Categories: paranormal books


Posted by Amy - November 2nd, 2009 Comments 5

By now fans of paranormal romance books are used to vampire heroes, but author Livia Reasoner brings us back to basics with vampire villains in her first Silhouette Nocturne novel, THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR. Livia’s here to tell us more in this guest post…

by Livia Reasoner, author of THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR

I don’t mind admitting that I’ve never found vampires to be as sexy and seductive as some readers do. I was raised as a country girl with a healthy respect for snakes, so if I ever saw something with fangs coming at me, I’d be likely to grab a hoe and try to whack its head off.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to write about vampires. They make great villains. It’s a tradition in fiction that goes back more than a hundred and fifty years. So when I got the opportunity to write a book for Silhouette’s Nocturne series, using vampires as the villains immediately sprang to mind. I’d written paranormal historical and time travel romances before, but never anything about the undead. In fact, since I envisioned having a journalist as my heroine, the first title I came up with was UNDEADLINE, but what’s romantic about that?

Because I was going to have vampires as my bad guys (“really, really bad guys”, as one reviewer put it), I knew I needed a strong hero and heroine to oppose them. Michael Brandt comes from a family of vampire hunters who have been doing battle against the undead for two centuries, and his pose as a millionaire playboy masks his determination to wipe out a menace that he regards as an unholy plague because of a personal tragedy it dealt him in the past.

Tabloid reporter Jessie Morgan is just as determined to rise from her impoverished background and prove herself as a serious journalist by uncovering the story of the century. Their passions clash as the Brandt family’s war against the vampires sweeps both of them into danger, but their undeniable passion for each other proves to be even stronger.

Of course, a writer can’t take it too easy on her characters, so what’s the worst thing that can happen to a ruthless vampire hunter? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find that out.

Throw in some military action, some Native American mysticism (I’m part Cherokee even if you can’t tell it by looking at me), and some sizzling romance, and I think you have a pretty good book called THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR.

So what do you think? Do you prefer vampires as heroes or villains? ~Amy

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