Welcome to the Paranormal Love Wednesdays Blog Hop! This hop is for writers to share their works--either published or in progress--and their love of all things paranormal! So check out my discussion of setting in Sanguinary, below, then HOP to the rest of the entries for some great new reads!
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Setting in Sanguinary
The Metroplex
I grew up in a small town in Texas; the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex was the closest urban area and where we went to do "city" things. I didn't know until I was an adult that the term "metroplex" (meaning two almost-equal cities forming one contiguous urban area) originated with Dallas/Fort Worth. In Sanguinary, Cami Davis is a Dallas city police officer, but having to work with officers from Fort Worth or any of the smaller cities around the area always remains a possibility.
Most of the action of the novel, however, takes place in the Dallas Arts District.
The Winspear Opera House
I have season tickets to the Dallas Opera, so it's perhaps no surprise that I would use this wonderful building as a setting. Its curving exterior walls are a deep red, and the tinted windows that make up the exterior walls turn that color to a blood red. When I started writing Sanguinary, the image of a murder outside the building and the matching reds of the blood and the walls stuck in my mind. So the novel opens with Cami examining the latest in a string of murders—this one on the flagstones leading into the Winspear.
The Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe
This beautiful church serves the largest cathedral congregation in the United States, with more than 25,000 registered families in the congregation. It stands in the center of the Dallas Arts District, and is one of the most distinctive buildings in the area. And I couldn't imagine a novel about vampires that didn't include at least one cathedral.
The Adolphus Hotel
The beautiful beaux art Adolphus has been a Dallas landmark since it was built in 1921, and has hosted Queen Elizabeth II, the Vanderbilts, Oscar de la Renta, Donald Trump, U2 and Babe Ruth, among others. When I was deciding where the Sanguinary would hold their annual masquerade ball, I couldn't imagine a better setting than the Adolphus's glorious ballroom.
The Blood House
This is the only part of the setting that is wholly fictional, though of course all of the other buildings are used fictionally. The Blood House is a local vampire hangout, and this is how Cami describes it the first time she sees it:
An enormous crystal chandelier hung down from the ceiling, casting a sharp, glittering light across the scene below. The balcony overlooked the central area, a marble-tiled room with white floors and burgundy velvet drapes covering the walls and windows. A black marble staircase curved up to the balcony on each side of the room.
At the very back of the room, a bartender manned a bar made of dark wood. As I watched, several people (or maybe vampires) slipped through the door that stood directly behind the bar, always sure to close the heavy wood behind them.
Dark niches lined the walls under the balcony, many with velvet drapes drawn across them. The ones that were open held couches, some of them with figures draped across them—sleeping or dead, I wasn't sure. People—humans? vampires? both?—stood in small groups on the balcony and on the ground floor.
Soft, baroque chamber music swayed through the room from a hidden sound system, notes from the flutes dancing across the deeper sound of stringed instruments.
And it smelled like blood. The coppery tang of it shivered on the back of my tongue.
I imagine it looking quite a bit like this image of the Hammerstein Ballroom in the Manhattan Center in New York City.
Taken altogether, these buildings create a backdrop to Sanguinary's story of blood, lust, and power in Dallas.
Detective Cami Davis and her sexy, cowboy-turned-vampire informant are all that’s standing between humanity and monsters who would rule the world—and all that’s standing between them having a torrid love affair is the fact that he’s an enemy of humanity.
THROUGH DARKEST TEMPTATION
When Dallas police detective Cami Davis joined the city’s vampire unit, she planned to use the job as a stepping-stone to a better position in the department. She didn’t know then what she knows now: A silent war rages between humans and their supposedly pacified predators, and the vampires are winning. With the clock running out on her kind, Cami will do whatever she must to defeat the “Sanguinary.”
Enter Reese Fulton, a disaffected ex-cop and a vampire. She can’t exactly trust him, but with his cowboy boots and good-ole-boy drawl he’s the perfect beard for Cami’s fledgling undercover operation.
Yet playing Reese’s Claimed—a vampire’s personal bloodgiver—isn’t as straightforward as she was led to believe. His bite is as enthralling as his dimpled smile, and soon Cami is wondering which will pose more of a challenge: subduing the enemies of humanity...or her own desire.
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Buy Links
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About the Author
Margo Bond Collins writes urban fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal mysteries. She lives in Texas with her daughter and several spoiled pets. Although writing fiction is her first love, she also teaches college-level English courses online. She enjoys reading romance and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, monsters, cowboys, and villains, and the strong women who love them—and sometimes fight them.
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Connect with Margo
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/margobondcollins
Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com
Website: http://www.MargoBondCollins.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MargoBondCollin @MargoBondCollin
Goodreads Author Page: http://www.goodreads.com/vampirarchy
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/MargoBondCollins
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/mbondcollins/
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