Blood Prophecy: Queen’s Destiny by Barb Jones

First, let me say thank you for having me here for this interview!

Thanks for joining us today, Barb.

Can you tell readers a little bit about yourself and what inspired to write in this particular genre? 

I love telling stories and told them since I was little.  I was born and raised in Hawaii, the best place for stories when it comes to legends and all.  I’m just your typical quirky girl who loves vampires.  I write paranormal because I love vampires, but then you got to throw in the other races too!  Werewolves hunt, witches have real power and well, vampires drink blood!

What is it about the paranormal, in particular vampires, that fascinates you so much? 

I just love the fact that they have these special enhanced abilities to compel people, they move fast, they are sexy.  Vampires have these deep sultry voices that can be hypnotic!

What inspired you to write this book? 

I wouldn’t say inspiration but I was tired of the genre being so “fake like”.  I mean, vampires do not walk in the daylight or sparkle.  I wanted to write something that would be close to their true nature but also interact with other races.

Please tell us about your latest release. 

Queen’s Destiny is a new, ground-breaking book that tells of a prophecy that has spanned centuries involving an epic battle that will rage between the races.  A queen is destined to bring peace to the races.

Do you have a special formula for creating characters' names? Do you try to match a name with a certain meaning to attributes of the character or do you search for names popular in certain time periods or regions? 

It’s funny, I get asked this a lot.  There is no secret formula or anything.  I try to use names that are meaningful or that will fit the character.  I come up with the character first and see what name is worthy of them.

Was one of your characters more challenging to write than another? 

I would say, Michael is my challenging one.  Even to this day, I don’t know how he will turn out.  Will he remain true to his Queen, his lover and friend or will he turn against her?  I haven’t quite decided yet.

Is there a character that you enjoyed writing more than any of the others? 

As much as I love vampires, I love writing about Chloe, the witch.  I think it’s because she has such a Seattle girl attitude.  She’s goth, sexy and smart!

Do you have a formula for developing characters? Like do you create a character sketch or list of attributes before you start writing or do you just let the character develop as you write? 

Hmm…No formula.  I just write the characters, letting them develop as the story progresses.  I have no outline or anything.

What is your favorite scene from the book? Could you share a little bit of it, without spoilers of course? 

My favorite scene…it would be between Amber and Chloe.  Vampire Queen and witch, respectively, of course.  It’s when Chloe admits to being a witch and Amber is just grasping the situation.  It’s the way Chloe teases her and makes fun of her being a genius but can’t believe there are vampires and witches!  They are the best of friends.  True BFFs.

Did you find anything really interesting while researching this or another book? 

I probably learned a lot about gypsy legends, Macedonia and such things.  I love history and all, so this was perfect!

What is the most interesting thing you have physically done for book related research purposes? 

I met and talked to a few historians about Macedonia and languages.  It was really an interesting and valuable experience.

Can you tell readers a little bit about the world building in the book/series? How does this world differ from our normal world? 

It takes place in today’s time – Seattle to be exact.  The only difference is that I bring the Seattle Underground world to life and populate it with the supernatural races.

With the book being part of a series, are there any character or story arcs, that readers jumping in somewhere other than the first book, need to be aware of? Can these books be read as stand alones? 

These can be read as standalones but only because I revive the prophecy in each book.  But, to grasp the full nature of the characters, readers would have to read the first book and the novellas will complement the books.

Do any of your characters have similar characteristics of yourself in them and what are they? 

I think each of the characters have a little of me in them!  I mean, Amber is a genius girl, well, that’s me.  I’m a bit of a nerd.  And there is nothing wrong with being a nerd!  Chloe has an attitude and edge.  I’ve got that too!  Michael can be, well, sneaky.  I was a sneaky kid at times.  And Marcus has that gentle heart.  I care so much about others and it shows in my children – the way they care about others.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? How do you deal with it? 

I do.  I have to sometimes put it aside for awhile or I sweat it out at the gym!

Do you have any weird writing quirks or rituals? 

(laughing!).  I will write anywhere and at any time I have a thought.  I even wrote while on a dinner date!  I love telling that to people so that they understand the muse does not wear a watch when it comes to writing.

Do you write in different genres? 

I do.  I write children’s fantasy books, children’s books about special needs, poetry and of course, my favorite – paranormal!

Do you find it difficult to write in multiple genres? 

Personally, I don’t.  My imagination is all over the place.

When did you consider yourself a writer? 

I think a lot of writers need to cross a threshold to consider themselves a writer.  For me, I was 9 and in the fourth grade (in Hawaii).  I had to write a Haiku poem, a story and my teacher told me that these were the most beautiful things she ever read.  She told me that if I believed in myself and didn’t stop writing, I could be a writer that day.  From that point on, nothing stopped me from writing.

What are your guilty pleasures in life? 

Probably chocolate and desserts.  That’s not good when you want to maintain a healthy lifestyle!

Other than writing, what are some of your interests, hobbies or passions in life? 

I love to read.  I can’t get enough of reading!  I try to stay on top of my scrapbooking as well.  Well, and living in Florida – there’s Disney!  I love anything and everything Mickey Mouse.

What was the last amazing book you read? 

I just finished Chris Kuzneski’s Hunters book.  It was absolutely amazing and I can’t wait for the movie to come out!

Where is your favorite place to read? Do you have a cozy corner or special reading spot? 

I will read anywhere so there is no favorite place.

What can readers expect next from you? 

They can expect the next book in the series to come out in 2015 as well as novellas on the characters.

Where can readers find you on the web? 

I have a facebook page at www.facebook.com/bloodprophecybooks where I interact with my fans as well as my website at www.thebloodprophecy.com.  There are lots of games and fun giveaways for my fans just because I appreciate them.  In fact, my team is working hard to create a street team just for Blood Prophecy.  I’m excited about that.

Would you like to leave readers with a little teaser or excerpt from the book? 

Yes.  I would.  Thank you for asking.  Here is an excerpt from the book between Chloe and Amber.  You can see how their personalities are from this snippet.

“Relax, Amber.  I’m going to tell you a secret.  I’m not just a brilliant curator.  I’m also a witch.”

“A what?”

“I practice witchcraft.  It’s not all the crazy junk you think it is, and I think I can help you to understand your dreams.”

“Oh, Jesus.”  Amber stood and started for the door.  “Are you drunk?  This is too insane for me.”

Chloe put a hand on her shoulder.  “Sit down, Amber.  I can help.  There are things that people think are imaginary, but I assure you, they are real.  Please let me help you. Please.”

“Chloe, what are you saying?”  Amber sat, but in the process she spilled her wine and started to cry.  She tried to hold back, but her lips began to quiver and she ended up giving in to the sobs.  All at once, she realized how badly she wanted the stress and the lack of sleep and the fear to go away. 

“Amber, there are things in this world that are beyond what we think is normal.  There might very well be vampires like the man in your dream.  My mother was a witch.  Her mother was a witch.  Her mother was a witch.  We go back for hundreds of years.  I can help.”

“How can you help me?”  Amber looked at Chloe, whose eyes were wide.  Was she crazy?  Chloe gestured and the candles in the room seemed to flare before burning more steadily than before.  Amber noticed an old clock sitting on a shelf with two candles on either side.  It was 8:45.  I haven’t even been in Seattle for twelve hours.

Chloe gestured again, muttering something under her breath.  A warm breeze blew through the apartment and seemed to settle on Amber.  She felt her hair blow across her cheeks, and her body began to shiver.  Chloe approached Amber and took her hands.

“Close your eyes and breathe in deeply.  Listen to my voice and only my voice.  Breathe, okay Amber. That’s it. Relax and listen to my voice.  Let me take you back to your dreams. Amber, you are dreaming, okay?  You are dreaming again.  But you’re awake in my apartment, and you’re safe.  Tell me what you dream.” 

Amber stood in the woods.  She was naked, again, and she felt the hot breath of dogs—no, wolves—blowing against her thighs, her ankles, and her hands.  She looked down at the wolves, hundreds of them, covered in red fur, brown fur, grey fur. They snarled at her, some coming close and bearing their teeth, growling menacingly.  A large wolf, enormously large with black fur and deep yellow eyes, stepped from among the pack to stand in front of her.  “He’s giant, Chloe.” She saw its body moving as it breathed, and felt its breath against her breasts.  It stared at her for a moment and then dropped its forelegs as though bowing.

“Wait, now a man is stepping out of the trees.  The wolves are going crazy.”  Amber shook on the sofa.  “They’re stepping between me and the man.  He’s laughing and pointing at me.”

The man waved his fingers at Amber and smiled.  She saw sharp teeth, and the man licked his lips and blew her a kiss.  His face was still obscured, unknown, unreal.

“Amber, calm down.  Are you still there?”  Chloe’s voice seemed distant. “Nothing is going to hurt you, Amber, you’re still dreaming.  Take me back to the woods, Amber.”

“The man is very close now, and the wolves are gone.  He’s touching me and kissing me.  He tells me he’s been waiting, and I am his.  He’s calling me ‘Queen.’”  Amber shook on the sofa.  “I can smell his blood, Chloe.  God, all I can smell is blood.”

Amber sobbed and mumbled incoherent words as Chloe held her on the sofa.

Blood Prophecy: Queen’s Destiny

Blood Prophecy

Book 1

Barb Jones

Genre: Adult Paranormal

Publisher: World Castle Publishing, LLC

Date of Publication: October 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-1629891521

ASIN: B00NCN1CJU

Number of pages: 211 Kindle

282  Paperback

Word Count: 71,417

Cover Artist: Kip Ayers

Book Description:

Amber Stone, once a child prodigy, has just become curator of a special collection of Macedonian artifacts for the Seattle Museum of Natural History. Chloe, a prodigy of a different sort, holds a position at the museum focusing on tribal art. The two become fast friends, united by Amber's unsettling dreams and Chloe's unorthodox ways of dealing with them. Two strangers arrive in town, bringing with them a prophecy recorded more than three-thousand years ago, a prophecy that places Amber directly in the midst of a battle that has spanned a millennia.

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/79ydZ0W26tk

Available at Amazon and BN

About the Author:

Barb Jones is a multi-genre author with a very vivid imagination.  She writes with an uncanny ability to draw you into the supernatural world.   She also carries the talent to write for children and allows them to feel as if they belong to the magical world of King Arthur.  Barb is also a successful IT director in addition to being a mother.  Her world is filled with imagination, creativity and passion.  She made her debut in the paranormal genre with the start of an amazing series called Blood Prophecy for adults and The Adventures of Little Arthur and Merlin the Magnificent for children. 

Currently residing in Sarasota, Florida, she enjoys the beaches and sunshine.

www.thebloodprophecy.com

www.facebook.com/bloodprophecybooks

@BloodProphecy_1

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Guest Blog and Giveaway with Stefan Petrucha

Man and monster are in his blood…

His name is Jeremiah Fall. A soldier of fortune, he has been fighting his own war for 150 years--ever since the beast in him was born.

Desperate to restore his lost humanity, Fall crosses the sands of Egypt, discovers a lost city off the coast of France, and finally arrives at the birthplace of all mankind. Shunning daylight and feeding only when he must, he battles the monster who transformed him forever. He can share his deepest secret with no one . . . not even the beautiful woman he starts to love, the only human who grasps the mysteries of an ebony stone as old as creation itself.

Across the world, across time, Fall seeks the stone's secret. But has he found a cure for himself or unleashed a final curse on all mankind?

Read an excerpt! Check out the VIDEO and the MUSIC!

Read the FREE short story, FALL AND THE JERSEY DEVILl!

"[Jeremiah Fall] travels to the shores of Egypt, the rocky coast of Brittany, and the gates of Eden itself in a quest for understanding and redemption that will thrill fans of biblical horror and historical detail." -- Publisher's Weekly STARRED REVIEW

"A must read... a classy, fun spin on the vampire tale."-- Ryan Buell, host of A&E's Paranormal State

Dark Shadows 4-ever!

"You wanted your Josette so much, well, you shall have her-but not in the way that you would have chosen. You will never rest, Barnabas! And you will never be able to love anyone - for whoever loves you will die."
-- Angelique Bouchard, 1796

My new novel, Blood Prophecy tells of Jeremiah Fall, a puritan devoted to finding a cure for his vampirism. Like any writer, especially one confronting a topic written to death and back again, I didn’t want to simply repeat what’d come before. For some authors this means not looking too closely at anything remotely similar. I, however, am of the he who does not remember the past is condemned to repeat it variety. So, I spent some time thinking about where vampires came from, how and why they worked, and more specifically how my own fascination with them began.

For me, the thickest nosferatu-root is the 1960s soap opera, Dark Shadows, subject of this little meditation. I was eight when I first glimpsed Barnabas Collins baring his fangs on a B&W TV at a friend’s house. Though my pal explained he wasn’t a total monster, I was so terrified it was a year or so before I joined the rush of kids running home to catch the latest episode.

Yes, Dark Shadows was cheaply made. Sets wobbled, actors blew their lines and the blooper reel is nearly as long as the series. It also holds, I think, a critical spot in vampire lore. Barnabas Collins, a tortured Byronic hero, owes as much to Wuthering Height’s Heathcliff as he does Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Laugh if you will, but without Barnabas, the works of Anne Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twilight, would not be possible.

Its writers borrowed, often intelligently, from the best horror had to offer, featuring werewolves, witches, zombies, Jekyll & Hyde, Lovecraftian cults, and ghosts a la Henry James' Turn of the Screw (also turned into a classic film, The Innocents). The first James-based episodes, featuring the mute spirit of Quentin Collins (a variation on James Quint, get it?) and his eerie theme music playing on an old Victrola, remain genuinely chilling.

The show also gave birth to two features. The first, House of Dark Shadows remains one of my favorite vampire films. The second, Night, well, we’ll never know, since it was hobbled by last minute studio-ordered cuts. As testimony to the show’s endurance, Tim Burton is currently working on a re-launch with Johnny Depp playing Barnabas.

Barnabas was always the star. About a decade before Interview with the Vampire’s Louis de Pointe du Lac, he was the first reluctant vampire. Now, the vampire tale itself, near as I can figure, began as a plague myth, a disease travelling within families. Later, it morphed, via Varney, Carmilla and, most famously, Dracula, taking on the trappings of sexual repression, and evolving into the more familiar monster.

Barnabas was different. Rather than a soulless metaphor for disease and/or sex, he had a soul, and thanks to it, whined constantly. To be fair, Count Dracula, in Stoker’s novel, expresses sadness at not having seen the sun for a real long time, and there may be other precursors, but I’m convinced that it’s in Barnabas the notion of vampire as someone trapped reaches fruition. (The idea may seem a bit alien to fans of the 21st century glitter-vamps who sort-of don’t like the bloodlust thing and still attend high school. These days, more often than not, the punishment aspect of vampirism has been diluted to the point of meaninglessness.)

One reason you gotta love old Barnabas is that, for all his reluctance, he was never a sweetheart. Both pre and post vampirism, he was controlling and abusive. “Do you think I’d ever hurt her? Do you think I’d want to hurt anyone?” he might scream while smashing his poor man-servant’s face with his silver wolfs head cane.

Scion of the wealthy Collins family, his troubles began in the late 18th century when he did the nasty with his fiancé’s maid, Angelique Bouchard. He tried to dump Angelique, but, being a witch, she turned him into a vampire and spent the next few centuries obsessively tormenting him. Me, I would have stuck with the witch. She was self-actualizing and incredibly hot.

Barnabas, not quite reluctant yet, planned to turn his betrothed, Josette, into a vampire like himself. When Angelique showed Josette what that’d be like, she killed herself, setting in motion our hero’s long-lasting obsession.

Skipping sundry details, he winds up chained in his coffin until 1967. (Though we later learn that, thru time travel, it was opened a whole bunch of times.) Does he get on with his un-life? No. Instead, out-of-the-box, the fiend finds the first of many women whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his dear, departed Josette. This never works out, btw. As the show progressed, eventually Barnabas didn’t even care if the woman looked like Josette. He was just fine finding someone he could dress up in that musty old wedding gown.

We’re all obsessed at times, but how low can you go? In one of the creepier iterations from the novel tie-ins, Barnabas adopts a child, figuring she’ll grow into his new Josette. He raises her until she’s of age, and then proposes (“Haven’t you noticed I don’t age? It’s cool, baby…”). Thankfully, the head of the family whisks the girl away. Barnabas doesn’t follow, agreeing that perhaps he’d crossed some kind of line there.

In this lovelorn sense, Barnabas neatly fulfills an essential trope of the old-style vampire – being completely, hopelessly, eternally stuck. Old school Vampires do not change. They do not progress. They do not grow, not emotionally, not spiritually. They do not let it go. They keep checking Facebook even if they have no friends. That’s because they’re dead. Static. Their hunger for blood is a clear symbolic yearning for lost life.

Nowadays vamps are often played as having the same growth-potential as humans. They’re more like misunderstood mutant superheroes, blessed with powers, plagued with weaknesses. It’s an equally interesting trope, but certainly not as monstrous.

Back to 1967 and a final twist. For Barnabas, Josette is the same as blood, but a funny thing happens. He’s offered a cure (in the film, by Dr. Julia Hoffman), a way to lift the curse. Instead of bemoaning the possibility of losing his immortality, he goes for it. He’s thrilled that he might be able to come to his Josette-of-the-week as a living man. It wouldn’t be a shadow existence anymore, an echo of life, it’d be the real thing.

The series giddily jumps shark after shark and Barnabas goes from human to vampire a few times, but his initial realization that there’s a difference between being alive and dead, seems to me a crucial moment for the vampire story itself. Varney, Carmilla, Dracula, weren’t just in hell, they were hell. They had to be destroyed. Now, we’re talking purgatory, possible escape. After all, what’s a heaven for?

Which brings me back, roundabout, to Blood Prophecy and Jeremiah Fall. In writing the book (more an action-paced thriller than this intellectual essay might imply), I tried to keep that history in mind. In part, the book harken back to the notion of vampire as plague, embodied by Jeremiah’s nemesis, Skog, but also to the Dark Shadows idea of salvation.

There is a twist, of course. Rather than a rich dude who beds the wrong woman, Jeremiah is a simple farmer, a pious Puritan. And it’s that belief system which crystallized everything about vampires I wanted to say. See, Puritans (like the ancient Gnostics) had an intense distrust of the physical world (it is the Devil’s, after all), yet knew they had to live in it.

Their rigorous quest for salvation drove them stiff and twitching to some wonderful innovations (the idea that each person had to read the Bible and discover God for themselves, the first books printed for children, for instance) as well as horrific cruelties (cutting off the ears of blasphemers, the Salem Witch Trials, to mention two).

I mean, I can just see them using that wolfs head cane on Willy for his own good.

For me, though, the big thing tying Puritanism to the tortured vampire is the fact that they were never, ever, certain they’d earned God’s favor. Being rich or successful might do it, or it might not. Good works, maybe, but is it enough? They lived in a constant state of dread, trying to guess which signs were from God, which from the Devil. For the self-aware vampire that translates to – which hunger is the true hunger? Which love real love?

Rather than a woman (though yes, there is a woman, you betcha) Jeremiah is motivated by the belief in salvation. Unlike Barnabas, his goal in death the same as it was in life. Like his Puritan forbearers, he’s never sure whether he’s doing the right thing, or being insidiously compromised, whether he’s struggling to reach heaven, or being dragged inch by inch into hell. Seemed cool to me.

And that’s the walk from Dark Shadows to Blood Prophecy. It may seem bizarre to award a cheap, goofy old soap a lofty spot, or arrogant to discuss my own humble work in such terms, but I hope it may provide some distraction, useful notions, or at least a glimpse into the mind of one crazed writer.

Thanks to Roxanne for inviting me to blog here – and thanks for reading! Now where did I put that wolfs head cane? Willy!

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