Alex Severin's unique brand of dark, erotic prose will kick you in the ass and grab you by the heart.
Introducing characters from the 'Vampire Vintage' paranormal romance series, with six 'Vampire Vintage' stories (three online favorites and three exclusives,) a lengthy novel excerpt, and a SECRET story online you'll find a link for in the book. There's also four bonus stories too!
Excerpt from THE BIRTH OF LORD RUTHVEN:
+CruxShadow666+ sat in the darkness of his lounge, bathed in the glow of his computer screen. It was a sickness.
An obsession.
His passion.
Vampires.
He would endlessly browse vampire websites and blogs. He would lurk in chat rooms and on forums and message-boards. He would observe, read, and invariably sneer at the webmaster or blogger or poster. He had always considered himself to be superior to the other surfers and webmasters and site members who frequented the same vampire and bloodfetish sites as he. He felt that there was something a little off about them, something not quite right. To him they were nothing but poseurs, pretenders. They were role players in Halloween costumes.
But he was different.
He was the genuine article.
A vampire.
“Fop bas—rd. Prancing around calling your self The Brat Prince or Le-fucking-stat. You wish.
Define vampire. Look it up. Doesn't say fifteen year old goth-boi with too much black eyeliner and a Stephenie Meyer fan club membership. Dick. How can you be a vampire and not drink blood? Sparkly twat,” he spat the words from his lips as if they were rancid morsels, spittle raining onto the LCD monitor.
+CruxShadow666+ would rant and rave at his computer screen, punctuate his words by rapping his knuckles on his desk. He would sit there, red faced with rage, itching to rip into the source of his ire. He would even go as far as typing a detailed response, pounding so hard on the keyboard his fingers would ache. But then he would delete it, erase what he had written, resist posting it. Just the act of writing the response, even without his current nemesis seeing it, would be enough to sate him for a while, be enough to get the latest outrage purged from his system. Usually.
These days, he mostly lurked, didn't take part in the discussions he ran across on the forums or social networks. Even he, who once thrived on the conflicts he could instigate with just about anybody, had grown tired of his own troll behavior and constantly causing havoc. On the rare occasion he posted anywhere now, a flame war would inevitably erupt. Unfortunately, his reputation preceded him onto many sites.
Somebody would know of him from elsewhere and relay comments he'd made about most vampire enthusiasts being role players, or fakes or wannabes. Some of the more net savvy had posted links to cached pages of forum posts by +CruxShadow666+ or posted a screen-shots of them. The moderators of some of the more earnest communities did not appreciate his comments. And he'd be banned or asked to leave. Sometimes he'd even play nice for a while, ignore the comments that infuriated him.
But eventually, he'd flame somebody, rant and rave at them and end up banned anyway. Being part of the community and seeming to fit in would only delay the inevitable.
But most of his online time was consumed by searching for something – the ultimate vampire story. He would plow his way through hundreds of pages of search engine results and never tire of his quest, no matter how many bad Anne Rice clones he happened across. He'd sit through them all – the bad goth poetry, the Interview with the Vampire fan fics, the Edward/Jacob slash fiction, the Dracula pastiches, the angst-ridden Poe-a-likes, the hardly literary and the barely literate. Sometimes, it seemed as if he was looking for the Holy Grail – there was no hard evidence that it existed but he believed that it did exist.