Winners!!

Without further ado, the winner of Fallen by Traci L. Slatton is...

Vickie, who commented:

I love Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, starting to dig on Grimm. I like Sanctuary, love Eureka, Warehouse 13, Haven, and Alphas.

Congrats! Please email me with your mailing information so that I may forward it along to the publisher.

**Also, I am still waiting to hear from the Blood Eternal winner. ML, if your out there, please email me with your mailing information! If I don't hear from you soon another name will be chosen.

Trick or Treat! The winner of Blood Eternal is...

 ML, who shared this Halloween traditions with us:

Halloween is my favorite holiday so I have some traditions. I have to have a party and make a spooky looking cake (from spiders, to coffins, to oozing eyeballs). I also like to name the party food (Bone-chillin' chili, boneless bat wings, etc.). Around Halloween I always like to watch Beatlejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus (don't ask) to get in the festive mood. I also try to dress up every year (at the very least don some devil's horns). Then it's pretty routine-hand out candy to the neighborhood kids-maybe turn on the spooky CD and smoke machine. When that's done-sit back with some candy corn and another Halloween or spooky themed movie.




Congrats! Please email me at vampchixreadbooks AT gmail DOT com with your mailing information. 

Review: Blood Eternal by Marie Treanor

Secrets don't disappear after seduction...

Elizabeth Silk is struggling to reconcile her passion for the vampire overlord Saloman and her allegiance to the vampire hunters. When a shocking vampire revolt calls Saloman away from her, she refuses to follow him.

To make matters worse, Saloman’s beloved cousin Luk has been
found and awakened by one of his greatest enemies. Frenzied
with bloodlust, Luk embarks on a killing spree and prepares to
expose Saloman’s biggest vulnerability: Elizabeth.
But under Saloman’s regime, vampires have become less concerned with secrecy, no longer willing to hide their power. Rumors are swirling

about attacks on humans. After Saloman joins forces with the vampire hunters to consolidate his power, Elizabeth begins to understand her role in the inevitable collision of the two worlds. She could bring resolution between vampires and humans—if she can manage to stay alive long enough to play both sides….

Review:

This was such an interesting character driven book and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet Elizabeth Silk and Saloman. I hadn't read the other books in the series (yet) so at first I didn't quite understand the depth of their feelings and I thought their relationship strange. My initial impression of Saloman was that he was a rude, brutish vampire, but that falls away as you continue to read the book. His behavior is fitting for one so old, ancient really, and he struggles with the concept of love just like the rest of us. By the end of this book I was smitten with him myself.

Elizabeth is a complex woman that is constantly put in the middle of two worlds- hunters vs. vampires- with one vampire in particular causing her to question herself and her role in the grand scheme. She never easily fits in one place and no decision is black and white, but varying shades of gray, only her choices effect those closest to her. She is a valuable resource to both sides, whether they know it or not, because she can see past the stereotypes and acts based on what really is, not what's perceived to be. Her entire life is complicated and I really liked her, but just like with Saloman it takes time. 

The story between hunters and vampires is involved and probably more emotionally complicated than the characters themselves, especially because of Luk. I liked how that aspect of the story played out and the action/suspense was well written. Overall, I'd rate this book a solid 4 out of 5, and I would definitely read this author again.

Website:

http://www.marietreanor.com/news.html

Other books in the series:

Blood on Silk

Blood Sin

Blood Eternal

Halloween guest post and contest with Marie Treanor

Thanks to Marie Treanor for treating us to such a fun and informative guest post. I had a lot of fun learning more about Halloween customs and I hope that you find it as cool as I did. It's always interesting to me that when we Americanize a holiday it seems to become more commercial and less about traditions. Sad really. I think I prefer the old ways more. 

Our traditions are pretty simple: We take the kids to Apple Annie's, this little orchard up in Willcox, to pick pumpkins and vegetables, walk through the creepy corn maze, and maybe go on a hayride. We stock up on local food stuffs like desert honey and apple butter too. Then we spend an afternoon turning our front yard into a cemetery and hang spiderwebs and lights on the porch. Costumes are usually pretty simple for monster #1: Jedi, Stormtrooper, or homemade Ghostbuster. Monster #2 changes about a million times every year but this year we have settled on Frankiestein, a Monster High character that she loves (She wanted to be Draculaura but mean 'ol mommy thought the outfit was too skimpy for a 9 year old). Over the years I have tried to teach them the more traditional aspects of the holiday, like celebrating the end of summer and honoring those that have left our world behind, but I imagine that those details won't be as important until they grow up a bit. We'll see. 

CONTEST DETAILS:

*One lucky reader will win a print copy of Blood Eternal (U.S. shipping only)
*Leave a comment about your favorite Halloween traditions
*Please include an email if one is not easily located in your profile
*Winner will be drawn on October 31st


Enjoy and good luck~


Anna

As Halloween approaches, all things scary, spooky and monstrous seem to be on everyone’s
minds. It’s no different in my house, where my eight year old daughter is desperately trying
to work out whether she should be a werewolf or a zombie for the occasion!

I know America has a particular fondness for this “holiday”, with long-standing “trick or
treat” traditions – which, incidentally, have been spreading around the UK in recent years.
Even in my home country, Scotland, where we have our own very distinctive traditions,
many of the kids I open the door to at Halloween, greet me now with, “Trick or treat!”
Although I’m a traditionalist at heart, I don’t mind that, because they’re not substituting one
tradition for another, they’re just adding to their own customs.

Anyway, I thought I’d tell you today about Scotland’s Halloween habits. As you’ve probably
guessed, the children dress up and go round their neighbours’ houses, much like American
children. Only, we call it “guising” – as in “disguising”, I suppose! – and the children are
all prepared with some sort of turn – a song, a dance, a scary little play, or just a Halloween
joke or two – which they do at your door or in your house, and then receive sweets, nuts,
fruit, cake or other goodies, and sometimes a bit of loose change. I believe it’s a hangover
from medieval times, when visiting mummers would dress up and entertain in the spirit of All
Hallows Eve.

We live in a village, so it’s usually great fun and quite safe for guisers. One of the kids in a
given group nearly always knows someone in each house, so they usually just keep going
from house to house until they get too cold and decide to come home and divide the spoils.
The “turns” they do can be amazing, everything from the tiny child clutching his mum’s hand
and telling a bad joke about a skeleton, to an elaborately choreographed dance routine from
well rehearsed eleven or twelve year olds.

We have Halloween party traditions too. Including “dooking” for apples: you can either kneel
on a chair, with a basin of water and apples on the floor beneath you, stick the handle of a
fork in your mouth and then drop it into the basin and hope to prong an apple; or you can
just stick your face right in the basin of water and grab an apple with your teeth . Neither’s as
easy as it looks!

And then there’s “biting the treacle scone” – which is extraordinarily messy. Some scones are
hung from a piece of string at around head-height, and covered in black treacle. The kids are
blind-folded and have to try and take a bite of a scone. You really need a hosepipe to clean up
after that one!

I’ll probably avoid the treacle scones, but we may dook for apples. My daughter will
certainly want to go guising, although my teenage sons are too old to go on their own behalf
now. And we’ll have some fruit and sweets ready to give to the guisers who’re bound to come to our door.

What will you do this Halloween? Will you dress up, party, take kids out on their scary
missions? What’s the custom where you are?

Secrets don't disappear after seduction...

Elizabeth Silk is struggling to reconcile her passion for the vampire overlord Saloman and her allegiance to the vampire hunters. When a shocking vampire revolt calls Saloman away from her, she refuses to follow him.

To make matters worse, Saloman’s beloved cousin Luk has been found and awakened by one of his greatest enemies. Frenzied with bloodlust, Luk embarks on a killing spree and prepares to expose Saloman’s biggest vulnerability: Elizabeth.

But under Saloman’s regime, vampires have become less concerned with secrecy, no longer willing to hide their power. Rumors are swirling about attacks on humans. After Saloman joins forces with the vampire hunters to consolidate his power, Elizabeth begins to understand her role in the inevitable collision of the two worlds. 

She could bring resolution between vampires and humans—if she can manage to stay alive long enough to play both sides….

Blood Eternal by Marie Treanor

Mark your calendars!!! Marie Treanor will be stopping by (and giving away a copy of Blood Eternal) on October 26th as part of her Bewitching Book Tour. You won't want to miss out on your chance to win. See you there!

Blood Eternal
By Marie Treanor
Awakened by Blood, Book 3
Signet Eclipse
Mass Market Paperback
4th October 2011

Secrets don't disappear after seduction... Elizabeth Silk is struggling to reconcile her  passion for the vampire overlord Saloman and her allegiance to the vampire hunters. When a  shocking vampire revolt calls Saloman away  from her, she refuses to follow him.

To make matters worse, Saloman’s beloved  cousin Luk has been found and awakened by one of his greatest enemies. Frenzied  with bloodlust, Luk embarks on a killing spree and prepares to expose Saloman’s  biggest vulnerability: Elizabeth.

But under Saloman’s regime, vampires have become less concerned with secrecy,  no longer willing to hide their power. Rumors are swirling about attacks on  humans. After Saloman joins forces with the vampire hunters to consolidate his  power, Elizabeth begins to understand her role in the inevitable collision of the two worlds. She could bring resolution between vampires and humans—if she can manage to stay alive long enough to play both sides….

Excerpt from Blood Eternal:

Set up: An Ancient vampire, believed to be Saloman’s newly awakened cousin Luk, has gone on
the rampage in the Turkish hills. Elizabeth Silk is helping the hunters to track Luk and his
allies…

Luk began to run, and as his limbs stretched out, he remembered their strength and what they
could do. A surge of excitement urged him to speed up, to run around the entire world and never
stop. But her scent was close and sweet, and as he leapt down the final fifty feet to land right in
front of her, he grew dizzy.

Startled, the woman fell back, her dark hazel eyes huge in her beautiful face. Hair the color of a
long-forgotten sunrise whipped against her soft cheeks in the breeze. Blood pumped through her
delicate veins. The sound and smell of it drove him to new hunger, but this was one human he’d
never kill.

“Tsigana,” he whispered.

The name held Elizabeth frozen. She’d had an instant’s warning from the Ancient detector,
which suddenly, after indicating his slow plod away from her, went nuts, the readings obviously
failing to keep up with the speed of the vampire who leapt out in front of her a bare instant after
she’d known he would.

She’d had time to press her buzzer, at the same moment it had gone off in warning. The others
knew. So she backed off, giving them time to get here, holding the stake poised for the vampire’s
attack that didn’t come. He stood unmoving, staring at her.

The ordinary vampire detector in her pocket was still and silent. So the Ancient was alone. She
prepared to attack, targeting the spot in his chest that she needed, but before she could fly at him,
he said, “Tsigana.”

If he’d said her own name, if he’d called her Jane or Esmeralda or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she
wouldn’t have hesitated in the slightest. But he said Tsigana, as if he’d seen straight to her one
weakness, a jealousy that amounted almost to fear of the long-dead human woman who had once
held Saloman’s heart.

Her fingers curled convulsively on the stake, altering its aim by accident, and she had to readjust
it. The Ancient who was Saloman’s cousin, his onetime friend and his betrayer, one of Tsigana’s
three vampire lovers, continued to stare at her. She had the impression that if he breathed he’d
have been panting, but weirdly, she sensed no threat from him. He lifted his arms slowly, reaching out to her with intense, weirdly unfocused longing. Understanding slammed into her
like a blow.

“I’m not Tsigana,” she said between her teeth. “I’m Elizabeth, the Awakener.” And she flew at
him, aware her aim was true. She summoned every ounce of strength, every ounce of power she
believed in. Because she didn’t know how long the hunters would take to get here, she had to try
to do it alone, as she’d once tried to kill Saloman alone. She still believed she could have slain
him, using her power as his Awakener, but she’d never found out for sure, because her heart, not
her body, had prevented it. There was no such prevention here; Luk was the cause of most of the
unbearable pain  that had haunted Saloman for centuries. He was as good as dead, and she
couldn’t even regret her lack of compassion.

But he didn’t wait for her. He leapt back so fast she didn’t even see him move. Her stake sliced
through air, almost overbalancing her.

“Not Tsigana,” Luk repeated. He sniffed the air.

“Tsigana is dead.” Again she leapt, this time before she finished speaking, but again he evaded
her. A howl rent the air, like a dog or a wolf in agony. It had to be coming from Luk, as his
distant figure leapt back up the hillside at impossible speed, the bloodcurdling wail fading with
him into the night. Not because he’d stopped crying, but because he was too far away to be
heard.

“Shit,” Elizabeth whispered. With shaking hand she retrieved the Ancient detector from her
pocket. The pointer indicated the hill up which Luk had vanished, the display counting madly as
the distance increased. Then it went dead. Elizabeth delved for her phone, just as the needle
swung rapidly several degrees to the west, and the display galloped forward.

Oh, hell, he’s doubling back. He’s gotten over Tsigana and now I’m dinner.

Blood Sin
Awakened by Blood, Book 2

Even if you walk in the light, you can dwell in
the dark.

Months after her dangerous encounter with  vampire overlord Saloman, Scottish academic
Elizabeth Silk is still trying to cope with both  the demands of her ancestral bloodline—which
marks her as a vampire hunter — and the  overpowering desire she feels for the immortal
she brought back from the grave. But she is not  alone in her fascination with Saloman.

When Elizabeth tracks down a distant cousin  from America, she learns he possesses an
antique sword that has caught the interest of the Grand Master of the American hunters. It is the ancient and mystical sword of  Saloman — a treasure of vast occult powers and a prize beyond measure to both  vampires and humans. Now the race is on for possession of the sword. Even as her enemies and allies shift their allegiances and battle for supremacy, Elizabeth must decide which will rule her own perilous fate: unwanted loyalty or unholy love.

Reviews:

"An action-packed sensual read, filled with danger, romance, vampires, humor and seduction,
BLOOD SIN is an unforgettable story... a delightful read and a welcome addition to the keeper
shelf... this amazing series..." - 4.5 Blue Ribbons, Dottie, Romance Junkies

"Beautifully worded... Unique plot twists... Steamy chemistry and passion-filled romance... an
altogether spicy read." - 4 cups. Virginia, Coffee Time Romance

"The fantastic sequel to Blood on Silk... delicious... I truly cannot get enough of...Saloman... a
fascinating character, free from cliche... truly an amazing series..." - 5 Tombstones, Jennifer, Bitten by Books

Blood on Silk
Awakened by Blood, Book 1

The debut of a seductive new series of  vampires, lust, and revenge. Scottish academic Elizabeth Silk is spending  the summer in Romania researching  historical superstitions for her PhD. While she is tracing local folktales, one subject in  particular sparks her imagination. His name
is Saloman, legend's most powerful vampire,  a seductive prince staked centuries ago.

Now, in the ruins of a castle crypt, Elizabeth  discovers the legends are real. Her blood has awakened him. Her innocence has aroused him. But Elizabeth unleashes more than
Saloman's hunger.

An army of vampire hunters has amassed to send Saloman back to hell. Sworn to  help - yet fearing Saloman's deadly blood lust - Elizabeth seeks to entrap him, offering her body as bait. But something stronger than dread, more powerful than revenge, is uniting Elizabeth to her prey. Caught between desire and rage, Elizabeth must decide where her loyalties lie...and what the limits are to a yearning
she can no longer control.

Reviews:

"BLOOD ON SILK is sensual and thrilling, a wonderful combination of vampire myths old and
new. Saloman and Elizabeth's relationship is both amazingly hot and terrifyingly complicated.
Readers will fall instantly in love with the world that Marie Treanor has created. You cannot
miss this novel!" --Michele Bardsley, national bestselling author of the Broken Heart series.

"A provocative read... witty, sensual and, sometimes, dark... Brimming with complex and
compelling characters, sexual tension, danger, betrayal, emotional turmoil, witty banter, a
thrilling plot, an enigmatic hero who is at times an anti-hero, a captivating heroine and plenty of
vampires, this erotic, gothic story grabs your attention and holds it right up to the very last page."
~Dottie, Romance Junkies, 4.5 Blue Ribbons

"Praises for Marie Treanor; this book has found a permanent place alongside the likes of Anne
Rice and Laurell K Hamilton." - Rating 5, Jillean, Once Upon a Romance.


Author website:
http://www.marietreanor.com/