Blood Shackles was a difficult book to write: personal, challenging and unflinching. Passionate about slavery and human trafficking, I knew this would be an important book. As a writer of the paranormal, I asked: what would happen if humans enslaved Blood Lifers?
Blood Shackles was reviewed this week: Readers’ Favorite awarded 5*
“When Light is captured, he refuses to lose himself, despite how his captors try to break his spirit and force him into submission. Being sold to Grayse is the ticket he needs out of his cell, even though her father owns the company that enslaves him… Blood Shackles is brutally honest, tragic, triumphant, addictive and somehow hopeful… Johns succeeded in creating a world, characters, and a story that pulled me in until I had to finish reading it… This is a novel everyone should read, along with Blood Dragons” – Readers’ Favorite
That brutal honesty? Light calls it ‘the truth flayed bloody‘. Same thing for a writer: your Soul wide open. Takes courage that…but I was never one to play it safe.
Blood Shackles is written as the Slave Journal of Light: it’s direct and immediate for the reader. A diary? Means you live each day in Light’s mind. You become the slave as well…if he’s ever truly one.
The journal is meant to control Light’s thoughts – no secret can be hidden – but Light is anything but a reliable narrator. His fangs might’ve been taken but he still has his words. And to Light? They’re a weapon.
‘So, dear Reader (because I know you’re reading this), did you reckon giving me this poncey journal – all softness and stink of leather – would make me spill my Soul? You already have my body, bought and paid for. You think you have my mind. My thoughts, however..? They’re my own. Write in it every day, you’d ordered, with that little smile. What do you think this is: Bridget Jones’s Diary?’ (Blood Shackles)
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The reviewer says, “I was so engrossed in Light’s story that I didn’t notice my Kindle was dying until it died.”
And that? Is why a writer flays their Soul.
The Midwest Book Review took on 
And it was Vamped Magazine, who dived into 
Rebel here, yeah? Is one of my favourite quotes because in one of Light’s typical phrases it sums up the 
OK, wanker here, and you’re a… I don’t know yet. That’s what brings me out in a cold sweat – the uncertainty, which haunts all slaves – because nothing is under their control, least of all what their new owner will be like.’ (
9 authors – myself included, of course – have come together to sponsor a $225 Amazon Gift Card to the winner. The 
In a divided paranormal London, Light is the bad boy vampire of the Blood Lifer world. Since Victorian times he’s hidden in the shadows with Ruby – a savage Elizabethan Blood Lifer. But he’s keeping a secret from her, which breaks every rule in Blood Life. 1960s London. Kathy is a seductive singer. But she’s also human. When the two worlds collide, it could mean the end. For both species.
It’s a dangerous game to love your slave. When your whole species is enslaved – and it’s the humans who are acting like the monsters – how far would you go to free your family?
When I was a kid? Books were my favourite gift. I’d escape into their pages for the rest of the holidays. As an adult? Yeah, still books.
Then you suddenly hauled me closer, and we were snogging.
I ran a Christmas contest to discover your favourite vampire…and it turned out Light in 
And the winner? Mary Brannian
‘We have the name they wetted us with when we wailed all bloody from the womb but we also get the one we select, when the blood elects us from the ranks into something else. Me? I chose Light…it wove me to the best of my First Life and everything I never wanted to lose.’ (
In 
rosemaryajohns.com 