Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Wednesday Promo- D.B. Reynolds


D. B. Reynolds is the author of the Vampires in America series, as well as other paranormal fiction. JABRIL, the second volume of the Vampires in America series, was recently nominated for a 2010 RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. She is also the recipient of two Emmy nominations for her work in television sound. DB married her University professor and now lives with him in a flammable canyon near Los Angeles. When not writing her next book, she can usually be found reading someone else's.

Why do you write paranormal?
When I decided the time was finally right to try writing as a serious pursuit, I knew I had to write something I would also enjoy reading. I've been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy since high school, so the very first novel I wrote was a sword and sorcery fantasy. But then I discovered Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance, and I knew I'd found my genre!

What is the hardest part about writing this genre?
There are so many wonderful books out there, so many twists on the basics of the paranormal genre. The most difficult part is finding something to separate your books from all the others, while still following enough of the established rules that your readers don't turn away.

What are you working on now?
Right now, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo 2010, working toward that 50K word goal. For that, I decided to try something different and give my brain a little bit of a break. So, I'm doing my very first YA novel, it's a sword and sorcery fantasy in first person, with a sixteen-year-old male protagonist. I'll polish that after NaNo's over, and then before the end of the year, I'll begin writing Duncan, which is the fifth book in my Vampires in America series.

Burb
Buffalo, New York—Thundering waterfalls, great sports teams . . . and a treacherous Vampire Lord who is slowly losing his mind.

New York City vampire Rajmund Gregor is the undisputed master of The Big Apple. He bows to no one but his Sire, the Vampire Lord Krystof, who has ruled the Northeast for hundreds of years. But when Krystof summons Rajmund to his headquarters in Buffalo, Raj finds his master slowly descending into madness and his territory crumbling around him. Raj is the only one of Krystof's children strong enough to seize power, but he'll have to save his master before he can destroy him. Several women have gone missing and the local police are convinced a vampire is behind it. Is Krystof so lost to reality that he's capturing and murdering human women? Is a rogue vampire moving into Krystof's territory for the kill? Or is it something far more insidious, something that could threaten the existence of vampires everywhere? Sarah Stratton is living a lie. Her past holds a secret she shares with no one-not even her good friend Cynthia Leighton, the West Coast vampire lord's mate. It's a secret that could destroy her carefully constructed life as a professor at a Buffalo university. It's also a secret that could save the lives of the missing women. To save them, however, she must enter Buffalo's vampire community and put herself into the care of Rajmund Gregor. But can she trust Raj, the dangerously seductive vampire who wants to lay claim to far more than her secrets?

Excerpt:
Buffalo, New York
It was totally dark. She touched her fingers to her eyes to make sure they were open. They were. But the room was like pitch black, like she couldn’t see her freakin’ hand in front of her face. Her mom must have pulled the stupid blinds down behind the curtains again to save energy. Regina was all for saving energy, but she wasn’t a damn bat either. She sat up with an irritated groan and reached for the small lamp near her bed, nearly falling on her face when it wasn’t there. She frowned and felt around blindly with both hands, finally hitting something solid. A small table lamp, but not hers. The first stirrings of unease coiled in her chest as her hand felt its way up the unfamiliar base to an old-fashioned push-button switch. A press of her thumb yielded a dim, yellow light.
She stared, abruptly wide awake. This wasn’t her room. The strange lamp should have warned her, but somehow she’d still expected to see her familiar bedroom with the old-timey furniture she’d inherited from her Gramma Lena and the cheesy posters she’d bought with her twenty-first birthday money two years ago, the ones she’d thought were so sophisticated, but turned out to be just weird. But this wasn’t her room; it wasn’t even her house. So where the hell was she?
She blinked, forcing down her fear and thinking furiously. She’d gone out with friends. Right, okay. Katie’s bachelorette party. But after that . . . She’d probably had too much to drink. All the signs were there, the sick stomach, the pounding head. God, had one of her friends dragged her home with them? Had she been that out of it? A wave of guilt swept over her, replacing the fear and tightening her chest with remorse. She could hear her mom’s voice lecturing her, saying, "If you can’t drive, you catch a cab or go home with one of the girls instead. Just make sure you call me, Regina, so I don’t worry." She clutched the rough blanket close against a sudden chill and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet touched a cold, damp floor and she frowned at the sensation. A concrete floor? She looked up. No windows either. Was this a basement? She didn’t remember any of her friends having guest rooms in—
It all came rushing back—the lights on the dark street, ice gleaming on the sidewalks. She’d almost fallen. No she had fallen. She flushed in embarrassment and remembered a strong hand gripping her arm, keeping her from hitting the ground. She’d glanced up, wanting to thank her rescuer and then—
She jumped as a noise broke the silence, something loud and heavy, a door slamming into a wall. She froze, listening, expecting footsteps. She heard a soft sob instead, a woman’s voice somewhere nearby. She stood, taking a tentative step toward the door which was little more than an outline in the dim light. "Hello," she whispered, wondering if the other person could hear her. She reached for the door knob. "Hello?" she said again, louder this time.
A heavy footstep scuffed in the hallway and she snatched her hand back, holding herself tightly. Her heart was racing suddenly, her breath fast and shallow, making her lightheaded as she strained to hear. A key rattled and the unseen woman began to cry, louder now, pleading. Regina stumbled back onto the bed, pulling her feet up, wrapping her arms around her legs, trying to be small, to be invisible.
The woman began to scream . . .

Purchase this book at Amazon.

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