How Do Vampires Stay Happy? A guest post by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Tracey (who has a very cool name, by the way) has posted a number of posts about positive thinking and happiness recently, which got me thinking about vampires and their mental well being.  

Vampires have a tough row to hoe, really.  I explained how difficult it can be for them when I stopped at Kathryn Wallis’ blog (http://bit.ly/ReWJu0) earlier in my blog tour, when I was also explaining how The Unspoken Ones in my vampire romance series, Blood Stone, found it easier to withdraw from society and the world at large after a millenia or two of passing through history, rather than trying to adapt and change any more.  Once they had withdrawn, they developed very strange behaviours and attitudes, off in their isolation.

One character in the second novel of the series, which is also called Blood Stone, that is to be released tomorrow (!) is Nial.  Nial is so old he also qualifies for the status of Unspoken One…but he isn’t one.  How did he managed to avoid that awful abyss?  How did he stay happy for over a millenia? 

There’s a clue in the first book, Blood Knot, when the woman that would become his wife quizzes him on truth telling.  Winter can adjust other people’s biologies by touching them, and she attempts to “read” Nial by touch:

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For the tiniest fraction of a second, Nathanial hesitated. Then he lifted his hand out to her. He had a big hand, to match his height and frame. But unlike Sebastian, he did not have the long, sensitive fingers. His were strong, the palm square. There were calluses below the fingers. Winter touched them.
“From my sword,” Nathanial said.

“But…that must have been years ago.”

“Centuries, actually. Our physiologies do not change, Winter.” His gaze was steady, defying her to be appalled or horrified.

She covered his hand with both of hers and edged her senses inside him. It was the same deadness she remembered from her incursion inside Sebastian. But it wasn’t all black and dead and darkness. There was life of a sort. Just not life as she understood it. The heart was there, capable of beating. Blood, and veins and arteries. All the organs were where they should be. They were all dormant, ready to function as needed.

“Do you like football, Nathanial?”

“NFL? Bores me silly,” he told her. His body remained still. Silent.

“What do you like?”

“Sports are vague posturing of people who have forgotten why they do what they are doing. Did you know that most team sports were originally conducted to prepare men for war?” He shook his head. “I find them vapid and shallow.”

She smiled. “Well, I guess I asked for your true opinion.”

Nathanial smiled. “You did.”

“Very well. What do you like that isn’t sports? What gets you excited? Apart from sex?” she added hastily.

The gleam in his eyes told her the final proviso had been just in time. He considered for a moment. “There is no one thing that I consistently turn to. But there are many things that move me. I find them every day. You just have to be open to seeing them and they come to you.”

“I don’t understand,” Winter confessed.

“The modern philosophers and cultural psychologists of this day and age advise everyone that they should have a hobby that they’re passionate about, to give them an interest in life. That’s what you’re trying to ask me about now. Truth is, Winter, I ran out of time and patience for maintaining interests decades ago. Now, I just follow life. There’s always something new to learn and life always gives me something beautiful to appreciate. Something to get excited about.” He nodded towards the window. “Like your hair outlined by the sunset a moment ago. They were the perfect compliment.”

And she felt his heart shift just a little.

“Have you ever stopped to truly smell the bergamot in a pot of fresh Earl Grey tea, Winter?” he asked. “I’ve forgotten what it tastes like now, but the smell is divine.”

Blood stirred and flowed, pushed by his heart.

“I like studying the stars, because they’re older than me, and they make me feel very small, humble and insignificant. They haven’t changed in all the years I’ve looked up at them, despite the massive changes I’ve seen on Earth. I find that astonishing and comforting at the same time.”

Again, the small flutter of his heart beating.

“Every day there are small things. A kitten asleep in a plant pot. The sun rising over the snow and turning it pink. Hoar frosts still take my breath away with their beauty despite the hundreds I have seen. The kindness of the stranger who pays for the next person’s drinks at the coffee shop. The rudeness of tourists in Jasper during the summer season. The unconscious beauty of young people who don’t realize they have everything ahead of them and are enjoying their every moment now, just as they should.

“And then sometimes I am rewarded by meeting someone like you, Winter, who stirs me so strongly I am forced to hide my reactions with professional techniques.”

And his heart squeezed. Hard. It began to beat with a normal systolic pulse.

[Extract from Blood Knot – copyright © Tracy Cooper-Posey 2010]

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When the Unspoken Ones become a more active force in Blood Stone, Nial has to explain himself and his great age and happy outlook yet again.  This time, his answer is a little less patient and a lot less complicated:

__

“I was born in the year five hundred and fifty-nine in what is now called northern Italy. I’ll save you some mental gymnastics. That was one thousand, four hundred and fifty-three years ago. But I think of myself as…” He shrugged. “In my thirties.”

Roman was scowling again and Garret recognized the expression as the one he used when he was thinking hard and disagreeing with the stated opinion.

“Euphrasia didn’t think of herself as thirty,” Garrett guessed.

Roman just scowled harder.

“The unspoken ones aren’t some sort of exclusive club to which you get invited by brown-nosing and paying membership dues,” Nial told them. “There isn’t an arbitrary age cut-off that says ‘at this point you become an unspoken one.’ Euphrasia simply didn’t want to be a part of modern life. She hated it. You spent a week on her island, Roman, so you tell me – what did it make you think of?”

Roman shrugged, still glowering. “Constantinople, like when I was a child. But simpler. Peaceful.”

“That was her version of ancient Athens,” Nial told him. “A far more comfortable and insulated one. She arranged it so she didn’t have to adapt anymore. She could just go on as she was, unchanging and uninterrupted.”

“But you didn’t choose that way,” Roman pointed out. “When every other vampire as old or older than you did choose it…or died. As far as I know you’re the oldest of the blood who still actively passes. Why didn’t you retire to coddle your worn psyche like the others?”

Nial shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I’m stubborn? Because something interesting came along just at the right time? Because I’ve been terribly lucky, all my long, long life. Who does know? I don’t look back, Roman. Well, not that often and I try not to linger on the unpleasantness, of which there’s been far too much. But I can tell you that I did think about chopping myself off from the world more than once. There is definite appeal to not having to go through the tiresome routine of change, over and over. But change is what makes life so damned interesting, too. And I can tell you when I stopped considering the idea altogether, when it became an absolute impossibility for me.”

“When you made Sebastian,” Garrett answered.

Nial glanced at him and smiled. “Of course, you would have that figured.”

Roman sat back in the sofa again. He almost threw himself back, as if he was frustrated, or made angry by the answer, but didn’t dare show it. “Is that why you defied the edicts and kept Sebastian with you all those years?”

Nial’s smile didn’t fade. “I didn’t keep Sebastian with me. He stayed because he wanted to. He still does. But in the way you mean, he kept me alive, yes.”

[Extract from Blood Stone– copyright © Tracy Cooper-Posey 2012]

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These are the moments I thought of when I was reading Tracey’s posts about happiness and positive thinking.  Nial has some pretty definite ideas about what keeps him centred and moving forward through his many days and nights:

1. Love
2. Focus on the positive stuff
3. Find pleasure each day, even in the smallest of things
4. Gratitude

It seems to me that’s a pretty good recipe for humans, too, wouldn’t you say?

____________

Blood Stone is my 44th title and my ninth indie book.

Nial orders Calum Garrett to get close to Hollywood producer Kate Lindenstream.  Garrett reluctantly complies for he has held himself apart from humans for centuries.  Kate doesn’t fall into Garrett’s arms, either.  She already has someone for that.  Roman Xerus -- whom Kate knows as Adrian -- and Garrett go way back to the sixteenth century Scottish highlands, but they parted bitterly two hundred years ago.

With Roman’s support, Kate battles Garrett in wills and business as he methodically forces himself into her life. However, on the closed-in movie set in the Californian desert, Garrett’s calm, orderly world crumbles for Garrett is drawn to Kate.  He has begins to experience real, human feelings.  

Kate doesn’t cooperate in the chess game Nial orchestrates, despite being unaware of the strategies swirling around her film set.  Demanding and expecting only the best for her movie, Kate’s agenda forces Roman and Garrett to work together to protect her and keep the humans around her ignorant of the Pro Libertatus, the anonymous and all-powerful vampire group who nearly killed Nial, Sebastian and Winter, and shield Kate from the excesses of the League for Humanity.  But could Roman really be with the Pro Libertatus?

There’s hidden intentions everywhere, and centuries of repressed feelings, along with at least two different groups that mean them harm.  Then there’s the rumours that Kate has found the mythical Blood Stone, the key to unlocking vampire history and lifting their curse.   Who is Kate, really?  Because once Garrett begins to notice, things about Kate don’t quite add up, either...

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An Excerpt From: BLOOD STONE
Copyright © TRACY COOPER-POSEY, 2012
All Rights Reserved.

Nial clapped his shoulder and stepped back to lean against the counter again. “Kate slapping you down is a good sign,” he said, smoothly changing the subject. “It confirms she has the backbone we’ll need. She really is perfect for this. I’m more curious about how Roman came into her life. It’s interesting timing.”

Garrett frowned. “The only people who knew in advance about the plans for Kate are us three...and I presume your—Winter.”

Sebastian grinned but didn’t comment about Garrett’s change of name for their wife.

Nial crossed his arms. “Then Roman has to be there for his own reasons—or for Pro Libertatis reasons.”

“What possible reasons would the Pro Libertatis have for seeking her out, before we give them one?” Sebastian said.

“None,” Garrett said flatly. “Kate Lindenstream is exactly what she seems to be. A Hollywood producer/director who makes successful big budget action adventure movies, and has a growing amount of political power in the industry because of it. She has a lot of friends in high places, and probably has a number of skeletons in her closet, just like all the power players do. She can do interesting things with money. If she wasn’t so wrapped up in La-la land, I would have coaxed her over to one of my Boston corporations a year ago and put her in charge of finance.”

Nial lifted a brow. “You did your homework.”

“I’m not stupid, Nathanial,” Garrett shot back. “This woman has a tested IQ of 160. She would have spotted holes in a cover story from ten miles away. The approach had to be flawless and long term.”

“And now that you’ve met her in person, what is your reading?” Nial asked.

“She has an entrepreneurial mind. She thinks like a man — probably a result of fighting it out in the industry she’s in, and surviving. She likes to have fun and explore with big toys. That’s why she does all those hands-on research trips to wild corners of the globe and lives rough and hard for six weeks in the Gobi Desert or the Atlas Mountains while she digs up some interesting trinket or another for her next movie.” Garrett grimaced. “She also doesn’t mind slapping down men every now and again to prove her point. She has mental balls.”

Sebastian laughed softly. “I like her already.”

Nial was frowning. “These research trips of hers. That’s one of the reasons we focused on her, Garrett. The last trip she did...”

Garrett shrugged. “She’s in pre-production for some biopic about a warrior emperor. Murad. She did all the research a year or so ago.”

Nial nodded. “Somewhere in southern Turkey.”

Garrett felt the jolt almost down to his toes. “Çayönü,” he breathed. “Near Diyarbakir.”

Sebastian moved around the counter and came up next to Garrett’s side. He was taller than Garrett remembered, and looked Garrett in the eye. “Murad was an Ottoman emperor, wasn’t he?”

Garrett nodded.

Nial straightened up from his slouch against the counter. “Southern Turkey was all part of the Byzantine empire...and the Ottoman, too. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Roman was born an Ottoman. He’s probably heard about Kate’s research,” Garrett said.

Nial crossed his arms again. “You have to find out, Garrett. Roman is a wildcard we need to neutralize if this game is to play the way we want it to.”

Garrett grimaced. “In three hundred years, I never could tame Roman in the slightest. The best I managed was to walk away and not look back.”

Sebastian’s smile was grim. “You can’t walk away this time, my friend. Your stakes are not the only ones on the table anymore.”

Garrett nearly opened his mouth to ask who else had a stake in the game beside him. Then he clamped his jaw closed, his heart pounding, as he realized the answer for himself.

Everyone’s future rode on the outcome of this. Human and vampire. Merely the future of mankind.

BLOOD STONE is the second book in the Blood Stone series

BLOOD STONE is the sequel to BLOOD KNOT.

It is a Plus-sized Novel.

WARNING:  This book contains two hot, sexy alpha heroes, frequent, explicit and frank sex scenes and sexual language.
It includes heart-stopping sexual scenes between the aforementioned sexy heroes, menage scenes, anal sex and the use of sex toys.  Don't proceed beyond this point if hot love scenes offend you.
No vampires were harmed in the making of this novel.

___

Blood Stone is the second book in my best selling vampire romance series.  It will be on sale on September 14, if not a bit before then. 

The good news?  The first book in the series, Blood Knot, is my #1 best seller, was the Winner of the Coffee Time Reviewer’s Recommended Award, was listed as one of Goodread’s “Most Drool-worthy Covers“, nominated for Erotic Vampire Book of the Year by The Romance Reviews, and received a CAPA Nomination for Best Paranormal Book of the Year by The Romance Studio, December, 2011, among many glowing and rave reviews.  If you’re curious about Blood Knot, you can read more here:  http://bit.ly/g9pSw5. 

The really good news?  On the 14^th, when Blood Stone is released, Blood Knot drops down to $0.00 for three days of free downloading at Amazon.

Bookmark Blood Knot on Amazon now:  http://amzn.to/hcrCCf

And bookmark Blood Stone on my website, so you can jump to the Amazon link the day it goes live:  http://bit.ly/TrCuWv

If you want a reminder on the 14^th to go get your free book, sign up to my blog’s RSS feed, or to the email feed, or to my newsletter.

Tracy Cooper-Posey writes romantic suspense, hot erotic paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published over 40 novels since 1999, been nominated for 5 CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award. 

She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated three times for Book Of The Year.   She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at Grant MacEwan University. 

She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together.  In her spare time she enjoys sewing, history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.  

You can find her site at http://www.TracyCooperPosey.com.