Vampires: They’re so 2009. Right? With about fifty million books and movies and television shows about them already out there, who on Earth would want to write more?

Call me a glutton for punishment.

I didn’t sit down and say to myself “I’m going to write a vampire series! Let’s cash in!” I originally started my Shadow World series in 1999, but back then I was only 22; I was terrified of the ordeal I knew was waiting. Everyone said fiction’s impossible to break into - even in ’99! I was afraid of the disappointment, so I shifted my focus to nonfiction. As it turns out that was a great idea; I used my writing to help my spiritual community and by the time I was ready to return to my first love, fiction, I had grown a lot as a writer and could create something much, much better.

Something changed in 2008. I wish I could say what, specifically - I think it might have been that I was so, so tired of all the mopey, self-loathing vampires that were filling up page and screen. I wanted to see vampires who had completely accepted what they were and had created their own world just at the edge of ours. I didn’t really care how original or not my own work was - my first impulse, whenever I want to see something, is to write it myself. I had no idea I would be approached by Ace for a two-book contract before the first book had even cooled on the printer.

Enter the Shadow World series. In Austin, Texas, a young woman is losing her mind; she’s an uncontrolled empath, able to feel and manipulate the emotions of others, and it’s driving her over the edge. After a horrific attack she stumbles headlong into the darkness: into a war between old school vampires who want to kill humans, and the current ruler of the Southern United States, Prime David Solomon, who has outlawed killing entirely.

The world is divided into territories and there are 27 Primes, each chosen by a mysterious supernatural system whose origin was forgotten millennia ago. Each Prime can have one Consort. David, a computer geek and warrior with a love of ice cream, programming, and Joss Whedon, has used technology to revolutionize how the vampires of his territory live and hunt, and it’s upsetting the old guard. When his Queen comes along in the person of a certain psychic musician, things get even worse, for Miranda won’t sit idly by as women are expected to in the Council; she owns her power as well as her skyrocketing music career. Miranda’s dramatic arrival in David’s life is the first domino to fall…and soon the whole world will change.

Now in its third book, with at least two more to come from Ace Urban Fantasy, the Shadow Worldseries is Miranda and David’s story, as well as the story of how the world changes when a handful of powerful vampires who refuse to live in the past any longer come face to face with the ancient origins of their kind. In this world political alliances are constantly shifting, romantic relationships always evolving, and new threats arise from every dark corner.

The first two books of the series, QUEEN OF SHADOWS and SHADOWFLAME, are already on shelves at your local bookstore. SHADOW'S FALL, the third, will be released at the end of March. To learn more about the series, check out my website: www.diannesylvan.com.

Post your comment on this blog and you could win a signed copy of SHADOW'S FALL!

This past week I had the opportunity to meet some very impressive folks.

I attended a couple of regional meeting/training seminars for independent booksellers. I wasn’t there as an author but rather as an employee of a publishing company.

As readers, you probably already know that locally owned and operated bookstores are wonderful places to frequent and typically staffed by knowledgeable and caring individuals. They often offer programs, services and insight into literature that simply wouldn’t be available in certain communities if they were to disappear.

And let me tell you, disappearing is a clear and present danger for many a local book retailer. These folks are up against some major obstacles, including massive competitors: businesses like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Costco and Wal-Mart. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.

Over the past few years many independent bookstores have already closed their doors. Their communities have lost some of their vibrancy, color and atmosphere as a result. They’ve also lost a revenue source, for the sales tax paid to local bookstores stays local and makes an impact on that town’s economy and infrastructure, helping to pay for schools, roads, etc. Community bookstores also frequently support and provide services to charities and causes related to their town and its citizens.

What became clear to me at last week’s meetings was that independent bookstore owners typically care very deeply about both books and their customers. They’re our friends and neighbors and more often than not act that way.

Think about it, do you really want one or two major retailers, whether online or brick and mortar, deciding what everyone in the nation is able to read and at what price? While some of the big boys are very competitively priced today, what incentive would they have to stay that way if all the little guys were gone and the huge retailers no longer had any real competition?

Here’s my message: Whenever possible, please make your book purchases from a locally owned bookstore. That goes for anything you buy online as well. Most independent bookstores have websites now. Prior to making a book purchase anywhere else, please see first if you can’t make the same purchase from your friendly neighborhood book retailer, either in person or online. You’ll be doing yourself and your entire community a favor if you do.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE OR A STORY ABOUT ONE THAT YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE? A FREE COPY OF MY DEBUT NOVEL, MRS. GOODFELLER WILL BE RANDOMLY AWARDED TO ONE PERSON WHO LEAVES A COMMENT BELOW BEFORE THE NEXT WRITERSPACE BLOG IS POSTED.

Jaycie Cash blogs on a regular basis for Writerspace.com. Her debut novel, Mrs. Goodfeller, is available through most major e-Book outlets, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. She’d love for you to like her Facebook Author page.

www.jayciecash.com

I’ve been as guilty as anyone else.

Over the years, I’ve been known to sit in judgment of those who are more obviously blessed in the financial department than the majority of us for some of their more opulent choices.

Wouldn’t it have been nobler to give money to the poor than to use it buying a Maserati, I’ve mused. Does anyone really need an outfit that costs thousands of dollars, I’ve sometimes wondered.

This past weekend I learned the error of my ways.

While on a business trip, my employer treated me to a tour of the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. If you ever get the chance, do yourself a favor and go there. Plan to stay as long as possible, because there’s plenty to see and do and it’s incredibly beautiful.

Finished in 1895, Biltmore House is the largest personal residence in America. It has 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. The basement alone houses a swimming pool, gymnasium and changing rooms, bowling alley, servants' quarters, kitchens, and more. It’s set on 125,000 acres of truly gorgeous land, including formal gardens.

George Vanderbilt had it built as his personal residence when he was a bachelor with no potential wife waiting in the wings. So, being a sometimes-judgmental sort, time was when I would have damned the creation of Biltmore House an inexcusable self-indulgence. After spending time there, I’m of another mindset all together.

Although no longer used as a private residence, approximately one million people visit this glorious site annually. Over 2,000 people are currently employed on the estate, whether at the house or its associated hotel, winery, gift shops, various restaurants or whatever. Hundreds-perhaps thousands-of people were involved in the Biltmore’s creation over the six-year period it was being built. George was known to be a kind employer who treated, paid and housed those who worked for him in an exemplary fashion. Several of the employees I spoke to this weekend assured me that tradition continues and that the Biltmore is still a terrific place to work.

Was the creation of Biltmore house self-indulgent? Probably. Was that a bad thing? In this instance I have to vote no. An untold number of people have been blessed over the years, and continue to be, as a result of it being built and preserved. Therefore, I have determined that when self-indulgence leads to the responsible creation and maintenance of something positive and lovely that blesses others, it is among mankind’s nobler endeavors.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS SELF-INDULGENT OPULENCE RIDICULOUS OR A POTENTIAL ONGOING BLESSING TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS? A FREE COPY OF MY DEBUT NOVEL, MRS. GOODFELLER WILL BE RANDOMLY AWARDED TO ONE PERSON WHO LEAVES A COMMENT BELOW BEFORE THE NEXT WRITERSPACE BLOG IS POSTED.

www.jayciecash.com

Jaycie Cash blogs on a regular basis for Writerspace.com. Her debut novel, Mrs. Goodfeller, is available through most major e-Book outlets, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. She’d love for you to like her Facebook Author page.

Have you seen the gorgeous man on the cover of HAUNTING WARRIOR? I mean, seriously, do they get any sexier? If I saw him walking down the street would I throw caution, decorum and sanity to the wind and accost him…probably yes. (Okay, okay, absolutely yes….)

Well, meet Rory MacGrath.

I fell in love with Rory during the first draft of HAUNTING WARRIOR. It was about that time when the reserved and sometimes angry man began to show me his softer side. Disconnected from his past, his family, and even his heritage, Rory had a vulnerability that was a direct contradiction to his manly exterior. But even Rory knew that the front he presented was just that—a façade that might fool strangers, but couldn’t fool those who knew him.

Or people like me who were about to fall in love with him.

Tough on the outside and lost on the inside, I knew that all Rory needed was a woman who could help him see his own strengths—a woman who would challenge him to rise above the past that had crippled him emotionally. This woman would bring him back into the circle of the living. She couldn’t be just any woman and she certainly wasn’t easy to find. In fact, Rory had to travel through time to reach her.

One of my favorite scenes in HAUNTING WARRIOR comes when Saraid (Haunting Warrior’s heroine) faces the fact that man she’s wed is not the loathed Ruairi the Bloodletter, but another man who watches from the same blue, blue eyes….

Saraid stared at her splayed fingers, feeling that the freezing hand must surely belong to someone else. Not her. Not Saraid. Yet she could feel the coldness of it pressed against the burning heat of the Bloodletter’s chest. Feel the fierce pounding of his heart beneath her palm. She was numb and raw at the same time. Her mind felt dull and yet every pore of her skin was sensitive to the slightest shift in the air. The draft coming from beyond the curtain chilled like a blustering wind. The voices in that other room boomed loud and jarring. How could they still be laughing? Playing music and dancing? How could they not know what Saraid had witnessed? The impossibility of it felt as enormous as the sky, the sea, the very earth beneath her.

“It is you she foretold. It was always you.” Saraid spoke the words before she’d even realized their truth.

But somehow her eyes and her mouth had accepted what her mind still rejected. This man staring at her from behind the Bloodletter’s blue gaze had changed—pulled himself in two and . . . and . . .

She moved her icy fingers, trailing them over the heated muscle to the rippled pucker of a scar just over his heart. Slowly she traced the outline while he remained perfectly still, barely breathing. Watching her with the same shock she felt inside.

The scar was as big as her hand, spread wide over it. It was shaped in three continuous spirals that had no beginning, no ending. She knew them, recognized the symbol from the ancient stones at Tara, from the countless mounds and dolmens scattered throughout Éire. It was the triple spiral that represented life, death, and rebirth. The same symbol that she’d just seen locking what could only be the Book of Fennore. The spirals had been burned into this man’s flesh so long ago that the skin was now white and silky. But the scar hadn’t been there before, when he’d stripped his clothes. When he’d taken her on the bed….

I hope you’ll take the journey through time with Rory and Saraid and I hope you’ll find the same fascination with Rory MacGrath that both Saraid and I shared. Be warned though…he might steal your heart.

HAUNTING WARRIOR is available now at all bookstores and online booksellers in mass market paperback and electronic formats. Amazon, Barnes & Noble , Books-a-Million or Indie Bound

Also new this month, look for IRISH MIST, a e-novella quick-read for 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and All Romance.

Erin Quinn is an award winning author who writes romance for the thinking reader. Her books have been called “riveting,” “brilliantly plotted” and “beautifully written” and have won, placed or showed in the Booksellers Best, WILLA Award for Historical fiction, the Orange Rose, Readers Crown, Golden Quill, Best Books, and Award of Excellence. Go to www.erinquinnbooks.com for more information or follow Erin on FB at www.facebook.com/ErinQuinnAuthor or twitter at @ErinQuinnAuthor.

Erin will be giving away an eBook copy of WHISPERS or ECHOES to 2 lucky winners who comment on today’s blog. Tell me, what is your favorite kind of paranormal novel? (time travel, shapeshifters, magic….?) Talk to me!

www.erinquinnbooks.com