Sunday Snippet – More Vampires

This week’s Sunday Snippet is taken from A Vampire’s Deadly Delight, my novella that will be on sale for $0.99 this week (6/26-28) as part of the Summer Book Crush. Keep those dates handy or bookmark that page, because a bunch of authors, from every genre, will have their books on sale for $0.99.

In A Vampire’s Deadly Delight, an ordinary bookstore owner named Kristen plays hostess for a vampire-slaying djin named Jai. Whenever Kristen smells vampire, Jai takes over and mayhem ensues – for the vamp, anyway. Kristen’s friends give her a hard time for being so stubbornly single, and in this snippet, she explains why…

Real men always suffered when I compared them with whichever fictional character I was infatuated with. It started with Frank Hardy. He was darkly handsome and more thoughtful than his brother Joe. I was ten when I decided to marry him. It didn’t last. A brief flirtation with Almanzo Wilder ended when I met Mr. Rochester. For about five months I looked everywhere for a bitter, brooding, older man that I could save with my youthful purity. In hindsight it was probably fortunate that I was unsuccessful. After Mr. Rochester was Aragorn, though I admit that my original vision of that character has been completely obliterated by Viggo Mortensen, who was fairly perfect in the movie version.

In high school I spent a few weeks riding through the French countryside with Athos and D’Artagnon and spent a hauntingly lovely weekend with Max de Winter. I would spend hours staring deeply into my own navel with Homer Wells. I rode dragons on Pern and found that bonding with a dragon was just as orgasmic as it was supposed to be. The summer after high school, I started to work in the bookstore, where I was always able to find someone new.

Along the way I met a few vampires. Don Ysidro was my first. His reserved sensuality intrigued me. Then I met Lestat, who truly captured my heart. I count the Vampire Lestat as one of my great loves. His energy, honesty, and radiant flair blazed through me. I was thrilled with his passion and the incredible depth of his feelings. While I knew in my heart that Lestat would never really care for a bookish woman with a caustic tongue, in my dreams I was slender and amusing. And beautiful. Unlike with Aragorn, I never confused the literary Lestat with the Tom Cruise version. Sorry, Tom. More recently I met Eric Northman, a sunnier, straighter cousin of Lestat who would probably laugh at my jokes. He’s my current main vampire squeeze.

Or, more accurately, Eric was my current main literary vampire. In real life, I squeezed whichever vampire brought Jai out of me. I squeezed them and often kissed them and once or twice rode bareback on them. And I stabbed them, or rather Jai did. When I thought about it too long, it took my breath away. It was all so much fun. Yeah, unless Herbert was totally lying to me, it would be a while before I was tired of playing hostess for Jai.

So who’s your favorite vampire, fictional or otherwise? Inquiring minds want to know…