Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card

I'm trying to decide which book description to use with my historical vampire novel, The Bad Death. Help me out. Vote by leaving a comment on this blog and note it on the Rafflecopter form below to be entered in a raffle to win a $25 Amazon gift card. You can cast more entries by tweeting or posting about the contest on Facebook. The contest is international and runs from Monday, July 29 12:01 AM to Monday, August 5 midnight EST.

The Bad Death is a violent adventure with a kick-ass heroine and a steamy romantic subplot. So, if you were browsing and you picked up a copy, which of these would prompt you to buy the book?

Option A:

Passion rules the heart and terror rules the night…

South Carolina, 1788. The beautiful black woman emerging from his family crypt is a stranger to Julian Mouret, the refined owner of Lion’s Court plantation. A dancer and a mystery, she spins a strange, dark, and impossible tale of peril and flight. Though he fears she must surely be mad, the handsome slave owner is soon himself a slave, lost to the seductions of this enchantress called Anika and determined to lead her North to safety.

But there can be no safe haven for Julian or the exquisite Gullah girl who has bewitched him, not while monsters roam the night. A series of horrifying mutilation murders screams of the presence of “plat-eyes”—shape-shifting blood-sucking supernatural creatures feeding at will on the plantation workers—and only Anika can end the rampage. But to face the vampire horde she will have to master the darkness within. And the price of victory in the battle ahead may well be the eternal soul of the man she is coming to love.

Option B:

Can she defeat supernatural horror in a world overrun by human evil?

It is 1788 in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Planters have fled the feverish climate, leaving vast estates in the care of Gullah slaves. Julian Mouret is the one planter who didn't leave, but how could he foresee the mortal consequence of a stranger’s embrace?

An African beauty emerges from the family crypt and shatters Julian’s isolation with a kiss. How she came to be in the crypt – and the unseen creatures that emerged with her – are mysteries that transcend time.

Anika has the strength and spirit to sustain her through a lifetime of slavery on Mouret plantations, but magic is about to overturn the laws of man and nature.

As a rising tide of brutal killings overwhelm the Lowcountry, Anika suspects shapeshifting creatures of legend known as plat-eyes. She, alone, holds the key to stopping their bloody rampage. But Julian Mouret, a man of science who scorns superstition, will block her at the risk of her life and his soul.

Which one?

Instructions to enter the raffle: First, leave a comment. Then, use the form to mark that you left a comment (this enters your name in the raffle). To increase your odds of winning, use the form to tweet and post about the raffle (you can even tweet and post each day to super-increase your chances of winning). The winner is chosen randomly by Rafflecopter. Thanks for playing!

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Dressing Julian

Julian Mouret is a vampire in my contemporary novel, Bloodroom. My upcoming historical vampire novel, The Bad Death, also stars Julian Mouret. Today I took the stock image photo I bought for the cast-of-characters animation on bloodroomthenovel.com and "dressed" it in 18th century clothing for the cast-of-characters animation to be featured on thebaddeath.com. This wasn't quite as fun as dressing a good looking man for real, but it was still pretty fun.

The hottie in the tux is from http://www.istockphoto.com/. The young gent with the pistol is from 123rf.com. My challenge was to get Julian out of his tux and into the sharpshooter's old-timey clothes. I used my Photoshop 6.0.
.I can just hear the hoots of incredulity. Yes, I use 12 year old software! It has all the features I need for simple image manipulation. If you don't have Photoshop, Adobe now has an affordable monthly subscription service for its creative programs.

I'll assume you know very little as I explain what I did here. I copied the sharpshooter into the tuxedo photo, which put it on its own layer so I could manipulate it independently. Really, the dressing trick amounted to resizing sharpshooter's body to "fit" Julian's. I used the pen tool to create a path around the cravat so that I could cut and paste it into its own layer. I used the transform tool to resize the cravat and torso.

To fit the the cravat "around" Julian's chin, I used the lasso tool to free select portions I didn't need and also used the eraser tool. Julian looks awfully fierce about his new outfit. Could be that moody sky; it fortells of vampires on the horizon. I cut the sharpshooter out of the sky and dragged the halves of the sky together. Then I duplicated layers and played with the layers blending feature till I got this moody effect. The blending feature in the Layers palette makes the layer in question "react" to the layer beneath it for visual effect. I include a screenshot of my layers. You'll see the selected layer has blending set to "Soft Light". If you mess with enough layers' blending features they all sort of affect each other, which can make for interesting results.