ReVamped - Vampire Book Review

ReVamped (Void City, Book 2)
by J. F. Lewis
Pocket (March 10, 2009)

[Reviewed by Sandy Rainey]

ReVamped roars out of the starting gate like an undead Mustang and never slows for a pit stop. That simile is not as daft as it sounds: At the end of Staked, the first book in this series, Eric, Lewis' headstrong vampire hero, was blown to smithereens—along with his strip club and his lifelong love, the mortal and now-elderly Marilyn—by his erstwhile best friend and now sworn enemy, Roger.

That would be more than enough to do in many a vampire, but readers of Staked know that Eric is no ordinary vampire. ReVamped picks up in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, with the incorporeal Eric and Marilyn having a discussion that clears up for Eric the inexplicable relationship between her and Roger, as well as a lot of what the jealous and treacherous Roger had been up to in Staked. Their conversation is cut short when a demon comes for Marilyn's soul. Bereft, Eric vows to win Marilyn's soul back, but he is unsure how to reclaim his vampiric form. Fortunately, he has friends back in Void City who have not given up on him.

Magbidion the mage, Eric's vampire daughter Greta, and his thrall, the stunning temptress Rachel, team up to reincorporate Eric. Magbidion's spell is successful, but goes a bit awry and ends up vampirizing Eric's car in the process. "Fang the 'Stang" eats roadkill and whatever else gets in his way. He is a dark and mute version of Knight Rider's KITT, and Eric has reason to be grateful for his assistance on more than one occasion.

No one has felt Eric's absence more keenly than Tabitha, the Living Doll who has characteristics both human and vampiric. Rudderless when he is gone, she joins the High Society Vampires Eric so despises at the Highland Towers complex. Tabitha is overjoyed when she learns that Eric has returned, but circumstances conspire to keep them apart. Eric has his hands full tracking down the fiend who has taken Marilyn's soul. Besides, the irresistible Rachel - who happens to be Tabitha's once-dead, now unaccountably alive little sister - has an odd hold over him that muddles his thoughts and dilutes his resolve. For his part, Eric is none too happy to see Tabitha keeping company with the snooty dilettante vampires he detests.

ReVamped charges along at a breakneck pace. Revelations come fast, resolving mysteries held over from Staked and leading to encounters with several very old and powerful vampires and a particularly nasty demon, none of whom know quite what to make of his considerable powers and flagrant disregard of the rules. Eric is impetuous and does not suffer fools, but he is a loyal friend with a strong moral compass and a definite soft spot for the defenseless. Aided by an ancestor's cowboy ghost, Talbot the catlike mouser, Magbidion, and an ever-growing collection of thralls under his protection (remember that soft spot?), Eric enters into a dangerous pact that could return his humanity if he's lucky. It's far from obvious who is trustworthy and who is plotting Eric's destruction, but what could be more tantalizing than the promise of information on his mysterious vampiric origins? By the time ReVamped careens to a halt, it's clear that Eric's story is far from over.

Reviewed by Sandy Rainey for Patricia's Vampire Notes

Phantasm - Review

Phantasm (Zoe Martinique, Book 3)
by Phaedra Weldon
Ace Trade (June 2, 2009)

[reviewed by Patricia]

Zoe is such an interesting person and lives such a complicated life. Even though this is her third adventure, but the first I had read, I was so completely engrossed in the story that I could not stop reading. Eventually I was able to make sense of the intricate plot and multiple characters.

As the story begins Zoe can no longer speak. Although she is mute there are a few individuals who can read her thoughts.

Her mother lies in a long-term care facility, technically alive but with her soul missing. Zoe desperately wants to find mom's soul. The problem is someone stole it. Even when that individual, a powerful being named Archer, is found, he claims to no longer posses it. In desperation Zoe tries using magic (for which she has zero ability) to enter the Abysmal realm hoping to physically retrieve her mother's life force. This stunt almost costs Zoe her life. At the last minute her friend Dags rushes in and saves her.

Her troubles don't end there. Zoe is a Wraith who uses her special ability to travel the astral plane, out of body, or OOB as she refers to it. Unfortunately, that ability, one that practically defines her, has disappeared. And this is only the beginning when listing Zoe's problems. Her best friend lied to her and betrayed her; the cop Daniel Frasier, with whom she fell in love, has abandoned her; and the evil entity Phantasm wants her destroyed.

As Zoe searches for ways to help her mother and to recover her own lost powers she finds herself pulled relentlessly into a paranormal universe with complicated, often unfathomable rules, that must be followed exactly. Weldon's imaginative, complex plot and brilliant characterization adds up to a compulsive page turner. And there will be more to come in this series.

Although I enjoyed this book tremendously, it's probably best to read the books in order of publication.

Wraith (Zoe Martinique, Book 1)

Spectre (Zoe Martinique, Book 2)

Phantasm (Zoe Martinique, Book 3)

Interview with Author Cecilia Tan

"I'm a writer, best known for my erotic stories but I also write science fiction, mainstream fiction, baseball nonfiction, and essays."

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Cecilia is also the founder and editor at Circlet Press which publishes erotic science fiction and fantasy. And there's more. Go to Cecilia Tan's Bio. I don't know how she has time to breath let alone write excellent stories!

Still she is kind enough to give PVN this candid interview. She is also generously offering three copies of her current ebook. Look for details at the end of the interview.

[The contest portion is now closed. Many thanks to all who visited and/or commented!]


PVN: Discuss your recent paranormal novel Mind Games.


Cecilia: Mind Games was one of those ideas that had been in the back of my head for years before the chance to write it came along. I had the characters of Wren and Derek in my mind, and I had sat down over ten years ago and tried to write a story about them, but it didn't go anywhere. I wrote this one sort of hot scene with them as an established couple, where they are having sex in preparation for her to spy on someone, so he's teasing her to the brink but not letting her come, but the actual story itself never gelled. So I put it away in a drawer. Then I was talking with the editor of Ravenous Romance about things and she asked me if I did a book for them, what would it be? Wren and Derek came to mind, and I thought, what about the story of how they met and fell in love? The book practically wrote itself from that one thought.




PVN: I love the character Lawrence from Mind Games. Would you describe him?

Cecilia: Lawrence is a quirky character in my head. I knew I wanted my heroine, Wren, to have a best friend she could confide in, but I felt like having a female best friend was going to turn it too much into a "chick lit" book, and it's so definitely not in that style. Lawrence kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, "um, hello? I'm her downstairs neighbor." I named him Lawrence as a little bit of a nod to the writer Lawrence Schimel, who is gay, and who was the person whose shoulder I cried on back in the day when I was starting out as a writer. He was always a great reality check, and that's what the Lawrence in the book is for Wren, too.

PVN: What attracts you to the paranormal?

Cecilia: I like writing elements of fantasy because I like to have ways of adding layers of meaning to the sex and relationships in my books. This isn't to say that just plain sex and falling in love aren't great topics (I wrote a "vanilla" romance in THE HOT STREAK about woman who falls for a baseball player, for example.) but I really like being able to put the characters in danger, and to have them need to dig deep in their souls to find out what kind of strength they really have. Paranormal stories tend to allow for that, especially ones like MIND GAMES where there's a suspense/mystery element. It's just also one of my ultimate fantasies to have a lover who could read my mind. I tend to lose the ability to talk while I'm having sex, which makes it difficult to express what I want or need. it'd just be so handy if I didn't have to, you know?

PVN: What are some of your current or future projects?

Cecilia: I'm currently writing an erotic fantasy series for Ravenous Romance called Magic University. It's four books, one for each year of our hero's trip through college at a--you guessed it--magical university. It's Harry-Potter-esque in that he shows up at Harvard only to discover he's got magical powers he didn't know he had, and finds there's this whole hidden magical world right under everyone's noses. I'm writing it for all the grown-ups like me who loved the Harry Potter books but were left wanting all the sex and on-screen romance and openly gay characters (just to name a few things) that you just couldn't put in a book for kids. "The first book of the Magic U series just launched this week! I can't wait to see what people think of it!" It's available here.


PVN: Tell us about Circlet Press. Would you perhaps discuss the Vampire anthologies you edited - Blood Kiss and Erotica Vampirica.

Cecilia: Circlet Press is my baby. Back in 1992 mixing sex and any kind of science fiction or fantasy was considered totally weird. Paranormal romance hadn't really hatched yet, science fiction publishers still thought their audience was 14 year old boys--it was like in the 1980s genre literature had actually taken a step backwards from the sexual freedom of the 60s and 70s. Blame Ronald Reagan, I guess.

Well, in 1992 I was out of college and trying to get my career as a writer going, and everything I wrote kept mixing sex and sci-fi or sex and fantasy somehow. I ended up starting my own publishing house because there was no one else who would publish material that mixed the genres together! So that was Circlet Press.


One of the earliest anthologies I edited was called BLOOD KISS, erotic vampire stories, because I thought, what a no brainer. Everyone understands that vampires are sexy, right? I wanted people to send me all the stories they went and wrote after reading Anne Rice's vampire books and discovering there was no actual sex in them. I edited several more in the erotic vampire series, including Erotica Vampirica, Cherished Blood, and A Taste of Midnight. Then I did Blood Surrender for Blue Moon Books, and the latest erotic vampire collection from Circlet Press is an ebook called Like Crimson Droplets: Erotic Vampire Stories. (Available at circlet.com as well as the Amazon Kindle store and other ebook sellers online.) I also just edited one for Ravenous Romance called BITES OF PASSION, which I think is the best one yet. The stories are so fresh and hot; writers just keep finding ways to keep vampires sexy and interesting. It just went live on the RR site last week and will be up on Amazon and places like that by next month. (I should send you a copy!) Thank you!!


PVN: *Would you care to riff a bit on your love of baseball?

Cecilia: I used to joke that baseball was my one non-erotic passion! But now I wrote a baseball-themed romance, plus some short stories, for Ravenous, so I can't even say that any more!


PVN: Describe your writing day and your writing environment?

Cecilia: I live in a Victorian house in the Boston area that was built in 1887. My ideal writing day starts with me making a pot of tea and carrying it up to my desk on the third floor. I have an office that overlooks my street, a cherry tree right in front and half the wide windows shaded by a pine tree taller than the house. I'll work on things like email for an hour or so, then be out of tea and have to take a break to make more. Then I'll write through two more pots worth, and then go back to email and Twitter and such for a while. I'll go to the gym, then have dinner with my boyfriend of 17 years (we've never gotten around to getting married). We trade off who cooks and who cleans. And then I'll go back upstairs and write some more.

Lately it's been a bit more hectic than that, so most of my writing has been after dinner, between the hours of midnight and three a.m. I'm a night owl.

PVN: What authors have influenced you?

Cecilia:When I was growing up the two authors who influenced me most were the sf/fantasy writers Roger Zelazny and Marion Zimmer Bradley, because I wanted to write like them. My aunt Maureen Brady was also a big influence--she was the founder of the feminist publishing house Spinsters Ink and published her first novel, Give Me Your Good Ear, when I was a child, and so she was always a huge role model to me. She always encouraged me to write and express myself and I know that not every aspiring writer gets that kind of direct support!

PVN: What do you do for relaxation?

Cecilia: What's that? Just kidding. I like to travel. I'm a bit of a workaholic, so the only real way to get me to relax is to take me out of my work environment, whether that means a trip to Disney World (which I love), somewhere new and exotic like Spain or Aruba, or just a weekend in New York City. I am also a big foodie and love eating in nice restaurants and discovering new cuisines. Both traveling and eating-for-discovery lets my mind experience new things, which ultimately end up back in my writing somehow.


PVN: Where can readers find you on the Internet?

Cecilia: I'm easy to find! I have my own blog at http://blog.ceciliatan.com, but I'm on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, et cetera: "ceciliatan" just about everywhere.


Contest

[The contest portion is now closed. Many thanks to all who visited and/or commented!]

Three lucky commenters will each win a copy of ebook Mind Games

To be eligible do one or more of the following:
* Leave a comment on any topic in the interview
* Ask Cecilia a question
* Link this interview to your own site or a social network site, and be sure to let me know the URL

If your email is not associated with your ID, please put the address in your response.

Winners will be selected by Random.com. Name will be posted and contact made by email. The winner has 2 weeks to respond after the name is posted. If there is no response a new name will be picked.

Contest ends July 9 at 11:59 PM

[The contest portion is now closed. Many thanks to all who visited and/or commented!]

Upcoming Event - Interview and Contest with Cecilia Tan

On Tuesday July 7 PVN welcomes Cecilia Tan, author of Mind Games, for an interview and contest.

Says Cecilia: "I'm a writer, best known for my erotic stories but I also write science fiction, mainstream fiction, baseball nonfiction, and essays."

Read a review of Mind Games

Please stop by. There will be three winners!

Demon in Blue Jeans - Review

Demon in Blue Jeans
by Tony V. Sweeney
Wild Rose Press

I recently read this delightful novella by Toni V. Sweeney. On a night out with her girlfriends Kate mockingly makes a wish by asking Satan to send her his baddest bad boy. This was a case of be careful what you wish for. One evening someone knocks at her apartment door. It's a cute guy dressed like Robin Hood. He asks her to sign for the delivery which turns out to be him. Kate, who had spent the evening drinking too much wine and whose love life had been nonexistent, decides to humor the guy.

His name is Zel and he is a 3rd class succubus who is up for evaluation. If he does not get a good evaluation this time there will literally be hell to pay. Kate wants to help this very sweet, rather inept, and definitely naive fellow. Their clumsy romps in the bedroom will bring tears of laughter to the reader. Kate and Zel are very appealing and their story is joyful. This is a funny, feel good story.