Get ready…get
set…READ…
Tainted Heart
Melissa Graves
Series: Mi Corazón Sangrante, book
twoo – should be read in order
Release date: November 5,
2015
Spotlight on…Melissa
Graves is in the hot seat!
Was
there a basis for you story? A previous experience or something else?
You could say that. I spent my tender, formative, Internet
porn-seeking years role-playing fantasy characters on the then super popular
Yahoo!chat platform, and once I got past the PG running around forests and
doing spells and fighting demons, I settled down with a small, private
role-playing group that introduced me to erotic writing, and my then-girlfriend
introduced me to the young man who I spent four years co-writing vampire-themed
role-play with—and who, in my late twenties, became my husband! The sort of sex and pleasurable, sexual blood
drinking we wrote together is the basis for the intimacy in my vampire works.
What
skills do you think a writer needs?
Obsession.
Fixation. A word-crammed
brain. The need to create, whether you
write flowery prose or haikus. You have
to have something in there that desperately needs to come out, and you have to
be willing to become a slave to that process.
Free time and a reliable computer wouldn’t
hurt, either!
What
for you is the perfect book hero?
Imperfection is key, as is
relatability. I want to understand a
hero, but I also want to hate certain things about them, too, because I want to
root for their process as much as I want to root for their inherent qualities. I want them to make me laugh and cry. I want to remember them, and care about their
ending. I want to be turned on by
them. A character has to make me feel a
lot for me to give them that label. The
journey is important—a hero’s choices make or break their story.
Is
there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
People underestimate sometimes how hard
simply writing is. Crafting sentences
that make engaging paragraphs that make effective scenes that combine to make
good stories. The art of scene by scene
and chapter by chapter novel writing is an art unto itself. So just bringing that to the table is a
tremendous effort. My particular burden
is usually middles—struggling though the meat of a story while trying to tie it
to the beginning and the end and keeping the reader engaged is not easy for me.
Tell
us about your favorite childhood book.
I read a lot of Judy Blume, as I’m sure most
90’s kids did! But I gravitated toward
fantasy (Tolkien) and fairy tales (Grimm’s) as well. I also read a lot of children’s mystery
books, and V.C. Andrews and L.J. Smith when I was a little older. The Harry Potter books didn’t come out until
I was older, so I’m not of that particular generation in terms of childhood
fiction exposure, though I enjoyed those books in high school and into college
as much as any kid!
Categories: Erotica, Fiction,
Gay Fiction, Paranormal, Romance, Thriller, Urban Fantasy, M/M Romance
294 pages
Publisher: Interlude Press
Cover Artist: RJ Sheperd, Buckeyegrrl Designs
Excerpt:
When it gets dark, he texts Brian that he's
going to be out late, and avails himself of not one but three vampire-human
nightclubs set along a dense strip of Chicago nightlife. Going alone to places
like this always attracts immediate attention, and he isn't surprised when he
has to pry both humans and vampires off of himself. But he doesn't mind—the blood
from the center is humming in his veins, and that buzz takes on a new dimension
every time that he swallows a thimbleful of blood from a donor, which he does
at least a dozen times over the course of the evening. When he’s more relaxed,
he allows bodies against his own, dancing with strangers until strobe lights
become normal and everything outside is too dim and still.
The blood changes the world around him.
Every color, every sound and every source of light takes on a life of its own.
He loses track of how many donors he pays.
All he knows is he's spent all of the pocket money that Brian gave him for the
weekend.
He feels like a bloated tick. He’s been away
too long. Brian. He has to get back to Brian.
You can find Tainted
Heart here:
Let’s talk about Melissa
Graves:
A veteran writer of fan fiction with
thousands of followers, Melissa Graves wrote her first story at age thirteen,
and by age sixteen had met her future husband in an online vampire fiction chat
room. A fan of science fiction and fantasy, she has a degree in anthropology
and a passion for good chocolate, amateur erotica and fan worlds that celebrate
diversity. She is mother to two cats.
Bleeding Heart, book one of the Mi Corazón
Sangrante series, was her debut novel for Interlude Press.
Find Melissa here:
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