Not Another Vampire Book

Every Vampire had an Eternal-One.
One woman he was tied to forever. Destroying the woman meant destroying the
Vampire. And Damien wouldn’t rest until he’d destroyed Slade. The Vampires
had hunted his race since the beginning of time. Now, as the last of his kind,
it was time he returned the favor. The human woman was an innocent pawn in
their chess match of death, but Damien didn’t care. When you were fated to be
a Vampire’s mate… sometimes life just sucked.

Eternal
Passion at Sunset- Chapter One

“This
is the worst beginning of any book I’ve ever read.” Karalynn Donnelly waved
the manuscript in front of her father’s abashed face. “It’s terrible. Utterly
ridiculous in ways that other terrible, utterly ridiculous books would just point
and laugh at. We can’t print it. It’s a blasphemy against the written word.”

“Now,
honey, you’re barely one chapter in. You need to give it a chance.”

“One
chapter was all I could take! It’s making my brain bleed. Do you have any
idea how many anachronisms are in the first twenty pages alone? How many
stupid, clichéd lines? How many times random women throw themselves at
Slade’s
–wait, let me get this right.” She flipped through the stack of printouts.
“Here it is. Here it is. Slade’s ‘pulsating, animal maleness?’” She looked
up at her father, again. “Are you
kidding
me with this crap?!”

“Well,
that’s why I pay you, Kara. To smooth over the rough spots. That’s what an
editor
does
.” Harold Donnelly wasn’t as spry as the running-back he’d
been in his youth, his hair was greyer and his body rounder, but he could still
move fast when he wanted to. He got to his feet, preparing for a hasty
get-away as he took in her aggravation. “Your stepmother’s really counting on
us to help her friend start her writing career. Tanya needs some handholding
and your job is to help her get her bearings. Give her some constructive
criticism. Some feedback.”

“Feedback?”
Kara nearly pegged the manuscript for
Eternal Passion at Sunset
at his
oblivious head. “Dad, Gemma’s friend can’t write!
At all
. What kind
of feedback can I give on a book written by someone who can’t write?”

“Vampires
are very hot, right now. I’m sure you can salvage something from it. Just get
Tanya to refocus on the heart of the book and go from there.”

Kara
folded back the blue, plasticized cover, flipped to the first page, and read him
the blurb that summarized the world’s worst novel.

“Spunky
and beautiful, Lady Melessa Fairfield dreams of escaping to the 1892 World’s
Fair in Chicago, innocently believing that it is her one chance to avoid the arranged
marriage to an accountant of her father’s choosing. Yet, she has no idea that
evil lurks in the fabled White City, salivating at the thought of destroying
her innocent, blonde beauty. A stalking menace consumed with a centuries old
vengeance hunts Melessa. Damien, the last of the Wizard Warlocks, who knows
that the beautiful, innocent Melessa is the destined bride of Slade, king of
the noble race of Vampires.

Age
old enemies, Damien will stop at nothing to destroy Melessa, enrage his mortal
foe, Slade, and win their supernatural war. Meanwhile, Slade will stop at
nothing to possess Melessa’s fiery passion
for his very
own and have the one, beautiful woman who can fill the void of his lost soul.
If only the beautiful flame-haired vixen will heed his powerful call and give
herself fully to this dark knight, before
the evil
Damien
enslaves her and the rest of the planet with his otherworldly powers and thirst
for revenge.”

Kara
paused for a minute, once again taking in the staggering stupidity of those melodramatic,
run-on sentences.

Harold
cleared his throat. “Can we say ‘dark knight’ without the Batman people suing
us?”

“I
doubt it. The
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
folks probably won’t be thrilled
with the lost soul plagiarism, either.” Kara arched a brow. “Also, the
World’s Fair was in 1893, not 1892. Melessa’s hair color changes from one
sentence to another, the word ‘beautiful’ is repeated about five times, and ‘Slade’
is just a God-awful name for a vampire. And that’s just the
beginning
of the problems with this story.”

“Well,
I trust you to work it all out.” Harold headed for the door.

“Dad.”
Kara followed him out of his office and out on to the main floor. “You need to
talk to Gemma and get her to see that this Tanya St. Clair person is not a
writer. I get that Gemma likes to help people and these two are gym-buddies or
whatever, but Gemma doesn’t even
like
the gym. She told me she’s
planning to quit going anyway, because they won’t stock Diet Pepsi at the juice
bar. It’s a phase. She’ll forget her friend Tanya’s literary aspirations without
us having to really print
Eternal Passion at
Sunset
and waste
precious trees making paper for this drivel.”

“I
can’t do that to her, honey. Besides, you’re always saying we should branch
out, right? Release some romance novels?”

“
Good
romance novels, Dad. Well-written. Likeable characters. An actual plot.
Not
another vampire book!” She waved the manuscript at him. “Do you
really want to inflict
this
monstrosity on the unsuspecting world?”

Donnelly
Publishing was a small firm. Mostly they published movie novelizations and
unauthorized biographies. Kara had bigger plans. Oh, she loved movies and she
was very, very good at her job. Her DVD collection covered half the walls in
her apartment and the books she edited almost always sold well. For years, though,
she’d been urging her father to expand Donnelly and publish more original
fiction. Romance novels were fun and popular. She had stacks of them herself,
because she enjoyed reading them. They would be such a great step for the
company.

But,
Eternal Passion at Sunset
was like a parody of a romance novel. If
Tanya St. Clair had ever read one, she obviously hadn’t understood it. Every
stupid plot devise that had ever been inflicted on the supernatural romance
genre had been distilled into one barely coherent pile of gibberish. Gibberish
Kara’s father wanted to print thousands of copies of. It was like making
duplicates of that evil tape in
The Ring
.

Donnelly’s
offices sat on the fourteenth floor of a century old building, overlooking
another century old Chicago building. Kara had the brief thought that she
should just fling herself out the window and be done with it.

“Gemma
really wants this, Karalynn. It’s more than the gym-buddy thing. More than
even the beauty license, or the law school thing, or the Peace Corps idea she
had before. She wants to help people and she thinks finding talent just might
be her niche.” Harold made it to the elevator and stabbed at the button. He
was running away from the scene of the crime, the coward. “If you could just…
mold the novel into some kind of printable shape.”

“Wizard
Warlocks, Dad.” The words said it all.

“I
know, I know, just…” He let out a sigh. “I can’t break her heart and tell her
how bad her friend’s book is. I just can’t. You should see how pleased Gem is
that she’s part of the publishing world.”

Kara
squeezed her eyes shut.

She
loved Gemma. She did. She didn’t resent her step-mother or want to upset
her. Kara’s mother had been dead for over a decade and her father needed
someone to make him happy. Gemma certainly fit the bill in that respect. The woman
was nothing if not… Cheerful.

Really,
Kara
liked
Gemma’s bubbly cheerleader-ness. The woman flitted from
store to store, job to job, landing just long enough to create confusion before
zipping off to the next adventure. That could be endearing, in a
rip-your-hair-out-by-the-roots-even-as-you-had-to-laugh sort of way. But,
Donnelly Publishing was Kara’s
life
. Her grandfather had founded it.
She’d grown up in these offices. How could she possibly publish a book like
this with the Donnelly logo on the cover and still sleep at night, even for
Gemma’s new friend?

The elevator doors binged open and Harold scrambled inside. “We’ll do a very
limited run. I swear. Just enough so Gemma can feel validated.”

“Validated?!
This is a business, not some life-coaching retreat.”

“She
wants to be part of our company, honey. Remember, it’s not just business.
It’s a
family
business.” The doors began to slide shut. “Just do the
best you can and I’ll see you Monday.”

Kara
swore softly as he escaped, leaving her alone in the office.

She
glowered down at the manuscript and wondered if she could just pretend to lose
it or something. Gemma wasn’t known for her forethought or attention span.
Maybe her friends weren’t either. Maybe Tanya St. Clair had forgotten to save
the book on her computer and this was the only copy. For the good of all
mankind, Kara could destroy it forever.

Except…

Damn
it. Kara couldn’t do that to Gemma or her father.

So,
she’d spend her weekend trying desperately to salvage something from the
seventy-two thousand word nightmare that was
Eternal Passion at Sunset
.
God help her, she’d need a lot of red ink. And liquor.

Figuring
that she could do the reconstructive surgery at home, with a steady supply of
alcohol close at hand, Kara marched back to her office and began packing up her
stuff. Her apartment was only a few blocks away, so she rarely took her car to
work. It was an easy walk in the crisp, autumn air. Kara collected her coat
and pulled her red knit cap down over her brown hair. She liked hats. They
disguised the slightly frizzy, impossible to tame curls that defied all styling
products known to womankind.

Kara
found it easiest to just hide her follically challenged head. She’d never be
the tall, blonde bombshell that Gemma was, but her stepmother refused to accept
defeat. One birthday Kara would no doubt receive a hair transplant gift
certificate.

“Look
your best and carry a charge card.” Written in pink, cursive letters, it could
have been Gemma’s motto.

Kara
accompanied Gemma on shopping trips at least once a week. At first, she’d
resisted the ‘girl time’ on general principles, but she’d actually come to
enjoy the excursions. Gemma could be fun, even in the midst of the chaos, and
Kara was a workaholic at heart. At thirty-two, she had no husband, had no
kids, and no real prospect of getting either. She had her job and a whole
lotta films to watch.

And
she was okay with that.

But,
if someone didn’t drag her outside sometimes, her entire social life would
consist of staring at a movie screen or correcting grammar. Gemma had
absolutely no respect for work schedules, so she was usually the one who forced
Kara out of her rut. Harold was right in the fact that Gemma loved to help
people. Sometimes Kara got the feeling she was her stepmother’s main, on-going
project.

Tucking
the stack of pages under her arm, Kara headed for the elevator herself and hit
the button for the bottom floor. What an unbelievably horrible day.

Slade
the Vampire and Damien the Wizard Warlock.

No
wonder nobody read, anymore.

Unable
to resist the traffic-accident allure and avert her eyes for long, Kara flipped
the book open, again. She’d already read the first chapter, but if she was
going to try and patch together something publishable from this mess, she’d
have to actually pay attention to every word.

Lady
Melessa Fairfax was the most beautiful woman at the party. Not that her
ranking as such was an unusual occurrence. With her raven colored tresses and
sparkling blue eyes, Melessa was always the center of attention wherever she
went. Men wanted to touch the alabaster perfection of her ivory skin, while
woman wished that they could be this stunning, popular creature whose delicate laugh
could light up a room. Melessa was all that was beautiful and pure in
womanhood. That very day, the virginal beauty had saved four orphans and a
puppy from drowning, yet she still took the time to buy the very latest of
summer fashion to wear to the party.

What other woman
could hope to compete with such a prize?

Kara
rolled her eyes in disgust. She already hated Melessa, whatever her hair color.

The
girl sounded like a real bitch.

The
doors slid open and Kara stepped inside. The elevator was nearly as old as the
building itself, with a brass arrow that pointed to the corresponding number as
it moved between floors. Kara barely noticed the squeaking of the gears as the
doors closed and she started her slow descent. The elevator in the Donnelly
Building creaked along like molasses.

But,
it was more than just the lustful eyes of men and the envious stares of woman
that followed beautiful Melessa as her slim figure glided among the guests
who’d come to celebrate her betrothal. There was also the glowing black gaze
of an ancient, immortal enemy whom she’d never even met. Damien, last of the
Wizard Warlocks, was there for revenge and sweet Melessa was the key to all his
nefarious plans.

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