Finley Hollister

A move to a new town, a new job, and the stresses of dealing with her estranged family as they prepare to say goodbye to their dying mother have put romance on the back burner for Hannah Kennedy. So why are the advances of much younger colleague, Jim Drake, so irresistable? And can love survive when it's revealed that Hannah's family intersects with Jim's past, a bizarre series of murders, and a powerful vampire adversary just starting to reveal his intentions?

Interview With The Author

Q: Why did you write this book?

A. I like vampires, obviously. But I wanted to switch things up a bit. In general, there are very few may-december romance novels involving older women and younger men, and very few vampire romance novels where the female non-vampire is significantly older biologically than the male vampire. I wanted to explore these dynamics.

Q. This book could fit into a few genres. Did you do that on purpose?

Yes. I wanted this to be less a vampire romance novel than a book about two people in a relationship where one happened to be a vampire. So I chose to throw to make it a story that with a definite vampire mythology that was also about people and their stuggles - the childhood sexual abuse in Hannah's dysfunctional family and how it affects them in the present time as she and her siblings deal with their mother's death, Jim and Hannah negotiating gender roles in their relationship, and the role of friendships. The vampire suspense angle was accidental - it just came out that way as I was writing, and became an integral part of the plot.

Q. What do you like best about this book?

I really like strong female leads in paranormal romance and suspense (in romance and suspense in generally, actually), and elements of feminist fiction in romance. But I like that while Hannah is very strong, Jim challenges her to think about what strength really is, and that she challenges him to think about the way that he looks at the world. And I like that Jim's very confident in some ways and not so confident in others. He's complicated, more human-like than vampires are generally depicted.

I had fun writing this book, and I'm looking forward to releasing the other two in the trilogy.