Swag!

That was it--the word I was looking for in yesterday's post about giveaways. The books I got at RWA as swag. Never heard it before RWA but just saw it again at a site called I Love Vampire Novels. I'm definitely going to have to check it out further--and add it to my blogroll. My knights, you see, are a form of vampire--not the kind pictured here--but rather, unseelie dark faery vampires. In Scottish folklore, lots of faeries drank human blood. Mine are lamian drones--the "breeders" for an amazonian race ruled by a predatory queen.

I'm out surfing for someone to inspire my hero, Leith MacQuill. Long black hair, chiseled face, green cat-like eyes. His alter ego is a cat sith. More on that later.

Any suggestions?

Back to the Knight of Cups . . .

Social media is both mesmerizing and daunting. Taking a breath between books, I spent the weekend befriending fellow writers on FB, trying to figure out Triberr, and other audience and brand-building experiments. Today, I started back in on book two of THE KNIGHTS OF AVALON series, THE KNIGHT OF CUPS. The rewrite on QUEEN OF SWORDS derailed me a bit, but now that's done until I hear back from my beta readers (and thanks again to my kind volunteers!). Here's a wee taste from the rough first draft. Still got a lot to work out. Sigh.

Leith MacQuill stilled his fingers on the keyboard and squeezed shut his eyes, which burned with the strain of too many fruitless hours spent staring at the screen. Sighing, he reviewed the few lines—a pathetically paltry output. Smoldering with self-disgust, he plucked his cigarette from the ashtray, rose from the desk, and strode to the library’s diamond-leaded window.

            Taking a long pull on his cigarette, he surveyed the expansive grounds of the castle he called home. The formal gardens looked scruffy, the conservatory cried for paint, and the corner turrets were in dire need of repointing. But upkeep took money, which he had in short supply. And, try as he might, he could think of no new way to acquire more. He’d already sold off most of his horses and opened some of the rooms for tour groups and special events. The former was a painful sacrifice, the latter an insufferable intrusion. But what else could he do? Let the castle he’d spent a fortune restoring fall into ruin?

Meet Graham Logan . . .

One of the authors I follow on FB posted something today asking other writers who inspired the heroes in their novels. Well, here's my inspiration for Graham Logan, the blood-drinking dark faery hero in QUEEN OF SWORDS. Picture him with longer ginger hair and green-gold eyes. And more buff, but not too much more. Anyhoo, I got all the way to the end of the rewrite today. Now it's going out to my beta readers (and thanks to my two volunteers). The book opens with a short preface--an entry in Cat's dream journal about a recurring nightmare she's had since childhood. Chapter One introduces Graham. Here's a taste from the start of the book, which could change, of course, depending on feedback and further editing.

Graham Logan, teeth set against his lower lip, peered at the three facedown tarot cards on the desktop before him. He’d laid them out with a particular question in mind, but now couldn’t bring himself to turn them over. Did he really want to know if she would come again? And, if she should, how to keep history from repeating?

            Since the last time--a hundred years ago--he’d walked a tightrope of deprivation and despair. It was how he avoided entanglements; how he coped with his losses and his lot. Yes, he was lonely and miserable. Yes, he was sick to death of his colorless life, of denial and longing, of settling for scraps. But how could he allow himself more when the price was so dear?

            Lighting a Gauloise, Graham rose from the desk and walked to the window, leaving the cards where they lay. Sweeping aside the heavy drapery, he gazed out across the manicured hedges and intricate boxwood parterres of the manor’s formal gardens. The sun was just beginning to rise, bathing the scene in golden light. In the distance, through a veil of mist, rose the private chapel’s bell tower and, beyond that, the treetops of the woodland deer park.

Wicken Manor, Wickenham Village, County Essex. The latest in a long list of posh addresses in the English countryside. And, like the rest, it was remote without being too far from the conveniences of London. Unlike the rest, however, Wickenham boasted a progressive university specializing in the occult--a promising prospect. The library, from what he’d heard, housed a collection of vampire literature rivaled only his own.

Changing residences every five or six years was a necessary evil, but at least he’d been spared the scourge of repeating school ad infinitum, like so many poor sods in the novels of the day. He’d been transformed at the age of seven and twenty, on the eve of his wedding to her—the first time they’d met. (As far as he knew, anyway.)

Was God still laughing about that one?

He sucked the harsh smoke from his cigarette and blew it at the glass. Could he resist her this time around? He honestly didn’t know. She seemed to call to something deep within him—something he might think his soul, if he still had one. But that was unlikely. He’d surely lost it when he joined the legions of the Fae.

Undead, they called what he was nowadays.

A scoff rose in his throat. What did that oxymoronic word mean? How could anyone be un-dead? A body was either alive or it wasn’t. And his was unquestionably alive. It had a beating heart and reasoning brain, among other functioning organs. It just didn’t age, get sick, or die of so-called natural causes. Neither did it digest solid food for nourishment; rather, it absorbed the life force of mortal beings through phlebotomy, among other methods.

He took another drag and exhaled with vehemence. Calling a creature undead was like calling an object very unique. A thing was either unique or it was not. There were no degrees of uniqueness. He shook his head, reining his thoughts back to where they’d started: her magnetic pull.

It was as if she’d been made from a part of him the way Eve had been made from Adam’s rib, and his body longed to have that missing piece restored. Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Realizing the cherished gold lighter she’d given him was still in his hand, he ran his thumb across the fading inscription. Je t’aimerai toujours. I will always love you.

Me too, m’aingael. To our doom.

Heaving a mournful sigh, he threw a glance toward the unturned cards before shifting his gaze to the windowpane, where his reflection looked back at him with an expression of forlorn. “Dracula was lucky,” he ground out before blowing a stream of smoke at the visage. As he continued to stare, it began to morph. His ginger hair darkened to a chocolate brown; his topaz eyes became sapphires; his angular face softened into a delicate oval; his wide mouth shortened and filled out.

Her face.

Even more tormenting than his own.