Magic Thursday: When You Want to Write About Vampires But They’ve Been Done to Death with Daniel de Lorne

The first book I wrote and published was about vampires. Mean, nasty, gruesome, brutal—and of course sexy—vampires. Beckoning Blood was book 1 in what later became a trilogy, with Burning Blood and Binding Blood coming out sometime later. 

When book 1 came out in 2014, Twilight had already well and truly wreaked havoc on the publishing landscape when it came to vampires. However, lucky for me I found a group of readers who were hungry for vampires who walked on the darkside and absolutely did not sparkle in the sunlight.

It was about the time that I wrote the first book that I was toying with another idea about what would happen to those immortals beings that feasted on humans when humans became a rare species a-la-apocalypse. I was working in a zoo at the time so questions around conservation and extinction were at the front of mind.

I thought the story would focus on vampires, but I pretty quickly decided to do something different. But what vampire-adjacent creatures was I going to write about?

Enter, the soul-eaters, or as they’re called in my new series Immortals of the Apocalypse, the Darisami.

Soul Survivor is book one in this post-apocalyptic trilogy set in 2141 where humanity is hanging on by a thread, and the Darisami are extremely worried about their food supply. 

(And I admit the challenge of releasing a post-apocalyptic book in the dumpster fire that is 2020…)

It centres on 500-year-old Emrys Stone as he journeys from Endurance, an underground bunker on the brink of collapse, to Providence. There he falls for a human named Galen and becomes embroiled in the power plays of a population at war with itself. At the same time, Emrys must keep his existence as a soul-eater a secret.

As for the lore of the Darisami, they must feed on a human soul every thirty days or die, they have increased strength, the power of glamour, and they glow under the light of the moon in an unintentional-nod-to-Twilight-but-really-a-reverse-of-the-vampire-bursting-into-flames-during-sunlight-idea.

Moral ambiguity abounds when it comes Emrys and the other Darisami’s guilt (or lack thereof) over taking souls, but life is cruel, but you’ve gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

So, if you’re looking for something darker, something that’s like vampires but not, and something that starts with a bang and doesn’t let up, check out my new book, Soul Survivor, on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited and in paperback. 

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Soul Survivor

Immortals of the Apocalypse: Book 1

An ancient craving. A dead world. Can one near-immortal save his heart as the planet descends into ruin?

2141. Five-hundred-year-old Emrys Stone hates that his hunger for human souls kills everything he touches. But supplies are scarce in Earth’s scorched landscape, and his kind are falling into anarchic chaos. When a ferocious insanity devours the remaining food source, Emrys’s last hope for survival lies in a desperate trek across the apocalyptic wasteland.

Almost at death’s door, Emrys stumbles on another colony and asks for shelter in return for his services as an assassin. But when he becomes a pawn between warring factions and falls for a handsome human warrior, his violent passions could cost him his cursed life.

Can Emrys survive the madness without destroying his own future in the land of the living?

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Daniel de Lorne writes about men, monsters and magic.

In love with writing since he wrote a story about a talking tree at age six, his first novel, the romantic horror Beckoning Blood, was published in 2014. At the heart of every book is a romance between two men, whether they’re irresistible vampires, historical hotties, or professional paramours.

If you take your LGBT romance fiction with supernatural, urban fantasy or contemporary flavoring, Daniel de Lorne delivers.

In his other life, Daniel is a professional writer and researcher in Perth, Australia, with a love of history and nature. All of which makes for great story fodder.

And when he’s not working, he and his husband explore as much of this amazing world as they can, from the ruins of Welsh abbeys to trekking famous routes and swimming with whales.