Archive for May, 2025
Welcome to the May 2025 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.”
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
To subscribe to this monthly newsletter, please e-mail me at MLCVamp@aol.com, and I will add you to the list.
For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
In keeping with the season of spring and Easter, an excerpt from my light fantasy novella “Bunny Hunt” appears below. After Melanie, a professional doula, has had a strange encounter at the community Easter Egg hunt, that night a mysterious telepathic voice summons her. The publisher’s page:
Our May interviewee is Elizabeth Schechter, who writes in multiple speculative romance subgenres.
*****
Interview with Elizabeth Schechter:
What inspired you to become a writer?
I am a total cliché – I always wanted to be a writer. I just came at it the long way around. I was told (often) that I was never going to make it as a writer, so I went into teaching, and when I burned out on teaching, I went into a variety of different things – retail, jewelry design, university admissions, independent artist. And all the while I was still writing, still working on getting better. I made my first short story sale at the age of 37, and my first novel sold one month after my 40th birthday.
What genres do you work in?
I write under the speculative romance umbrella. Everything I write is a romance, and the catalog includes Fantasy, Steampunk, Paranormal Romance, Science Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Weird Western, and Romantasy.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I make jokes about this – I write long, detailed outlines that my characters laugh at before doing whatever the heck they want. So my books will often start where the outline starts, and usually ends where I think they’re going to end, but what happens in between is anyone’s guess. My writing style can, I think, best be described as “taking down the incident report.”
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
I have told Jacqueline Carey that my career is all her fault. Years ago, there were several authorized play-by-email role playing games set in the Kushiel universe from Jacqueline Carey. This involved sending long, detailed story messages to the Yahoo group and tagging in the people who needed to respond to that post. You had to keep track of plotlines and characters and all sorts of machinations. The game ran for five years, and four published authors came out of it.
How do you define the relatively new subgenre label “romantasy”? Is it the same as paranormal romance or fantasy romance? A subset of one of those? An umbrella term encompassing both?
When I first heard the word romantasy, I thought it was just marketing. But now it seems to be an actual subgenre in speculative romance, and distinct from fantasy romance. It’s definitely not paranormal romance, because that really seems to signify some flavor of shifters, witches with lower back tattoos, and more modern settings.
I haven’t really dug into the brass tacks of the genre hallmarks of romantasy vs fantasy romance, but I think it might be that romantasy is where the plot is driven by the relationship growth, and fantasy romance is where the plot is driven by the fantasy elements. In both cases, the fantasy and the romance are integral to the plot, but which one does more of the heavy lifting determines fantasy romance or romantasy.
Please tell us about your various novel series.
My longest series is the one that started as stunt writing – it was a steamy closed-door serial that ran weekly on my Patreon for four years. That’s Heir to the Firstborn, and it’s a seven book romantasy series where you have the Chosen One and her four Companions (fated mates and why choose?) who have to save the world when a usurper overthrows the previous ruler and throws everything out of balance. That series is complete, and book one was my Vivian finalist Written in Water.
My favorite series is my historical erotic fantasy Swords of Charlemagne, a four book series that I occasionally pitch as The Song of Roland meets The Parasol Protectorate… in a blender. I take the legends and lore of Charlemagne’s court, and thread parallel storylines set in late-700s Carolingian France, and 1898 Victorian Europe. The series starts with the book Hidden Things, and is also complete.
I have two incomplete series as well. The first is Tales from the Arena, an erotic SF series about genetically engineered supersoldiers and the submissives who love them. There are two books out now, and there will be two more (I think. There might be three. It depends on how long book 4 gets.) The first book is Tales from the Arena: Opening Gambit.
My other incomplete series includes my most recent release. Blood of the Raven builds off my first book Princes of Air, and is a sequel series of two books of Celtic mythology inspired romantasy. Raven’s Fall came out in February, and Raven’s Flight is currently in edits with the publisher.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
My latest book was Raven’s Fall, which I mentioned above, and which follows Lorcan, the son of the Raven King who was featured in my first book, Princes of Air. The only problem with Lorcan being the son and heir to the Raven King is that his older cousin was heir first and isn’t letting go of his position without a fight! Lorcan finds himself kidnapped and sold as a gladiator in Rome.
My next book will probably be The Sea Prince, which is book one of a series that doesn’t have a name yet. It’s a sort of gaslight fantasy Master and Commander. I’m hoping to have this one out sometime this summer. (I say probably because there are other irons in the fire at my publisher, and I’m not sure if they’ll beat me to the publishing punch!)
What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m working on The Coral Throne, which is follows The Sea Prince. I’m also working on Tales from the Arena: King of Swords, which is book four of Tales from the Arena.
I have Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand (book three of Tales from the Arena) with an editor now, and I’ll be revising that to submit once I get it back.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
I’ve given this advice to a lot of aspiring writers. They need to understand that as a new writer, their writing is going to suck, and that they are not alone. We ALL sucked when we were new writers, and the only way to not suck is to keep going. Keep writing. Keep reading. Keep learning. Eventually, you learn enough and read enough and write enough that you get good at it. Jake the Dog said it best: Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.
Don’t be afraid to suck at something.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
I have all the socials, so the easiest way to corral them is with a linktree. You can find my website, my sales sites, my newsletter, and all my various social media links here.
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, by Premee Mohamed. This short novel has the shape and atmosphere of a dark fairy tale. It takes place in a secondary world, in a country oppressed by a ruthless, capriciously cruel foreign conqueror known as the Tyrant. Veris Thorn’s small village lies adjacent to an enchanted forest all the locals know mustn’t be entered, ruled by old gods and dark fae. Many years ago, Veris trespassed in the forbidden wood to rescue a child captured by its nonhuman inhabitants, as children are so often lured or kidnapped by fairies in folklore. Nobody else in living memory has ventured into the forest and returned. At the end of the book we learn the truth of her finding, but not quite saving, of the lost child. The story begins, however, with Veris snatched from her home by soldiers of the Tyrant, not even allowed time to change from her nightclothes and robe. She learns the reason only when she’s presented to the warlord. His two small children have disappeared into the forest, and he expects her to recover them within an absurdly brief time. The only reward for accomplishing the mission before the deadline will be not having her family slaughtered and her village burned. Somewhat to her surprise, he clearly cares for his children. When she eventually catches up with them, she discovers they don’t view him as a cruel oppressor but as the father who teaches them the principles of rulership. She reluctantly forces herself to acknowledge that the Tyrant’s son and daughter can’t be blamed for his crimes. During the ordeal of bringing them safely out of the enchanted wood, she even comes to like them a bit, especially the girl. Like an archetypal fairy-tale protagonist, Veris gets aid from talking animals, possesses some modest magic of her own, and engages in contests of wit with tricky and sometimes malicious faerie beings. After finding the children, she faces the still more daunting challenge of keeping them alive and out of the supernatural creatures’ clutches until they reach the border between the magical realm and the fields we know (to borrow a term from Lord Dunsany). The numinous milieu offers both dangers and temptations. One price of her victory is a grievous wound. A believably flawed but appealingly strong character, Veris wins through a suspenseful series of perilous encounters to an ambiguous but satisfying conclusion.
HUNGERSTONE, by Kat Dunn. A re-imagining of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla,” set, like the original, in the second half of the nineteenth century, but in England instead of central Europe. Dunn’s protagonist, rather than a young girl like Le Fanu’s, is a married, upper-class woman in 1888. The love between Lenore and her husband, Henry, a prosperous, rigidly proper, social-climbing industrial magnate, has long since cooled. Her “failure” to conceive a child has contributed to their quiet estrangement. Propriety must be outwardly observed, though, and Lenore prides herself on her competence in running their household and providing hospitality to Henry’s associates. When they leave the city for a stay at a huge, rundown country mansion he has just bought, she has to pull the place into shape quickly enough to be presentable for a hunting party he plans. There the real story begins like its classic prototype: A mysterious young woman in allegedly delicate health is foisted upon the household. Like Le Fanu’s Laura, Lenore finds Carmilla simultaneously alluring and alarming. The name of the estate, Hungerstone, foreshadows the entire novel’s thematic focus on hunger in all its forms, physical, emotional, and metaphorical. It’s sometimes harrowing to read Lenore’s first-person narrative of her struggle, torn between the duty she has always embraced and her yearning for freedom and self-expression. Carmilla embodies the latter, of course, goading Lenore to take daring risks, while the financial and social trap of marriage to Henry closes progressively tighter around her. Where can she turn for help when a Victorian husband can have his wife committed as insane at will, and no male doctor is likely to listen to the truth as she sees it? “My appetite is vast,” she admits to herself late in the book, “and I am in agony knowing myself to be unsatisfied.” A shocking event ultimately liberates her, taking advantage of conventional society’s unquestioning image of what a proper wife must be, to go with Carmilla and become her true self. The word “vampire” never appears as far as I recall, and we don’t learn exactly what kind of vampire Carmille is, except that a psychic, energy-draining component seems to be involved. An afterword by the author discusses the historical background of the industrial revolution in the Sheffield setting.
AMERICAN GHOUL, by Michelle McGill-Vargas. A very different vampire novel about an ambiguous bond between two women. Shortly after the Civil War, former slave Lavinia meets Simone, who feeds on her without killing her, creating a bond. The term “ghoul,” by the way, refers to a living person bonded to one of the undead, not the vampire herself. On the plus side, Lavinia now heals fast. As a serious disadvantage, being separated by more than a certain distance from Simone causes intolerable pain. Tough-minded Lavinia is more annoyed than frightened by finding herself in this predicament. Having never even heard of vampires before, she has to learn the nature of her new companion/mistress with no background knowledge to draw upon. Moreover, Simone herself knows almost nothing about her kind, having been turned against her will and abandoned with no explanation. Lavinia tells her story in first person to the constable who guards her while she’s in jail for allegedly murdering Simone. Lavinia tries to hammer into his head the points that (1) technically, Simone was already dead, and (2) she may still be undead. In either case, Lavinia didn’t kill her. As she gradually persuades the constable that she might be truthful instead of a lunatic or liar, she obsesses over her fear of a lynch mob and tenuous hope that Simone might come to her rescue. The jail interludes are narrated in present tense and the flashbacks (the greater portion of the text) in past. Tension between Lavinia and the jailer builds, enhancing the suspense of the present-time plot thread. During Lavinia’s adjustment to her role as caretaker, servant, and sort of babysitter to an impulsive vampire, an odd semi-friendship grows between them. Knowing she can’t leave her mistress, Lavinia puts up with finding prey for the vampire, disposing of bodies, hiding out in uncomfortable situations, and coping with Simone’s suspicion and jealousy of any human connections Lavinia tries to form. I felt she too quickly developed a callous attitude toward choosing people for Simone to “eat,” showing scant evidence of guilt. On the other hand, Lavinia does try to pick potential victims who “deserve” their fate and rationalizes her complicity on the grounds that Simone would do much worse if left to herself. Eventually Lavinia attains a position where she isn’t tied to the vampire constantly and can enjoy a limited degree of normal human interaction. We know from her plight as an accused murderess, of course, that no such precarious happiness can last for long. Her deepening relationship with a man she could actually fall in love with is complicated by a clash with a family of fanatical vampire-hunters. Lavinia displays a ruthlessly clear-eyed view of race relations in post-Civil-War America, cleverly maneuvers within the limitations of her social status, and reflects on the meaning of freedom. The transformations she undergoes over the course of her life as she narrates it culminate in an ending I didn’t expect.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Bunny Hunt”:
Melanie realized she’d fallen asleep only when she jerked awake to the faint sound of bells. Glancing at the clock on her nightstand, she found she’d slept no more than half an hour. No, she wasn’t hearing bells. A silvery voice called to her. *Wake up.*
“What?” She flipped the sheet aside and sat up. “Who’s there?” She whispered, not wanting to disturb Jason.
*Help me.*
One look at her husband confirmed he was still asleep, if the rhythm of his breathing hadn’t already made that fact clear.
*Come to me. I need your help.*
Jason didn’t stir, so that must not be an audible voice speaking to her. It’s talking inside my head.
Her legs wobbled when she stood up. Her head seemed to float, as if from one glass of champagne too many. Who is this? And why me?
*You helped me earlier. I need your aid again. Please hurry.*
Again Melanie glanced at Jason in the dim light of the bedside digital clock. Still asleep. He inhaled and exhaled in faintly whistling snores. I guess I’m dreaming. Pretty interesting dream so far. Might as well go with the flow.
She pulled off her nightgown and fumbled into underwear, jeans, and T-shirt in the near-dark. As she was slipping on her sneakers, the voice said, *Wear the amulet.*
The what? Oh, the voice must mean her grandmother’s necklace. She put it on.
Just as she stepped into the hall, it occurred to her that she might need her professional kit. Unsure where that impulse came from, she decided it was simply dream logic, which she should obey. She tiptoed back into the bedroom, picked up the zippered gym bag that held her supplies, and sneaked out again.
Downstairs, she exited the house through the kitchen door, since the voice in her head seemed to be coming from that direction. She carefully left the door unlocked, not wanting to get stuck outside even in a dream.
Their yard backed up to the wooded area whose other end bordered the playground where the children had searched for eggs that morning. She started toward the trees, listening hard, hunting for the source of the call. When the plea for help echoed in her mind yet again, she realized there was no question of its origin. The voice definitely came from the woods, and there was only one way in from here.
As soon as the damp grass touched her ankles, she realized she should have put on thicker socks. Also, the April night breeze chilled her bare arms. When she considered going inside for a sweater, though, the disembodied voice chimed, *Please hurry. Still feeling pleasantly drifty, Melanie shrugged off the chill and quickened her pace.*
On the trail that led into the woods, trees cut off most of the light from houses and street lamps. Even with a full moon, she could barely see her way, but fortunately she’d strolled this path many times before. The second time she stumbled on a root, though, she yielded to common sense and dug the emergency flashlight out of her bag. Wouldn’t you think I’d be able to see fine and walk safely by moonlight in a dream?
Every few yards, the voice renewed its appeal for her to hurry. Where was it coming from? How long had she been walking, anyway? Surely not much more than ten minutes. Shouldn’t she have reached the border of the woods by now? The walk from one end to the other took no more than fifteen minutes at a leisurely stroll, and by road the long way around only about five minutes.
Of course, that was in daylight. Maybe she’d unconsciously slowed down to avoid a fall, despite trying to obey the urgent appeal of the voice. On the other hand, she didn’t recall the trail having this many curves. Could she have accidentally stepped off the main track onto a side path?
Around the next bend, what she ran into convinced her she was definitely not on the right path anymore.
Overhanging the trail, a tangle of tree limbs entwined with thorny vines formed an arch. This shouldn’t be here. This dream is getting wilder by the minute. Am I supposed to go through that?
-end of excerpt-
*****
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, visit the Dropbox page below. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
All issues are now posted on Dropbox, where you should be able to download them at this link:
All Vampire’s Crypt Issues on Dropbox
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links:
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Carter Kindle Books
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Goodreads
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You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter