Building Lycanthropy Lore

For Good to the Last Drop, I decided it was time to expand the universe of Love at First Bite, with the usual next step in the monster guide: werewolves.

When I built the vampire lore for the series, I decided that I wanted my old-school, allergic to crucifixes, with an option for free will thrown in.

When I decided on adding lycanthropy to the mix, I actually thought back to a DragonCon panel by Jim Butcher, where he said that, if you really want to get books on old school monsters, you go into the kid section of the bookstore -- otherwise, you couldn't read five pages without the "adult" books on monsters going into Freud and Jung.

At which point, I'd have my shape shifters be less a matter of virology dictating shape, and more a matter of soul.  Which, considering what I did to vampires, is at least somewhat consistent. Temperament and attitude shapes what the human changes into. After all, if all of the head shrinkers want to make it about Id, Ego, and archetypes, well, hey, I can play with that. The furry form that comes out in the full moon is representative of the dark side of the infected.

It's why, going through the series, I had George Berkeley-- which is pronounced "Barkley," see what I did there? -- a shape shifting Irish wolfhound. He's a nice, easy going fellow, who will rip somebody's head off, if threatened. There's a reason the motto about wolfhounds is "Gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked."

From day one, vampirism was transmitted by a blood born virus. The way I had it set up was as a metaphysical virus. Like many viruses that have a symbiotic relationship to their host, the vampire virus helps with the host's continued existence: it aids the food stock's continued survival by increasing the strength and stamina of anyone bitten. Obviously, for the vampire itself, it brings a lot of advantages and disadvantages.

With a werewolf, it's going to suck for a while. A person's dark side becoming manifest as a furry is going to be disruptive for a while. Also, the more violent the dark side, the more difficult it will be to control all the time. The impulse control of the newly bitten werewolf is going to be a bitch and a half, if you'll pardon the expression.

As the vampire's virus constantly needs feeding, as does the were virus. Meaning the infected is going to need fuel. Obviously, a lot of fuel, considering what happens to the body in a standard transformation.

Of course, if a werewolf isn't made because he's bitten by another werewolf, but by a matter of soul, why are werewolves the most common?  Because people are pack animals by nature. And the dark side has to be represented by some variety of predator -- they can't turn into sheep. Even the least of us have a dark side, even if that dark side is a beta or a gamma wolf.

Of course, if I'm going to add weres to my plot, the obvious--truly obvious--move would be to make them henchmen for the vampire.

Now, since I've had some complaints about how "easy" some of the main bad guys were, I decided to build on the threats. Frankly, the villains were "easy" to take out because, well, if they weren't killed in short order, pretty much everyone would be dead. Imagine if any season-long Buffy villain just skipped directly to trying to murder everyone immediately. It would be a really fast, continuous plot that takes place over a few hours or days .... or everyone would have just been dead.

Good to the Last Drop was going to have every element build on top of each other from all of the other books.

• Honor at Stake had a vampire with his own nest. That's easy enough to supply.
• Live and Let Bite had minions. Those are easy.
• Murphy's Law of Vampires ... had a different creature entirely. Slightly different problem. Difficult to reproduce.

Then we pile on the werewolves.

Now, I've had a few reviews state that Marco seems more than human, which has usually been a result of Amanda's vampire bite enhancing his strength and stamina, part of the vampire virus. Some of it has been he's been too stubborn to die. I'm almost afraid some of it bad writing on my part, but I've been told that's not the case by multiple people who don't know me from a hole in the ground.

But either way, I figure I have an easy fix for a difficult conflict-- one that Marco has never tried confronting, but has been around since Honor at Stake.

He's going to get bit.

How would you like to see that dark side?

Anyway, the complete Love at First Bite will be available next Monday when Good to the Last Drop is out.

FREE SHORT: Blood Stained Cliffs of Dover: A Love at First Bite story

Here's a new enticement to have you sign up for my mailing list.

Free stuff.

My, doesn't that look shiny? Isn't that interesting? Who's the classy dame?

.... Okay. If you've read the novels, you probably know the answer to the last one.

Here's the short version. Remember Bad Date? It's now for sale for $.99 over on Kindle. See, you could have had it for free.

Sign up for my newsletter, and you'll get this short story completely free. No joke. Automatically.

What's the plot? you ask, savvy reader that you are.

In World War II, the allied invasion of the continent hinges on them keeping one secret absolutely secure.

Tonight, German spy Konrad Achterberg is about to discover what that secret is.

He's also about to discover that the Nazis aren't the scariest predator in the night. Because something in the dark is colder than the dark, and it is hungry.

Sign up right here, right now, for free. You'll get access to it immediately.

And while I think about it....

Over at Silver Empire Publishing's Lyonesse streaming short story service, today is the live launch of my short story Zombie Jamboree. It stars a new character, as well as an old character.  If you've read Live and Let Bite, you know about NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Wilson (who was in Chapter 5, Blue blood), and he's got a large role in this one.

And yes, this is my take on Zombies. And here's a hint: it has nothing to do with The Walking Dead.

And here is the rest of the Love at First Bite series. 

And my other novels

    

Love at First Bite, part 4, is Coming

Book 4 of my Love at First Bite series is coming. It might be titled Good to the Last Drop, but I have a few other suggestions going the rounds. 

Here's the only problem I have.

I need a title.

I've already started a survey in my group on Facebook, as well as on my Facebook page, asking for suggestions. And I've gotten a lot of feedback.

I'm actually surprised, especially with some of the ones suggested for me.

Good to the Last Drop is currently winning, and I didn't even suggest this one. It's pulled ahead, and I can't believe it didn't occur to me. My family has been making this joke AT blood banks for years.

Greenwich Village of the Damned -- one of mine, and suggested by a chapter title.

Final Blood -- Book 4 will be the end to the main arc of the series. So "final" in the title has a good ring to it. Also, it's a take on First Blood -- you know, the novel that started John Rambo on his career.

Shadow of Murphy -- I originally suggested this because there are elements of Murphy's Law of Vampires that resonate in this novel. I won't say what, because that might spoil the surprise.

Certain Parts of Brooklyn -- This is actually taken from an exchange in the film Casablanca.

Major Strasser to Rick: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris? ....How about New York?

Rick to Strasser: "Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

Bloody Love -- a original title, suggested by on of my acquaintances.

Murphy's Shadow -- another suggestion, and probably better than "Shadow of Murphy," if only so the cover artist can have most of the cover dedicated to the image.

Army of Light -- I've always liked the imagery of the term, used in Babylon 5. No one else does, apparently.

Shadows of Day -- This works for reasons.

At the end of the day, I suspect most of the titles will be used. Why? Because I'll stop needing titles after I run out of novels.

If you've missed any of my novels, click some below.

And if you haven't, ask yourself, have you reviewed them?

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

15 Movies Where the Guy DOESN'T Get the Girl

My family makes lists. We've done it for a very long time. After watching one of the following movies, we started assembling THIS list.

Easily 95% of Hollywood stories end with boy get girl, and vice versa. Personally, I'm a fan of this ending. I'm a romantic, somewhere under all this cynicism. So shoot me.

But how often have you seen a film where the man and woman meet, fall in love, and DON'T go home in the end?

There be spoilers ahead, so you've been warned.

These are listed in no particular order, by the way. I will not discuss Romeo and Juliet / West Side Story, because 1) it's the same bloody story, and 2) it's been talked to death.

Shall we begin?

Casablanca

If you don't know this one by now ... where the Hell have you been? It's a classic.

Chronologically, the events are -- Boy meets girl, girl leaves boy because she discovers that she's NOT a widow, girl wanders into boy's gin joint with not-dead husband. Husband happens to be hunted by Nazis because he is THE propaganda arm of the resistance, a true leader. Boy let's girl and husband go off into the sunset, despite that he still loves her, but it's for the greater good, because the husband is needed in World War II, and he needs her. Boy walks off into the fog with his best friend.

It was a great execution, and a classic film. And if you haven't seen it ... what the bleep are you waiting for?

Gone with the Wind
Another classic film, this one is more convoluted. Girl is a whiny little brat who becomes a manipulative woman. In order to keep the family farm within the family, she goes through several men, landing, finally, on a Han Solo prototype. After putting up with years of abuse from this woman, their daughter is killed in a horse riding accident. He has no reason to stay and put up with his wife's crap anymore, and leaves her -- at pretty much the moment where she realizes that she actually loves the guy she married for his money.

Yeah, this was one screwed up dynamic from minute one. Every time I turn into this film, I tune in for Rhett Butler's scenes, and the burning of Atlanta.

When they made a sequel, several decades later, the two finally ended up together, only after she leaves the family farm behind her, deciding that her home was with the family she had created.

But the original was truly an exemplary portrayal of Dorothy Parker's line: For every bitch there is a son of a bitch.

The Bodyguard

Do I even need to bring this one up? Won a few academy awards. Girl hires boy as bodyguard -- boy is a stiff, OCD security specialist. Boy and girl take a while to warm up to each other. SPend one night together. Boy is screwed up in that he didn't maintain perfect control. Yelling ensues. Boy saves girl. Boy moves onto his next job, letting girl fly off into the sunset.

This film was carried by style as much as anything else. A great many elements of this film still hold up, strangely enough. It's odd, but it mostly works.

Dr. Kildare

An entire series of films revolved around this character, but at the end of the day, in the penultimate film, the title doctor loses his wife to -- I believe -- a traffic accident. It was out of nowhere, and surprisingly heart wrenching for a series that is largely light and breezy.

If you trip over it on TCM, I do recommend the series, if only for Lionel Barrymore.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Louis Armstrong's piece, "We have all the time in the world has ominous overtones in our household because of this film. It is cruel irony for this film. A new James Bond had just taken over, and married the best Bond girl ever -- Diana "Emma Peel" Rigg.

Bond gets married. Leaves the Secret Service. Drives off on his honeymoon ....

And his wife is murdered in a drive by shooting by Enst Stavro Blofeld.

.... It is possibly the only Bond film that has a real emotional ending.

The Great Gatsby

Talk about a train wreck.

Boy meets girl. Boy is from the wrong side of the tracks. Boy grows up, gets his fortune, and dedicates his entire life to getting enough cash to make the Silver Spoon girl happy. Girl is married. Boy tries to woo girl away from husband. Girl drives boy's car, and runs over a local woman. Girl's husband talks the dead woman's husband into killing boy. Boy dies. Girl wanders off with husband as though nothing happened.

This feels like the prototype of every screwed up love story ever. Why is this guy chasing this girl? He could have any woman he wants, and he focuses all of his attention on married woman who is ultimately a vapid shell of a human being. I don't understand any "romance" where a guy is treated like a doormat by the object of his affections, and he takes it until she comes around -- only in this case, she doesn't come around.

Ugh.

The Manchurian Candidate (Original)

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl are broken up by schmuck parents. Boy goes off to Vietnam. Boy is brainwashed to be an assassin when the right commands are sent. Boy is sent to murder girl's father, girl gets in the way and is killed. Boy is deprogrammed, kills his handlers, and then himself, without ever knowing that he had killed the girl he loved.

... Just ouch.

And this was  Frank Sinatra film, sans Rat Pack. Oy.

Comic Book Films

Yes, they get their own category. Why? Because you generally don't expect comic books to have Romeo and Juliet syndrome, where everything goes bad. Unless the girlfriend is murdered because the writer has no idea what to do with her.

Captain America

Boy meets girl. Boy is frozen under the ice for decades --JUST AFTER finally making a date with her.

This doesn't help when you get to part two. Girl is still alive when he comes back.  Girl has Alzheimer's... damn that was heartbreaking.

Wolverine: Origin

Stop right there, and keep reading. I see you reaching for the comments section to complain. Yes. this is a film where the boy and girl don't end up together, even if you hated the film. And it's also sort of hard when you realize that not only does she die trying to protect him, he doesn't even remember her doing it.

The Dark Knight

Talk about your train wrecks. Boy meets girl, boy loses parents. Boy dresses up like giant bat. Girl finds a nice guy. Boy decides that the nice guy means he doesn't HAVE to dress up like a giant bat. Girl is blown up by killer clown. Boy thinks she would have waited for him, even though she was going to run off with the nice guy.

Ouch.

Amazing Spider Man 2

I haven't seen this one yet, mostly because I know what happens. I was never really a fan of Gwen Stacy in the comics, but Emma Stone made me like her. I was rooting for them. And then she gets dropped off of a clock tower. Really? Couldn't have waited until film #3?

Questionable Content

These are films and setups where you look at them and go ... "Was that a romance?"


The Dain Curse

Okay, this one is screwed up.

A Dashiell Hammett book made into a film, The Dain Curse centers around a rich girl who is hip deep in problems: there's a simple murder, to start with, and then a cult (and a murder), then another murder, and a bombing, AND she's got a major drug problem. Our main character is a PI hired by the family, who is dragged down the rabbit hole.

I"m not even sure if this one even counts, really. If there's really a romantic connection between the two, or what.

Big

10 year old becomes an adult Tom Hanks. Meets adult woman. At the end of the film, he becomes a 10 year old again.

..... This one just makes my head hurt.

Count of Monte Cristo

Boy meets girl. Boy is thrown in jail. Boy comes back for revenge and finds that one of his targets married the girl. Boy destroys all of them. Girl informs boy that burning all of his bridges on a quest for revenge isn't cute or endearing, and leaves.

This one is questionable because the original love story isn't the focus of the film, or the novel -- it's the revenge. So does it count? No idea.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Yikes. What do you do with this one? Boy meets girl. We discover girl is a Nazi. Girl also slept with boy's father. Girl goes crazy and dies when she screws with the wrong artifact.

.... I won't even touch this one.

Zorba the Greek

Again, the love story here is secondary, and perhaps even tertiary.  Boy is setting up a business. Boy meets other boy. Both boys get girls. Boy #1 loses girl because a DIFFERENT boy killed himself because she wouldn't love him, and his family murders her. Boy #2 loses girl to disease. Business falls apart in epic failure.

I'm .... not even sure where to start. So I won't.

So, what did I miss? Anything in particular? 

For books where the boy will -- most likely -- get the girl ... eventually

Try some of these

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

Latest Reviews of Live and Let Bite, et al

To start with JD Cowan has an awesome review for Bite over on his website, that I think is a great review for the entire series, to heck with just one nove. You can check out his review right here.

After a surprising first entry and a rousing second, author Declan Finn's Love At First Bite series performed the task I had been certain wasn't ever going to happen: He wrote a vampire series I actually enjoy.

How did he perform this feat? Well, he did a remarkable thing. It's as crazy as it is impossible. What he did was write a story where vampires were actually vampires, the characters aren't mopey millennials or pious boomers, and the plot progresses from point A to B. Basically he wrote a story that happens to have vampires in it.

I still can't believe it.

My April 2nd guest, Jim McCoy, recently reviewed Murphy's Law of Vampire, and he really likes Mister Day. You can check out his review here.

The book sizzles. The action sequences are impressive. Finn obviously spent hours mapping out the best way to do violence to vampires and other things before writing this. He has very carefully choreographed the fighting in this book. It's impressive. Marco and company are smart and dangerous. Catalano knows that he has to out-plan his enemies and he does so well. The action is so well described that I found myself moving in my seat along with the movements in the fighting. It was exciting. I had my adrenaline going. I wanted to kick ass along with him. It's probably better that I didn't though. I'm a three hundred pound man. I would have gotten in the way.

Something I've often commented on is the need for an epic villain. Finn delivers. Given the fact that the characters in the book can't figure out what Mr. Day is, I won't spoil the fun. But he is pure, unadulterated evil for a reason. He is deadly and vicious. He has a very interesting back story. He's the kind of guy that REALLY REALLY REALLY deserves every terrible thing that happens to him. He's tough as hell and smart. This is no Cobra Commander making stupid mistakes. Day is smart and savvy. He makes chaos because that is his nature. He is cocky but he's damn near indestructible so he should be. But Day does what he does in a logical manner. I wouldn't want to take this guy on.

These are both fun. I'm happy whenever I see a review like these.

If you'd like more news-based articles, I'm not really up to it. But if you follow my Twitter feed you've noticed Brian Niemeier and Jon Del Arroz have some interesting articles. 

Brian: Tor apparently put a hit out on a novel from Castalia House. Nice going, dudes.

Jon covers Marvel's Diversity problem, then he has a follow up dissecting how his first article was reported, and he has yet ANOTHER one about the blowback from the reporting.

Oh, and the publisher of the reprint for The Pius Trilogy has launched their short story streaming service, Lyonesse. One of mine is called "Zombie Jamboree."

Anyway, you can pick up any of the books mentioned above by clicking here. And please, while you're reading, remember the Dragon.

Be well all. And good night.

    

Why Social Justice Storylines Don’t Work

Just a reminder that Declan is on vacation for the next couple of weeks and guest bloggers will be filling in. Today, I'd like to welcome Moira Greyland Peat (author of the Hugo nominated "Story of Moira Greyland") to the Pius Geek blog with her post on Social Justice Story lines.

Yes, I know. We are all supposed to be diverse, and treat every new fad as though it is as “valid” as the traditions and cultural norms spanning thousands of years. But deep down, we know that even though the more sensitive (read: adolescent) members of our culture really want us to validate their folly, it remains folly, and diversity doesn’t work in movies if it eclipses our most basic human needs and drives.

We can see the failure of the social justice storylines all around us. The most famous, of course, can be found in the more recent iterations of the Star Wars saga. No amount of money, CGI or big-name actors has ever equaled the thrill of Luke and Leia swinging over the chasm, or the cliffhanger interchange between Han and Leia where she said “I love you” and he said “I know.”

What passes for “romance” in the first three prequel Star Wars movies was an implausible mess between a preadolescent child and an older teen girl. Creepy enough on its face, it was difficult to believe that Padme Amidala could possibly have seen anything attractive in him. One day, he came to her whimpering and crying about having committed genocide. Genocide! Padme Amidala, the ruler of so many people, was completely unconcerned about Anakin’s distinctly un-manly show of emotion, or the gut-wrenching atrocity he had just committed.

Instead of running like hell, Padme Amidala MARRIED the psychopath, and unsurprisingly, his insanity continued unabated. But oooh! We are meant to be more impressed by the CGI!! Starships and pretty lightsaber duels and Really Cool Abilities!! Padme’s death was reminiscent of that one might find in an operatic heroine like Lucia di Lammermoor: she died of a broken heart. This is coherent for a princess: less so for a career politician. Where in psychological terms, a princess can represent pure nobility and pure emotion, a politician is something else entirely.

I am trying to imagine Hillary Clinton dying of a broken heart over ANYTHING that her erstwhile husband did, from bimbo eruptions to military missteps. Seriously, if Anakin’s genocide does not provoke any emotion in Padme, how could his brutal rejection cause her death?

So now we have “The Force Awakens,” where Rey can magically do anything at all, better than anyone else, despite her low economic status. She can beat a much better trained Sith lord with a sword, despite his obvious reach and height. In a swordfight, this is ludicrous. She can fly starships… could it be that in her culture, flight training is a normal part of slave life? And Finn, who really ought to be a romantic figure, doesn’t get to do a whole lot, because she is The Powerful Leading Woman. The guys stand around, or help Rey Be Impressive. They don’t get to think, or be heroic. Not very inspiring to the guys out there, except for the very few guys who hope that Finn will become a gay love interest. Is this the future of romance in movies? The women save the world and the men turn to each other??

Yes, the Star Wars franchise had a chance for a great romance, and they blew it! After all, what do men and women almost invariably want? Partners, sex, companionship, even (gasp) commitment. Movies which have good love interests pique our interests, and we project ourselves onto the characters. Millions of women wanted to have a love affair like Leia and Han, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened after he was sealed up in the mythical Carbonite! They cared! Does anyone give a fig about Finn and Rey? They couldn’t even manage a kiss.

Wouldn’t it have been more inspiring to show us that even powerful women can still love men and be loved by them? Is the bottom line that an impressive woman must be a single woman? Do powerful women still need men, or can they still choose to have them? Do powerful women regard men as bonbons to be snacked on and forgotten, or is partnership between men and women still necessary in fiction?

For those of us who belong to the human race, the answer is an emphatic YES. We need love and we want romance, and plain old stories of courtship. They give us hope. They inspire us. Will we have a generation of girls dressed like Rey, not bothering with romance because their need for love has been eclipsed by the need to Go Forth and Be Awesome? Does any man want to be like Finn, stuck in the background and un-kissed?

I don’t think so. Romance will always be in style. This is why the original Star Wars will always beat the new ones, until and unless Finn manages to give Rey a really good kiss!



For good storylines with some great romantic tension, check out the Love At First Bite Series

The Catholic Geek: Love and SCOTUS 02/12

The Catholic Geek: Love and SCOTUS 02/12 by We Built That Network | Culture Podcasts:



At 7PM, EST, author, artist and paralegal Dawn Witzke will join us for a special Valentine's Day episode. She will offer commentary on President Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, and then she and host Declan Finn will discuss romance writing. Witzke promises that she will then pontificate on the virtues of Valentine's Day. Finn will try not to scoff.

If you haven't already, check out some of the books below.

And if you have, please leave a review.

    

Superversive SF Roundtable - Romance in SF & F

Yup. I'll be here at 4PM, EST.

And these are my claim to romance.

If you haven't already, check them out.
And if you have, please leave a review.

    

Live and Let Bite Roundup

So, in case you're new here, and wondering what this Live and Let Bite is that's all over the blog, let's back track a little bit, all the way to the beginning, if you like.

I've got the basics of the universe down, including the cover and the tag.

Why I went from doing thrillers that take Dan Brown out to the woodshed to taking a certain Miss Meyer out to the woodshed.

I've covered the origins of book 1, Honor At Stake.

There's been a discussion of how I modified vampire lore for Honor at Stake.

There is of course the old joke about how a sociopath and a vampire walk into a bar...

For those of you who are interested in world building, how vampires would deal with the real world, and Vatican Ninjas...I've got that too.

Sigh ... and then there was a conversation on writing romance. Yay.

I even posted the prologue for Honor at Stake.

There is, of course, book 2, Murphy's Law of Vampires, which tackles demons, San Francisco, an blowing up even more damage to public places.

And now, there's Live and Let Bite

The third in the Dragon Award nominated series, Love at First Bite.

Merlin “Merle” Kraft has been fighting the darkness for months. He left San Francisco in the capable hands of Marco Catalano and his anti-vampire team to defend them against vampires. With special operators at his command, Kraft has been killing every vampire he can find in the Middle East. After clearing out a nest in Tora Bora, he is finally brought back to New York, and the investigation that led him to vampires in the first place.

Marco is starting to spiral. He knows it. His team knows it. Everyone around him can see that he’s just a bomb waiting to explode. The only woman who can bring him back from the brink is also the woman who lit his fuse.

Ever since the demon Asmodeus tried to murder Marco, Amanda Colt has been hunting down every lead to find the ones ultimately behind the attempt. After months of investigation, she learns that something in the dark is colder than the dark. It is a vampire assassin that Amanda has faced once before, and Amanda lost. This assassin is stronger than anything they’ve face before, and it isn’t alone.

With Marco ready to self-destruct, and the armies of Hell ready to descend, the three of them must come together and stop a thousand-year-old assassin that has has never been stopped, and has never failed to kill her target.

This book is going to be awesome. How awesome?

I'm almost certain that Live and Let Bite will take Best Horror at the Dragon Awards. Why? Pure logic on my part....

And if you think that logic has anything to do with awards, I have a bridge to sell you. Heh.

There was the cover reveal. Nice cover, huh?

Then I showed a bit of chapter 4, where our hero was ... a little cranky.

Chapter 6 saw how the world of the supernatural coincides with the real world

Chapter 5 gives you a sense of just how dark this will get.

And, there is, of course, the playlist for the novel.

And, now, there's really nothing more to do than to suggest you try buying these books and enjoy.

    

Playlist for Live and Let Bite

Apparently, music playlists are popular.

I mean, heck, John Ringo has them. Why not me?

Yes, I know. Ringo usually just lists his listening playlists in a chapter by chapter breakdown in the back of his books.

However, Ringo doesn't have a blog he needs to fill with content, so work with me people.

For, for our first entry ... you could have Marco's theme harkening back to the final revelation of Honor at Stake.

But, in this case, after the end of Murphy's Law of Vampires, Marco has not heard back from Amanda for months.

And now, in Live and Let Bite, he can only assume what that means, and he doesn't assume anything good.

And as you saw in the other excerpt from chapter 4, Marco is ... cranky.

Amanda comes to San Francisco to find Marco, and possibly protect him.

As we saw in the other excerpt, she finds him .... a little different than she remembers.

This next one works on various levels ... up to and including Merle's chapter, and another chapter later on called -- wait for it -- A Theory of Everything.

Enter ... A theory of everything.

Live and Let Bite is coming, and you've got until Monday before it's released.

The Launch Party starts On January 29th, on the Radio Show

And continues with the FB launch party.

And if you haven't read book 1 and 2, we can fix that. 

If you have, please, review them.

    

Live and Let Bite excerpt, Chapter 5: Blue Blood

This excerpt is the entire chapter.

Live and Let Bite will have a heft dose of world building. There will be more backstory built into history, the characters, the world, the relationships, and, more importantly, who knows about the little rabbit hole that our heroes have fallen down. After all, vampires have been around forever, that's why we have Vatican ninjas. Why the hell has it taken Merle Kraft so long to catch on? Why has it taken the government to catch on?

And this one will be a big piece of that.

I keep saying this should be the Dragon Award winner for a reason, people.

For those people who have read Murphy's, you can see where bits and pieces fit together, especially with the creature known only as "Mister Day."

The following sequence brings Merlin "Merle" Kraft back to the investigation that he started in Honor at Stake. But before he can really begin, he has been intercepted by the NYPD, and not because he's being profiled, but because the Police Commissioner has some information for him. 

For the record, if PC Wilson sounds like he could have been played by Tom Selleck ...

Ahem ....

Maybe.

****

Merle Kraft walked into New York City’s One Police Plaza and merely looked around the office building, hoping that he wasn’t about to get mugged by reality - or a bunch of cops with nightsticks.

Despite being a secret agent with connections to the government and the FBI, Merle had no idea what he was doing in the headquarters of the NYPD. All he knew was, after an 11-hour flight from Israel to New York, he had arrived at Kennedy airport, only to find the police waiting for him. They wanted to bring him to the Police Commissioner.

Merle smiled genially, then went along quietly.

On the top floor of 1PP, Police Commissioner Ray Wilson sat behind his desk, and welcomed Merle with a nod, barely looking up from the paperwork on his desk. Wilson was a large fellow, tall, with a full head of dark hair. It was a surprise for someone who was his age - Merle knew it was in the sixties, but he looked more mid-fifties. If the vague hints in the PC’s bio were to be believed, his conditioning probably had something to do with being Naval Intelligence in Vietnam… which, to Merle’s mind meant “I used to be a SEAL.”

Personally, Merle thought he looked more like Teddy Roosevelt.

“Hello sir. You wanted to see me?”

“Yes please, have a seat.” Wilson turned through some more pages. “If you ever wonder why there is a minimal police presence in high-crime areas sometimes, it’s because that every time a police officer even needs to look at a suspect crosseyed, he has to fill out a stack of papers about, oh, yea high.” He held his hand about a foot over the desktop. “I should know, because I’m the one who gets all of the forms in triplicate.”

Merle chuckled as he sat. “Shouldn’t there be a hundred guys between a street incident and your desk?”

“Maybe. But that’s what it feels like.” Wilson looked up from his desk, his black wire-framed glasses making him look like an owl. He set the papers aside, leaned back, and folded his hands across his stomach.

“One of the last times you were in town, you made inquiries with one of my detectives about a Marco Catalano and an Amanda Colt.”

Merle nodded. “Yes sir?”

“This brought you to my attention.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a government employee that no one likes to talk about, asking one of my officers about one of the citizens of my fair city. You had no obvious reason for it, and you had just wrapped up a case here that ended in the decapitation of someone whose body had completely disappeared. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but that looked fishy as hell.”

Merle chuckled. “Yes, I can believe that. Trust me, I think a great many projects I’m sucked into have the smell of salmon about them.”

“Right. Since then, I thought you had been staying out of my city, so what you were doing has been none of my concern, and none of my business. However, now that your ex-wife and your son are in San Francisco, there is no reason for you to be in my town except on matters that are my business. I think it’s time that you and I have a talk.”

Merle wasn’t about to argue. “Okay. How do you figure?”

“After I made a few inquiries, I realized that there are a great many things than I don’t think you understand about your position.”

“My position? What would you know about my position?”

“To begin with, Mister Kraft, you were a cost-saving measure.”

“A what?” I could understand if I was a minority hire, but a cost-saving hire?

Wilson nodded. “You see, back in the 90s, we already had a team in the government. More than a few teams. The Initiative, as you know it, came later.”

Merle sat, blinked, and tried to do some math. “You had teams, plural? Vampires and ghoulies aren’t new to the government? And somehow, you have known the whole time?”

The Commissioner paused a moment. “You’re aware of my record?”

Merle nodded. “You’ve been a cop since you left Vietnam. You’ve been Commissioner in several cities, mostly setting up methods of patrolling in order to prevent crime.”

“That’s not all I’ve been setting up.” The PC leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “When I was in Nam, I also ran missions into Laos and Cambodia. I won’t say they were all missions. There were a few times where we simply got lost; that isn’t a euphemism, that’s the fact of navigating in the jungle. However, I can tell you that I and my men ran into some strange crap. And by strange, I mean your kind of strange, things with fangs and fur, and occasionally scales. We were soon brought in for special training, because we tended to run into a lot of this stuff. About half the folks who worked the tunnels in Nam had similar run-ins, and we all kept in touch. Because when there’s a network of tunnels running under an entire country, trust me, things that like the dark will start migrating there.

“About the early 90s, most of the guys running ‘special’ missions had been laid off, or cut back, part of the ‘Peace Dividend.’” Wilson scoffed. “Peace Dividend. Right.” He coughed, and cleared his throat.

“Anyway, beastie attacks had been down, the Cold War was over, and the idiot in the Oval Office decided that we weren’t going to be involved in the world as much anymore. If our boys weren’t running into these creatures, we weren’t going to be using special teams, or have special training. And if we stopped hiring and training, well, it’s just less likely for ‘this sort of thing’ to get out into the media, right?”

The Commissioner growled to himself. “We won’t even go into that part of it. Anyway, someone decided that when weird stuff started showing up in America, then it was time to start bringing someone in who could handle it locally. Someone with, well, initiative.”

Merle narrowed his eyes. “Me? Great. Why didn’t they clue me in on some of this? I didn’t even know vampires were real until the past year. Heck, why didn’t they get some of the old band back together and give me someone to work with?”

The PC shook his head. “From what I heard, some of the higher-ups in some fringe eco-groups were put in charge of the EPA in that administration, and so they declared that the dangerous things we knew about were put on a classified endangered species list. Not only were they to be protected, they were to be protected by completely denying their existence on every level of government.”

“That means I’m left to myself.” Merle sighed. “Such mishegas. Is it at all possible to bring in some of these guys from the old days?”

The Commissioner rolled his eyes. “Son, most of these men have been cashiered for more than 20 years. I include the ones who weren’t outright thrown out of the Army, or served in other branches. Now they’ve been hired by private military contractors.”

Merle thought it over a moment. Just because the US had stopped running into vampires and lycanthropes and whatnot, didn’t mean that they had just gone away. Like the “Peace Dividend” bull, just because the White House ignored threats didn’t mean that they had just gone away. In fact, if the US had stopped caring, and assuming that the nations of the world had already done as much as they could, that meant someone had to pick up the slack.

“Don’t tell me that PMCs have their own monster hunting squads?”

The PC waggled his eyebrows. “Okay, then, I won’t.”

Merle processed this a bit more. “We ran into them in the sandbox after 9/11, didn’t we? Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. That’s one of the reasons that the PMCs were brought in, isn’t it? They had the special hunters, and the regular military hadn’t.”

The PC nodded. “Got it in one. As the Secretary of Defense said, they had to go to war with the military they had, not the one they wanted. It was easier to hire PMCs than to recruit and train soldiers to fight a single type of enemy. The military tried to start building back up, but -”

Merle held up a hand in the “stop” gesture of a cop halting traffic. “But let me guess, the next administration decided that we didn’t need a special monster squad, we just needed Predator drones?”

PC Wilson didn’t even smile. “Precisely. Meaning that if you want a monster squad, you’re going to have to assemble it yourself.”

“There’s a difference between ‘Some Assembly Required’ and just getting an empty box and a diagram without any parts.”

“You’re doing a good job already. In fact, I think you’re already doing better than you think you are.”

“How?”

Wilson smiled tightly. “Back in Nam, we hadn’t said anything after our first encounter, because we didn’t want to be dragged into a rubber room. But we were prepared for our second, and by then, someone had found out what we were doing and why. We had been read in to the situation, and we had the facts of life explained to us by one of the higher-ups.”

“Okay. That’s to be expected, I suppose.”

“Remember how I mentioned you came to my attention?”

“Yes. I had Kristen run a background check on Amanda and Marco. Why?”

PC Wilson reached into his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and slid it in front of Merle. It was a New York City ID for Amanda. “She’s why you came to my attention. She was the government agent who briefed my men. The woman known as Amanda Colt used to have your job. She was one of the people fired as a cost-saving measure. You’re her replacement.”

Merle gaped at the photo. “Son of a bitch.”

If you like this, you've got a week before it's released.

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