Sapphire Sins is Live on Amazon!

I fell in love with my first vampire more than 20 years ago. I had a new baby boy who seemed immune to sleep, and there’s only so much late night television anyone should be forced to endure. Someone gave me a copy of Interview with the Vampire, and Lestat kept me company while I held vigil with my sleepless son.

Jean-Claude came along several years later. He was hot for all the obvious reasons. He was smart, powerful, handsome, and yes, a bad boy, but Jean-Claude’s real attraction for me was that he loved a bad-ass woman. Anita Blake was human, and she owned that vampire.

Lestat and Jean-Claude were the first, but I’ve loved many vampires since. Eric Northman, all of the Black Dagger Brotherhood (particularly Wrath and V), Jericho Barrons (technically not a vampire, but close enough), Kisten Felps, Quinn O’Connor…they all hold a place in my heart. Like Jean-Claude, all of them loved strong women, and that is the magic ingredient in paranormal romance. The female protagonist must be the equal of her undead lover. The doormat, damsel-in-distress is unappealing.

Seven years ago, after reading a particularly unsatisfying paranormal romance, I decided to write one myself. I had written short stories, but never a novel. In a fit of hubris, I decided I was at least as good a writer as the one I had just finished reading. Hubris always demands payment. I discovered that writing a novel is really hard.

I spent 8 months writing it and another year and a half revising it and querying literary agents. In 2010, I signed a contract with an agent. Aside from writing “The End” on the last page of my novel, it was the best moment in my writing life. I rode that high for about a month, and then reality set in again. The book didn’t sell. Vampires had already hit their peak popularity, and editors were looking for the next hot thing. Six months later, my agent left the business, and my book languished in my computer collecting electronic dust.

I have continued to write, mostly for my own satisfaction, but I earn my daily bread as a teacher, and that requires an enormous amount of my creative energy. I’m okay with that. Teaching is not merely my profession, it is my vocation. It’s who I am.

I am also a writer, and while I’ll probably never earn my living that way, I’m still proud of this book. My beta readers liked it. It was good enough to catch the attention of a literary agent. I want readers. I want you to read it.

I have dusted off my file, done one final, comprehensive edit, and published it using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. If you enjoy paranormal romance or like me, have a not-so-secret love affair with vampires, I invite you to read Sapphire Sins.

Click here to check it out on Amazon. Or you can search my name. (I’m searchable on Amazon! I’m not going to lie. That makes me more than a little bit giddy!)

Diana’s girls’ trip to New York was supposed to include shopping, a show, and the rare opportunity to shake off the stress of owning one of the last independent bookstores in Central Kentucky. Running for her life was not on the agenda. Bite marks and frightening visions were not the souvenirs she wanted to bring home. That’s just what happens when your best friend accidentally introduces you to a vampire. 

Raphael has moved through the centuries footloose and fancy free. He meets a beautiful woman, tastes her, and then leaves her happy and none the wiser. Diana is the first woman in his long life to not only resist his spell, but to bite back. He has to have her. She won’t be had.

Their battle of wills takes them across the country and across time. Diana is thrust out of her quiet, bookish existence to one in which she must face down not only her own demons, but Raphael’s as well. Diana discovers that there is a very thin line between love and hate, and that sometimes in saving someone else, you save yourself.