First Dawn The morning that followed the night the Breed's existence was exposed to mankind around the world, after Dragos freed scores of bloodthirsty Rogues from incarceration to terrorize human civilians.
Gen One A Breed of the first generation, born of an Ancient and a Breedmate. Gen Ones' dermaglyphs are more plentiful than on later generations of the Breed. Gen Ones are not necessarily the oldest members of the Breed, depending on when they were born and to whom, but they are the strongest of the race, physically and otherwise. However, Gen Ones are also the most susceptible to Bloodlust.
Host A human, male or female, from whom a Breed vampire feeds.
hypnotic manipulation The ability to make someone see or believe something that's not there (as Lucan did to Gabrielle when he showed her a non-existent police badge in Kiss of Midnight).
Master The term used by Minions to refer to the Breed vampire who made them.
mind-blast The ability to temporarily cripple someone by psychically delivering debilitating pain in their skull (see Renata).
mind scrub / memory scrub The process used by one of the Breed to erase memories from a human or Breedmate, though the latter is frowned upon as disrespectful and seldom done. Mind scrubs are typically done to prevent the subject from exposing the Breed to mankind following the witness of something unexpected or potentially damaging to the Breed nation.
Minion A human or Breedmate who has been bled to the very brink of death by one of the Breed, but ultimately kept alive. At that point, the person becomes a Minion, his or her will completely and permanently enslaved by the Breed vampire who drank from them. There is no cure for a Minion, except death. Minions are seldom good interrogation subjects, as they will readily take their own lives to avoid betraying their Master's trust or commands. Only the most powerful members of the Breed (Gen One and second generation, typically) are capable of making Minions.
Order, the A cadre of Breed warriors founded and led by Lucan Thorne. The Order was formed in Europe in the mid-1300s as a group of eight Gen One warriors who rose up against their fathers, the Ancients. In 1898, Lucan reformed the Order in Boston along with Gideon and others, all united in the mission of keeping both humans and Breed civilians safe from Rogue violence. The Order remained headquartered in Boston for decades, but since First Dawn has been based in Washington, D.C., with command centers and warrior teams located around the world.
psychometry The ability to read the emotional past or actual history of an object, usually with a touch (see Savannah).
pyrokinesis The ability to ignite fires or explosions with one's mind (see Andreas Reichen).
Rogue A Breed individual who's become irrevocably addicted to blood. Rogues display permanently extended fangs and eyes present solid, glowing amber with vertical pupils fixed in a constant state of constriction (like a cat's eye). Once a Breed vampire has gone fully Rogue, there is no hope for recovery. Rogues' blood systems become corrupted and weakened, in a fatal allergy to the metal titanium. Most Rogues eventually go insane with their disease and attempt, or succeed, to commit suicide.
shadow bend The ability to gather shadows around oneself and manipulate them into a concealing mass (see Sterling Chase).
sonokinesis The ability to manipulate and amplify sound waves with one's mind (see Corinne, Nathan).
suckhead Derogatory word used to refer to a Breed individual who's addicted to blood and gone Rogue.
talent A term used interchangeably with ESP ability in regard to the unique extrasensory gifts of Breedmates and the Breed.
trance The act of inducing a temporary state of unconsciousness in a human or Breedmate by one of the Breed. All members of the Breed are capable of trancing someone. Trancing a Breedmate for any reason is considered rude and is generally done only as a last resort.
The Novels
Kiss of Midnight
BOOK 1
Romantic Leads
Lucan Thorne
Gabrielle Maxwell
Plot Summary
A gifted young art photographer gets caught in the crosshairs of a growing war within the Breed, thrusting her into the arms of the darkly sensual leader of the race’s warrior Order.
Primary Story Locations
Abandoned old asylum outside Boston, Massachusetts
La Notte night club in Boston's North End
Gabrielle’s apartment on Willow Street in Boston
Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston
Various other locations in and around Boston
Playlist
Save Yourself by Stabbing Westward
Tourniquet by Evanescence
Falling by Lacuna Coil
Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum by Collide
Predator by Collide
Too Sick to Pray by A3
Possession by Sarah McLachlan
Story Background
As much as I enjoyed writing historical romances, I have to admit I was getting a little bored with the restrictions inherent to the genre—particularly the limitations on character types and settings. So, when I first sat down to put together a formal proposal for Lucan and Gabrielle’s story, which at the time I was calling, Kiss of Darkness, I felt an incredible sense of freedom. I could set my book anywhere. I could populate it with a diverse cast of characters from all walks of life. My heroes—hell, even my heroines—could carry badass weapons, drive cool cars, carry a cell phone, even use the f-word if the situation called for it!
Of course, I also wanted to write something that would interest a publisher, as I’d just received word that I was out of a contract at the same time I’d just become a first-time homeowner. But even that setback fueled my enthusiasm to throw off all of the old restraint I’d learned from writing historical romances and write the kind of book I would want to read but wasn’t finding in the romance genre at the time. A gritty, dark, scary-sexy vampire story set in Boston, a city I love.
Less Dracula and more Underworld.
Better yet, an erotically charged blend of Predator meets Blade.
The story poured out of me fast and furious, and I realized it had been a very long time since I’d had so much fun writing. By this point, I had an amazing three-book contract in hand from one of the top publishers in New York, and a twisty plot that would carry me through the trilogy and bring everything to a big finish.
But then I got to the last page of Lucan and Gabrielle’s story and I realized that the ending I plotted out for this book…well, it sucked. The bad guy (Marek) needed to get away so he could come back again, bigger and badder, in the next two books. But the way I orchestrated his escape—a very lame “exit, stage left” kind of thing, where he dashed out the back door of a warehouse while Lucan ran in to save Gabrielle—read like a lazy cop-out.
I sent the draft in to my editor and told her I wasn’t satisfied with the ending in particular and that I wanted to take another crack at it. She read the manuscript and agreed with me—the ending needed some work. Then she did what never seems to happen in tight publishing schedules anymore: She gave me more than a full month to work on the revisions.
I tend to write a clean first draft, and I’m even better with revisions and polishing. So a month to fix a shaky ending was an invitation for me to take a good look at the entire manuscript and really make it shine as best I could.
Now, it’s at this point that my husband would tell you he rode in to save the day. And maybe he did. John has been my best friend for nearly three decades. He’s also my best plotting partner (and my sanity checker when it comes to writing believable men). So when I complained to him that my ending was weak and I needed the villain to escape in a big way, John nodded and said, “You need a helicopter.”
Um, okay. Together we sketched out a better escape plan for Marek, and I went back to write in a helicopter to another scene in the book so it wouldn’t seem totally convenient that at the pivotal moment the bad guy happened to have one handy.
I fleshed out
a lot of other things too, including more “getting to know you” scenes between Lucan and Gabrielle, and I layered in more details about upcoming characters that I could use in the other two books.
I also changed the ending from a simple, “I love you, let’s make a life together” type of closing, to one where we get to see Lucan finally show Gabrielle a more vulnerable side of him than he had allowed thus far in the book. Not the smoldering powder keg, but the tender lover he was promising to be for her in asking her to take his blood, to bond with him, and be his mate forever.
I sent in the revised manuscript and was stunned to hear back from my editor just a couple of days later. She loved it! Actually, she said something along the lines of, “This book was great the first time I read it, but you’ve taken it to a whole new level.” Wonderful words. Almost eight years later, I still remember them and smile.
It wasn’t too long afterward that I got another call from Shauna. Everyone at the publishing house was really excited about the revised book, so instead of releasing it by itself in 2006 as planned, they wanted to hold it until I had the second book ready to go too, and they would release them as a back-to-back marketing event in the first half of 2007.
The series was off to a great start!
Kiss of Crimson
BOOK 2
Romantic Leads
Dante
Tess Culver
Plot Summary
A reckless act of need binds the fiercest of the warriors to a mortal woman who arouses his most primal hungers and desires...a woman who just might be in league with his enemies.
Primary Story Locations
Tess's veterinary clinic in South Boston
Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston
Chase family Darkhaven in Back Bay, Boston
Playlist
Razorsharp by Collide
Weak and Powerless (Tilling My Own Grave) by A Perfect Circle
Wicked Game by H.I.M.
Uninvited by Alanis Morrisette
Morning After by Chester Bennington
Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses
Killing Loneliness by H.I.M.
Story Background
Creatively, I was on fire when I began writing Kiss of Crimson. I’d just turned in Lucan and Gabrielle’s story, and I had a lot of publisher and agent enthusiasm behind me, the only outside feedback I had on the series at the time. Let me tell you, knowing that you have a team of experienced industry professionals genuinely excited about something you created—especially after failing in another genre—is incredibly motivating.
Plus, I just couldn’t wait to write Dante and Tess’s story.
While Gabrielle was my wounded, tormented artist, Tess was a scrapper and a survivor. I’d had the opening chapters from Kiss of Crimson in my head for a long time—from Dante biting her in a state of desperation, to her stabbing him with the syringe full of animal tranquilizer.
Their courtship was dark and aggressive, unconventional (to say the least!) but, of course, Dante wouldn’t have it any other way. Dante is the kind of character who’s most interesting when he’s pushed into a corner, so forcing the smartass, street-fighter of the Order into a blood bond with a mate he didn’t plan on having made sparks fly right away.
Dante also runs up against a source of conflict in his work with the Order—a source of conflict by the name of Sterling Chase, Special Investigative Agent with the Enforcement Agency. (‘Scuse me, I mean, Senior Special Investigative Agent.) I like a good bromance almost as much as I like a good romance, so pairing these two up as unwilling partners in a joint investigation between the Order and the Enforcement Agency was one of my favorite parts about this book.
So, about Sterling Chase. When I was writing this book, I didn’t realize I would be developing his character or storyline beyond what we see in Kiss of Crimson. As far as I knew, I was writing a trilogy, and I already had the plot and characters for Book 3 sketched out. I loved Chase, but he was going to fade into the background after this book (along with Elise, who, by the way, was never meant to end up with him).
But in the middle of writing this book, we had something terrible happen in real life. John’s eldest daughter, who’d been battling leukemia and the aftereffects of treatment since late 2001, passed away in January of 2006.
All along, in the third book, I had been planning to match Tegan up with a human woman who was a world-famous concert pianist, but who was also dying from a mysterious blood cancer. Tegan was going to abduct her from the hospital and find a way to cure her with his blood. [Author’s note: This is now against the series lore; Breed males cannot heal human disease with their blood, and they don’t take human women as their mates.] I suppose I thought it would be therapeutic or romantic in some way to write a happy ending for a heroine battling what seemed to be a terminal disease.
But as Leslie became sicker, and after she eventually passed, I knew there was no way I wanted to live that kind of story for the months it would take for me to write it. Nor did I want to minimize what Leslie went through, and it seemed out of the question to make that kind of story a part of my household when everyone was so raw with grief.
Which meant I had to come up with an entirely different romance for the heart of Book 3.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that widowed Elise Chase would make a wonderful mate for Tegan. Perhaps even better than what I’d originally envisioned for him. So, I reworked a few scenes to bring the two of them together, and what do you know? I found what is arguably one of Midnight Breed readers’ favorite pairings from the entire series thus far.
I completed Kiss of Crimson and before I wrote the first word on the new outline for Tegan and Elise’s story, I received word from my agent that Random House had made an early offer for three more books in the series. Hurray!
Except…my overarching plot was ending with Book 3.
It had to end there. I had already altered so much of the storyline for the book, but one thing that had to remain was the death of Marek and the way it was all supposed to go down with the final confrontation between Tegan and him.
So, while I celebrated the opportunity of being able to write about more characters in this new story world, I also knew I needed to come up with a suitable villain to carry the torch after the end of Book 3. And he needed to be a bigger threat than Marek, because we’d been there and done that.
The pressure was on in many ways as I set out to begin Tegan and Elise’s story.
Midnight Awakening
BOOK 3
Romantic Leads
Tegan
Elise Chase
Plot Summary
An unlikely alliance is formed when a beautiful Darkhaven widow enlists the help of the Order’s deadliest vampire warrior in her personal vendetta against the Rogues.
Primary Story Locations
Chase family Darkhaven in Back Bay, Boston
Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston
Andreas Reichen's Darkhaven in Berlin, Germany
Aphrodite erotic club in Berlin, Germany
Rogue rehabilitation facility in Germany
Bohemian mountains in Czech Republic
Playlist
Cat People by Gosling
Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
The Sacrament by H.I.M.
Man in The Box by Alice in Chains
Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails
Stripped by Shiny Toy Guns
Lithium by Evanescence
Story Background
I got off to a wobbly start when I began writing Midnight Awakening. I was trying to adjust to a new romance storyline and a new heroine, while at the same time working to wrap up the overarching plotline of the first three books and begin a new external plotline that could carry me through another three, but potentially more, if things went well with the back-to-back debut of the first two in May and June of 2007. Everything about this book seemed up in the air for a
long time, including the title, which during the first draft phase was called Kiss of Temptation. (I know, blech!)
But there were a lot of good things happening too.
The series had been acquired by an exciting new German publisher that was looking to start a paranormal romance imprint called LYX. They wanted my series to be their launch title, which was a thrill for many reasons, not the least of which being that Germany is my mom’s home country. I wanted to do something to show my appreciation to my new German publisher, and to the readers there whom I hoped would enjoy my books. So as I was recasting and re-plotting Midnight Awakening, I decided to write in a brand-new character, Andreas Reichen, a charming, sophisticated Breed male who led a Darkhaven in Berlin.
I also decided to bring on more members of the Order in this book. I had three more books to write, after all, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d run out of Breed warriors pretty quick! Thus, enter Kade and Brock—a wolfy-looking Alaskan, and a smooth-talking Rogue-killer who hailed from Detroit. The pair of new recruits provided some comic relief in an otherwise dark book, and they also brought out more interaction between the rest of the Order’s members who would soon be on deck with their own books.
As originally planned, Midnight Awakening puts to bed the bad guy plot involving Lucan’s brother, Marek, as the villain. In the final showdown with him, readers also learn more about Tegan’s first Breedmate, Sorcha, and the truth behind her abduction and eventual death—events first referenced in Kiss of Midnight.