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Don Massenzio It’s time for the next subject for my 2018 author interview series. Author interviews are posted every Friday throughout the year. I am honored to continue this series with Canadian author Audrey Driscoll. You can catch up with … Continue reading
on Quartz Media LLC:
Chibi Vampire . . . I Think
Stephanie Talon falls into the same category as Gregorio Roman because she was never a game character. While I was planning the series, I realized that there were only 3 female characters. All of those were impressive and powerful and designed to have an impact on their scenes. I felt that having a more low key female character would be fun and fill another gap in the roster. None of my vampires specialized in rituals and scrying, which felt important for a series that revolved around a war. At least that’s how it turned out because Stephanie wanders through my notes for this series like she got lost on her way to another story.
Due to her having to be a low key character, I had to hold myself back. That wasn’t easy and resulted in her repeatedly getting left behind. She was an assassin at one point and the meek child of Clyde in another. Another version ended up being forgotten for two outlines before she returned as a noted ‘present’ thing. Finally, I made her a vampire twin and her brother ended up on the opposing side of the war. This was going smoothly until I realized the brother wasn’t working out and he got dropped. Obviously, things weren’t going well for Stephanie, so I put her on the shelf while I flushed out all of the other characters. This is when I noticed that ritual and scrying need. Unfortunately, she didn’t really fit well with Clyde, Mab, or Xavier.
I had taken a break to finish writing Legends of Windemere and went back to add another story that came to me. It was here that Stephanie popped up in the plot synopsis and stuck to Nadia Sylvan. She was like the woman’s obedient shadow and developed what I could only describe as love. The slightest bit of praise made her swoon and she was nearly as protective of Nadia as Lou. I planned on making her a personal maid, but that didn’t work with the ritual master thing. Instead, Stephanie became another adviser who butts heads with Kai. While he prefers physical spying, she believes magic is a superior method. She tends to play obvious favorites too if anyone disagrees with Nadia. Though, Xavier gets away with it because he’s the husband and Clyde simply unnerves Stephanie because of his new powers. Still, she now had a role and personality that ended up making her fun to write. I couldn’t use her as often as I’d have liked because of her specialties, but she’s there to stay.
One of the really fun parts about Stephanie Talon is that I immediately decided to make her something other than human. I went with a calico, which are the cat-people of Windemere. This meant she was a vampire with tufts of hair on her ears, natural grace and agility, and a tail. One of my favorite things to do with Stephanie is have her act like a pampered cat because putting a vampire twist seems to give her a playful personality. For example, when threatened, she can puff up her long tail with blood and it becomes huge with a dark red tint. It’s a small quirk, but those are what make characters so memorable in these stories.
Welcome to this week’s edition of Lisa Burton Radio. I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and we’re waiting for a very special caller. While doing that, let me ask you something.
How would you feel if you were accused of something you didn’t do? What if the ramifications were beyond serious? Would you rely upon the system to get it right? You only have so much energy and time. Would you focus on proving your innocence, or would you try to find the actual culprit?
Oh, my phone lit up. “Hello, this is Lisa Burton.”
“You are receiving a collect call from the Suffolk County Jail. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes, please.”
“Hello. Is this Lisa? Please forgive the collect call. I didn’t know when we scheduled this interview that I would still be in jail.”
“Yes, Greg it’s me. Don’t worry about the call. I’m sure you…
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Ravnos from Vampire The Masquerade
Sitting between the nobility and common vampires are the gangs like the one that Clyde runs. While his is more infamous, there are plenty around that exist for various reasons that typically boil down to survival. Some go with crime while others stay together to hunt and hide. They can live in the wild, ruins, or the vampire cities depending on what brought the members together.
One important thing with the gangs is that they are watched by the nobility and other powerful members of society. They can be considered the biggest threat to vampires since they don’t always act rationally or within any types of laws. Some go full anarchist too, which is what causes a lot of vampire hunts. Unfortunately, a gang becoming a danger and exposing their presence can create backlash on others. Mortals only know that there are vampires in the area and will hunt all of them down. They aren’t aware that there could be individuals nearby with no association to the gang causing trouble. This is why the nobility in some regions will purge gangs that get too big or try to cause any crimes against mortals.
As far as Clyde’s gang goes, they were certainly one of the biggest in Windemere. The reason they didn’t get in trouble is because they had their own internal hierarchy. You had the inner circle that did the big heists that ranged from thievery to mercenary work. The other members did their own things with the protection of the gang as long as they didn’t make too big of a mess. More importantly, Clyde and Mab created a system of hideouts that their people could use for a fee. Unlike other gangs, they worked with nobles to get some leeway with their antics. Not that they caused a lot of trouble, but Clyde had his moments of doing large heists with the inner circle. This separation helped hide the size of his gang with the Duragians who considered it a smaller one instead of a giant organization.
Something I try to portray with the gang is that they are a family. At least in Clyde’s case, he depends on them to support his ideas and plans. They are the ones who keep him on the right path and he does the same for them. Considering he has been absent from the world for fifty years, Clyde needs his gang to help him acclimate to a new Windemere. The group probably becomes more important than ever before because of all of this. No matter what happens, he has the gang and they have him. This is going to be a major part of the entire series too. It feeds into the question about his humanity and how hard it is for him to hold onto it. With the gang depending on his leadership and control, Clyde has to think about more than himself.
It’s going to be hard to pull all this off though. As things progress, you’ll have Gang vs Nobility. This turns them into anarchists in a way, which makes their existence problematic. Then again, some nobles may see them as a useful ally if they want to control vampire society. It’s not going to be easy working politics into this series even slightly, which might be why I’m focusing more on the gang than the council.
Although, there is one more ‘group’ that should probably get some attention . . . Friday.
Great post and something that many might not even consider.
I recently discovered Sara’s blog, Rough Diplomacy. Sara is a veteran of Active Duty Air Force and Navy Reserves, plus a Bioinformatics graduate, and her blog reflects her diverse interests. More than anything, however, it highlights how passionate she is about history—and military history in particular. With her permission, I am sharing here some of the wonderful material I have come across as part of my Fun Historical Facts series.
One of Sara’s posts, which is of special interest to authors, deals with the subject of US food rations from the War of Independence todate. As Napoleon famously observed, amateurs discuss tactics; professionals discuss logistics. A lesson all writers should heed in their tales!
“C’est la soupe qui fait le soldat” (The soup makes the soldier)
~ Napoleon
Armies can’t march on empty stomachs. This simple truth has defined warfare from Ancient Greece (when fighting had…
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Licence Obtained to use image – Copyright: Dmytro Pauk 123RF Stock Photo
The possible steps between biography and fiction seem to increase from year to year. Ian Jack, writing in the Guardian in 2003, commented, “Writing one’s own personal history used to be called autobiography. Now, more and more, it is called memoir.” Since then, the variety of memoirs has proliferated: we have the traditional memoir, the constructed one, the fictionalised and finally the fictional. This last categorization may still be greeted by a furore as some degree of “truth” is still demanded of the genre.
Biographies may trace accurately the life of someone, usually a person, well-known for their achievements or notorious for the life they’ve led. Though stuffed with facts and footnotes and even using the actual words of their subject culled from letters, diaries and interviews, the biographer usually remains somewhat detached presenting an overview of the…
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Spotlight and giveaway time! First, I am going to make sure you have an idea of what book you will soon be entering a giveaway for, then introduce you to the author, and, finally, give you the details of the giveaway itself.
This time around the giveaway is for a novel I reviewed last week and immensely enjoyed: Blade and Bone. Take a look at the review if you don’t mind spoilers for this third installment of the series.
BOOK SPOTLIGHT
Genre: Fantasy — Sword and Sorcery
Series:The Book of the Black Earth #3
Publisher: Pyr (February 27, 2018)
Author Information:Website | Twitter
Length: 515 pages
In a world reminiscent of ancient Egypt…
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Vampire: The Masquerade
With every society, you have different factions and levels that come into play when changes occur. One of the most common groups in vampire stories is the noble class, which stems from how the vampires were originally immortal princes, kings, and other nobles. This has carried over to other time periods where they come up as businessmen, crime bosses, and whatever groups fit at the top of the undead heap. So, I definitely had to consider if this was something that would come about in Windemere and how Clyde would fit within it.
Both of those issues had simple answers. Clyde has always been a borderline anarchist and outsider, so he wouldn’t fit in it at all. It isn’t that he would openly rail against the system, but he couldn’t possibly fit in that kind of world. This was especially true when I enhanced his thief side, which opened the idea that he would work with the nobles if his goals matched with their own. This tempered him a bit since it meant he could work with others to some extent. Yet, I made sure that he would have some friction when them because the vampiric high society had to maintain an air of superiority. Work with a ‘lesser being’ and be friendly, but still consider yourself better type of thing. Of course, Clyde would take opportunities to poke at them when he could.
The other question was if this would come about in the first place. Considering this is a fantasy world where kings and queens truly exist then it would make sense for vampires to mimic that for their own world. After all, they started as mortals, so this is what they are used to. The changes would be created around the idea that their rulers can’t die of old age and heirs were created instead of born. For some systems, this ended up being houses or clans with an inner hierarchy. I didn’t go that route, but made them families divided by global territories. Some of them had ancient capitals for all vampire-kind while others controlled roaming military forces or supplied food to others. You get a sense of this since it starts falling apart after the Great Cataclysm.
The central governing body of all vampire society is the Council, which has a seat for every family. It grows and shrinks a bit, but the numbers tends to be stable. It really depends on if Duragians, hunters, or adventurers take on an entire family and succeed. This is why the Council is designed to connect the global society of vampires and survive upheavals that are short of acts of gods. The downside of this is that there is always infighting, bickering, and power moves. After all, this is a political group as well as a social one, both of which have reputations for being messy. Thankfully, this side of the system pretty much wrote itself since I was focusing more on a few members. Some nobles are good and some are bad with their goals going across the spectrum.
Vampire nobility always feels like a necessity, especially in a world where humans have their own nobility. This is what takes the species and raises them above the other types of undead. Ghosts, zombies, liches, and the other rotting rabble tend to lurk in the shadows as hordes or solitaries. Vampires are the ones that try to be more human in their society and blend into the cities to some extent. It’s almost like they’re trying to retain some of their old lives or rise above them by creating a nobility class. It is fun to see how they function in a story where they aren’t the focal point too. Clyde might play nice and lend a hand, but this is his series and he’s not in that circle.
What do you think about vampire societies and their gravitation towards ‘nobility’ classes?
Legends of Windemere 