Vampire Factions: The Vengeance Hounds

Night Stalkers from Marvel

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.

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Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age Review

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Just got a review on N.N. Light’s site, which isn’t WordPress anymore.  So, I’m going to leave a link here to help people go see it.

N.N. Light’s Review

Amazon Sale Site

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The 2018 Interview Series Featuring Audrey Driscoll

This gallery contains 6 photos.

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 →

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Here’s how to check which apps have access to your Facebook account—and delete them…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

Further to my blog linking post on 15th March

Facebook doesn’t make it easy to delete your account – Here’s How to do it

Please also read the following  from Mike Murphy  on Quartz Media LLC:

If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you’ve probably installed games or given sites permission to log into your Facebook account. You may even use Facebook to log into services like Spotify, Netflix, or Tinder.

But if you’ve been following the news around Cambridge Analytica, the data consultancy firm hired by the Donald Trump campaign for the 2016 US election that harvested the data of up to 50 million Facebook users without their permission through data collected from third-party apps, you may want to know how to make sure that something similar isn’t happening to you.

Here’s what you need to do

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Stephanie Talon: The Playful Ritualist

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.

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Circumstances of Childhood, on #LisaBurtonRadio

coldhandboyack's avatarEntertaining Stories

Lisa Burton

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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Vampire Factions: The Gangs

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.

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Army Logistics: Food Rations

Great post and something that many might not even consider.

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

Sara | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookI 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

The American Revolutionary War

Armies can’t march on empty stomachs. This simple truth has defined warfare from Ancient Greece (when fighting had…

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Teaser Tuesday: Who Dares Enter . . . Oh, It’s You

Title Card by Alison Hunt

Almost forgot to use this teaser.  People seemed to like the concept of a certain character and I’m happy to share his debut.  It’s actually getting rather difficult to get this guy involved because he’s trying to stay neutral, so it’s a special joy whenever I get to use him.  It means every scene needs to drip with his personality.  Hope that comes across from this excerpt.

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From biography to fiction – Guest Post by, Felicity Sidnell Reid…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

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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