Beloved Vampire – Mason and Jessica’s Emotional Tango

I’m the type that, when I start to read a romance, I get irritated pretty quickly if I’m mired in pages of action, politics and world building. Introduce me to the characters from the very beginning, pull me into their minds, hearts, yearnings, and then build the plot around that. I’m like that weird Kohler commercial, where she wants the architect to build her house around her faucet choice – laughter. However, I think for romance, the relationship and character building is way more than one fixture – it’s the structure/frame of the house.
I’ve been writing paranormal erotic romance for the last few books. While paranormal does have the pesky problem of requiring politics, world-building and/or action scenes, it’s still quite possible to make romance the focus. It’s just a bit trickier. However, the beauty of a series is that, after a few books, you’re at home in that world, and sometimes the muse gives you characters on whose relationship you can focus far more exclusively.

Beloved Vampire, the fourth in my Vampire Queen series, offered that pleasure. Oh, and before you stop reading, yes, it can be read as a standalone, though there will be guest appearances by characters from the previous books. That’s another delightful side effect of writing series – those previous characters tend to jump into plots of your other books. Good friends who show up and say “What’re you doing today? Can I join you? Need any help? Can I add additional word count?” (laughter)

Let me tell you a little bit about the story. Lord Mason is a vampire who’s haunted the Sahara for three hundred years, guarding the tomb of his lost love, a young Bedouin girl. When someone breaks into the tomb, he’s more than ready to let them know the consequences of pissing off a nine hundred year old vampire. However, he finds Jessica, a fugitive from his own world.

For five years, Jessica was forced to be a second-marked servant to a brutal vampire master. She escaped him, but she is dying as the result of a partial third-mark he tried to inflict upon her before she killed him. While she had no control over any of that, she is determined to control one thing – where she dies. An archaeology student before her capture, Jessica wants to finish her life in the tomb of a Bedouin girl who sacrificed everything for love. While Farida’s story is reputed to be mere fanciful legend, her unwavering faith in Lord Mason’s love resonates with Jessica, because she lost her own fiancé to her vampire master.

It isn’t until she finds the tomb that Jessica realizes the tragic irony – her desire to die in the tomb has led her right back into another vampire’s hands. Though of course, she’ll find that Mason is an entirely different kind of vampire – one that a woman might trust and yearn to call Master in the end.

While all my work is character-driven (if I’ve done it right), every once in awhile, the characters lead even more than usual, the strength of their emotions, past pain, and intense need for one another centering the story on them even more tightly. Mason and Jessica were those kind of characters.

I love writing erotic romance because every story is like dancing a tango for the first time—the complex give and take, the provocative footwork, between two strong people falling in love. I hope you’ll enjoy dancing with Mason and Jessica. You can find the official blurb and a free excerpt at my website, http://www.storywitch.com/, under the Vampire Queen series link. Oh, and you’ll notice there’s a TwoLips scavenger hunt icon there – Two Lips reviews site is having a month long scavenger hunt with bunches of prizes available from over a hundred participating authors, and my giveaway is a signed copy of Beloved Vampire.

Counting the days until I get to meet you all at the Authors After Dark conference. Until then, happy reading!