Norah Wilson has Bite! (And a Barnes & Noble gift card) Back to Blog
Update: The winner of the $10 Barnes & Noble gift card is…Connie T!
Our next guest is very busy author Norah Wilson–Norah, thanks so much for coming by! I can’t wait to learn more about your vamps!
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First let me say I’m thrilled to be here during Cynthia’s launch of Angel Betrayed. Her paranormal romances rock out loud!
And I’m thrilled to share with you an excerpt from one of my own paranormal romances. Nightfall is the second in my Vampire Romance series. Nightfall really seems to be finding its audience, which makes me happy. Aiden and Sam might just be the best match I’ve ever made.
Here’s the blurb:
Aiden Afflack (a vampire) is as charming, sexy and easy-going as he is gorgeous. Unless you happen to be a rogue vampire, in which case he’s apt to be the last thing you see. Sam Shea is a wildly successful nature photographer whose prescient dreams lead her to some of the world’s most turbulent, awe-inspiring weather phenomena.
When their paths cross and Aiden discovers that his proximity to Sam warps her psychic power, causing her to hone in on vampire violence instead of violent weather, he knows he’s found a priceless tool in his fight to rid the world of rogues.
Sam has a deep-rooted aversion to having her powers exploited, but once her eyes have been opened to the lives she can help save, she can’t withhold her cooperation. But she can deny Aiden the other thing he wants from her, which makes her unique among women. And absolutely irresistible to Aiden!
***
And an excerpt:
She looked tired, he thought, as she swung the door open. Still beautiful, of course, but tired and nerved-up and edgy. Good. She’d been having the dreams.
“May I come in?”
“Good of you to ask, since we both know you could have been inside waiting for me.”
Oh, yeah, she was definitely feeling chippy. But she stepped aside and let him enter.
She locked the door and leaned back against it. “By the way, how did you get in here last time without setting off the alarm?”
“Second story window. They’re not wired into your security system.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re sure you can’t fly?”
He grinned. “No flying. But I can jump pretty high.”
“Of course. Jump two stories,” she muttered, then pushed away from the door and headed toward the kitchen.
Without waiting for an invitation, he followed. She must have expected him to, because she tossed her next words over her shoulder.
“I’m fresh out of O negative, I’m afraid, but I can offer you some tea or coffee, if you’d like.”
“How about a whisky?”
That brought her head around. “Really?”
“If you’ve got it. It doesn’t give me a buzz, unfortunately, but it still burns going down. I like that.”
Something flickered in her eyes — compassion? She bent to open a lower cupboard. “How about vodka?”
“That’s fine.”
She put the bottle on the counter and got two old fashioned glasses down from an upper cupboard. Guess that meant she was abandoning the aromatic tea steeping in the mug by the sink. Probably a good idea, given the conversation to come. No doubt she had an inkling.
She poured two neat vodkas and handed him one. “I presume straight up is good if you’re looking for the burn.”
“Perfect.” He accepted the glass and took a sip. Ah, the woman knew her vodkas. Ketel One made most everything else seem rough as jet fuel. He leaned back against the cupboard. “You look tired.”
She almost spewed her vodka. “Wow. Does that line work any better for the next-to-immortal than it does for regular guys?”
He grinned. “I didn’t know you wanted me to use a line on you. I can do better.”
She blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. Can we sit down? I have some things I’d like to talk about.”
“Does this have anything to do with why I’m on the verge of asking my doctor for an Ambien prescription?”
“I think so.”
She sighed. “The living room, I guess.”
He followed her through. She took the same chair she had last time, he the same sofa.
“You’ve been having visions.”
She glared at him. “I have. Every night since you were last here, in fact.”
Her words carried a certain amount of venom, but he had no trouble cutting her slack. She hadn’t asked for this. He pulled a paper from the pocket of his jacket, unfolded it and passed it to her. Her fingers trembled, he noticed, as she took it.
She glanced at the sheet, then back up at him. “It’s a list of locations and times.”
“Do any of them mean anything to you?”
“Not the first one. Not the second.” Her finger paused on the third.
“Familiar?”
She looked up, her eyes huge. “What happened there?”
“Another homeless victim. The next one, too. Is that familiar? The locations are very close.”
Her grip tightened on the paper, wrinkling it. “Yes.”
“Keep going,” he urged.
“This one … Union Street in St. Louis?”
“There were two there, actually. A meth-addicted prostitute and yet another homeless man.”
The paper shook visibly now. “What about this rural one…?”
“Lexington area?”
“Yes.”
“Migrant workers. Two of them in the same night.”
She swallowed hard, but kept her eyes on the paper. “Was there something involving a train? I can’t think of the place….”
“Warrensburg?”
“That’s it.”
He whistled. “I wasn’t sure about that one. Modern-day train hopper found at the bottom of a gully. I figured it could have been an accident. It’s a dangerous hobby.”
She laughed, a short, sharp bark of a sound. “More dangerous than he knew.”
“Yes.”
She folded the paper and tossed it on the coffee table between them. When she lifted her gaze to meet his, he saw that her eyes glittered. “Okay, Aiden. Why?”
“Why?”
She rubbed at her right temple. “Why is all this vampire crap coming to me now? Until I went to St. Cloud and bumped into you, all I found at the end of the line were tornados and anvil clouds and dust storms. What’s happened to me?”
“Were you in Montreal recently? Say about four weeks ago?”
Her eyes widened. “An exhibit opening at a gallery on St-Paul. They were showing some of my stuff.”
“Is that where you had the St. Cloud dream? The one that sent you to Chief Michaels’ house?”
She’d paled. “Yes.”
He held her gaze. “I was there, too, in Montreal, to see a friend. He’s the one who asked me to straighten out Chief Michaels’ thinking vis-à-vis his stalking habit.”
She was still looking at him, but her eyes had lost focus. He could almost hear her thoughts tumbling, see the puzzle pieces falling into place.
“So we were both in Montreal when I had the St. Cloud dream. And both in St. Cloud when I dreamed about the second location there, the riverfront.”
“Yes.”
She focused in on him again. “And you’ve been here in Sioux City these past two weeks, haven’t you?”
“I have. At Edgar Salazar’s place just down the street, actually.”
She leapt to her feet. “It’s you! Dammit, you’re the reason this is coming to me!”
He resisted the urge to stand, lounging further back into the sofa’s cushions. “I think so, yes.”
“Then the solution is pretty straight-forward, isn’t it?”
She moved closer to loom over him, fists clenched, tears of anger ready to spill. Like one of her rain clouds, he thought.
“Sam—”
“Just stay the hell away from me! That’s all you need to do.”
“I could do that,” he agreed.
“Could do? You will do it. I won’t have my life highjacked like this. I won’t!”
“But what of the victims?”
The tears spurted. “What about me?”
“Sam, I caught up with the rogue who’d been cutting a swathe through Missouri last night. Even with computers and access to databases that are supposed to be off limits, it took me that long to sift through the reams of information to put a pattern together.But if we’d been working together, I might have been able to stop him after the first night.”
“It’s not my—”
“Fault? No, it’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault but the killers’. But we could stop them.”
She pressed her hands to her temples. “I can’t.”
“Do you want to know how old that prostitute was in St. Louis?”
“Oh, no. Please, Aiden. Don’t.”
Her eyes begged him not to tell her, but he couldn’t afford compassion. “She was sixteen. A runaway. Granted, the meth-amphetamine addiction probably would have killed her in a few years anyway, but as long as she was alive, there was always the possibility that she might get off it.”
A moan escaped her.
“And the second homeless victim? He would have been twenty-one next month. The migrant workers? They had families, Sam. Wives and children and one of them with a baby on the way.”
She covered her face with her hands and cried silently, her shoulders shaking.
Jesus, she was killing him.
He stood and pulled her into his arms. He half expected resistance, but her arms went around him and she pressed her face into his chest. His heart did a weird tripping thing.
Oh, Sam.
He put her away long enough to shrug out of his jacket, then pulled her down with him onto the couch. She turned fully into him and cried, dampening his shirt. He shushed her and stroked her hair and otherwise did what he could to provide the proverbial shoulder.
But dear God, all he could think about was licking those exquisite, salty droplets away, which would lead to nuzzling her earlobe, then her throat where her pulse throbbed. And then his unsheathed fangs would be buried deep in her delectable neck and she’d be writhing beneath him in a sexual bliss such as she could never imagine.
A moment later, the sobs subsided, but she made no move to draw back.
“I hate you for this.”
He stroked her hair, ignoring the unexpected pang under his breastbone. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She pulled away, wiping her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.
He fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
She moved further away on the sofa’s cushions to finish the mop up operations. “So, what now? How do we … work together?”
***
Thanks for checking out the excerpt! Now…for the prize…want to win a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card? Then tell me what you like most about vampires. Or, if you aren’t a vamp fan, then what supernaturals do you enjoy?
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What I like most about vampires are their fangs and sexual appeal:)
yadkny@hotmail.com
Ah, yes, the fangs. Very sexy! Except sometimes on TV, it can be more funny than sexy to have them snap audibly into place. But in our books (and imaginations), they’re always sexy. Well, except when they’re threatening. ,-)
I am a HUGE vamp or were fan! I like vampires because they have this mesmerizing sexuality about them. The ones who have lived for centuries are the ones that are the most interesting because they must adapt with the changing times or risk exposure and that knowledge of the ages is intriguing.
Good points, Lora! And I love exploring how they cope with change. In my first book, Delano had stayed aloof from people, so I tried to make his voice and syntax reflect an old world sensibility. But Aiden in Nightfall is much more hip. 🙂
They are the perfect picture of bad boys that I love so much. Bad, dangerous and fighting their instincts. Powerful, dark and sexy 🙂
Love that point, Jolene, about fighting their instincts. There’s something extremely sexy about that leashed danger, that self-control. 🙂
What draws me to vamps is their immortality and the fact that more often than not, they’re perfect and gorgeous.
Exactly! They are larger than life. Stronger. Faster. More. 🙂
There is something very sexual about vampires and the biting of the neck and wrist.
Maybe because those wonderful pulse points are very delicate, very vulnerable. Very sexy!
Shifters are my favorite paranormal creatures but vampires are a close second. I like vampires because they have seen everything before. Very little surprises them. They are usually very wise.
Hey, I like that perspective! I think in my first book I have Delano explain his extreme wealth by observing that if you live long enough and have a sufficiently long look at human nature, it’s not that hard. 😀
Wow, your vamps sound awesome! As far as vamps are concerned, what’s not to like (tall, dark and bitey) Swoon! Thanks for helping my friend Cynthia celebrate and can’t wait to read your vamp series! Thanks for the wonderful giveaway.
Thanks, Barb! I’m thrilled to be here.
I like werewolves because they are strong. When they mate, they mate for life. They never travel alone and they have a long life expectancy. They are also very loyal. There is something really sexy about a werewolf.
Agreed! Weres are my #2 favs, and not just since Joe Manganiello walked onto the True Blood set as Alcide Herveaux. Though that didn’t hurt. ,-)
Their sex appeal:)
😀
I do love vamps. I like that they are strong, mysterious, and can be loyal to those they care about.
mythic021@gmail.com
I love how you put that, Vanessa, that the “can be loyal to those they care about”. They’re a trifle unpredictable.
love vamps…thanks for showing soo many new wonderful books
love that they are sooo sexy
I’ve been reading all the excerpts too. And charging my Kindle. 😉
not really into vamps. Oh there are a few authors out there that keeps me liking theirs, and sometimes new authors surprise me with their twists and I have renewed faith in blood suckers. they tend to get too cliche.
Now give me elves and dragons.. You have me for life.
Mmm, dragons. As my friend Shea MacLeod says, “Everything’s better with dragons.”
I love vamps(and other paranormals). They’re cool, cold, mysterious, strong, superpowered, and a little dangerous.
I think you summed that up pretty well, Danni!
Love vamps! Sexy, dangerous, the ultimate bad-boy!
AMEN! 😀
Yes! Ultimate bad boy.
I love the strength of vampires, the appeal the secretive ways they have.
Definitely a mystery to them.
What I love about vampires, is that they live forever. I think it would be fantastic to see the world as it changes over hundreds of years. Especially with someone you love 🙂
Now there’s a great question – can love last eternally? Kind of an attractive idea, especially in this world where marriages can last months. Opinions?
I love the confidence of the vampire. They have all these really cool abilities and are super sect so it only goes to figure they could be cocky ;).
You bet. Cockier as a cowboy, but with more sophistication. 😉
I like that they don’t always have to be the bad guys. They can be sexy as hell with big hearts and of course sometimes heros!
Lisa B
Love this excerpt. I need to read a good vampire book. It’s been a while.
Thanks, Lisa! I love it when they’re heroes. Love it even more when they start out reluctantly.
Vampires are my favorite paranormal creatures. They can be good, bad or both and still have that dark and mysterious appeal. I like their enhanced powers. Better sight, hearing and longevity is always a plus.
Oh, excellent point (good, bad or both)! A good vampire needs to be a little of both, I think.
Vampires were my first love.. Bela Lugosi on the old UFH channels growing up was my first fascination.. and it grew from there. Spike has to be my all time favorite tv vampire – along with the boys from Vampire Diaries… So that love spilled over into books.
Oh, definitely on Spike! So, Stefan or Damon?
Great excerpt. What I like most is that they can be such a versatile creature. There is so much that can be done with the story and their myth.
That is absolutely the most fun, playing with the myths and building my own world. 🙂
i’m not a big vampire fan. i’m more into shifters like in nalini singh’s psy-changeling series.
Love that about the paranormal market – there’s something for everyone. I like the off-the-beaten-path stuff, too. Selkies, Djinn, demi-Gods, you name it.
I love vampires. I have loved them ever since I was a little girl & watched Love at First Bite and Once Bitten. Now I like my vampires like Charlaine Harris’s. I love the fact they are strong & can minipulate people’s minds. They are irresistable. I love my vamps.—Rachel
Me, too, Rachel! And yeah, love the True Blood vamps. Also loved Mick in Moonlight. Also Blood Ties based on Tanya Huff’s books. If there’s a vamp show on TV, I’ll try it.
I like the possibilty of choosing to be good. Although it is usually not in their natures to be good, they can choose to keep some of their humanity. I love the danger factor of not knowing what might make them cross the line.
I’m not a huge paranormal fan. At least, that’s what I keep saying. But Norah Wilson’s writing pulls me in effortlessly every time.
Oh, Kate, what a positively wonderful thing to say.
Stephanie, I think you’ve hit on one of my favorite reasons for loving these guys.
I love how vampires are so darkly sensual and their sometimes gentleman exterior.
Dr. Delano Bowen in The Merzetti Effect is very much a gentleman; Aiden in Nightfall, not so much. But that dark sensuality is a prerequisite, I think.
Norah writes such sexy vampires! The stories are different too. I love the way she melds modern medicine with vampires.
Wow, thank you, Lina! (Lina writes award-winning vampire stories herself.) And yeah, the medicalized model for vampirism was fun. Some people read it and say, “Wow, this was really different. I loved it.” And others read it and just say, “Wow, this isn’t what I expected.” I just tell people it’s not your ordinary vampire story.
I love all paranormals equally as long as they are big, bad and alpha. I love both dark and mysterious series and light and humorous series. As long is there is a great story behind it I’m in.
That’s a question I’d love an answer to! Like Maria, do you go for both light and dark vampire romances, or are you all dark or all light? I’m more of a dark fan, but I do like a light paranormal when the mood is right.
The eternal life angle is very appealing. Also, they tend to start off being human before turning into a vampire so there’s that bit of humanity left in them.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to live eternally. My vamps usually fear falling victim to depression. One day the same as the next and the next, stretching out into eternity. If we as humans can grow jaded in 50 years, imagine 500 or 5000. I think they envy humans their mortality, which makes everything so much sweeter. 🙂
I love their confidence; what they want, they get. No matter what makes them weak, they’ll go over it to get to their goal.
Oh, yeah, Lucy. 🙂
I love me some vampires!!! They are always sexy and end up being a hero to the girl.
I love me some vamps, too. I think I said earlier that weres are my #2, but actually, my #2 might be demons. They share a lot with vamps. A lot of people would say that they’ve lost their souls. They both have to fight their natures….
Hi Nora!
Great exerpt!! What’s not to love about vamps? Super speed, strenght, & stamina!!!!
Thanks for the offer!
Yes, the mind does boggle a little bit when you consider what skilz the vampire could bring to the bedroom. 😉
Sounds like a great book!
I like the biting, it’s so intimate.
We could spend a long time talking about the biting and the whole appeal. Pleasure and pain combined. Sex and death. Blood and life. All very primal stuff!
I have to admit that I’m not a huge vampire fan…blood makes me a little squeamish, lol. But a big, strong shifter or a super powered demon would suit me just fine 😉
LOL, Cheryl. You might want to stick to the demons. Those shifters invariably shift into carnivores, and there’s just bound to be more blood. 😉 But I get it. I have a good friend who doesn’t like vampires but likes me, so she read my book – with her hand over her neck. (Thank you, Debra.)
I love vampire books that are written well, beware the corny stories! Yours sounds great, i’ve added it to my tbr list. The vamp stories i’ve liked most can range from an intense dark vamp to a lighthearted vamp, but most important is his desire, devotion and alpha male attention he gives the heroine. Also the intamacy of the bite is a nice twist 😉
Thank you, Patti! And yes, you raise a good point. As with all genres, you do have to be wary of corny stories. But perhaps more so with vamps. All that mythology, all those tropes, just sitting there ready to be used or abused. 😀 I invented some of my own mythology. In my world, vampirism is caused by a virus, but the vampire has to take deliberate action to “infect” a human. They also don’t drink blood, but infuse it. The fangs are hollow, telescoping affairs with which they bite the carotid artery (not the vein). The positive pressure in the artery pushes the donor’s blood into the vamp’s venous system. No tearing throats open and lapping blood. It’s quite neat and clean. LOL!
Enjoyed reading the excerpt… I like how vamps are dark, dangerous, & seductive.
Emphasis on seductive. :-p
I love vamps. They are so strong and sexy and always protect their woman.
I think this is the number one qualification for any hero – protectiveness toward their woman!
I love vamps… The alpha-ness, the strength and the coolness…
Thanks, May. Aiden is definitely a cool vamp. Delano (The Merzetti Effect) definitely has his moments, but he’s a bit of a science nerd. 😀
There’s just something about a tall, mysterious, dangerous vampire, they always have perfect bodies, their dark personality is a magnet for me!
There’s a good word – magnetism. My vamps always have a little extra something. More sheen, more vitality, more health, more vigor, more attractiveness. In fact Sam, the heroine in Nightfall, strikes a bargain with Aiden to let her photograph him in exchange for her psychic rogue location radar. Of course, Aiden knows the extra something doesn’t show on film. ,-)
They’re not really sparkly, like a certain sparklepire? 😛
It’s got to be the tall, dark, & dangerous vibe.
LOL, Cris. Not a sparkle in sight. Altho Aiden does concede that Buffy was good television.
I haven’t read any of your books yet but have seen your name everywhere so I think it is time to check some out. The excerpt above sounds great! I recently started reading paranormal romance and the thing I seem to like about vamps is their weakness with lust – both for blood and sex it seems! 🙂
Oh, wow, Amy! Glad to hear that! You’ll have to drop me a line if you read one of them to let me know what you thought.
And yeah, I love that about them, too! Imagine being able to hear the thing you want most surging in the veins of the woman standing right there in front of you… 🙂 I do love to torture them.
I love vamps and their immortality!
There’s another great question – if vampires were real and you actually had the chance, would you opt to become a vampire and have immortality?
I do really enjoy werewloves books 🙂
Me too, Julia. My friend Bonnie Vanak writes amazingly creative werewolf stories for Nocturne. She has a new one coming out very shortly (The Covert Wolf, I think it’s called. And yeah, he’s a SEAL!)
I like vamps, but I like shifters more 🙂 I like the thought of being able to be 2 creatures at once 🙂
The thing I like about vamps though is that they live forever, then again that could be a bad thing I would hate to out live everything and everyone I love! It could be a very lonely life.
I like that vampires are alpha and immortal.
I have to admit that vamps are not my favorites. They are okay, but I will usually choose a shifter over a vamp every time. Something about their dual nature appeals to me. Plus, they are warm-blooded and I’m always cold.
I think vamps are so appealing for their power, longevity, and magnetism 😉 Depending on the mythology, they are quite fascinating creatures!
Liked angel on tv so hot