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A Character’s Voice is Unique
Fangs for Hire follows a resistance fighter who, after being executed during WWII, is resurrected as a vampire and transforms personal tragedy into a lifelong quest for justice. What inspired you to combine wartime history with vampire fiction?
I am a history buff as well as a science buff, and I enjoy reading historical magazines, historical novels, and watching fascinating documentaries about World War II. I was inspired to write this novella by several influencing creative forces, such as the TV series Forever Knight, about a 13th-century vampire who became a 20th-century cop to save as many innocent humans as possible and redeem his past sins when he fed on the innocent and guilty alike. Another inspiration came from reading about the resistance against the Nazis in occupied Belarus, from 1941 to 1944. I thought: why not combine the dark fantasy and realism of real military conflict to tell a story of an ordinary teenage girl who fought for her country and was presented with a unique opportunity to strike at her enemies after her moral death? The result was Fangs for Hire, and I am very proud to be able to see this project from start to finish. Larisa Tokar is a unique character who is a survivor and a vampire with a human heart that is no longer beating.
Larisa balances confidence, compassion, and ruthlessness throughout the book. How did you approach creating her voice?
This is a very good and interesting question. A character’s voice is unique, and since Larisa is the main protagonist of the story, she has a unique voice and actions that define who she is. Born as an average human female with no special powers and no particular or unique talent, she nevertheless is an honest, kind, and compassionate person. The brutal Nazi invasion of her country and her desire to fight back against a brutal oppressor make her a person not only influenced by Soviet propaganda, but also a young woman who learns not only how to survive but also strikes at the enemy from a unique angle. She narrates the story with strong personal feelings based on her life experience. Her execution, death, and resurrection as a vampire alter her perspective about the war and the dark truth that was hidden from her. Born again as a vampire, with inhuman abilities that make her into a unique warrior, Larisa navigates through years in prison, during and after the war. She survives and adapts to her condition, and learns new skills to help those who deserve her love and respect. Larisa Tokar is a unique kind of time traveler.
The Urtama functions more like an international society than a traditional supernatural clan. How did that idea evolve?
Fangs for Hire is a novella that is related to my other vampire novels such as Beyond Sunlight, Eighteen Forever, Innocent Eyes, Heatseeker, and Before the Dawn. All of them feature a secret race of nightwalkers who call themselves Urtama. They are a very ancient species that have been living alongside mankind before the dawn of recorded history, stretching all the way back before the time of the last Great Ice Age. My idea about vampires came from the realization that, as a secret species, they had to remain in the shadows while adapting to the new times, as humanity had evolved from hunters and gatherers to farmers and eventually to city builders. Urtama represents a secret race of immortals who depend on human blood to survive, and therefore human lives are precious to them. And while I liked reading about supernatural clans and traditional vampire fiction, I imagined a different and secret world of vampires with their own rules and traditions and system of punishments for the crimes against humanity and their fellow immortals. No society can exist without rules and regulations, and Urtama has their own.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am currently working on a sword and sorcery story, which has evolved from a short story I wrote in my experimental science fiction and fantasy writing group in the year 2012. It will most likely be a novelette-length, but with a rich, dense, and hopefully interesting story about kingdoms, battles, knights, love, ambition, and ancient super weapons. This is a unique project, because I seldom work on fantasy tales involving warriors and magic. I hope to complete and present the next book for review sometime in the early Fall. For me, writing is a labor of love, and I want to make this story a unique tale that is not only about action, adventure and magic, but also a morality tale with values that remain true both in the real and magical realm. The best part is that my work schedule permits me two days per week to work on my novels, and each novel I write, I want to make it interesting and informative for my readers. Please stay tuned. A new book is coming!
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Fangs for Hire: A Story of the Vampire Larisa Tokar
Fangs for Hire is a fast-moving blend of vampire fiction, wartime drama, and espionage thriller. Its narrator, Larisa Tokar, is a century-old vampire who works as a freelance operative for intelligence agencies, using her supernatural strength, heightened senses, voice imitation, and access to blood memories to pursue dangerous targets. The story alternates between her present-day missions in Paris and her youth in Nazi-occupied Minsk, where she joins the resistance, is betrayed, publicly executed, and resurrected through the intervention of the ancient vampire Andrei Rumin. That structure gives the novella two distinct energies: the brisk confidence of a supernatural spy adventure and the heavier emotional pull of an origin story shaped by war, loss, and survival.
Larisa is the book’s center of gravity, and her blunt, self-assured narration makes her easy to understand even when her actions are ruthless. She enjoys money, travel, history, good company, and the practical advantages of immortality, but she also carries lasting grief over her parents, her friends, and the destruction of the life she expected to have. Her moral code is simple and consistently applied: protect innocent people and reserve violence for those she believes have earned it. That certainty gives the action a pulpy, vigilante quality, while her memories of occupation and execution add a more personal motive beneath the swagger. Her confrontation with Roman Starenko, the officer who betrayed her, brings those sides together in a scene driven by anger, political disillusionment, and long-delayed revenge.
The novella is especially interested in building a complete vampire society. The Urtama have elders, laws, banks, donors, safe houses, political networks, and punishments for anyone who threatens their secrecy. This world feels less like Gothic folklore and more like an international organization that has quietly adapted to every century. The book also spends considerable time on military and political history, often pausing the immediate story to discuss Soviet repression, the German invasion, Napoleon, resistance movements, and the changing shape of Europe. Readers who enjoy historical detail may find this scope rewarding, though the amount of explanation sometimes slows the suspense. While the story could benefit from careful editing, its directness gives it the feeling of Larisa telling her remarkable life story exactly as she remembers it.
I’d recommend Fangs for Hire most strongly to readers who like alternate-history adventures, powerful antiheroines, detailed vampire lore, and action stories with a firm moral divide between predators and their chosen prey. It should also appeal to military-history fans who enjoy seeing real events woven into supernatural fiction. The violence is graphic, and the book includes sexual material, so it’s best suited to adult readers. At heart, this is the story of a young woman whose first life is destroyed by war and whose second life becomes an ongoing campaign against cruelty. By the final pages, Larisa’s immortality feels both like a weapon and a responsibility, leaving her with endless time to remember the past, enjoy the present, and decide what kind of future she’ll help create.
Pages: 145 | ASIN : B0H68MHWVP
Daywalker: Hybrid Vampire
Daywalker: Hybrid Vampire by Len Handeland is a supernatural horror novel that blends vampire fiction, historical horror, queer romance, and paranormal adventure. The story begins in postwar Norway, where Anna Beck becomes involved with Wolfgang Von Pritzker, a former German officer hiding a deadly identity. Their son, Christian, is born a dhampir, half human and half vampire, with a thirst for blood and the rare ability to survive in daylight. By letting Anna, Christian, and Christian’s lover Kjell narrate different parts of the story, Handeland gives the novel the feel of a collection of intimate confessions.
Christian’s journey gives this vampire horror story its emotional center. Abandoned as an infant and adopted as a child, he grows up trying to understand his unusual body, control his bloodlust, and find a place where he belongs. Music becomes both an escape and a clever disguise when Christian fronts a vampire-themed rock band called The Vamps. The irony is fun: the audience sees a theatrical gimmick while Christian is quietly revealing his real nature onstage. His rise through the European rock scene also adds an unexpected show-business angle to the paranormal fiction.
The novel’s relationships are as important as its supernatural confrontations. Christian and Kjell’s romance develops from friendship and attraction into a loyal partnership, while Christian’s reunion with Anna forces both of them to face the pain of his abandonment. Wolfgang brings a colder energy to the family story, representing the predatory side of vampirism that Christian fears inheriting. These connections turn the book into more than a vampire hunter adventure. It’s also a dark family drama about identity, inherited violence, forgiveness, and the choices people make when love and survival pull them in different directions.
Handeland writes in a direct, dramatic style, with plenty of blood, sensuality, emotional declarations, and classic vampire lore. The later chapters move firmly into paranormal action as Christian discovers the full range of his powers and battles the vampires created by his father. Readers who enjoy LGBTQ+ horror, dhampir stories, gothic vampire fiction, supernatural romance, and fast-moving battles between vampires and vampire hunters will find plenty to dig into here. Daywalker: Hybrid Vampire is a bold, personal take on the genre, combining family secrets, rock-and-roll ambition, romance, and monster-hunting in one expansive story.
Pages: 223 | ASIN : B0GXMX8DM6
Anatomy of a Vampire: Part 2, Present Day
Anatomy of a Vampire: Part 2, Present Day, by John Matthias, is a paranormal science thriller that blends vampire mythology, virology, ancient history, and FBI investigation into one sprawling modern conspiracy. The story begins with a brutal attack in the Canadian wilderness that looks like a bear mauling but quickly points toward something stranger, especially once the deaths connect to scientists studying SAV, a mysterious adaptive virus. From there, the novel follows Ariel, an unusually long-lived science writer, FBI agent Josh Cummings, Monica, and the hidden Houses of Anu and Lilith as old secrets push their way into the present.
What I liked most was the book’s refusal to treat vampires as familiar creatures of cape, coffin, and cliché. Matthias builds his own mythology, tying “vampires” to ancient beings, bloodlines, viruses, portals, and rival houses with deep moral fractures. It’s a lot, but I found that ambition interesting because the novel isn’t just asking, “What if vampires were real?” It is asking what would happen if myth, disease, evolution, and human history were all tangled together in one long, hidden thread.
The writing has a direct, investigative quality that suits the thriller side of the story. The forensic details, lab discussions, and casework give the book a grounded feel, even when the plot moves into winged beings, ancient scrolls, and supernatural politics. I did feel at times that the explanations somewhat slowed the pace, especially when characters unpacked large pieces of lore through dialogue. Still, I appreciated the author’s patience with his own world. Matthias wants the reader to understand the machinery behind the mystery, not just watch shadows move in the dark. That choice gives the novel weight.
I would recommend Anatomy of a Vampire: Part 2, Present Day to readers who enjoy paranormal thrillers with a strong science fiction edge, especially those who like vampire fiction that rewrites the rules instead of repeating them. Fans of conspiracy-driven stories, ancient bloodline mysteries, secret societies, viral outbreak plots, and genre blends that move between crime procedural and dark fantasy will find a lot to dig into here. It’s best for readers who enjoy deep lore and don’t mind a dense, layered plot that takes its mythology seriously.
Pages: 330
Pages: 406 | ASIN: B0HGTQ3VL4
Night Shift
Night Shift, by Allie McCormack, is a paranormal romance about Beth Kerrigan, a clouded leopard shifter trying to rebuild her life after betrayal, trauma, and false imprisonment. When vampire security specialist Tyr Lindström comes into her world through his work protecting the veterinary clinic where she works, the connection between them grows from careful attraction into something much deeper. Their romance is tender, complicated, and shaped by one big question: what does forever mean when one person is mortal, and the other is not?
What I appreciated most about this book was how much space McCormack gives Beth to heal. This is not a story where love magically fixes everything, and I was glad for that. Beth’s fear, caution, and slow return to confidence feel central to the book, not just background for the romance. The veterinary clinic, the shifter community, and the steady presence of friends and family give the story a warm, lived-in feeling. The large cast and series history can feel like a lot to take in, especially for a reader coming in fresh, but the emotional core remains clear. Beth wants safety. Tyr wants to protect without overwhelming her. Both of them are learning how to trust what is growing between them.
The author’s choices lean strongly into the comforts of the paranormal romance genre: fated bonds, supernatural politics, protective heroes, found family, danger from outside forces, and a love story that asks for courage from both sides. I liked that Tyr is powerful without being cold, and ancient without feeling unreachable. His romance with Beth has a gentle patience to it, which makes the more dramatic turns later in the book land with real weight. The story also has flashes of humor and sweetness, especially in scenes with children, pets, and supernatural chaos, and those moments keep the book from becoming too heavy.
I would recommend Night Shift to readers who enjoy paranormal romance with a strong healing arc, a protective but respectful vampire hero, shifter lore, and a close-knit supernatural community. It will especially appeal to fans of series-based romance where past characters continue to matter, and the world feels bigger than one couple. Readers who like warmth, danger, tenderness, and a clear happily-ever-after will likely settle right into this book.
Pages: 390 | ASIN : B0F9XP2RRV
Magical Law
Hybrid follows two sisters seeking safety, family, and their place in a magical world as they face the consequences of one sister’s transformation into a vampire. What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of writing a series?
Continuing a beloved character’s story and giving voice to newer characters. In the first book, the POV focus is on Annamaria. In this second book, Marianna deserved significant POV moments, and the reader gets to be in her head almost as often as they are in Annamaria’s head. In a way, this was my way of exploring two sides of myself: Marianna is who I am, and Annamaria is who I desire to be.
Concordia feels like both a refuge and a judgmental space. What did you want that setting to represent in the larger story?
I wanted it to represent a prison wearing a mask of protection. Thick concrete walls surround the magical city, cutting off the coven from the rest of the world. Only two gates in and out of the city, guarded by vampires and shifters day and night. And once you’re in the city? Rules, rules, and more rules! Definitely a new adult’s worst nightmare.
The novel juggles romance, family conflict, magical law, and personal trauma. How do you balance so many narrative threads without losing focus?
All of those threads are interconnected with the main plot, and thus are needed to tell both Annamaria’s and Marianna’s stories. Family conflict is why Annamaria’s romantic life experiences challenges. Magical law is why Marianna is viewed as a source of conflict for her grandmother. And both girls’ personal trauma influences how they react to the current events they are thrown into. I’ve been told that Annamaria is a very relatable teenager; and real people go through similar issues all at once. They don’t get to focus on only one. I’m pleased to have been successful in weaving so many subplots together.
Looking ahead, how will the events of Hybrid shape the sisters’ paths in future books?
The power dynamic shift at the end of Hybrid is going to continue in that direction for the third book. Both sisters are going to continue to grow in confidence, power, and leadership; and Trinity has also earned a spot as a POV character.
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Marianna Lyons is a big disappointment. Stripped of her magic when she was forcefully turned into a vampire, she is now an outcast, desperate for Libby’s approval. When Marianna is tricked into breaking coven rules, she faces a difficult decision: endure brutal rehabilitation, or leave her new home. As Marianna struggles to rediscover herself, will she accept her new identity, or conform to Libby’s impossible demands?
Immortal Beings
A Tale for the Shadows follows a murdered woman who is reborn as a ghost and finds unexpected love and purpose alongside a hunted vampire in a world where death is only the beginning. What drew you to combining ghost lore with vampire mythology in the same narrative?
The simplest answer is that I love stories about ghosts, and I love stories about vampires, so I combined them for my own entertainment. I knew that I wanted to write a novel that I would love to read.
A longer answer would include a recognition that the lore around ghosts and vampires is deep, centuries of material. Those stories are also ingrained in our societal consciousness. We tend to view ghosts as fearful entities in most European traditions, but in so many cultures, they’re welcomed, revered. Vampires are feared because they are alpha predators of human beings. In the Victorian novels (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example), vampires are symbolic of a frightening force of sexuality. I think the fear of ghosts and vampires also rises from a fear of death, our own and that of those we love. My idea was to turn this fear on its head, at least to some degree. No group of humanity is monolithic. That includes the dead and undead. Could there not be kind ghosts, wise vampires? We know that, for those who live on, love lingers after death. What would happen if love were a force for those who have died?
And, finally, I was intrigued by how a friendship might develop between a ghost and a vampire, two supernatural beings. And from there, how love might develop. From that rose the promise of an eternity together, as two immortal beings. How cool would that be?
Senka’s story begins in trauma but grows into something more complex. How did you shape her emotional evolution?
A lot of my shaping of Senka’s character was instinctual, based on my own experiences. Life, not just mine but everyone’s, is a process of accumulating anniversaries—of births, marriages, deaths, significant events. When I was in high school, my father died suddenly. My grandmother, mother, and life partner all died in the space of a year. My son’s fianceé died about a year after he was in a devastating car accident that left him paralyzed from the collarbones down. I watched him recover and learned a lot about forgiveness from him. Senka’s losses and her eventual choices about how to heal come from my own beliefs about the value of life and the extraordinary healing power of forgiveness and compassion.
The novel explores love after betrayal. Do you see the story as more about love, survival, or transformation?
Hmmm. I see those three as inextricably intertwined. Each supports the others; each makes the others possible. In Shadows, there are obviously several different kinds of love: Finn’s for his mom, hers for him; Senka and Silas for Luna, his for them; Mrs. Wang for her husband; Jeremy for his parents; Sarah/Senka’s for Stanley; and, of course, Senka and Silas for each other. There are also several kinds of transformation: from living to dead, from apparently good husband to … not so good husband, from smoke to monster, from revenge-focused to justice-focused. There’s even a shape-shifter. If Senka hadn’t transformed from the self-absorbed, willfully blind actress she was into the compassionate, caring, introspective ghost she became, she wouldn’t have been capable of finding the love with Silas that she finds. At the same time, if Silas hadn’t found the love he has with Senka, he wouldn’t have been interested in continued survival.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
It’s 1972. When Poppy is forced to move to Monterey, California, just before her senior year in high school, she’s furious and powerless to stop it. Then she discovers a mysterious journal that answers her anger with something irresistible: every wish she writes becomes real. At first, it feels like freedom, like finally taking control. But the magic has a cost, and someone else always pays. As the consequences grow darker, Poppy realizes she must give up the magic and develop the strength to shape her life without it. It’s a coming-of-age story with a dollop of Twilight Zone. I’m hoping it will be in bookstores by October 2026.
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She was murdered by the man she loved. Now she’s a ghost bound to the cabin where she died—until a wounded vampire, an ancient enemy, and a mysterious cat change everything.
Senka was once a rising television star. Now, she’s a restless spirit, trapped in the site of her betrayal. But everything shifts the night Silas appears—an ageless Native American vampire fleeing a ruthless Maker determined to erase him from existence. When a violent confrontation leaves the cabin in flames, Senka is finally freed, and an unlikely partnership is born.
As Senka and Silas forge a path through shadows and centuries-old grudges, they begin to pursue justice—not just for Senka’s murder but for the other lives shattered along the way. Guided by ghosts who’ve chosen to remain in the world of the living and aided by Luna the twenty-third, a clever feline with a talent for love and loyalty, they face vengeful vampires, unravel hidden truths, and awaken powers Senka never imagined.
But love in the afterlife is complicated. Haunted by the past and hesitant to trust again, Senka must confront the choices that led her here—and decide if an eternity with Silas is worth risking her heart one more time.
Lush, lyrical, and darkly romantic, A Tale for the Shadows is a supernatural fantasy that blends ghost stories and vampire lore with emotional depth, wit, and resilience. Perfect for fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Dead Romantics, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is a tale of second chances, found family, and the quiet power of choosing love—even after death.
A Tale for the Shadows
A Tale for the Shadows is a paranormal fantasy novel with a strong gothic streak and a surprisingly tender emotional core. It begins with murder, which sounds blunt because the book is blunt about it: Sarah Sommers is killed by her husband, becomes a ghost, and from there the story opens outward into something larger about grief, loneliness, survival, and connection. As her ghostly life unfolds, she becomes Senka and crosses paths with Silas, a hunted vampire, while another thread follows Finn, a sick teenage boy in a hospital, listening night by night to a story that may be doing more than simply entertaining him. It is a book about death and love, just as the subtitle promises, but it is also about what keeps a person, or spirit, moving when they have every reason to stop.
Author Joyce Sherry writes in a way that feels intimate without getting precious, and that is not easy to pull off in fantasy. The book has ghosts, vampires, ancient rules, and real danger, but the language keeps bringing everything back to feeling. A cabin smells wrong. A hospital room feels long after visiting hours. Loneliness sits in the air. That grounded quality made the supernatural parts easier to trust. I also liked the author’s choice to frame the novel through storytelling itself. The repeated sense that stories “want” to be told gives the book a self-aware quality, but it never turns smug. It feels more like someone sitting across from you and saying, let me tell you what happened, and meaning it.
I found myself especially drawn to the way Sherry handles character. Senka could have been written as pure vengeance, Silas as pure brooding, and Finn as the sentimental heart of the book. None of them stay that flat. Senka grows into someone more thoughtful and more brave. Silas has the old-world vampire sadness you expect from the genre, but he is not just a dark silhouette in a doorway. He is wounded, weary, funny in flashes, and very human in the ways that matter. Finn, meanwhile, gives the novel an anchor. His scenes keep the book honest. They stop it from drifting too far into mood for mood’s sake. I also appreciated that the novel takes its big ideas seriously without dressing them up in heavy language. It asks what love looks like after betrayal, whether pain has to define a life, and what it means to keep choosing existence. Big questions. Quietly asked.
I would recommend A Tale for the Shadows most strongly to readers who like paranormal fantasy, gothic romance, and character-driven supernatural fiction that cares as much about emotional healing as it does about eerie atmosphere or mythic stakes. It will appeal to people who enjoy vampire and ghost stories but want something softer around the edges and more reflective at heart. I came away thinking this book understands that darkness is only interesting if there is some light pressing against it. That balance is what gives it its pull. It is thoughtful, strange, and sincere, and for the right reader, that combination will feel like being led into the dark by someone who knows exactly where they are going.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0FBYTKMSB
