Daniel Rambin, vampire sidekick

Today I welcome Sonya Clark to Toad's Corner. She's blogging about one of her characters in the ass-kicking urban fantasy novel, Mojo Queen. Welcome Sonya, and thank you for taking some time out to chat with us.

Early on in the writing of Mojo Queen I knew main character Roxie Mathis needed a best friend. In a moment of mad whimsy a thought occurred to me: vampire sidekick. Gasp! you say, and what kind of sacrilege is this?! Who makes a vampire the sidekick instead of the hero?

Someone fed up with all the brooding, romantic, jailbait-obsessed, oh-so-serious vamps filling up paranormal fiction, that’s who.

Thus was born Daniel Rambin. Although he does hit a few of the standard vamp qualifiers – he’s hot, he’s sexy, he’s dead – he’s not quite a typical vampire either.

The sensibility and world I was creating with Mojo Queen didn’t call for vampire politics or any of the usual types of bloodsucking plots, especially since Daniel is a sidekick. He enjoys tagging along with Roxie on her paranormal investigations, and occasionally he likes to blog about the jobs. He is a beverage connoisseur as might be expected but he’s also a foodie, even though he can’t eat. He likes to take Roxie out to eat and he’s inordinately fond of the Food Network.

Almost right away I realized I had an issue that needed to be dealt with: I had to get rid of any possibility of a romantic relationship between Daniel and Roxie. Roxie would get a love interest, sure, but I didn’t want it to be her best friend and I didn’t want to go down the well-trod path of the love triangle. The perfect solution presented itself. Daniel would be Roxie’s ancestor and they would tell people they were cousins.

Since Daniel was the sidekick he had to have some wacky character traits, the best one of all being his love for belting out classic country songs at the top of his off-key voice. Blame that one on too many over-heated montages set to twee emo or Hot Topic goth, with the vampire walking through the night all brooding and, um, brooding. My vision of Daniel included him singing Conway Twitty in a karaoke bar, flashing a smile at Roxie that bared just a hint of fang. Most of all I wanted Daniel to be a fun character, not like a lot of other vampires.

But he is still a vampire. There came a point in Mojo Queen when I knew that needed to be shown and it chilled me to write the scene. Suddenly I began to see Daniel in a new light. I stopped thinking of him as a wacky sidekick, a character I made up just for a laugh. The more I thought about him the more I wondered about that seemingly goofy choice to make him a fan of classic country. I strongly associate country music with family.

Roxie’s “living” family want nothing to do with her so Daniel is all she’s got. Family are supposed to be the people you can trust the most, and Daniel is that to her. But he – like family – is also the one who could hurt her the worst. There’s a lot of cheese in classic country, but when you look below the surface there’s a lot of darkness too. A lot of murder ballads hidden under the beer soaked cheatin’ songs. Without even trying, I had found the perfect music to correspond to Daniel.

That darkness is part of what brings Roxie and Daniel together. They share a deep bond in their love of the night, the ease they both feel in the spirit-filled dark. Daniel doesn’t have to hide his fangs and Roxie doesn’t have to hide the fact that she can see auras and spectral energy. They are open with each other but Daniel still hasn’t told Roxie everything about his past. Sometimes when he grabs hold of my imagination and whispers possibilities to me, I think about Daniel’s history. His life as a man, his transition to vampire, and what led him to seek out any descendents. Daniel may not be the protagonist or the love interest of Mojo Queen but he is deeply important to Roxie. As I’ve explored his character more he’s become deeply important to me, too. He’s one of my favorite characters I’ve created so far.

Oh, one more thing to tell you about Daniel: Roxie calls him “bubba.” But she is the only one allowed to do that. Anybody else tries it and they might get to see his fangs - without a smile.

Mojo Queen is available from Lyrical Press. Learn more about the author at www.sonyaclark.net (including free reads featuring Roxie and Daniel.)

Whispering Bones: an excerpt

Today Toad welcomes horror author Rita Vetere to her corner, to share an excerpt from her recently released Whispering Bones (Lyrical Press). Rita's writing offers the classic retro horror feel evident in such classics as The Omen, Rosemary's Baby and their ilk. Her characters are real, three-dimensional people who go through harrowing experiences. I'm happy to say this is not a book you read late at night when it's storming outside. Or you could... **grins**

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“Let’s get on with it. It’s the last load. I want to get back.”

The men began emptying the cart of its gruesome cargo, jostling her. Terrified, she listened to the sickening thuds as corpses were thrown into the pit, colliding with the bodies already there. Suddenly, shockingly, Isabella was lifted up. “No... No!” She felt herself falling. Then, the blinding pain of impact as she landed among the dead.

The stench, the slimy feel of rotten flesh... Death surrounded her. More bodies landed beside her, on top of her. Panicked, she screamed, “Take me to the Lazaretto... please! It cannot be far, I beg you.”

The cloaked and masked monster towering above the pit said as he grabbed a shovel, “There is no place at the Lazaretto for the sick any longer. It already overflows with the dead and dying. You have been brought to Poveglia.”

Isabella moaned in despair. Poveglia was a disposal site, nothing more.

The other man spoke. “Tomaso... We could try on our way back to the mainland. Perhaps the Lazaretto will take her. She is but a child—”

“Shut up. I’ve no intention of stopping there, only to be turned away. Then what? Return here to do what we should have done in the first place? No. Look at her. She is already dead.”

The cruel words struck Isabella like stones. Although close to death, a smouldering rage began to build inside her. She looked up at the pizzicamorti, leaning on their shovels at the pit’s edge. Her gaze slid back and forth between the two men and came to rest on the dark form of the man who had refused to help her.

In that moment, something happened.

Her delirious mind cleared. For a split second, Isabella perceived her situation with complete lucidity. She could surrender herself to God’s will. Accept her fate, knowing her immortal soul would soon be reunited with Mamma and Papa in the afterlife. Or she could choose another, darker path—one which had opened before her as a result of this outrage. Isabella heard a sinister whisper. Take revenge. The callous man showed no mercy, no remorse for what he was about to do. She could go unforgiving into the darkness, her soul be damned.

Perhaps if the evil man had not chosen that exact moment to fill his spade and send a shower of dirt over her; perhaps if he had not acted at that precise second, Isabella might have followed the path of light. Perhaps. But the man made his choice and Isabella made hers. She opened and allowed the dark entity which had spoken to her to slither inside.

When the earth struck her open sores, Isabella’s rage exploded. A powerful force surged in her, a roiling, dark energy that breathed life into her once again. Lifting her head, she spoke directly to the man, the one called Tomaso, who had condemned her to be buried alive.

“A curse on you...and on your house... You will be made to pay for this deed... With a death worse than that which you have decreed for me... All of you. Until the very last...perishes.”

Isabella fell back onto her deathbed. The knowledge dawned that she had only been a vessel for the dark power which had risen in her, causing her to speak the words. She found she did not care. A cold satisfaction took hold of her when she saw the masked man hesitate before lifting his spade again. For a moment, instead of the stink of corpses surrounding her, she smelled only his fear. Suddenly, spade after spade of earth rained down on her as the man began to rapidly shovel. He carried out his execution, cursing as he buried Isabella alive.

Isabella could no longer move. Layer after layer of dirt covered her. It entered her nostrils when she tried to breath. It covered her open eyes, blinding her. Earth filled her mouth. It tasted like death, but her heart was cold now and she welcomed it.

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Liked this? Buy Whispering Bones here: http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_52&products_id=275&zenid=6oecjfs9l3kpk2r4gannru6bq5

Carol Hone and Edge of Humanity

Edge of Humanity is a very special story. Blending steampunk elements such airships and a fascinating culture of bioengineering, Carol Hone brings a detailed milieu to life. Here quagga (a now not-quite-extinct form of zebra) are useful pack animals, dodos have been domesticated, ghosts can be used for ammunition, and magic and science have fused into some remarkable hybrid technologies. Not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction, Hone’s setting is a plunge into a world where surprises lurk around every turn and nothing is quite what it seems.

Carol, thank you for stopping by Toad’s Corner to share a little of your magic.

Tell us about Kara and the origins of Edge of Humanity.

Edge of Humanity came about because I wanted to use the world I’d already developed in a novella-length story. This world has a curious and possibly lunatic mix of pseudo-sciences like acupuncture and herbology along with ghosts and trinketology—my invented pet favourite. I threw them into a steampunkish background, stirred and stomped on the mixture, then simmered it for a while.

Kara, the female protagonist in Edge of Humanity, was an adventure in writing a character who is not quite who she thinks she is, or it can be hoped, who the reader thinks she is. She became the somewhat unreliable narrator of a story within the story, though these two strands eventually merge into one another. I was drawn to the idea of the mind being a foreign land that no one ever sees in exactly the same light.

Along the rocky path to writing this, I learned a lot about the process of insinuating hints and clues into a story so that they can combine and deliver that “aha!” feeling when the answers click into place. By the time I reached the ending I was very deep into Kara’s character and found it both cathartic and simple to write. A warning here—though I would call this a romance adventure, don’t expect this to be a standard romance. I mostly wanted to have a go at turning the reader’s mind into a pretzel. Pretzels, come to think of it, do a fair imitation of that mind-numbing construction, the Mobius strip. Plus you can eat them.

Your setting borrows not only from fantasy but a healthy dose of SF. How did you realise your biomechanical mages?

I loved the idea of combining a technological device with some organic magic. Hence the biomechanical mages, who I’ve termed trinketologists, can take ingredients such as branches, metal objects, rock, jewels and so on and turn them into a device that will function for the lifetime of the bio-mage who created it. To supply the magical energy required to run these devices they harvest the animus of living things, mostly from animals, like the songster beetle in Edge of Humanity, but also sometimes from plants.

One character in the story has a coveted long gun that is a fusion of metal and plant. This weapon fires the rare gheist ammunition, which is derived from the ectoplasm of ghosts. Being hit by this ammunition either kills in a spectacular fashion, or causes insanity. It also begs the question as to how society would regard and use something this good at killing if it required the use of a ghost that might once have been a close relative. I like that sort of moral question coming up as the result of a world device.

You write about extinct creatures. Why quaggas and dodos? How do you give them the breath of life?

Oh, I had a terribly logical reason for putting them in—because I wanted to. Sorry, but dodos are sorely neglected in adult fiction, and so are those gorgeous zebras, the quaggas. Unfortunately for the dodos they ended up as the equivalent of chickens and so tend to be seen on the end of a kebab stick. The quaggas made a lovely pack animal. The stripes are to die for. I guess I also did have a notion of drawing attention to the tremendous ability of humanity to drive species to extinction.

Describe your writing process. Do you plot or do the words just flow?

I do a combination of both. I plot the major events as much as I seem to need to. I generally have a good idea of the main characters and a visual idea of the finale or a scene close to it in my head. Also I sort out the background and an overlying reason for writing the story, and then I go for it. If I get bogged down at any point I start plotting in more detail. I like to throw in things as I write that have the potential to twist the plot into different directions. Sometimes they get used in the story, other times not.

The fun times are when something links to something else in an unexpected way. Or you get stuck in a cul-de-sac and suddenly one of those weird plot thingies turns into a vital ingredient that sets the plot churning over again.

Who are some of the up-and-coming authors worth looking out for? And your all-time established favourites?

Old favorites range from the very old like Robert Heinlein and Zelazny and TH White to recent YA authors Philip Reeves and Phillip Pullman or the urban fantasies of Karen Chance. I’m also keen on Emma Bull, who I’m reading right now, as War for the Oaks is so yummily well written.

Care to share a bit about your works in progress?

I’ve got a steampunk universe that’s in the early stages. Tentatively titled, Mia, post-apocalyptic and I’d like to plonk it into the middle of the Pangea Ultima map when all the continents get squashed together, though it’s not likely humanity will still be around by then. My favourite quirk with that one should be my frankenstructs, a sort of frankensteinian clone that’s used by one of the nations as either cannon fodder or slaves.

I also have Needle Rain going through the beta reading phase, and it’s set in the same world as Edge of Humanity. It’s of far larger scope and I get to run a lot more of my nifty concepts though the story. Like my Immolators who are elite warriors created by Needle Masters who use a magical type of acupuncture. The bio-mechanical magic makes an appearance, of course, and I play around with the side effects of my female protagonist being over-dosed on needles and thus susceptible to possession by ghosts.

Magience, my first novel where I used the world of Edge of Humanity should, it can be hoped contracted and released within the next year or so, and is currently under consideration with an editor.

Useful links:

The Critters Workshop: http://www.critters.org/

Lyrical Press: http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=authors&authors_id=150

Carol’s website: http://carolhone.com/

Today Toad welcomes author Nyki Blatchley to her corner.

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Nyki Blatchley began writing when he was four years old, and hasn’t stopped since. In the meantime, he’s found time to graduate from the University of Keele in Greek studies and English and holds a number of jobs, ranging from bookshop assistant and care-worker to artist’s model, and even a stint with Macdonalds. Much of Nyki’s writing has been either poetry or fantasy (of the non-erotic kind), and he’s had numerous short stories and poems published, including one in a horror anthology where his story appeared immediately before one by HP Lovecraft. Nyki’s fantasy novel At an Uncertain Hour was published by StoneGarden in April last year, and he has another book contracted with them. He has also written music, and played numerous gigs on the London poetry/music scene, doing performance poetry to taped backing music, which he called the Invisible Band.

Nyki recently began writing erotica and had three fantasy novellas published by Dark Eden Press, before its unfortunate closure: The Concubine of the Temple, Kaydana and the Staff of Ishlun and Kaydana and the Ruby of Beguilement. He’s also had stories in the Xcite Books anthologies Sex & Submission and Ultimate Sex.

Interests other than writing (and reading, of course) include music, particularly folk, rock and blues, though Nyki has quite wide tastes. He also plays keyboards and percussion, though not particularly well. He loves history, and has been involved in Civil War re-enactments (the English Civil War, that is―roundheads and cavaliers). Nyki enjoys fell-walking, especially in the Lake District, loves cricket, though he’s limited to spectating.

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What stories inspired you when you were young? Any particular authors?

I was read to pretty much from the time I was born and started reading myself very early. My early favourites, I suppose, were the Pooh stories, which I still love. From about eight or nine onward, I became fascinated with King Arthur and anything to do with knights. I read all the retellings of the Arthurian legends I could find, and one of favourite books (which I never actually owned, and I’ve only recently found a copy of) was a wonderful half-fiction, half-non-fiction book called The Story of Knights and Armour, by someone called Ernest E Tucker.

Later, I started to read a lot of historical fiction―my favourite was Rosemary Sutcliffe, though in my teens I got into Mary Renault as well. I read a few fantasy books, particularly The Chronicles of Narnia. Then, when I was fifteen, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and that was that.

Who is your favourite character by another author and why?

Hm, there are so many. I’m very tempted to go with Homer’s version of Helen of Troy. She’s a wonderful creation―a real drama queen who exaggerates everything she says. Her relationship with Paris is one of those where they both equally enjoy the blazing rows and the making up afterward in bed.

In more recent terms, I love Mary Gentle’s character Valentine, also known as White Crow. She appears in the novels Rats & Gargoyles, The Architecture of Desire and Left to His Own Devices, which all take place in different settings and times―for instance, one’s set in an alternative version of 17^th-century England, another’s in a near-future London. She’s described as a scholar-soldier. I’m not sure exactly what I love so much about her―I think she has a wide range of emotions and reactions, and she’s simply someone I’d enjoy having a long conversation with over a drink or six.

Who is your favourite character that is your own creation and why do you think he/she will appeal to readers?

That’s even harder, because I love them all (including the really nasty ones). It’s probably between Kaydana and the Traveller. Kaydana is an itinerant sorceress who has a huge appetite for life (and sex) and is brave, loyal and resourceful, even though she always has one eye open for her own advantage. She’s a long way from perfect, but I think this would make her someone readers can relate to, rather than a perfect ideal.

The Traveller is a character I’ve been writing about since I was in my teens. He’s an ordinary man who’s become immortal by a magical accident. He uses his immortality to wander, trying to see everything there is to see, but his desire for freedom to travel is balanced by his instinct to help when he sees oppression and injustice. I think his appeal is that he’s an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation, and I hope readers can relate to the fact that he always tries to do the right thing, though he doesn’t always get it right.

Tell readers a bit about your current release and who do you think will enjoy reading it, and why.

Kaydana and the Dragon Prince, published by Lyrical Press Inc, is the fourth story about the sorceress Kaydana. The stories are fantasy/erotic novellas, blending the traditional plot-types of sword and sorcery with exploration of sexuality.

In this story, Kaydana teams up with a warrior to rescue a young princess who’s been kidnapped by dragons―but there all similarity with traditional plots ends. Not only is the princess’s warrior-love female, but the situation turns out to be very different from what might be expected. I’ve tried to mix an exciting and intriguing fantasy story with an examination of sexuality under unusual circumstances and some scorching sex scenes, of many varieties.

Care to spill the beans on any future plans?

The fifth Kaydana story, Kaydana and the Pool of the Gods, is now making its way through the editorial process, and I’m also working on Kaydana and the Lost City. That’ll be the end of the projected series (hopefully a Big Finish) although I certainly wouldn’t rule out coming back to Kaydana at a later date.

I’m working on a TV script, to pitch as a series, which just needs a final edit. I also have a fantasy trilogy about 90 percent written―I want to get the first part into submittable form within the next couple of months. After that, I have at least five novels planned, with a few other ideas on an even-further-back burner. Then I have beginnings of about a dozen short stories that need to be written. So I have quite a bit on the agenda―and that’s assuming I don’t have any more ideas.

What is the strangest thing that has happened, related to your writing?

Back in the 1980s, a poem I’d had published in a little writing-group anthology was selected for inclusion in a major-house anthology of poems about London. I was paid £10 for a 12-word poem, so I didn’t tell them it hadn’t actually been intended to be about London. The book was edited by a fairly senior member of the government of the time, and I got to meet him and some of his colleagues at the launch party. I didn’t give them much heed, though―they were only politicians (who I didn’t even support) and I was much more interested in the other poets at the party.

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See Nyki’s Lyrical Press profile: http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=authors&authors_id=11

Graham Storrs' Timesplash

Graham Storrs is someone who thinks a lot about the future. It’s a place we’re all going, whether we like it or not, a place where we, our children and their children will have to deal with changes we can barely imagine. Some of us can’t wait to get there, to see what it’s like, and how we will cope. That’s why Graham writes science fiction―he wants to know what happens next in this amazing story we’re all living.

After a career in research and software design, Graham has turned his gaze firmly to the far horizons and now lives and writes on a remote mountain-top in rural Australia. Surrounded by gum forests and wild animals, he relies on his wife, Christine, and their Airedale terrier, Bertie, to keep him anchored in the present.

Today Graham shares an excerpt from his novel, Timesplash.

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The light, when it came, blasted away her thoughts. Light and sound, gravity and pressure, rushed in on her. Something enormous smashed into her from the side, crushing her shoulder, her hip, slamming into her head. If it hadn't been for the helmet...

Gasping, winded, she gaped at the great slab of green that had hit her, and her mind wheeled and lurched. It was the ground. It hadn’t hit her, she had hit it. She had fallen—not very far, thank goodness!—onto a huge empty pasture. Sniper was there, close by, already bounding to his feet and looking around. Patty pushed herself up, shakily, looking for the others. They were there too, about twenty metres away, also getting to their feet. Sniper took off his helmet and surveyed the area. Then with a few deft flicks of the catches, he threw off his harness and strode across the field to where Hal and T-800 were unfastening themselves.

Miserably, Patty struggled to her knees, bruised and shaken, and took off her helmet. Sniper hadn’t even glanced her way. She might have been dead for all he cared.

They were in a large field. It had a rough, agricultural look about it. Could it be the same manicured and planned parkland Patty had seen earlier in the day? There were no people about, but the big house, Eerde Castle, was clearly visible, just about where it ought to be. There was the sound of traffic somewhere—not the whine and rattle of normal traffic but the growl and roar of old-fashioned petrol engines. Even in the middle of a field, she could smell exhaust gasses.

She was back in the 1980s! For a moment the fact drove all resentment and misery from her mind. If the lob had gone as planned, they would be spatially close to where they had been lobbed from, but temporally shifted sixty-five years into the past. She tried to get a better look at the far-off mansion, but she couldn’t see anything different about it.

“Are you okay?” It was Hal, standing over her, offering her his big hand and smiling. She took his hand and stood up.

“Yes, I think so.” She rubbed her shoulder. “A bit bruised.”

Hal grinned. “You get used to that.” He stepped close to her. For a moment she thought he was going to try to kiss her, but instead he started opening her harness catches. “It’s all a bit of a shock at first. You’ll get your bearings in a minute.”

“Is this really the past?”

“It sure is. The twelfth of July, nineteen eighty-two.” He looked up at the sun. “About ten in the morning, at a guess.”

Sniper, arriving with T-800, looked coldly at Patty but addressed himself to Hal. “Stop fussing with her. She’ll be all right. We need you to get us to the house. We only get a few hours, you know.”

“Right,” Hal agreed. He and T-800 stuffed the harnesses into backpacks, and then he nodded across the field toward the castle. “The road’s that way.”

They picked up their helmets and set off. Patty limped a little from the pain in her hip, but everyone else seemed okay. No one spoke much, taking their cue from Sniper, which suited Patty just fine. She watched his broad back with growing resentment, trudging along in a sulk in which her own pains and grievances gradually overwhelmed any sense of wonder she might have felt at being back in the twentieth century.

In fact, Patty had seen enough old vids from this era for none of it to be very surprising, yet when they left the grounds of the castle and walked into the road, little things began to catch her attention, like the number of telegraph poles, the quaint, old-fashioned cars that made such an appalling racket, and the huge, colourful signs that seemed to be directions for drivers. More and more, the fact that she really was in the time of her grandparents impressed itself upon her.

“Hey, watch this,” Hal called to her. They were passing an abandoned pile of builder’s sand beside the road. He ran across the pile of sand, kicking it around as he went. Patty thought he was just showing off, like young men often did around her, but then she noticed what was happening to the sand in his wake. It seemed to be jumping, vibrating, squirming. She screwed shut her eyes and looked again, as if they were the source of the strange blurriness she saw. Hal stopped at the far side of the pile and looked back at it proudly. With strange shifts of colour and position, the deep prints of his feet were slowly being erased. The weird, shifting of shape and colour spread briefly to the road surface around the heap, causing Patty to jump back in alarm as the effect rippled out toward her feet. In thirty dizzying seconds, the pile restored itself.

“Now do you believe we’re back in time?” Hal shouted.

“Stop pissing about,” Sniper snapped.

Hal gave Patty a grin and turned back to the road. Patty stared for a long time at the sand. It was a small splash, she realised. The little anomaly that Hal had caused—disturbing a pile of sand that should never have been disturbed—had righted itself. But for those few seconds before the restoration was complete, there had been a shake-up in spacetime around the sandpile. Causality had been thrown into disarray and it had taken a while for it to settle back to how it should have been.

She set off again, hurrying to catch up with the others, noticing for the first time that their footsteps left faint, blurry marks on the road that quickly faded behind them.

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See http://www.lyricalpress.com/timesplash

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Toad welcomes F/SF/H authors who wish to place excerpts, poems, short stories or editorial. Alternatively, she’s more than happy to throw a few questions your way and put up an interview. If you’re keen for some shameless self-promotion, send an email to nerinedorman@gmail.com and place “Toad’s Corner” in the subject line. Nerine will pass on your message to Toad, who’d prefer to sit at the bottom of Nerine’s garden eating worms. Darn hoomanz hav to b good for somefink.

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