Friday Reads | Dance With a Vampire

October 14, 2016February 12, 2019 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

I’m continuing the week with more vampires. Dance With a Vampire by Fabian Black is a seven pages long story. I love short fiction. Many make the mistake of thinking it’s easy to write—it’s not. It takes a lot of skill. Authors who master the form can rip my heart out in just a few words where others leave me quite unaffected. In a novel, you have time to grow to like a character, but in short fiction, that connection has to be established in just a few lines.

This is the second story I’ve read by Fabian Black, and my heart might not have been ripped out but I wasn’t unaffected either. At first, I found the narration a bit strange, or maybe not the narration, but the story is written almost like a letter where the MC is talking to a ‘you’. I was thinking the MC was another of those in your face, bratty, young characters, and he kind of is, but there’s also some subtlety to this short story.

There is one thing that always annoys me, though. Why oh why do bisexual characters always have to be described as unreliable? In this short, short story it’s even pointed out twice.

I made a mental note never to date a bisexual again. It doubled the chances of being dumped. – p.2

Bisexual faux vampire types were notoriously unreliable, emotionally draining and generally unsatisfactory. – p.4

But if you’re in the mood for a bratty twenty-one-year-old waiting in line outside a nightclub on Halloween and some vampires with a hint of BDSM, then Dance With a Vampire is for you.

You’ll find it here:

books2read.com/DanceWithAVampire *

A different kind of vampire tale, short and romantic, it uses a song title as a door into the story.

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

What sharp teeth you have!

October 10, 2016February 12, 2019 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment

the-devil-571217_640 — CC0 Public Domain

It’s October—the month of monsters! Do you have a favourite monster?

I do. About ten years ago I read every vampire story (mostly PNR) I could get my hands on. This went on for a while so, in the end, I grew a little tired of tall, dark and deadly and started mixing it up a little.

But as the nights grow darker I find myself wanting back to the time when I curled up on the sofa and read a novel a day, most often one including sharp fangs tearing through delicate skin.

But where are the gay vampires?

I know there are tonnes of M/M vampire stories out there, and maybe I haven’t read the right ones. Maybe I grew a little tired of these evil hotties even before I started reading M/M. Maybe, just maybe, the gay vampires are too busy having sex to actually take part in a rememberable plot.

I don’t mean to criticise, not really, but when I think of vamps, the books popping up in my mind aren’t M/M. I’m thinking of Black Dagger Brotherhood (yeah, I know one book in there is an M/M but it’s the weakest in the series in my opinion), Anita Blake, Nighthuntress, Sookie Stackhouse, Chicagoland Vampires, Guildhunter, I even think of Twilight before I think of an M/M story—though that’s probably more because of well-done marketing than a rememberable plot.

So where are the gay vampires? I scrolled through my read list to see which books I’d forgotten because some pale hunk must have swept me off my feet these last years. There must have been someone, right?

Nah, not really.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Jordan Castillo Price‘s Channeling Morpheus series but, as much as Wild Bill drags me in, the stories have little to offer outside the bedroom activities. I really liked Winter Winds by Missouri Dalton about Cillian the deaf vampire. And let’s not forget Harvey Feng in the Sanguine series by Harper Lou. You have to love a cross-dressing, vegetarian vampire. Among the favourites, I also have to mention Jordan L. Hawk’s Hunter of Demons. I’ve only read the first in the SPECTR series but I so loved Gray.

I’m still missing a gay vampire snagging and managing to keep my attention, though. I miss desperately searching for the next book in a series. I miss not being able to put the book down until the dreaded ‘The End’ stares back at me.

Which vampire books should I read?

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Nortown Release!

September 1, 2016February 12, 2019 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 2 Comments

Once in May…and then again at some other time.

Today John, Zachary, Tristan and Aiden are let out of their cabins!

There is this strange place called Nortown. Where it is no one really knows. I look out my window and write what I see (yes, I’m practically run down by lumberjacks every day) but so far I haven’t come across a real Nortown in Sweden. Though I lived up north for a few years in a small village where the meeting point is a café almost like Jen’s. During winter there are snowmobiles everywhere, by the bicycle stands outside the shop the kicksleds are lined up, and, I kid you not, they spread sand on half the pavement. The unsanded half is for the kicksleds. First snow comes in October, you hardly see the sun during winter (but it never gets dark during summer), and it’s cold enough for your eyelashes to freeze together.

But, back to Nortown! You’ll know you’re there if you see lots of bearded men in chequered shirts, wayward dogs, and gossiping women knitting and sipping on coffees.

It’s about time to get a cat or two in there, is it not? And now, writing this, I think I need to get a kicksled in there too.

By the time we released Once in a Forest, I already knew I would write Once in May. John was there, wanting to be let out of his cabin. His and Zachary’s story is not as fluffy and bright as Aiden and Tristan’s or even Tom and Jason’s but everything will be fine in the end, I promise.

Happy Endings is a Tristan and Aiden story, just a short little massage fun in Aiden’s studio. Og the dog even makes an appearance, not in the massage studio but in the story.

The big question now is what do I write next??

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.