It’s one week until Ravenous is released!
Have you pre-ordered your advanced copy at the special price yet?
As we count down the days until release, some of the contributors wanted to share some further insight into their stories and tempt you with a peek.
Here’s Jaap Boekestein on his story “Light Play.”
Jaap Boekestein on Writing Vampires
Don’t kill your food.
You need blood. You need the prey to give it to you voluntary. You need prey to survive. Kill your food, and sooner or later your food will kill you. They walk in the sun. They breed like vermin. Don’t start that war.
I write in all kind of genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, erotica. Every genre has its own traditions, its own do’s and don’t’s, but they all share something: your story universe needs to be consistent. It must work somehow.
Until Ravenous came along I had never written any real vampire fiction and I just couldn’t resist to try my hand at one of the most popular and sexy monsters of western culture. I started to think how vampires would work in a world with mortals. Make the vampires to powerful and soon there wouldn’t be a mortal left. Make the vampires relative weak but murderous and soon there wouldn’t be a vampire left. (Stakes and torches anyone?) It was a fine line were vampires and mortals could live together. Habitable planets have their Goldilock zone. Vampire worlds have their blood survival zone. Not too much of the one, not too much of the other.
Okay, then what is the relationship between vampires and humans? Vampires need blood. Humans are prey. But vampires need the humans to give their blood voluntary and the humans need to survive. Why? Because angry humans equals dead vampires. And let’s not forget, sucking someones blood is very intimate (Yes). It’s scary and exciting, one needs to be coerced, seduced to give up the stuff that is literately in your veins.
I kept thinking. So you have this vampire: strong, old, wise. And you have the human: lively, less strong, under the vampire’s bane. The vampire is focused on the human, it wants the human to surrender, to give up a part of herself (let’s make it a female human, why not?). But the vampire also looks out for her welfare. She needs to survive to give blood again in the future. And dead humans are not good for vampire-human relationships.
Wait a minute, I thought. Pieces started to fall in their place. This kind of relationship felt pretty familiar. A vampire is a Dominant, the human is the submissive. Power, intimacy, blood, boundaries, taking care of the sub, it had it all!
Vampire BDSM! Of course!
And I decided not to write about a Dominant vampire and its submissive little slave human. It was too obvious. Probably it had been done to death.
“Look into my eyes, you little human.”
“Yes my Lord of Darkness.”
Neh. Too easy. Not perverse enough.
What kind of perversions were possible with Dominant creatures like vampires and their submissive prey? What?
Duh…
Now look into my eyes, you little reader. I want you to read my story.
Excerpt From “Light Play”
The door opens. He stands in the opening.
Playboy millionaire; gray, wise Daddy; evil, arrogant Master. All clichés, none of them applicable. At first glance, he looks completely ordinary, a bit ugly even, but my god, he has presence. He radiates power without trying at all. He is a natural Dom. He is your Dom.Why isn’t he one of the People—a vampire? He would have ruled them all. But he is only mortal.
Still he rules you. You are a degenerate.
Sssh! Nobody knows!
Well, you yourself know. And so does he. It is your dirty secret. Shame! Shame!
You don’t feel shame. Not when he looks at you, when he inspects you from top to toe. Anxiety, pride, submission. All that and more. Not shame. Never.
About the Author
Jaap Boekestein (1968) is an award winning Dutch writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers and whatever takes his fancy. He usually writes his stories in trains, coffeehouses and in the 16th century taverns of his native The Hague, the Netherlands. Over the years he has made his living as a bouncer, working for a detective agency and as an editor. Currently he works for the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice.
Dark. Brooding. Tortured. Sexy.
Vampires are a mystery, morphing through history from maligned villains to sparkling saviors and back again. They can be the ultimate bad boys, the supreme seductresses, or the evil monsters. They fascinate and repel us at the same time. What other creature can steal into your bedroom in the depths of the night to stalk or protect? What other ancient being is so accessible yet so powerful? What other enigma is desired as much as feared?
Cross the threshold into a world of insatiable heroes and voracious heroines. RAVENOUS explores saucy, sexy, and sweet tales: of forbidden vampire/vampire hunter love, vampire threesomes in space, kink as only a vampire could enjoy it… and so much more.
