Danielle Blanchard of Death Wish: Book I The Vamp Saga (Guest Post & Giveaway)

Good Morning everyone! I hope for those who celebrate it, you all had a fabulous Christmas! Today I'd like to welcome self-published author Danielle Blanchard over for a guest post and giveaway, enjoy!

The Andy Warhol of Generation X?

First and foremost, I am not trying to compare myself to the greatness of a remarkable icon of the twentieth century. Merely, I am suggesting we share many similarities in common.

I think about how he took great symbols of Americana and attached his own spin. The Campbells soup can, the beautiful Marilyn Monroe; what would these unique takes be without his input? And his most famous expression, “In the future, everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame”. Priceless.

If anything, I believe I am his female equivalent in the literary world. I have always been an avid reader and with a sister eight years my senior, I had plenty of material to choose from. I grew up on V.C. Andrews, Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Jackie Collins. My sister, Nicole, also had novel series like Dune and authors like Kat Martin who also influenced me and the way I write.

I was twenty years old when I begin to hit my head against a brick wall. Fiction was very predictable, especially with my favorite writer, Jackie Collins. I loved her take on Hollywood. After all, to this day, Rock Star, Chances and Lucky are three of my most cherished books by the aged icon. The problem was I felt she was just writing for the numbers and there is nothing wrong with that if what an author is writing works for you. Ms. Collins work was no longer working for me so I decided to write my own opus to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. I called it Film Star at first. The title eventually changed and it became The Beautiful People.

The book was over one thousand pages and no way in hell was I ever going to get it published though I wrote query letters and desperately searched for an agent who would understand my vision and decide to shop it. Well, that never came so I decided to self-publish and never looked back.

I self-edited so the book is clunky and very raw. As I write this, my current editor, Felicia Sullivan, is re-editing my book and I will re-release The Beautiful People: Part One and Part Two in March and April of 2012.

My next work of art was Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga). I absolutely love a good vampire story. I have read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and devoured Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles like they were going out of style. I loved the homo-eroticism of her books but I wondered what would happen if this same type of angst could be applied to a male-female relationship without my heroine turning into a complete and utter Mary Sue.

First off, what the reader should understand is Manon Mourey, my heroine of Death Wish, is extremely flawed and not in a good way. She is good looking but I wouldn’t consider her drop dead gorgeous as much as I would sexy (and she is drawn that way purposefully).

The male protagonist of the story is a very old vampire by the name of Mikkel Damgaard, a Danish Viking who has lived for more than one thousand years. He makes no apologies about being a killer but as this book takes place in the year 2020, vampires no longer have to murder with impunity. They have blood beverages (Sang Pur, Blue Blood) and they own almost every commercial organization that makes money. They also were given their full civil rights in 2014 when the Civil Rights Bill was extended and passed to include both homosexuals and vampires.

I believe I offer a unique twist on the vampire genre because they are a species in my book. They are very much like humans as there are subtle differences between them and when Manon is turned, she becomes something wholly different and thus, this also affects Mikkel as well.

I hope I have designed a series which will stir people’s senses: A Twilight for adults if you may. I have nothing against Stephenie Meyer, Charlaine Harris, or Amanda Hocking and reference them in the first chapter of my novel. If people truly enjoy this novel, I hope they share it with those who like the genre as well.

I am not trying to re-invent the wheel but if I can make it a little better then by all means, I am definitely going to try.

Feel free to sample Death Wish on any website of your choice, including my own where you are given a two chapter excerpt. This is my magnum opus but I hope to write many more great books in the years to come. Happy reading and remember my fellow readers, life is too short to waste it on bad books!

Purchase Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga) at these outlets: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Create Space. Coming soon to iBookstore, Kobo, Sony and other ebook retailers!

Follow me on my blog, The Beautiful People: A Writer's Journey or on Twitter for more information on myself and works! 

~*GIVEAWAY*~

Danielle is giving away one digital copy of Death Wish! To enter, just leave a comment on this post and then fill out the rafflecopter below with your name and email address. Additional entries are available but not required. Good luck!