A Funny Thing Happened

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve been meaning to announce, only life keeps interfering, that I sold Sword and Blood, under the pen name Sarah Marques to Prime Books.

Why a pen name is tied up with “what is sword and blood.”

I suppose only a few of you know my very first sale was Thirst, a vampire short story, back in ninety four. If you look in the year’s best fantasy and horror for that year, it is under “honorable mentions.”

The truth is more complicated than that – truth always is – I actually sold it sometime in 93 of course, that part is normal. But I never got paid and didn’t even know it had been published until years later, while doing a routine search for my name on Amazon. Back then, it only showed three or four items, and that was one of them. You see, I sold it to an Australian magazine, the entire print run of which got seized and destroyed for violating indecency laws. I guess they’d got a magazine out to Year’s Best before that happened, but I never saw it.

Then I sold that short story again. Four times. It killed two more magazines and an editor. Finally, I sold another story (I was starting to think that would never happen) a science fiction one called Plaudit Cives to Absolute Magnitude. And I thought Dreams of Decadence was run by the same people and what the heck. So I sent Thirst to them, with its sorry history attached and ended the cover letter with “Do you feel lucky?”

Apparently they did, since they bought it and it was published… in 06? 07? Somewhere around that.

Since then I’ve done vampires intermittently always as short stories. On the one hand there is a lot to explore in the vampire mythos: the trade of death for life; the power that comes with virtually endless life; the nature of evil; the link of sex and blood which seems to be somewhere at the very back of my head. Vampires fulfill Terry Pratchett’s dictum that in the end all the important stories are about the death and the blood. (This is part of the reason I get so exasperated at what seems to me the defanging of vampires in Romance, because what’s the point of it if you don’t have the blood and the death. But then again, I never understood the appeal of the Disney versions of fairytales.) There was The Blood Like Wine and For Whose Dear Sake, and I get the persistent feeling I’m forgetting another.

Then three/four years ago, I was slammed under six books and home schooling a teenage genius. Something had to give and something did. Sleeping and vacations were no longer working as relaxation, so I took up art class because while working in pastel or pencil, my mind became empty of words.

Then one day I came out of class, and had parked far from the school (the school is across from a sports complex, and people parking for the game had taken everything up for half a mile.) By the time I got in the car and got my key in the ignition, I had three books in my mind in their entirety.
My first thought was “Oh, heck no. I can’t write that.” You see, they were the three musketeers set in a crepuscular world in which vampires rule most of the world and there’s a fight over France. Oh, yeah, and Athos has just been turned.

I came home and did what I do when I want to get rid of a novel that won’t shut up. I outlined it and wrote the first three pages. But it wouldn’t shut up. The series stayed at the back of my mind, nagging me, until I finished the first book, almost a year ago.

It has now been bought (and the still unwritten sequels, Royal Blood and Rising Blood) by Prime Books (not to be confused with Prime Crime.) It is not… exactly what my friend Kate calls undead porn, but it has sex. Oh, and death. And blood. Because of that, and fearing giving those of you who are fans of the other musketeer series or my space operas whiplash, I am bringing it out under Sarah Marques, which shall henceforth be my name for historical fantasy.

I’ve put up three chapters of Sword And Blood, the first book, in a temporary page. It’s not proofed and don’t sweat the look, this is just temporary. Before you head over, beware it contains references to sex. Discretion advised.

Hope you enjoy it, in many ways it’s the most intense thing I’ve ever written, though that might change when Darkship Renegades is done.

Do you mind horribly that I’m doing vampires? (I promise they don’t glow!)

9 thoughts on “A Funny Thing Happened”

  1. Sarah, I think it’s fabulous that you write vampire fiction. Let me know when the book comes out. If I had known when you spoke I would have had so many more questions for you. :) I don’t know too much about poetry.

    Rita

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  2. Rita,
    Mostly I write novels and short stories. I only wrote mostly poetry as a very young woman (that’s my excuse!) I like to say I’m a recovering poet — it’s been twenty five years, three weeks, four days, ten hours and fifteen minutes since my last sonnet, but even a couplet would be too much.
    This free collection http://cornerbooth.sarahahoyt.com/privatewound.html has one of my vampire short stories. :)

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  4. All I can say is, “it depends” and throw out a few horrible (to me) examples.

    A vampire who’s half a million years old? Or worse, of a species that pre-dates homo sap? (I think that one was Homo Habilis?)
    Able to grab onto a spaceship and ride into orbit on the outside? Orbit speed being roughly 5 miles per sec, we’re talking some serious wind and heat problems here. Ever watched a shuttle come down and seen the glow?
    All-in-one package combo platter vampires? Able to use magic, both innate and spell cast plus shape-change like your shifters, plus survive without a corporeal form, like ghosts only solid?

    I swear these are examples from books, and in each case my “suspension of disbelief” went boom. Maybe that’s just me, but I have to be able to give myself some reason to believe, and there have to be limits of some kind.

    Thanks, WB

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    1. I do have a vampire who’s probably a thousand years old in a short story, but… Not half a million. And I have (sort of) space zombies, but in vaccuum. They’re not vampires, anyway. But those are my only sins and the second one I don’t think I could do as a novel.

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      1. 1000 years is fine, that’s perfectly reasonable. Let’s say that would call for , oh one new language per century as a wild guess. New customs, money and finance moves etc, I don’t see that 1000 years would be a problem. Assuming your vamps start as human and must be “turned”, they would have to have somewhat similar minds to humans as far as limits go. Eventually I would think you just wouldn’t be able to keep going under the weight of memories, and the constantly changing human society of your prey. Look at the classic – Dracula, who imported a teacher to bring him up to speed first, and then moved out into the world fully prepared. Portable wealth like gold and jewels move easily and are high value, low bulk. Assume that the vamps who survive the longest are the brightest, most flexible of their kind and you’re home free. Let’s say a 1000 year old vamp in your setting started off as a noble and well educated. That would give him Latin, Greek, and a local language or two to start with, and he could reasonably be able to master Latin-kin languages like Spanish, Italian, French as they developed. I’m sure you see the reasoning here. NOT trying to tell you how to write, only explaining why the older the vamp the less I believe when we start talking in eons, LOL.

        As for space zombies, that would be fine. Adapted to vacuum is no problem, it was the resistance to heat and wind that being able to ride from surface to orbit on the outside of a ship that blew my mind. The friction of the air heats the shuttle to roughly the melting point of iron on the way down, I’m not sure what max temps they reach on the way up, but it would have to be way above the boiling point of blood, which a vamp must have somewhere inside. And likewise with air resistance, whatever a vamp is made of it is flesh of some kind (usually) and air speeds of over 1000 miles per hour would rip it right off the bones, it seems to me. How much wind speed can eyeballs withstand before they pop? Etc, Etc. And there’s the sunlight problem – it’s always daylight in space. Can the vamps get to the shady side of the ship before they fry and never leave the shade while they do their evil deeds?
        BTW the vamps who pulled off this trick arrived with their clothes intact, and I don’t care what you start off wearing, it’s not gonna withstand a surface to orbit lift unless it was woven unobtanium (grin).

        So – Bless You, my child. All is forgiven – go forth and sin no more!
        (WEG) WB

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  5. Wizard Bear,
    No Homo Erectus vampires. With this particular series that would be just WRONG. No spaceships. No shape shifting. There is no real magic except vampire “mind tricks” as well as a “hive thing.” Also vampires age, unless they’re uh… feeding off vampires.
    I completely see your point, and trust me, I have to BELIEVE it to write it.

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  6. I dunno – I could go for a “sparkly” vampire — provided it involves a magnesium flair appropriately placed (but maybe that’s going a little Larry Correia, eh?)

    A millenial vampire has possibilities, especially if he understands the power of compound interest. Although I s’pose a capitalist vampire is more Eric Flint’s oeuvre. (Although the public employee union tussles suggest an alternate metaphor for timely political content.)

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