THE BIG DAY!!! TRUE BLOOD SEASON 1 DVD GIVEAWAY!!!

So, what do you get when two vampire literature writers, one in England, the other in the US, team up to do a blog?

A giveaway on BOTH sides of the pond!

Our True Blood Season 1 DVD giveaway starts today!

First off, thanks to all our new followers, some of whom came over here from All Things Smart and Scary and the contest for Blood Ties over there -- congrats to the winner!

So, what draws us to these TV series?

Blood Ties: A hot, sexy vampire, a strong, smart female, and a cute police detective -- what more can I say? I'm not too into love triangles, but Blood Ties made it work really well -- I almost rooted for Mike at times ;-) Or maybe because I only wanted Henry all to myself! This series captivated me and captured my imagination -- it got me thinking into my own vampire protagonist's history (Henry Fitzroy, the vampire in the series, was based on the actual illegitimate son of Henry VIII), and thus Release was born.

Sadly, this series ended only after two short seasons. In order to get my Henry fix, I actually bought some of the books by Tanya Huff -- believe it or not, I'd never really read 'vampire fiction' before, other than Dracula or Interview With the Vampire! I loved the books, but I really enjoyed Ms. Huff's 'Smoke' series -- featuring Henry, but with Tony as the protagonist (instead of Vicki). I do encourage you to check them out if you haven't already!

So, onto True Blood. Marissa is a huge fan of both the HBO series and Charlaine Harris’s novels it seemed only fit that we get things going this week with a review and a competition.

Set in the deep south, the existence of vampires has been revealed. The Japanese have invented a type of synthetic blood which gives the vampires the option of ‘main-streaming’ (living alongside humans), without the need to feed on them.

Sookie Stackhouse is the female ‘heroine’. Twenty-five, blond, sexy, she can also kick-ass and, on top of that, she is a mind-reader. This makes it very difficult for her to date – imagine trying to having dinner with someone when you know all they are thinking about is what your boobs look like? So when she meets Bill and discovers that she cannot hear his thoughts she is thrilled. Except for one small problem; Bill is a vampire.

Sookie never goes through the whole ‘make me a vampire so I can spend the rest of eternity with you’ thing. She is confident with who she is and though she loves Bill, she also loves her life. This is refreshing in these days of angst-ridden, vampire-human relationships. But her involvement with Bill takes her into a whole new role she never imagined for herself. In the novels her ‘talent’ is used to help both vampires and humans, generally to find out who committed murders and disappearances.

True Blood, (both the series and the novels) is full of hot, dirty vampire sex, drugs (in the form of vampire blood), and plenty of rock-n-roll. These are vampires for grown-ups. At no point do the vampires go through the angst of who they are – instead they are more, ‘yeah, we’re vampires. Deal with it.’

The television series does the books proud. Although it follows different characters more closely than the books, it does stay true to the characters and most of the first novel. It involves a series of murders where Sookie’s sex-obsessed brother is implicated, but each of the murder victims also have vampire bites. The series has a great edgy feel to it and the music at the start of the show, Bad Things by Jace Everett, is fantastic - check out the post below.

The second series of True Blood has just started here in the UK (finally…), so what better way of catching up then by entering our competition.

And keep your eyes peeled as we’ll be giving away some of Charlaine Harris’s novels very soon!

So there you have it -- True Blood and Blood Ties: hot women, even hotter vamps, and some cute human guys thrown into the mix! What more could a girl ask for? ;-)

Today's contest question is: What would you prefer as a boyfriend/girlfriend (amended the question per Taliesin's suggestion ;-) -- a human, shape-shifter or werewolf -- and why?

Have fun!

A review – Triangle (2009)

Featuring Melissa George (30 Days of Night – a pretty good vampire movie for those who haven’t seen it) and directed by Christopher Smith who did Creep and Severance.

Although this movie is set on a boat where weird things happen, it is not actually about the Bermuda Triangle, despite the name.

The main character, Jess, has an autistic son, Tommy.  She is invited to go out sailing with a group of friends and straight away Jess is acting strange, though you don’t actually know why.  The group go out on the yacht where Jess falls asleep and starts to have strange dreams.  When she wakes up a terrible storm hits and the yacht is overturned, killing one of the group.  The others survive hanging onto the bottom of the boat.  They have been there a while when a huge ship approaches them. They manage to wave it down, but when they board the ship appears deserted.  Jess starts to experience déjà-vu and is convinced she has been there before. The ship is called The Aeolus who is ‘a God who made a promise to death that he did not keep.’

Then the killing starts and Jess is confronted by the worst déjà-vu anyone will ever experience – Groundhog day eat your heart out!  Where Jess starts out as a likable, but fragile character, she quickly proves herself to be a fighter, and then goes on to be someone else entirely.  It is a truly mind-bending plot and if you try to think about it too much I honestly believe your brain will probably start to melt.  There are plenty of shocking moments will keep you gripped. Although the film does contain plot holes of a paradoxical nature, especially at the end,  it is still a horror that gets you thinking.  I would highly recommend it for a night in.

Something Wicked rating of 8/10.

And as someone who doesn’t like boats it is another great reason not to go sailing!

 

 

 

Also, Nicole has a short story published at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11115.  It features the vampire from her novel Release and is set in New Orleans, classic vampire territory.  It is available for download for FREE!!! So don’t miss out.

Something Wicked!

Happy Mother's Day... a dedication for all those mothers in horror!

It's Mothering Sunday here in the UK, so I hope everyone has had a day of either being spoilt rotten by their offspring, or else showing their mothers how much they mean to them.

It's true that you never know the amount of sacrifice made by your parents until you become a parent yourself, so today's post is dedicated to the 'mothers' in horror and the lesson we may learn from them about how NOT to raise your child...

Norma Bates – Psycho

Possibly not the best example of a great mother, Norma preaches to her son, Norman, that all women are whores (except herself of course)and sex is evil. They live together in an unhealthy state of co-dependence until Norma takes a lover and drives Norman insane with jealousy. He then kills Norma and her lover and preserves his mothers corpse. Norman goes on to develop a split personality, taking on his mother's identity, and goes on to kill anyone who threatens his belief that his mother is still alive.

Ellen Ripley - Alien 3

Okay, I'm probably stretching the definition of 'mother' on this one, but in the third Alien movie Ripley becomes implanted with the Queen alien embryo. Despite others wanting to surgically remove the embryo she refuses, but then surprises them all by throwing herself into a giant furnace just as the queen is bursting from her chest. She still manages to grab the alien and drag it down with her, but you feel her emotional pain as she is doing it. Some part of her feels empathy for the alien.

You've got to love Ripley as a character. She is the ultimate tough bitch who is harder than all of the men she works with, but she still manages to have a soft side that makes you love her. She is a mother, but her daughter dies at the age of 66 while Ripley is in hyper-stasis. This loss and then her subsequent 'adoption' of Newt, a child she saves from the aliens in the first Alien, makes you warm to her otherwise tough character.

Sarah Conner - Terminator (1 & 2)

Now this is a woman to contend with. One hell of a tough cookie, she will do anything to protect her son, including sporting some serious firearms and muscles that would make a grown man weep.

Happy Mother's Day to them all!

M.x

New blog launched today – check it out!

Just a quickie today to let you all know that myself and fellow Vamplit author, Nicole Hadaway, have teamed up to create a brand new blog dedicated to all things supernatural. We hope you’ll take a moment to head over there and check it out.

Something Wicked

We have big plans for the blog, with lots of competitions, reviews, and author features.  Become a follower by next Friday and you’ll be in line to win a box set of the True Blood series.  The competition will be open to both sides of the water as I am in the UK and Nicole is Stateside!

Enjoy!

Supernatural blogging…

For hundreds, even thousands of years, in every culture known to man, there have been stories of the supernatural. Whether it be ghosts or demons, vampires or werewolves, even the existence of angels and a God, the supernatural has filled our lives.

The topic had spawned some of our best loved writers and film makers.

What beats the thrill of feeling cold fingers down the spine, the tears of fear pricking the backs of the eyes? The possibility of a world existing just beyond our consciousness holds the promise of excitement, danger, and maybe even romance….

Here we will be blogging about every aspect of the supernatural. From fiction to fact, if it has to do with the supernatural, we will be blogging about it. Both being writers ourselves we will also be featuring other writers who want to showcase their work, and of course, we will be keeping you informed about projects of our own.

Nicole Hadaway, author of the novel Release, has a few upcoming short stories and hopefully later this fall, the novel Return. She also blogs over at All Things Smart and Scary.

Marissa Farrar is the author of the vampire novel, Alone, and also has a second novel due out in May.

Marissa and Nicole are connected through Vamplit Publishing and wanted to bring together their love of vampires and the supernatural, providing sometimes the same, other times different perspectives on the amazingly popular paranormals.

We hope you'll join us for book reviews (Nicole is fond of pointing out that her review of the Anne Rice novel, Angel Time, was featured on Ms. Rice's own Facebook page -- but she promises to cut that out in about 2 months time ;-), movie reviews, features on upcoming novels, and authors.

Also join us for some great competitions and giveaways – starting next Friday with our huge True Blood giveaway. And the best part? Because we have a foot either side of the pond (so to speak) the competitions will be open to both the UK and the States!

Please feel free to leave us comments - we love to hear your thoughts!

Double trouble!

Back on-line and a review – Jodi Picoult: Handle with Care (2009)

I am finally back on-line! Hurrah!

It feels like it has been forever since I have had the internet and, however sad I may be, it has felt a bit like I have had my life on hold.  So now I am back and trying to catch up on lost time.

Just because I only write horror doesn’t mean I only read horror (though I do read a lot of horror!).  I’ve decided to branch out a little about what I write about on my blog, because I have a new, totally horror based project which will soon be coming to fruition.

I’m sure there will be some of you out there who hate Jodi Picoult, but I am a fan.  There was a little while where she was becoming a bit formulaic, and she still is to a certain extent, but what she does she does well.

Handle with Care is about a little girl called Willow who is born with OI - Osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease).  She has multiple broken bones before she is even born and has over fifty breaks by the time she is five.  The story is essentially about Willow’s mother, Charlotte, suing her obstetrician (who is also her best friend) who she believes missed a sign that would have told her about Willow’s disease and so would have given her the option to terminate the pregnancy.  But to sue her doctor also means saying in court that if she had of known about the disease then she would have aborted the pregnancy.  Heavy stuff, huh?

I really enjoyed this novel. Picoult has a way of making you feel empathy for every character, but also disliking them a little as well.  She writes each chapter from a different characters point of view which helps you get insight into their emotions and motives.  Nothing and nobody is black and white in her novels.  One minute I found myself taking one characters side, the next the oppositions.  Throughout the novel I was putting myself in each of the characters positions . On the front cover of each of her books is the question, ‘what would you do?’ and I honestly found myself asking myself that the whole time.

Though I did really enjoy the book, and found it hard to put down, I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I won’t spoil it for everyone, but the book does have a bit of a sting in the tail that left me feeling a little cheated.  Even so, I would still highly recommend Handle with Care – an honestly written novel that leaves you thinking…

M x

Still waiting…

I am now on countdown until the BT engineer turns up and changes my life by installing Broadband.  The mobile internet service didn’t work out so well for me as I only had very sporadic connection which led to some extremely harsh words being said to my much loved laptop! Still, only six days to go now and I will be back up and running!

In the meantime it is amazing how much else you get done when you don’t have the internet to distract you.  I have been reading ferociously and so storing up plenty of books to review once I am back in the swing of things. I have also re-discovered the library (who knew you could just take books out for free?!).

After the trauma of moving house I am also back into my writing (thank God!).  I hate it when I am not writing – it kind of makes me feel like my day has been a waste if I’ve not written something.  I’ve also discovered that I find it very difficult to work if I am feeling unsettled and distracted.  I don’t really suffer from the dreaded ‘writer’s block’ as such, but if ever I find it hard to write it is because something else in my life isn’t quite right.

So in the meantime please be patient with me.  As soon as I have my broadband back up and running I will have another exciting project to let you know about.  For all of you who know Nicole over at Smart and Scary, keep your eyes open!

M. X