The Cowboy throws a party & the guests are mostly adverbs
Hello cowboys & vampires!
The Vampires.com Interview
Can you tell us a little about The Cowboy and the Vampire Thriller Series? It’s a glorious mash up of Gothic existentialism and gritty western realism that imagines what happens when vampires descend on modern day Wyoming. Blending horror, action and comedy, it’s the kind of story that would emerge from a whiskey-fueled, late night conversation between Bram Stoker, Zane Grey and Dorothy Parker.
How does The Cowboy and the Vampire Thriller Series differ from other novels about vampires? One aspect that stands apart is the Meta – the “place” in our world where consciousness goes at death. Our vampires die, literally, every dawn like clockwork, and their sense of self rushes off down the tunnel of light to exist in the Meta until nightfall. Their long undead lives are an endless cycle of near death, and then post death, experiences. Human consciousness exists there too, but only when we die with finality. A few lucky humans have returned from the Meta with scant memories and a new sense of purpose. Most vampires return with a jumbled mass of sensory experiences and a renewed hunger for blood.
What inspired you to write about vampires? Love.
What is one thing you would like people to take away from their experience of reading Blood and Whiskey? We’d like readers to feel just a little bit lost, a little bit lonely, when they finish the last page, because they miss the characters, their new friends, and the world they return to just isn’t as exciting.
Read the entire interview with the authors and enter to win a signed copy of Blood and Whiskey.
Ask a Cowboy
Dear Cowboy: I’ve brought in all the cattle from the field and so on. I’ve read all my books in my mini library and have nothing else to do. Please give me an idea on what I can do.
Dear bored: When I was a kid, I learned early on not to let on to mom or dad that I was bored because it seemed they could always find something that needed to be done. And usually, their solutions involved tasks that were both boring and hard, like stacking hay, digging postholes or weeding the garden … and we had a damn big garden.
Read the rest of the cowboy’s wisdom here.
Sweet nothings in the margin
We’ve reached the final stages of editing Blood and Whiskey. Nerves frayed. The galleys are due back to the printer by Monday morning. These particular edits may surprise them … the truth comes out about writing with a partner. This is a constant argument we have. Clark likes flourishes and drama. Kathleen is a spare writer, preferring the reader fill in the flourish. Usually, by this stage in a book, we’ve integrated our distinct individual voices into our “third” (better) voice, but occasionally there is spillover into margin messages at this late point.
P.S. Kathleen won this one.
The Vlog: Boredom and weight watchers
Dr. Van Helsing, wherever you are, you might want to cover your ears. I am about to reveal the worst enemy of the Vampire: boredom. Ennui. Existential despair. No stake-wielding simpleton, no misguided vigilante armed with religious righteousness, no child orphaned by a blood orgy and nurtured by cold vengeance can induce even a fraction of the fear created by simple existence. Human or Vampire, routines become prisons and sadly, eventually those prisons become all too comfortable. It’s tragic really, and terminally depressing.