You may remember the Rave Reviews Book Club, a club devoted to promoting, reviewing and generally supporting authors, from some of my previous posts. Today, I’m hosting the first ever ALL ABOUT THE SPONSORS BLOG HOP.
All About the #RRBC Sponsors Blog Hop
These kind members of the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB (RRBC) donated their support during the 2017 conference, in the way of a gift card and Kindle e-book donations for RRBC’s Gift Basket Raffle. They supported the Club and now we are showing our support of them by pushing their book.
We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed and, after reading it, leave a review. There are several books on tour today, so please visit the HOP’S main page to follow along. For every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the HOP’S main page, your name will be entered into…
Name? Wolfgang Feuerleiben – At least that is the name I am currently using.
Which book/world do you live in? So Many Nights, So Many Sins – part of the Nightly Bites II anthology
Tell us about yourself: I am a vampire, a ‘companion-in-darkness’ as some of my more idiotic acquaintances call us. I am a monster, a killer, a blood-drinker. I have lived for centuries – how many I am not quite sure. After a while the nights all seem much the same, history repeats itself and ennui becomes a constant companion. A human woman told me I am depressed, bored, cynical. All those things are true, but wouldn’t you be after so long?
How do you see your world? My world is long, dark and full of blood and death. Mortals die, often. Vampires die – often at my hand. I am not an avenging angel, far from…
I’ve talked about immortals on my blog a lot due to Dariana and the challenges that came from her immortality. The same problems came about in War of Nytefall, but the solutions were a little easier to find. Then again, it also brought about some new wrinkles too. While Dariana was a sole immortal, aside from the Baron and Stephen, the entire cast of the new series are vampires. That means I’m dealing with heroes and villains that are really hard to kill and injure.
That isn’t to say have an immortal cast is a bad thing if you do it correctly. If they can still be killed then you can maintain the sense of danger. People tend to mistake immortality for invulnerable, but these characters typically have some kind of weakness. It could be a specific weapon, the destruction of their sole, or needing to be killed by one of their own kind. At the very least, you need to have a way to incapacitate them, especially if they’re villains. This fits into immortality not always coming with superhuman strength, so you can trap them like a normal person. All of these things were considered while designing the Dawn Fangs.
One of the benefits of the entire cast being immortal is that this puts them on even ground and it nearly negates each other. There’s no underdog in this arena because everyone has the same lifespan and regenerative abilities. It was halfway through the book that I stopped paying any attention to this too. This didn’t matter and the fight scenes took on a more violent and bloody tone. Why would an immortal care about defense when they could heal quickly? Not to mention losing an arm means less if they can still win and reattach it. Regeneration takes longer, but it’s doable. That means the vampires fight taking great risks and making really big splashes.
The character of Gregorio Roman brings up another aspect of immortals, which is anachronism. You have to consider how the passage of time effects these characters as far as their mentality and humanity. Some may become more monstrous because life is seen as fleeting and killing is the only thrill they can get. Others may become hermits because the new world doesn’t make any sense or bores them. With vampires, you have different generations among the immortals too. Younger vampires will have one opinion on the world while older ones see things from a more ancient and jaded view. It’s not much different than grandchildren to grandparents, but with the time periods being in centuries instead of decades. So, you have a generational issue among this society of immortals that can cause friction. It’s a fairly common one too, which is why I went more for a few characters being out of touch.
So, what do you think about books where all of the characters are immortals? Do you have a favorite immortal?
Plans were made
Factoring in a storm
Some flexibility built in
Yet praying
That the snow is light
*
Starting slow and cool
You feel a little skip
The worst is an illusion
Broken by the phone
To say the schools are closed
*
Storm still mild
While indoors is a maelstrom
Working and cleaning
While kid is running
You try to make some progress
*
Worn down to a nub
Yet thankful for foresight
One day of loss
Can be undone
Until the phone rings
Once
More
My narrowboat, moored up on one of England’s sleepy canals. What better place to dedicate myself to my craft? Peace and tranquillity, a total absence of intrusive cares, woes and worries, eh?
So, there I was, tapping away at my laptop working on the my magnum opus, and suddenly there’s a fully-grown sheep licking the boat’s windows. It’s a distraction and no mistake. One moment I had my two favourite popular scientist types soaked and running for cover across a wild and lonely moorland (right into trouble, where I want them), and the next moment I’m staring down a woolly ruminant’s throat, peering deeper and wondering if sheep have tonsils.
I am not unfamiliar with sheep, m’lud, my sister and I had a couple of pet lambs (orphans) during that part of our childhoods spent on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. One of them, “Whisky”, died young…
We got our 4th Nor’Easter in 2 weeks on Wednesday and this one had to be the worst of the lot. It started off relatively tame, but then dumped snow over night to many people’s surprise. We have an extra car here too, so Thursday started with digging my wife’s car out since we couldn’t fit on the driveway. Not that I had to take my son to school. He was off on Wednesday, which I expected. Thursday was a second day off that I didn’t see coming and it almost made me cry. We did have fun playing in the snow for two hours, but that was really draining and I barely had the energy to begin with.
The source of my exhaustion was that my main goal was to finish the first draft of War of Nytefall: Lost. The original plan was to finish it Friday afternoon and rest until Sunday when I could start a final edit on War of Nytefall: Loyalty. It’s going to be a rough job since my son starts his Spring Break on Thursday and then there’s Passover starting on Friday. With all of this in mind, I factored in Wednesday being a snow day and worked hard accordingly. I didn’t expect Thursday, which threw everything off and forced me to pull a longish night on Friday. Some people around here kept talking to me as well, so I had to work with no back support and in a room that is starting to make me feel very drowsy. I managed to get the first draft done though, but I do fear that I may have rushed the ending. The last section is only a page that I had more planned for, but may work better as an ominous teaser.
Needless to say, those invisible anacondas (panic attacks) have been working overtime this week. I’ve kept them at bay until I try to go to bed. Then, they show up and I keep fearing that I’ll fall asleep and never wake up. This fatigue and fear compounds itself over the week, which gets slightly undone by some extra sleep on the weekend. Not that I’m getting that this time, so we’ll see how long I last next week. Editing isn’t going to be a tough thing since I already went through it a few times. This is to put my mind at ease and make sure I didn’t make any continuity mistakes with the second one. That shouldn’t set off any really bad panic attacks and I’m going to minimize my news watching again. I fell off that wagon because it felt so much was happening.
As far as the next release goes, I’m still aiming for early April. My hope is for the 7th, but that’s the end of my son’s break and my birthday weekend. Things might get a little shaky during that time, which is why I’m hoping to get more volunteers to help promote this book. I put out a call for guest post volunteers last weekend, but I’ll probably have to do one on a weekday too. Weekend traffic is very lacking. I’m having trouble thinking up good topics since I used so much for my blog, so I have an option for a standard html if I can’t think of anything. Feel free to volunteer here if you want.
That’s really it. I’m gearing up for the Spring Break period, so I’m just trying to clear the big things off my plate. My extended plan is to take the week after my son’s break to relax and recover (if people here will let me). After that, I’ll be editing Quest of the Broken-Hearted and preparing to write War of Nytefall: Temptation. At this rate, I might be able to finish this year’s releases and the final Dawn Addison story before my son hits summer break. Considering he doesn’t have summer school this year, getting that far would be amazing. Then, I can spend July and August with him and only having to worry about blog posts and some outlining. I’d ask what could go wrong, but I think we’ve established that something will go south.
So, what are the goals?
Edit War of Nytefall: Loyalty
Prepare requested guest posts
Work a bit on June blog posts
Continue reading Dragonball Z. Just got to the first two androids and waiting on the next volume to come in
Start playing Lego Indiana Jones with kid on his break
Brace self for Passover and lack of pizza
Maybe find a way to get a little extra sleep
A side thing: Shannon Thompson put up a really interesting post on Ageism in Publishing. I really recommend reading it. In fact, it got me wondering about the ages of authors when they finally made it. This infographic came up, so take a look:
Within Clyde’s gang is a smaller group that calls themselves the ‘Vengeance Hounds’. I can’t go into too many details because the members will be getting their profiles posted throughout April. No sense in spoiling their moments. Yet, I can talk about how they operate as a ‘mini-gang’ and demonstrate how layered vampire society can be.
As stated, Clyde’s gang has the core members and the outer groups. The Vengeance Hounds fall in the middle of these two factions. They are part of the inner circle, but interact a lot with the lower level vampires. Part of the reason for this is because they act as mercenaries, which means they need to bring more on for bigger jobs. This also makes them the recruiters of the gang since they interact with others more often than thieves like Clyde and Mab. Any problems are passed through the Vengeance Hounds, which is another job. You can tell that they serve an important purpose similar to the trusted advisers of a noble.
I thought one of the hardest things to do would be to figure out what they were doing after the Great Cataclysm. It actually turned out to be the easiest once I went through with the mercenary idea. This helped them transition to the war pretty easily. Not official soldiers, but a special force sent on missions and into battles. Similar to Mab hunting powerful enemies, the Vengeance Hounds went after larger targets such as bases, weapon storage units, and enemy special forces. With battles, they would be unleashed to attack from the shadows and hunt down escaping enemies. As before, their numbers would change depending on the job, but a difference this time is that they don’t have as much control over their membership as before. The nobles they work for choose their added forces from their own armies.
A big part of the Vengeance Hounds’ story in War of Nytefall: Loyalty is them deciding on what to do in the face of the Dawn Fangs. Unlike Mab, they have integrated with the new world to a greater extent. They want to join Clyde, but they also have positions and loyalties to their new lives. Getting the gang back together means they would sacrifice something. They differ from the nobles too because they are not part of that higher level of society, so they don’t have that big an attachment. For the Vengeance Hounds, every member needs to choose between returning to their old lives and staying with their new one. This is what happens when loyalty gets spread between multiple factions even if they’re friendly with each other.
A perfect corpse floats forever in a watery grave.
Legends of Windemere 