~ Melissa Schroeder ~ Contest ~

Hey, everyone! First, I want to thank Dawn and Day Dreaming Book Reviews for having me on to talk about my new series!

If you don’t know me, my name is Melissa Schroeder and I’m best known for my Harmless series,

 

 a mainly BDSM contemporary series with most of the books taking place in Hawaii.  I do write in a lot of other different genres including historical and paranormal. Late in 2008, I came up with an idea to have vampires live in England and I thought the perfect time period would be Victorian.

Why Victorian? First, I will have to dial it back a bit and explain that I have a degree in history. I have always been completely enthralled it. I love to learn all aspects of a society, ie social, economical, industrial. With the Victorian age, England ushered in a different age, one where you showed the world one face, and acted differently behind closed doors.

Queen Victoria spent most of her life being embarrassed by her parents. They had numerous affairs and neither of them cared if everyone knew about it. So, in deference to the monarchy when Victoria took over, England became a little puritanical. But of course, that did not stop the debauchery. It just drove it behind the velvet curtains. People were prim and proper in public, but in private, the debauchery reached new levels. Stories of the Hell Fire Club with its public orgies and erotic gardens were whispered among many in London society. And in this era, I thought vampires roaming about among the ton might not be unnoticed, but it would be easier to hide.

For vampires who hide in plain sight, this society would be perfect. Everyone was hiding something, and it would not seem much different to see vampires maintain the expected façade like everyone else.

Once I picked the time period, I decided I wanted to build their own world within their world. Because of that, I needed classes. They have their own hierarchy. There are those that are part of the Alliance and the upper echelon of the Alliance is the Quad. While being a ranking member of the English aristocracy does count for something, being a member of the Quad, the four ranking families of the Alliance, gives you more power within the vampire society. And, anyone on the Quad is a Born-a vampire born of a union between a Carrier—a female having the gene that makes her able to birth vampires, and a vampire. There is a way of making vampires, but it is frowned upon. They can fall into a homicidal rage from which they cannot recover. If they do survive the transition, they are called Mades and society does not look kindly to them.

This whole underworld operates within the regular English society and no one noticed that much because society was accustomed to looking only skin deep.

Want to read more about them. I have a By Blood area on my Hot Stuff page on my website. And, make sure you pop on over and read the first chapter. 

A man with a secret.

Nicodemus Blackburn has seen the best and worst of mankind. Five hundred years of dealing with them teaches the vampire to be very wary of the creatures. Unfortunately, alarming events leave him no choice but to enter the world of the ton to hunt a villain. He must find a rogue vampire, one who is making his own army of bloodthirsty vampires. Searching for the villain is not the worst of his troubles. That can be laid at the feet of bluestocking Lady Cordelia Collingsworth.

A woman on a mission.

Cordelia has always been an outcast, even in her own family. She has forged her way in the world with her ability to write, and Nico Blackburn is the focus of her next article. Before she can obtain any information about the mysterious man, she is pulled headlong into a scandal that leaves her with no choice but to marry Nico—a man with dangerous secrets.

A passion that consumes them both.

Thrust into a world she knows nothing of, Cordelia finds herself falling in love with a man who claims to be a vampire. As their passion grows, so does the danger around them and Nico will have to call on all of his powers to protect the one thing he has realized he cannot live without: his opinionated, infuriating, and thoroughly delectable wife.

Do you want a chance to win a copy (print or digital) of the book?  Tell me what time period you would like to see vampires in? Victorian, Edwardian, the old west, Medieval? Or maybe, modern to futuristic?