Review - Vampire Blood

Vampire Blood

Kathryn Meyer Griffith

I first read Human No Longer which was the second book. Vampire Blood was the first and I must say I do wish I read it first. That most likely comes from my OCD more than anything. I think both books could be read as stand alones. 

Read Review HERE

In Human No Longer we read the story of a woman who lost her husband in a vicious attack which she barely survived. She decides to move back to her childhood home with her two children. As days go by we learn that Jenny is being changed into a vampire. The book then is her story of fighting the change and also her battle with vampires who are looking for her.

In Vampire Blood we have the story of Jenny, divorced and living in a trailer on her father's property. She is helping her dad renovate a friends' home when the owners are suddenly missing. Jenny learns they are not the only ones missing. Several people have been reported missing lately. Next door to her brothers' restaurant is an old closed theater. Jenny has good memories of going there with her first husband, Jeff. She notices that someone is planning to open it again. She and her father get the job of renovating it. But just who are the owners of the movie theater? Why do they want to open it? What happened to the missing people? Will Jenny be able to do anything to help? Will Jenny and her family survive?

I enjoyed this story. It kept me reading late into the night. The writing was very good. The story intriguing. I was reading a horror mystery with a bit of romance tossed in. I loved that. A confession...I was reading it downstairs and as it was very late needed to go upstairs to bed. As I was reading this on my Kindle Fire I had enough light to be able to walk around, so I was turning off lights without turning any on. I walked halfway up the stairs, still reading, when I glanced up. OMG! There were no lights on. It was completely dark. I stood frozen on the stairs. Light switches were located in the dark at the bottom of the stairs or at the top. I know it was completely irrational but I could not figure out which light switch would be safer. Finally, I used the kindle light to shine in front of me until I reached a light switch. Hahaha. That will teach me to read scary stories while walking around in the dark. Okay don't leave me alone in this. Have you done this? Have you read a book that had you afraid of the dark, even for a moment? Which ones? 

There was one difference between the books that bothered me. In Vampire Blood, Jenny has a grown daughter and grandchild. Samantha was mentioned often and both Jenny and Jeff have a desire to have a good relationship with her. They want to know their grandchild. At the end of the book they are reunited. Yet in Human No Longer they play no part. I wonder what has happened to them. I hope in the next book that mystery is solved. 

I am really enjoying Kathryn Meyer Griffith's writing. She has the ability to draw you into the story. She writes characters who become friends. Both are the signs of an experienced writer who cares about what they are writing. She has written a number of books that I find intriguing. You can read more about her on my blog post Human No Longer. Her book covers can also be found there. 

It is hard to choose my next read from her but I think it will be Don't Look Back, Agnes. This book has been calling my name since I read Human No Longer. 

Book description:

Don't Look Back Agnes--Agnes Michaels is coming home. Home to her childhood town of Fairfield and the house her father lovingly built for her mother. A house surrounded by the woods where Agnes’ two childhood friends and her boyfriend, Tyler, were all murdered twenty summers ago when she was just seventeen. She was the only one who escaped, but not without emotional and physical scars. Agnes knows that the woods and the evil entity that lives in it have been waiting for her all these years but she has no choice but to return to Fairfield and her mother’s house when her mother falls very ill and needs her care. Agnes can no longer avoid her destiny. Because the killings have begun again and she’s the only one who can stop them. And with the help of a new friend and Tyler’s ghost, she’ll defeat the evil and save another child’s life.

A second short story included is In This House.  Bernard and Althea have lived their whole lives in the neighborhood, in the same house and have grown old there. But Deer Run’s lead smelter plant has been buying out the houses around them because of lead contamination fears and now the lots are empty weeds and only their house remains. Their neighbors are gone. They’re alone. Althea’s been sick and Bernard cares for her even as he remembers how lovely she once was, all the friends they once had and all the good times they enjoyed when they were young. He loves her and he’ll never leave her. They’ll never leave their home. But they can’t stop time and they’re only waiting for their lonely daughter, Jenny, to make one last visit so they can say goodbye to her and introduce her to the man they know she’s meant to be with…then they can leave this earth happy.

Comments Welcome

Review: Human No Longer by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Human No Longer by Kathryn Meyer Griffith 

I spoke of this book and author earlier this week. You can read it HERE. Kathryn Meyer Griffith is a new writer for me. She has written 17 books so she is not new at this and it shows. Here is my review of Human No Longer.

*I received a copy of Human No Longer for review. No promises were made except to give an honest review of my opinion of the book. I received no compensation for this review.*

I love this vampire book. It is about a woman who is attacked. Her husband is killed and she is turned into a vampire. Years before she, her husband and her brother, fought vampires and killed some. Now Jenny is a single mother, recovering from the attack and finding herself changing into a vampire. Imagine her horror at that. Imagine her fear of harming her children. Imagine her love that refuses to give up her children. As you can tell this is not your sparkly, friendly vampire book. The author spends a lot of time letting us get to know Jenny and her family. We feel her love, her fear and her horror. We know her family is tight and that they are strong. Kathryn Meyer Griffith wrote this story beautifully. Since it involves children and the loss of a parent it could have been dreary and depressing. Ms Griffith handled writing that successfully. We hear of the sadness and pain, indeed it is a major part of why Jenny will not give up, but it is written with care. It takes Jenny awhile to admit that she is a vampire. Since she has hunted them before, this could be seen as ridiculous. However the author explains it in an understanding and real way. Jenny knows in her heart what she is becoming. She just doesn't want it to be true. We walk with Jenny through her changing. We feel her pain, fear, doubts, horror, strength and, most of all, her love and determination. Their is also a budding romance in the book. It goes at the right speed. We know Jenny is not going to jump into love even without the vampire effect. So it is just the start that we get. It is funny but one of the descriptive words that I think of with this book is healing. We are witness to a family healing from a huge loss. You might not think that possible in a vampire story but it is in this one. And it works. But this is a horror story. Do not be fooled by what I have written so far. There is violence in this book, what we believe are vampires, do kill in it. In horrifying ways and they kill children. I love that Ms. Griffith has kept the violence on the low end of graphic. It is there, just not like it could have been written. Most of it is suggestive, the way a good horror book is written. We get the set up, our imagination terrifies us and then we get what happened. I love that. I love when the author invites my imagination to play. I am hoping there is a follow up book. 

This was a riveting book, well written. I give it 5 stars and recommend it.

There is violence in the book. There is no sex or bad language.

I read this book as a stand alone but it is a part of another book, Vampire Blood. I am planning to read this one. I can actually hear it calling my name. I am very interested in reading how this began. 

All of Kathryn Meyer Griffith's books may be found on AMAZON.

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WRITERS AND READERS OF DISTINCTIVE FICTION

What is your favorite vampire book? Who is your favorite Vampire Author?

As always your comments are most welcome!

Human No Longer

 Human No Longer  by Kathryn Meyer Griffith is a book I will be reading this week. I wanted to share with you all this awesome looking book. What do you think of the cover? 

Human No Longer on Amazon

Looks great doesn't it? Cover is by Dawne Dominique.

Now check out  the description. 

 Jenny and Jeff Sanders, on a summer night, become the victims of a bizarre crime, leaving Jeff dead and Jenny in a coma. Their attackers aren't caught.

She returns to her children and her life. With Jeff’s death his business and their income are also gone. Jenny, a novelist, hasn't written a book in years, so she must move back to her childhood home in Summer Haven, Florida, where years before she and Jeff destroyed a sadistic family of vampires.

At least her brother, Joey, who owns a local diner, is there to help.

But Jenny has no appetite. She’s edgy. Her eyes hurt. Could be trauma from the attack. Grief. Until one night, after they've moved into the rundown family farmhouse, she can’t resist the night woods and going out to drink animals’ blood.

Gradually she accepts the truth. Her attackers were vampires. Now she’s becoming what she once hunted and fears she must either kill herself or run. She can’t abandon her children, but promises never to drink human blood; to find a way to live in the human world. It’s not easy. They renovate the farmhouse, which local gossip says is haunted. At night she hunts, and hides what she’s becoming from everyone. She fights to be a good mother and not let the bloodlust overpower her. Gets a job and attempts to fit in.

People, bodies emptied of blood, begin dying. Like years before. With her blackouts, she fears she may be the killer and confides in Joey. While a detective, investigating her husband’s and his daughter’s murders, complicates things.

Jenny suspects it’s her attackers doing the slayings. They've found her and demand she join them–or her family will die. When she resists, her children are taken; to save them, she becomes part of the vampires’ killing spree. Becoming a monster like them…until she finds a way to outwit and ultimately destroy them.

In the end it takes supernatural intervention, a ghost, and the help of a childhood friend to set her, and the world, free from the vampires once and for all. 

Wow! Imagine being a vampire hunter then changing into a vampire. Now add being a mother and single parent into the mix. You are trying to do your best for your children, help them over their father's death and keep them safe. After all, you are all they have now. Then they are taken and you must become the monster you hunted and hated to save them. 

Kathryn has very kindly permitted me to print an excerpt from Human No Longer. So get comfy and enjoy. 

Shutting her eyes, she lingered at the door and listened to the night animals beyond the glass. They were frolicking out there in the autumn murkiness among the crispy leaves and cool dirt covered ground. Little creatures, with nocturne eyes and speedy feet, full of hot blood.

The mother in her fretted over leaving her children alone in the house but the hunger overpowered the mother and she snuck outside into the darkness.

She told herself they’d be fine. She’d be back shortly. That she should reward herself for her self-restraint all day. She hadn't. attacked one living person. Hadn't gone crazy or hung from the rafters by her feet. She’d done well.

She told herself that killing innocent little animals wasn't all that creepy, wasn't all that bad, considering the alternative. It didn't work. She loved animals and hated having to kill them at all for any reason. Or had. But, she had to keep reminding herself, animals died every minute of the day to fill humans’ stomachs. Right? Was what she did any worse than that? All she wanted was their blood. It was her food.

She felt guilty only until she captured the large fox, humanely snapped its neck to drink the blood (which tasted better than anything she’d ever drank or eaten) and then was too exhilarated to think of anything but further feeding her hunger; not even that she could run faster than she ever had, could see like an owl through the darkness, smell her prey miles away and that her teeth were changing. When she stuck her finger into her mouth she could feel the points. Oh, great. Little fangs. Oh, Lord, could this get any weirder? She thought about those horror movies she’d seen over the years where some unlucky human had been bitten and was slowly turning into god-knows-what and couldn’t believe or accept it. Was in shock. Now she knew exactly how they’d felt.

Though, in the end, she did feel regret for killing the poor fox and the one the night before. But, yes, it was better than feeding off homo sapiens. Damn straight it was.

After ingesting the blood she felt as if there was nothing she couldn't deal with. No problem she couldn't solve, no disaster she couldn't avert. She was superwoman.

This wasn't so bad, was it? It’d occurred to her perhaps if a good person became a vampire that might be the key. Good person equals good vampire? Bad person equals bad vampire? She could only pray that was the case. Oh, it could be worse. She could lust after human blood and not be able to resist. Now that would be a deal breaker.

She absorbed the night poised beside a towering tree, its limbs shifting in the wind; inhaled the dizzying perfumes of the forest. Her lips on the verge of smiling. She felt better than she had since she’d come out of the coma weeks ago.

Her new world revolved around her in slow motion. The night birds cooed in their nests. The air danced among the dying leaves. Insects skittered between limbs and under bushes. On the breeze there were aromatic wisps of brewing coffee and chocolate (cake she thought), fresh baking bread and as always now, blood. Animal blood in the small bustling creatures hiding out all around her and in the distance the cloying scent of human blood. Her children asleep in their beds. Amazing.

God, the night was beautiful.

That’s when she saw the pale figure hiding between the trees to her left. A tall man dressed in drab clothes watched her.

She merged deeper into the woods among the thicker underbrush but when she looked back, he was still on the fringe observing.

Waves of uneasiness rippled through her and the vertigo was unbalancing. This man stalking her wasn't her friend. This man was dangerous. If he was a man.

She ran all the way home at a speed she never would have imagined a human capable of. More like flying really. Her feet barely touched the ground, her night eyes so keen she never once collided with a tree or stumbled over a rock.

Within seconds she was inside the farmhouse peeking out the windows; the mysterious stranger nowhere in sight. Thank God.***

How creepy is that? I am dying to know who the man is and why he is there. It makes me want to start it now. I suck at being patient. 

Are you wondering how Kathryn came up with the idea for this story? I am. I love hearing how stories come about. Here is the back story on Human No Longer.

Human No Longer. It’s my 17^th published book – yeah! – and my fourth vampire novel. First, let me tell you where I got the idea for it. About five years ago, I was still trying to please the agent (who I no longer have) who’d sold four of my earlier paperback novels to Zebra in the 1990’s and, because she didn't seem to like any of my new potential concepts, I asked her what she would like to see. Out of nowhere, she said, “You know your 1991 Zebra vampire novel, Vampire Blood? I liked that one a lot. The characters. Well, how about writing me a sort of sequel with basically the same cast, but with this premise: A woman, a mother, after being turned into a bloodthirsty vampire, must learn to adapt to the human world and still be a good mother. You know, how would she deal with everything when she had children she loved; didn't want to hurt or leave them…but still had the need to feed on blood? Still had all the urges and desires of a vampire?

Yikes. I hated the idea but, to please her, I went ahead and begrudgingly wrote the book. I tentatively called it The Vampire’s Children or The Vampire Mother or something like that. I finished it. Not too happy with it. I had never liked writing what other people wanted me to write. Stubborn, I guess.

My agent, in the meantime, had begun her own online erotic (which I don’t much care to write) publishing company and when I’d gotten done with the novel she was too busy to even read the finished book. She handed it off to an apprentice intern. An intern? What? Who didn't like it at all. Duh. So, disgusted, I tucked the file away on my computer and, fed up with the whole agent thing, returned to writing what I wanted to write. An end of days novel called A Time of Demons and a new vampire novel where the evil vampire wasn't a mother. In 2010 I went with a new publisher, Kim Richards at Damnation Books/Eternal Press, and she contracted not only those two books but asked me if I’d like to rewrite, update and re-release all 7 of my older out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks going back to 1984. Heck yes, I said! So for the next 2 years I was busy doing that. Some of those books were over twenty-five years old and very outdated. Their rewriting, editing and re-releasing took a lot of work and time.

Then, in late 2012, I decided to take a very old book of mine (Predator) which was contracted to Zebra Paperbacks in 1993 but, in the end, never actually released, and just for the heck of it, as my 16^th novel, self-publish it to Amazon Kindle Direct. Just in ebook form. A kind of grand experiment. The first time I’ve ever tried self-publishing. See how it’d sell. Dinosaur Lake. A story about a hungry mutant dinosaur loose in the waters of Crater Lake that goes on a rampage. Hey, I wrote Dinosaur Lake before Jurassic Park, the book, ever came out! Really. I had my cover artist, Dawne Dominique make a cover for it…and it was stunning with a dinosaur roaring on the front. And I did everything else myself. Editing. Proofing. Formatting. With forty years and endless publishers behind me I felt I was capable. And it’d been selling so well I decided to self-publish another one…and I remembered the mother/vampire book. Hmm  So I revamped (ha, ha, inside joke), polished, and self-published it, as well. I re-titled it Human No Longer. Got my fabulous cover artist, Dawne Dominique, to make me a lovely haunting cover with a troubled-looking woman standing outside a spooky house, with two children behind her in its shadows, on the front and voila! All in all, I don’t think the book turned out half bad. In fact, with the changes I made I think it’s not bad at all. Now I just hope my readers will like it.

So that’s the story of Human No Longer. My 17^th published novel.***

Hmm. Interesting but now I am really curious. 17 published novels? Just who is Kathryn Meyer Griffith? Here is what she has to say about herself:

Since childhood I've always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had seventeen (ten romantic horror, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance and two murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books/Eternal Press and Amazon Kindle Direct.

I've been married to Russell for almost thirty-five years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I've been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

To see all of Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Books available at Amazon.com, click here.

As most of you know already I am a cover freak. So for your pleasure, and mine, here are the covers for Kathryn's other novels:

    

   

    

    

  

and her two novellas

  

There are some great covers there. I am eager to review Human No Longer and then, perhaps, on to Don't Look Back, Agnes. Or maybe Egyptian Heart. But then Vampire Blood was the start of Human No Longer. Ugh!  That is what covers do to me!!

I hope you have enjoyed checking out Human No Longer with me. Later this week I will have the review up for you. 

For more on Kathryn Meyer Griffith please visit her websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http://www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith 

http://www.romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

As always your comments are most welcome!