Guest Post: Let’s Talk Fantasy by Raven Hart

Our next guest post come from Raven Hart, the author of the Savannah Vampires series from Ballantine books: The Vampire’s Seduction, The Vampire’s Secret, The Vampire’s Kiss, The Vampire’s Betrayal, and The Vampire’s Revenge.

Hi, all. Raven Hart here, courtesy of my most favoritest book club boss, Michelle. I write the Savannah Vampires series from Ballantine books. Let’s talk fantasy!

I love to talk about what kinds of books, TV, and movies I like and am anxious to hear your suggestions as well. If not for a friend’s recommendation, I would never have discovered Torchwood for example, and I LOVE Torchwood. It’s in my top five favorite fantasy series of all time behind “Buffy,”  “Battlestar Gallactica,”  “Angel,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

I just saw the new “Star Trek” movie and liked it very much. As far as vampires are concerned I really liked the “Twilight” film but not as much as the books. I’m really looking forward to “New Moon” later this year. I’m a huge fan of HBO’s “True Blood” based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books. I also like the Underworld movies and “Interview with the Vampire” based on the Anne Rice book. I wish there were more really high-quality vampire movies out there.

All the foregoing are well known and very popular of course, but here’s a tip about a vampire series you might not know about. Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt vampire novels are awesome. They are not what you’d call romances although there’s some romance in there. They’re more what I could call noir-style horror novels in a richly-imagined world in which Manhattan and the other boroughs of New York are divided up into vampire gangs.

Another fantasy that I read last year and can’t say enough about was a book called “The Gargoyle.” It was very, very different. Again, not a typical paranormal romance so be forewarned.

So, what are YOU guys reading? What are some vampire books and movies that you think are truly exceptional?

Cheers!

Raven Hart
www.ravenhartbooks.com

~ ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Raven has been a newspaper reporter, a speechwriter for a K Street PR firm in Washington, D.C., and for most of her career, a technical writer. Believe it or not, though, writing about how to keep your crane hoist in good working order didn’t satisfy her creative urges. So she decided to become a novelist, at least part-time. Since the romance genre makes up half of all paperback fiction, she figured her chances of getting published there were somewhat greater than those of being hit by a meteor. So she joined Romance Writers of America.

During the years that followed she wrote romances for Harlequin and Zebra. Later she sold stories for literary anthologies published by Belle Books. However, while she liked to read good romance novels, horror stories had become her favorite. She was hooked on the sinful, sensual, soul-challenged vampires of Anne Rice.

So Raven created a vampire series of her own, starring two sexy Savannah vampires—southern aristocrat blood drinker William Cuyler Thorne and Jack McShane, a blue-collar, NASCAR-loving vampire who didn’t know what he was getting into when he volunteered for everlasting undeath.