Hi and welcome to my web page.

Amazon’s Kindle and other e book readers have opened up a whole new world, not only to readers but authors also by offering opportunities previously prevented by literary agents who only want to deal with known authors or celebrities, knowing that their sales are guaranteed regardless of quality.

Midnight Wine and later, The Crowsmoor Curse, received excellent reviews from unbiased sources but couldn’t get past the agents as an unknown and therefore the publishing houses too. Thanks to this opportunity from Dave at Raven Crest, Midnight Wine and The Crowsmoor Curse are ‘out there’.

Incidentally, so are the vampires!

The front door stood open despite the hammering rain. Lane entered quietly, listening and sensing for sounds of occupancy. By rights she should be able to detect two heartbeats but only one came back to her. There was grief and tragedy in the air, and something else. Someone lost and in despair.

 She had followed the girl from the nightclub after seeing her leave with the masked one. She was afraid for her and her fears had fulfilled their potential as she found her lying dead and cradled in a man’s arms. He was kneeling on the hall floor, her head on his thighs, blood was everywhere and he was crying. And praying. Though she knew the girl was beyond the help of even the divine, she had to stay and watch. She had to be sure there would be no rising. And if there was, she would have to deal with it.

 The man looked up at her, not comprehending. He was covered in the girl’s blood and her heart went out to him. If what she believed was about to happen actually did, then this was only the beginning. Lane locked into his thoughts and read him. The girl was his sister, Grace. And he … he was a priest, Father Beckett. She frowned. It would complicate things. He would be harder to convince about the reality of what had happened to Grace. In her experience priests were resistant to the concept of vampires.

 “I’m here to help you, Father.”

“Are you the police?”

“Something like that.”

 She was in fact a member of the Vampire High Council and it was her job to police the behaviour of the vampires in her area. The majority of who were content with the Sanctuary, a place where they could feed from donors without harming any other human. Those that flouted the High Council’s edicts regarding the taking of life were outlawed and it was Lane that hunted them down and killed them, a ‘Catcher and Despatcher’.

 She lay a gentle hand on the priest’s arm, reaching into his mind, calming and soothing him, preparing his mind for the knowledge that was to come. That his sister had been attacked by a vampire and left to die. That she too, was likely to rise from death, reanimated by what now coursed through her, the essence of the vampire. And that if she rose, Lane would have no choice but to take care of her.

 For hours she talked to him although he remembered nothing of it later. All

he would remember was what took place after the first infinitesimal movement of the sheet with which Lane had covered Grace up to her shoulders.

At first he wasn’t sure if he had seen it at all, he was tired and his eyes stung. He held his breath, trying to hold time in a frame that would remain unchanged, becoming unaware of anything outside the arena of Grace’s bed.   

The atmosphere changed subtly. The temperature dropped and the air seemed rarefied, his chest was tight and his lungs struggled for essential oxygen, making him feel dizzy and disorientated.

He felt Lane tense, on the alert after hours of waiting. Whatever it was that she waited for was about to happen.

There was a heavy silence and then Grace’s lips parted and her left arm began to move under the sheet. In what was a fraction of a second but in what seemed like an eternity to Beckett, Grace brought her arm from beneath the sheet and turned her face to look at Beckett.

And he knew.