Today I’m LIVE with an exclusive READING of my latest release BLOOD RENEGADES in my Facebook Group ROSEMARY’S REBELS.
After the reading, there’ll be a Q and A session on the REBEL VAMPIRES series where – as always when I speak live – readers can ask me anything. Seriously. Now whether I answer..?
I love author readings: there’s a special connection between listening to an author read their own words and then having the chance to ask them about the book.
I read a series of fantasy flash fiction at a Women in Dark Fiction event at Oxford last year: the atmosphere was electric.
When I worked in the theater, there was nothing like the connection between audience and performer: when it’s your own words? It’s twice the buzz.
As a reader? I love the experience too. So below are Three of the Best Author Readings:
Jack Kerouac On the Road: reads the last page to jazz. Magic. Listen here.- James Baldwin Another Country: a novel that taught me a lot about the possibilities and power of language. Listen here.
- J.R.R Tolkien The Hobbit: hearing Tolkien describing Gollum and acting his voice? Special and never forgotten. Listen here.
Who are your favourite authors to listen to?
Blood Dragons: start your new vampire obsession…
Today I have on Andrew Q Gordon, author of the epic 
Tolkien and Lord of the Rings drew me into fantasy. I was twelve when I read the Fellowship of the Rings, and I was hooked. For the next twenty years I’d troll bookstores until I was left waiting for the new releases to come out to find something new. The other author who inspired me is Mercedes Lackey.
When I started the Champion of the Gods series, I set out to write an epic fantasy story with LGBTQ main characters and I wanted their conflict to be the same as if they’d been straight. Too often the gay guy died, either early on or in the resolution, or the lesbian character was the killer/antagonist. At the same time, I wanted it to be just a part of the story, not the main conflict or tension.
You’ll find me under ‘urban fantasy’.
1.Tell us where and when were you born.
3. Tell us about where you grew up.
humans the prey? I was wrong about that too. I may battle for redemption but the battle for my species’ freedom – for the right to love, family and home – that one I’m still fighting.
That’s the rallying cry – or the misfit call to individuality at the heart of my series 
5. V for Vandetta: Alan Moore. V is an anarchist: violent and vengeful. His porcelain Guy Fawkes mask is also the influence for Anonymous and activist groups in the real world. How’s that for subversive fiction?
3. The Dispossessed: Ursula K. Le. Guin. The unlikely rebel here is a physicist. How he rebels? By questioning: neither the anarchy of one world not the pacifism of the other is perfect. There’s no such place as Utopia? Yeah, got it.
1. A Song of Ice and Fire: George R. R. Martin. Where to start? The whole series is a sequence of political machinations, military campaigns, and rebellions. The obvious is Robert’s Rebellion but the one that sums up the spirit..? It’s the Mother of Dragons’ attempts to give the control back to the slaves, so they’ll free themselves in Slavers Bay. Daenerys is the ultimate rebel: against her place in life, her gender, her role and for freedom. What’s not to love?
From my days as a teenager spellbound by the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer every week (dangerous thrills wrapped in snarky comedy…learn from the best), I’ve loved the idea that fantasy can be empowering…and fun.
Light is a Blood Lifer and Kathy is a human. Their love is forbidden. In the wild 1960s Light realises that not as much divides the species as he’s always been taught. That maybe Blood Life isn’t about freedom but control.
My main character’s chief talent is his photographic memory: living as a vampire and witnessing all the glories and horrors, this becomes both a blessing and a curse.
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