#FiveOnFriday with Kate Hill

Please welcome Kate Hill today! You won’t want to miss her upcoming vampire story!

5 Vampire Traditions Broken

For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve been a vampire fan. As a child, I watched Christopher Lee’s Dracula movies with my mother and enjoyed reading stories with vampire characters. I don’t ever recall finding vampires particularly scary. To me they were fascinating.

While I’ll always enjoy a good, traditional vampire story, I also love those that break tradition. My upcoming release, Fangs and Fists: Grit, features several traditional “monsters” who don’t always behave in a customary way or have characteristics typical of their kind of creature. Vampires are among them.

Today I’m sharing five ways that the vampires in Grit break tradition. Nowadays, when paranormal creatures are often accepted as heroes instead of monsters, these characteristics might not be as unusual as they were years ago.

1. Vampires are alive, not dead. In Fangs and Fists, the vampires are not corpses who rise at night to steal blood from the living. After they change, they still breathe and feel. Their hearts still beat and they can be injured.

2. Sunlight doesn’t harm vampires. Though the Fangs and Fists vampires prefer nighttime, they won’t suffer or die when exposed to sunlight.

3. They eat food. The Fangs and Fists vampires drink blood, but they aren’t limited to a liquid diet.

4. They have traditional sex. Considering Fangs and Fists is an erotic romance series, it would have been difficult if the vampires couldn’t perform in bed.

5. Vampires can’t shift shape. The Fangs and Fists vampires go through several changes when they become vampires, but the ability to shift into animals or smoke isn’t among them.

Gladiator or warrior posing with shield and sword outdoors ready for battle

Fangs and Fists: Grit

Coming soon from Changeling Press

After being killed in the arena and then resurrected by a demon, werewolf gladiator Grit now exists as one of the soulless. Remembering only bits and pieces of his former life, he nonetheless recognizes evil and knows he must fight for the future of his young son as well as the rest of the world.

Zari, a vampire warrior, helped Grit escape while working undercover in the tower where he had been imprisoned. She had feelings for Grit when they’d first met, but at the time he had been mated to another wolf. Now that he’s single again, they’re free to explore their feelings as they fight side by side as part of a rebellion against the demons. In the midst of war, their love grows, but danger is everywhere.

Grit still shares a psychic bond with Haylen, the demon who resurrected him. Through this link, Haylen starts to rediscover his lost humanity. Haylen offers a bargain that might save or destroy the rebellion. Whatever the outcome, Zari and Grit intend to face it together and explore the once forbidden passion between them.

About Kate

Always a fan of romance and the paranormal, Kate Hill started writing over twenty years ago for pleasure. Her first story, a short erotic vampire tale, was accepted for publication in 1996. Since then she has sold over one hundred short stories, novellas and novels.

When she’s not working on her books, Kate enjoys reading, working out, spending time with her family and pets and running the Compelling Beasts Blog, dedicated to antagonists, antiheroes and paranormal creatures. She also writes under the name Saloni Quinby.