What better time to announce this news than Halloween?
Years ago, when I was penning my very first vampire romance, Twilight Phantasies, and wondering who in their right mind would ever publish it, I found a book that gave me hope. There had not been a vampire romance novel ever published. Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and maybe Poppy Z. Brite were all writing vampire fiction, but it wasn't romance. No one was doing this yet, at least not to my knowledge. As far as I know, the very first romance novel with a vampire lead character, was a volume I found in 1992 called Obsession by Lori Herter.
I devoured that book, and moreover, I took hope from it. Hope that maybe my own vampire romance had a chance of being published as well. And it was in 1993. By then Lori Herter had released two more novels in her series: Confession, and Possession. The fourth book was Eternity, and I didn't know it existed until recently because it didn't rhyme. 😉 (Interesting that I had a novel titled Eternity, as well.)
Lori Herter has been one of the authors I've admired throughout my entire career. It's a shame these books are tied up contractually and not available to be purchased right now, unless you can score them used. I treasure my copies. They were ahead of their time.
Much later, I met a blindingly talented writer by the name of Christine Feehan, who told me that my Wings in the Night Series had inspired her to write a vampish series of her own, The Dark Series, also known as The Dark Carpathians. And I don't have to tell you how that has worked out for her. 🙂 She took vampire romance to the next level.
Now, all these years later, the three of us card-carrying members of a true and heartfelt mutual admiration society, who have inspired one another for so long, have teamed up to bring you an anthology that is not to be missed. We're each writing a brand new vamp romance story for a collection we're calling EDGE OF DARKNESS, to be released by Berkley Publishing in August 2015. And we are just so excited to be working together we can hardly stand it.
My story's title is DEAD BY TWILIGHT and it will indeed be a part of my ongoing Wings in the Night Universe. It's set in the new reality of my vampire world, where mankind now knows of the existence of vampires. Some of the Undead try to live openly in this new world. Others, wary of the persecution and violence often perpetrated against them, remain in hiding. Our heroine is passing as a mortal, both to keep her job as a cop on the night beat, and to help protect her own kind. But when a string of bodies turn up, dead by apparent vampire attack, she has to find the truth and stop the rogue from ruining them all. This story will introduce a brand new branch of the family, so to speak, a branch that will carry us into previously unexplored realms of the paranormal, while (as always,) pulling in some of the beloved characters from books gone by.
If you didn't know, I'll be co-hosting Christine's FAN 2015 event in LaFayette, CA this coming February. This will be my second year in a row, and it's the most fun I've ever had. I don't know if it's sold out yet, but if not, details are HERE.
For more information about the Wings in the Night and Wings in the Night: Reborn, visit www.WingsintheNight.com