting equipment.

Then this next snippet caught my eye. I thought this was a really fun character flaw for a vampire to have and I’m certain I will do something with that. I think that modern vampire stories sometimes take them self too serious, I can’t imagine the vampires in twilight to get distracted by having to absolutely count some spilled rice, but I would have maybe enjoyed twilight  if they did. 

Occasionally suffer from severe OCD. One folkloric method of dealing with Vampires was to drop thousands of grains of rice in their coffin, the theory being they'd be compelled to count them all when they awake, wasting the whole night instead of getting up and terrorizing people.
  • The folklore version also is told with sesame seeds, and may also extend to any small, numerous nut or grain, if not any particulate (handfuls of sawdust?). Fairies also have this problem.
  • Dropping a bunch where you stand is a known way to escape the OCD variant of vampire.
  • A similar folklore variant involves hanging a sieve, colander, or other household item that's full of holes outside your front door. That way, the vampire will stop and count all the holes, leaving them vulnerable at sunrise. ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! FOUR GRAINS OF SAND! AH-HA-HA-HA!
  • Apparently poppy seeds were used to great effect in Greece, as they had the additional benefit of putting the vampire to "sleep".
  Also on the OCD theme, vampires will, like fairies, be obsessed with out of place and messily-tied knots, and must stop what they're doing to untie them.

The internet, always wonderfully enlightening!