A Taste for Blood

Lucy Westenra has had a poor deal from Bram Stoker and his followers.  She's depicted as Dracula's passive victim.  I think there's more to her than that, so I've written this story from her point of view, to set the record straight.   

It begins where Lucy is helping Mina to say an amorous farewell to her fiancé before he leaves for Transylvania, to meet with Count Dracula.  Lucy tells her own tale, of love between her and Mina, her own fiancé Arthur, and of course, the extremely male Count himself.

Re-reading Bram Stoker's excellent Dracula, and other novels written at the time, I find that servants are barely mentioned, yet they must have played an important part in the lives of the protagonists.  To redress this balance, I have created a maid-servant, Ida, to look after Lucy, to protect and comfort her when she can.  Ida is a woman of the world, and with her robust attitude and good humor makes Lucy's life happier and more exciting than it would otherwise have been.

I've submitted my novella, A Taste for Blood, to Torrid Books today.

Inspiration

The gleam of sunlight on the muscles of a young woman's arm, and I knew what my two heroines were going to do once they were nicely tucked up in bed.  Someone's going to get a surprise, and both will find themselves somewhere they've never been before.  There are so many ways for people to please each other.  Mmm.

Jennie: 7 from 7 from 7 from 7

In response to a challenge forwarded by Simon Whaley, here are seven lines from the seventh page of Jennie, starting at the seventh line:
“I’m sorry, there’s no milk.  Matthew—” and his whore “Must have finished it.”
“That’s all right, Miss Hughes—Jennie—I may call you Jennie?”
“If you like, Mr Williams.  Will you sit down?”
“No, thanks, Jennie.  I’ve called about, well, it’s the rent, you see.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not been paid.”
“But I gave Matthew the money to give you…”

Twenty-seven pages on, Jennie's in jeopardy again (still?). Everyone wants something from her; generally the same thing. And they're all so big, too. Well, taller, anyway. She's now travelling with a borrowed champion bodybuilder and has managed to rescue her copy of Ali Smith's Hotel World, which is one of her favourite books, so she'll have something to read, if she ever gets the opportunity. Maybe her next chapter'll be quieter...

Jennie in Chains

Poor Jennie's now in chains, just when she thought she'd worked out what to do next.  Hope she's enjoying it because she'll have to stay chained up till at least tomorrow...
Here's a relevant quotation from Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies:
"Do you ever worry," said Leo sleepily, "About the situation you leave your characters in when you stop writing? I mean, they've got to stay put like that till one starts again."