Today's Haunted Halloween Spooktacular Guest Author is Catherine Winters!

What's a Halloween Spooktacular without vampires?  Today's author guest writes an urban fantasy series about the fanged folks. Welcome Catherine Winters! The book featured today is a stand alone book which fits with her vampire series. I have to say I'm impressed with an author who knows how to spell bogeyman. It's a small thing but a peeve of mine. Grin. Here's the book information and a quick guest blog post by Catherine:

A Murder of Vampires

The Imperial Vampires Series

By Catherine Winters

ISBN: 9781535325509

ASIN: B01KD5DUYE

Book Description:

Even vampires have bogeymen.

Geneviève Lacroix wasn't really made to be a leader. Perhaps that's why she chose to form a council instead of an empire; she wouldn't have to bear the burden of responsibility alone. While the Council of the Undead was a success, her inability to face challenges head-on would affect vampires all over the world.

When Coventry Payne informed Geneviève of her intent to betray her sire, Grant Black, Gené did nothing. When Coventry succeeded, Gené ignored her own laws and Coventry went unpunished. When Coventry showed up asking for her own House, Gené gave her New York. When Coventry began weaving myths of Grant's excessive violence and ruthlessness to keep fledglings in line, Gené remained silent. When Geneviève feared Coventry would make a play for the Paris Council House, she gutted it instead of fortifying it.

As Coventry continued to grow her power and influence, Grant lay bound in a box, alone in the dark, starved of blood, slowly going mad. Only Coventry hadn't counted on the ever-increasing population of humans, the "shrinking" of the world, the eventuality that someone would stumble upon his prison and release him.

One hundred and fifty years has seen that eventuality come to pass, and now he will have his revenge. Coventry will get the bogeyman she created — although the monster she claimed he was is nothing compared to the monster he's become.

This book is a standalone within the universe of The Imperial Vampires Series

Amazon Kindle     Amazon Print     Smashwords

Excerpt:

The couple at table twenty-seven were not unusual for a Thursday dinner service. He was more handsome than most, and she more annoyed, but their clothes were expensively made and perfectly tailored, their shoes shiny and fashionable. She was perhaps too short for him; they looked a bit mismatched, but then, the gentleman was so tall that it was probably unavoidable. She was beautiful, though cold, refusing to smile even as her companion tried to charm everyone in reach. If they noticed the shaky hands and determined lack of eye contact from their waitress, they hadn't mentioned it; if they'd noticed the series of wait staff who had subsequently tended to them, they likewise had refrained from commenting. They were, in truth, the perfect table: neither of them ate, but both drank, and were pleasant and uncomplaining. The gentleman paid the tab, and tipped extravagantly – enough so that the shaky waitress didn't mind sharing, and even grudgingly admitted that perhaps she'd been wrong in her original estimation of his character ("Creepy."). 

            The couple left the restaurant, not touching each other, not even looking at each other. They were a mismatched set indeed: he was more than a foot taller than she. He towered over her, loomed, used all his great bulk to intimidate, but she would have none of that. She opened her own doors, assuming he was following, got behind the wheel of an obscenely expensive sedan, and pulled into traffic without looking.

            "Is the car bugged?" He wished not to be overheard. As did she, when it came to that – the restaurant had been merely a convenient rendezvous, not a place for conversation.

            "Of course not, it's mine."

            "You'll forgive me if I don't have the greatest confidence in your – What is he, anyway? Is he even there anymore?"

            "Not so often as to care what I do with my personal time." They spoke English with similar accents: softened consonants, narrow vowels, a superficially British sound with something more exotic underneath. It was the language they had in common, and the one in which they did the most business. "You didn't drag me to Budapest to discuss Vlad."

            "True enough. I need your help."

            She laughed. "It wasn't enough that I rolled back the stone from your tomb?"

            "You did that for yourself."

            "Did I? I can't remember what you've done for me since."

            "I've been a convenient villain, haven't I? A tale told to fledglings so they fall in line."

            "You could have been that lying in the sarcophagus."

            "Yes, yes. I'm a terrible burden on your conscience. One has to wonder why you bothered to free me if it was going to plunge you into this ridiculous guilt."

            "One does. I do. Daily."

            "But I've stayed out of your way, out of Europe, like I promised, haven't I?"

            "I fear that's going to come to an end."

            "I deserve vengeance."

            She bit her lower lip, worrying it with her teeth, drawing a tiny bead of blood that filled the car with a sweet-rotten scent, like berries gone slightly bad. A human wouldn't have noticed, but his nostrils flared and he turned to stare at her.

            "I don't know those laws," she said, and he could hear every ounce of relief.

            "It's not the law that gives me the right to kill them."

            "Then you don't have that right."

            "They locked me in a box for a century and a half."

            "Didn't you deserve it?"

            "You thought I didn't."

            She shook her head, taking a sharp right turn off the main road. They'd left the city completely behind, and he thought he knew where they might end up, but allowed her to determine their course. "I…don't know if that's true."

            "Then I am the villain to all of us, is that it? I'm the bogeyman, the big bad vampire?"

            "We all have our roles to play," she whispered, without looking at him.

Hey, all! *waves* I'm Catherine Winters, here to promote my newest novel, A Murder Of Vampires. It's part of my Imperial Vampires universe, and a prequel to the Josephine Trilogy. I hope you'll give it a try – it's a great place to step into the series!

I'll be honest, I struggled with this guest post for a while. I just couldn't decide what y'all might want to read about. Writing? Reading? My characters? Why I love Star Trek so fucking much? (Probably not that last one. But feel free to message me if you're interested. I could talk about Star Trek for days.) 

Finally, someone suggested that I should just let you all get to know me. And I figure there's no better way to do that than to see my Buzzfeed quiz results. I mean, they're clearly the most accurate personality assessments on the interwebs, right? Right. So let's get started!

I'm 40, based on my McDonald's order. But also 21, based on my shoe preferences. I'll let you guys sort it out.

I'm 100% pug, which I think is pretty damn impressive. I mean, how many pugs do you know who've published five novels? But I'm also somehow 67% cheese, which doesn't seem likely, mathematically. Though I did only get a D on a basic math quiz, so maybe don't take my word for it?

I'm 64% keen, which I think must be a British quiz, because it means, like, smart? And since I got 8/10 on the "Can you guess the animal from its French name" quiz, I'm going with smart. At least with words.

According to a visual test, I think I should live in London, but should actually live in Sydney. Denver, where I actually do live, was not an option, which is straight-up bullshit, yo. Denver is the place to be, as so clearly evidenced by all the out-of-state license plates I've been seeing lately. I'm also never going to get married, which will be news to Mr. Winters, who thinks we walked the aisle at least a decade ago. (Fun trick if I'm 21, eh?) And our fat, grumpy, orange tabby is apparently most like a black panther. I'll believe it when I see it.

I am not a die-hard Disney fan, though to be fair, the quiz was about the parks, mostly, and not the actual stories. I know a lot of useless facts, but not a lot of them are about theme parks. Sorry, Charlie. As for which famous redhead will play me in the movie of my life? Julianne Moore. I was hoping for Tess Holliday – she's much more my style – but who am I to argue with the Buzzfeed gods?

So. There you go. I hope you've got a pretty good idea of who I am, now, based on the world's most accurate metric: A 21-40-year-old unmarried married pug, who is kind of smart, doesn't know jack about Disney, looks like Julianne Moore, is more than half cheese, and should live with her black panther in London or perhaps Sydney.

Sounds about right. ;)

About the Author:

Catherine Winters writes urban fantasy, women's fiction, and literary fiction. She is an undefeated four-time Chopped champion and the principal mezzo-soprano for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. When she's not writing or singing, she enjoys teaching French to cats. At least one of these things is actually true.

http://writingwinters.com

http://facebook.com/writingwinters

http://twitter.com/writingwinters

http://pinterest.com/writingwinters

http://plus.google.com/+writingwinters

Tour giveaway:

5 copies of A Murder of Vampires, print or ebook (to be decided by the winners). Open internationally.

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Haunted Halloween Spooktacular Featured Author Today is Jamie K. Schmidt!

I love the title of Jamie K. Schmidt's novel, The Graveyard Shift. You see, I'm one of those folks who is a natural night owl so I've loved jobs where I worked graveyard shifts. I tend to be up late and do my best work while others sleep. I also love a bit of the supernatural and paranormal in my fiction so this book intrigued me. Hopefully it will interest you too!

The Graveyard Shift

By Jamie K. Schmidt

Genre: paranormal romance

ISBN: 1534805680

ASIN: B0177E5Z8S

Book Description:

Erotic, Sexy and Sweet tales of vampires, ghosts, mages, shifters and dreamers of dreams.

In this story collection, you will enter an adult bookstore run by two vampires and partake in the bloodletting and sex, see a witch accidentally summon a vampire who gains power through love making, and then go clubbing with an urban vampire.

However, vampires aren't the only supernatural beings in this compelling collection of stories. Ghosts jam with their favorite rock bands. A Grail Maiden helps protect Arthur's cup, and a paralyzed cyber mercenary finds love inside virtual reality.

Amazon

 Excerpt:

Deirdre was a European princess whose lineage, no one dared question too closely.  She kept close companionship with Viola, a dark Countess of equal renown and deadly beauty.  In a time where the night was feared, they flourished and fed at all the best parties of the nobility. 

The Princess was as fair and fey as a moonbeam with silver hair and cerulean eyes.  She lived for excess and to play with her new found friends. 

The Countess was the opposite side of the coin.  With raven locks and soulless black eyes, she was a lithe viper who struck quickly and gleaned minions from the throngs of addled noblemen.

But good times always end, even for immortal royalty and when the church's mercenaries, The Prophecy of the Eye, became too interested in the beautiful thralls encircling the Princess and the Countess, the parties suddenly stopped.

This cycle continued for many centuries.  Deirdre and Viola graced Czarist Russia, continued on to Gay Paris and finally to the New World in gin joints and sleazy jazz dives of the Big Easy. 

While America lacked the polished old world charm and the distinct respect for one's betters, it also provided more of everything else, from money and thrills, to gambling and illegal liquor.

Its wide terrain allowed the Princess and the Countess to move from state to state until technology caught up with them and they learned the value of keeping a low profile.  They were able to exploit the innocence of the forties and fifties, but were swept away into a drunken frenzy of Free Love. 

By the late seventies, they reached a rhythm that was blown away by the "Me" generation of the eighties and the cynical creep of the 90's that exposed the world's monsters in vivid detail across television screens and eventually the Internet.

Now in the new millennia, there is nowhere to hide and no other frontiers to explore.  They found out the luxuries of the day could be gone in an instant.  Swiss bank accounts could be seized and the Princess and the Countess could be among the nouveau poor, scraping their living feeding off homeless and runaways.  They have become merchants, biding their time and hoping for another renaissance of excess.

An ignoble end for two from the finest Carpathian bloodlines. 

Perhaps a fitting end some may say, for however pretty the monsters are, they are still creatures of the night— or from hell as the church's mercenaries proclaim. 

The church's vanguards have also migrated from Europe. And like the Princess and the Countess, they have morphed and remade themselves to fit the times.  Always hunting, they are similar to the women they chase, although they would balk to see the comparison.  The church mercenaries seek to destroy magic and any evil that lives outside their doctrine.

Whether their victims deserve their fate or not is irrelevant. 

It was so much easier for both during the simple times, where murder was accepted and random acts of violence and carnage need not be explained for helicopters with news teams or amateur videographers.  They've learned a new dance for the modern world and it is kept to a very fine line.  Like the sword of Damocles, the truce poises hair thin.  It is not a matter of if that strand will break, but when.

And darkness save the innocents caught between.

Dream Killer

Flash Fiction By Jamie K. Schmidt

I swore I was going to do it. And this time, I meant it. He had finally gone too far,

pushed my last button, and said the unforgivable.

“When I married you my dreams died.”

The fight ended quickly after that. In the vacuum silence of words that can’t be taken back, he looked as stunned as I felt. But he put up his chin with false bravado and waited for my one-two riposte. I merely left the room.

The apartment shook when he crashed the door open. He peeled out of the complex driveway in a puff of smoke and burned rubber. A huge belch came from the living room and the stench of burning sulphur wafted into my study. I came out to investigate. My husband’s words had summoned forth a creature that was too small to be a demon, too malevolent to be an imp. The creature was straddling the couch. Its

yellow eyes were narrowed at me. It hissed, showing pointy teeth. I crept closer and it swiped out at me, its bony arms like broomsticks. His scissor bladed claws cut the sleeve of my robe. I backed away, threw a pillow at it. It caught it and shredded it into confetti. What was warlock born could not be witched away but it also could not harm me. I hissed back at it and cast a protective spell around my cat, whose back was arched like the letter A.

Three days of silence passed. My husband was grumpy and sullen, rattling the paper and slamming dishes to fill up the emptiness and the quiet. I moved like the walking wounded. There was a hole in my soul where happiness once lived. I was numb.

The creature would appear and disappear. Always watching, never attacking us. It

played with itself, picked its nose. But for the most part was content with existing in the silence of our world. If my husband noticed it, he gave no sign. I ignored it.

After a week, things gradually started returning to normal. I still pretended to be asleep when he came to bed, when I wasn’t in my office all night staring at the world map and wondering if anyone out there hurt as much as I did. We didn’t talk, but I found I could meet my husband’s eyes. I saw no apology in them, but I really didn’t expect to. The creature faded slightly, became translucent.

But as I became angrier at the unfairness, the creature fed on my emotions. As I thought, “Did he think that he was the only one who sacrificed, compromised?”, it solidified again. Its teeth and claws elongated and curved into Kris daggers. The creature followed me around and would preen when I clenched and unclenched my fist.

Back in our routine, my husband would go to work and come home. I stopped making supper or cleaning the house. He could do his own laundry and fend for himself. I made phone calls and robotically did what I had to do. He would stay in watching television or stay out late in bars. I didn’t care either way. The creature would curl up on the couch beside him or swing from the drapes, depending on our moods.

Today, I heard my husband in the shower and I walked over to the window of my study and laid my forehead against the window pane. The sensation was like eating ice cream too fast and I had a giddy recollection of summer time. The door slammed and jolted me away from tire swings and seagulls. I sipped my coffee as I watched him get into his car and drive to work. He never looked up. I wonder if he even thought of me.

The creature plastered its tongue on the window, making huge streaks. Shortly after ten, the movers arrived. I sat on my kitchen counter and watched them professionally pack up my things. The creature, hidden by my invisibility spell, danced around them and jumped from box to box.

“No, that stays.” I said when they started towards the TV set. I directed them to my office and went back to my perch, slowly stirring a head ache relief potion.

The movers were expensive. But if I had to carry box after box into my car all by myself I never would have left him. It wasn’t the first time, I sat contemplating leaving. I would grab a handful of clothes from the closet and got as far as the bed with them. I’d sit and wonder if I should donate most to the Salvation Army before packing. Then I would chide myself for giving up. And I would talk myself into staying. It was harder to leave than in was to stay. We had been playing at being happy for a long time.

I received my power from my dreams and prayers. If I had made him impotent by

marrying him, then I could rectify that by leaving him. I picked up my cat and my purse and walked out to the car.

When my husband came home tonight, I wanted him to see the living room as it always was. He wouldn’t notice that my books or my knitting would be gone. Maybe he’d watch TV for a bit. Maybe he would go into the kitchen to raid the leftovers or to pop a frozen dinner in the microwave. He wouldn’t notice my coffee mugs were missing or that my teapot collection had been lovingly removed.

But he would see the creature, formed out of his belligerence and sustained by our

negative emotions. I looked up from the parking lot to see it rubbing its butt cheeks against the study windows. They would make a good couple.

The End

About the Author:

USA Today bestselling author, Jamie K. Schmidt, writes erotic contemporary love stories and paranormal romances.  Her steamy, romantic comedy Life’s a Beach reached #65 on USA Today, #2 on Barnes and Noble and #9 on Amazon.  Her Club Inferno series from Random House’s Loveswept line has hit both the Amazon and Barnes and Noble top one hundred lists and the first book in the series, Heat put her on the USA Today bestseller list.  Her dragon paranormal romance series from Entangled Publishing, has been called “fun and quirky” and “endearing.” Partnered with New York Times bestselling author and former porn actress, Jenna Jameson, Jamie’s hardcover debut, SPICE, continues Jenna’s FATE trilogy.

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