Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Debut Showcase: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

(click to image to enlarge)

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)

The undead can really screw up your senior year . . .

Marrying a vampire definitely doesn’t fit into Jessica Packwood’s senior year “get-a-life” plan. But then a bizarre (and incredibly hot) new exchange student named Lucius Vladescu shows up, claiming that Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by birth—and he’s her long-lost fiancĂ©. Armed with newfound confidence and a copy of Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions, Jessica makes a dramatic transition from average American teenager to glam European vampire princess. But when a devious cheerleader sets her sights on Lucius, Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a global vampire war—and save Lucius’s soul from eternal destruction.

Tia's Take:
The author must have redefined vampires if they can be born as one. Lots of authors have come up with ways to redefine vampires--everything from aliens among us to the blood-sucking fiends we all know so well. According to the author's site, this novel has already gone into a second printing, so I continue to be in the minority with my aversion to vampires. Maybe it's a generational thing, because I know Mulluane will agree with me.

Mulluane's Take:
Eww, yuk, ick....Though I do sympathize with the failure of her "get-a-life-plan". Aside from that, haven't the versions of the name Lucifer already been done enough? I do have to admit one guilty secret, I loved Anne Rice's take on vampires but aside from that, I am not a fan. Give me a good old demon any day! I'm sure though that all the paranormal romance lovers will get a kick out of this one.

Note: This is my first attempt at putting the image elsewhere to solve the image placement problem, which was the subject of the next post down. Please let me know if the image still obscures the text, although at this point, I don't know if there's anything I can do about it.

5 comments:

Kimber Li said...

Does any aspiring author who does NOT include a vampire in their novel stand a chance these days?

And if you do include one, does that give you a free ticket to break every other rule?

(((sigh)))

Tia Nevitt said...

It just SEEMS like they're all vampire novels but really, they're not.

We just need to invent the next hot genre!

Anne said...

{Sigh} If only inventing a genre was a bit easier to do. It would make finding what I like to read so much easier. {lop-sided smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Tia Nevitt said...

Anne, I think it's a matter of getting lucky.

Anne said...

True; there's always some luck in finding what you want. However, having some recognition that what you like is a recognizable type of fiction helps. Having a recognizable name for the type helps, too.

I'm not there yet for either of those. I didn't even know what set my favorites apart until Dad coined a term for what I like best: "family fantasy." He means fantasy (and science fiction) stories based in families, and primarily concerned with interactions between relatives, and between very close friends. {Smile}

I'm still working out and ramifications. However, I've figured out that it's a lot easier to find fantasy and science fiction than it is to find family fiction of any stripe. The former two are clearly labeled sub-sections of Juvenile, Young Adult and Adult fiction. Family fiction, on the other hand, is scattered all over the store, and often isn't recognizable by either label or blurb. {Sigh} I don't know that it really needs to be a separate genre, but I DO wish that it was easier to spot. {lop-sided smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin