By Alexis Morgan
I have something to confess.You know, just between you and me. Here goes: I seriously love a man who has fangs and knows how to use them. This isn’t a new thing for me, either. I’ve loved vampire stories since I was a teenager watching Dark Shadows while I worked at my summer job. Barnabas Collins. After all these years, he still gives me chills—the good kind.
The next vampire I remember stealing a piece of my heart was Don Ysidro from Barbara Hambly’s Those Who Hunt the Night. He wasn’t the hero in the book, but he sure dominated the story for me. He’d almost forgotten what it had meant to be human, but over the course of the book he rediscovers his code of honor. When the story ended, I worried about him, wanted to know how he did. It was years before she wrote the sequel, but I was so glad she did.
Then there was Andre Le Brel, the sexy vampire in Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series. We first met him in The Children of the Night when his and Diana Tregarde are both hunting for the same villain and team up. Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I’ve read those stories. I’ll have to dig out my copies and remind myself why I’ve kept them all these years.
I’ve loved watching the vampire evolve over the years from pure evil to heroic. Granted, in some stories, they are still the bad guys, but they don’t always stay that way. Spike, anyone? But part of what I love about vampire stories is all the amazing ways writers have taken the basic mythology and tweaked it to make it their own. I love Stefan in Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson’s series. He’s a soldier with a soldier’s honor and sense of duty. Works for me. Then there’s Zsadist in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. His story left me absolutely stunned. My list of favorites could go on and on.
Which brings me to VAMPIRE VENDETTA, my first full-length vampire book. I had such fun creating my own version of what it means to be vampire. In my world, there are pureblooded vampires, hybrids called chancellors, and then the humans. The hybrids are sometimes looked down by both humans and vampires, but actually the chancellors are the strongest of the three. They have the strength of vampires but none of the limitations. They can move freely in the sunlight and don’t need blood to live.
Oh, and they have those fangs. Works for me. Back in November, I did a Nocturne Bite starring Ambrose O’Brien, the head Chancellor to give readers a taste of my new series. Now, In VAMPIRE VENDETTA, Seamus Fitzhugh is a pureblood vampire on a mission to avenge his family honor only love with a hybrid chancellor gets in the way. I love a wounded soul hero who at long last finds something—or someone—that makes him remember what happiness feels like.
So if you’re a fan of the fang, who was your first? Who’s your favorite? I’d love to know.
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To read Alexis’s bio and the cover blurb for VAMPIRE VENDETTA, see yesterday’s post. To learn more about Alexis and her books, check out her website at www.alexismorgan.com.