Book Tours - Silver Dagger Book Tours

The Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire - Book Tour and Giveaway

10/11/2019

The Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire
Books I and II
by Colette L. Saucier
Genre: Paranormal Regency Romance

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER: The definitive vampire adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and its sultry sequel in one volume!

Books 1 and 2 of the award-winning, international bestselling Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire, re-released in this special edition only on eBook for a limited time at an incredible price.

BOOK I: Pulse and Prejudice
Elle Magazine selection "A Most Inventive Adaptation" (April, 2016)
Austenprose "Readers' Choice, Top 5 Books of the Year" (2012)
1st Place Winner in Category, 2013 Chatelaine Awards Romantic Fiction
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy - elegant, dark, brooding...vampire. The Master of Pemberley tells his haunting tale of unquenchable desire and forbidden love.

"I cannot express enough how skeptical I was upon starting this book. Pride & Prejudice with a touch of vampires was enough to send me into fits of eye rolls. But, within only the first chapter, I found myself strangely drawn to the story. The vampire Darcy weaves his spell quickly." - Austenprose

Book II: Dearest Bloodiest Elizabeth
In this lurid, lusty sequel to Pulse and Prejudice, death shadows the newlywed Darcys from Pemberley to the parlors of Regency London to the courtyards of Antebellum New Orleans. As Elizabeth discovers the trials and travails of marriage to a vampire, can Darcy ever believe that she loves him as he is? Or will his jealousy tear them apart?

This is the sequel to Pulse and Prejudice; however, as it is not an Austen adaptation, the reader will find it darker, bloodier, and more provocative than Book 1.

"After taking the plunge into this dark and haunting world, I am bloody thrilled to say that I just loved this sequel! The story examines the beauties and frailties of Darcy and Elizabeth's love and devotion to each other while folding it into a world filled with gothic danger. It is action-packed and left me turning pages rather quickly, while at the same time being filled with well-developed characters whose inner turmoils make the reader empathize with each of their own plights."
C.A. Pepe, Just Jane 1813

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Crimson drops fell onto the white snow, staining it pink.
Darcy had not intended this—to drink from his wife—when he claimed his prize of a kiss after catching her as they raced through the hedge maze at Pemberley. Elizabeth had actually done surprisingly well in evading him, considering his intuitive abilities; but, of course, he caught her—laughing in his arms, eyes ablaze, cheeks chafed from the cold.
“And now my prize!” As had so often occurred in the span of their brief marriage, his tender kiss escalated quickly into fervent ardour. The laughter then in her eyes, his wife had taken hold of the lapels of his greatcoat and, falling back onto the snow, pulled him down with her. As their kisses deepened, so, too, had his hunger and desire. He pulled off his gloves and trailed his cold fingers down her face. Untying her bonnet and unfastening her cape, he exposed her neck for his lips and his teeth.
She moaned softly as he drew the blood from her throat, sharing her warmth and her pulse, savouring the rich, metallic taste. He pulled back to watch her, only then noticing that a few precious drops of lifeblood had escaped his embrace and fallen onto the snow.
“William,” she whispered in a half-plea, her hand running down the front of his trousers to convey her intent.
He gazed into her eyes. “Should not we go in? Are not you cold?”
“Cover me to keep me warm.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth onto hers, sharing the taste of her blood as their tongues intertwined.
Darcy slid up her skirts and brought the hem to her knees. He reached his hand up between her cold thighs to the hot core that drew him in. She gasped against his mouth as he touched her there, but he wasted little time in freeing himself from his trousers and thrusting deep within her.
Afterward he held her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs as he kissed her beatific face. His thoughts of his good fortune in finding and winning this woman were disrupted when he comprehended that, even in their current state of dishabille, she was stuffing snow down his back. He reacted dramatically, rolling up to shake out the snow; and Elizabeth availed of his distraction to make her escape.
“Madam, you use your wiles and allures to seduce me and gain an advantage!”
As she stood up, though, she stumbled and fell forward onto the soft snow, thus providing her husband the opportunity to reciprocate by putting snow down her gown and eliciting her squeals.
“I surrender!” She laughed, trying to dislodge the snow from her back. “You have bested me once again, Mr. Darcy.”
He stood and pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “Perhaps we should consider it a draw.”
They walked from the hedges to the house with an appropriate space between them for the benefit of the servants’ sizing eyes to temper any gossip about the master and his bride, though Darcy wondered if the household would be insensible to the affection he shared with his wife when he noted her swollen lips and the mirth in her eyes. Indeed, he doubted his countenance could conceal his own jubilance. The staff of Pemberley could not but be affected by their master’s joy, which proved contagious. He could see his own easy smiles reflected in their faces.
Darcy felt he had undergone a metamorphosis of sorts, a second transformation to reverse the pain and shame of the first. After years of self-loathing, disgust for the beast he had become, the indignity of even pronouncing the word, he had found someone who not only accepted his dark nature but embraced it—welcomed it, reveled in it!—gaining from it a satisfaction to match his own.
Naturally, no one could possibly have imagined the secret of their marriage bed; but anyone seeing him standing a bit taller, walking with a self-assurance heretofore unknown, could not doubt that marriage agreed with him.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, vampire, was happy.

Colette L. Saucier is a bestselling and award-winning author in a variety of genres under multiple pseudonyms. Her novel Pulse and Prejudice, Book I: The Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire; the highly-acclaimed paranormal adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, was the 2013 Chatelaine Awards 1st Place Winner in Category, Romantic Fiction. Elle Magazine named Pulse and Prejudice a "Most Inventive Adaptation" of Pride & Prejudice in their April 2016 edition. It was also selected the 2013 1st Place Winner in Category: Chatelaine Awards Romantic Fiction.
An abridged version of The Proud and the Prejudiced: A Modern Twist on Pride and Prejudice was selected a 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Semi-finalist and Austensque Reviews’ Favorite Modern Adaptation under the title All My Tomorrows.
Colette’s latest release is the controversial erotic noir suspense, The Widow. She will be releasing Dearest Bloodiest Elizabeth, Book II: The Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire in eBook August, 2016, and print in October.
A writer, world-traveler, empty-nester, and a literature, history, wine & cheese lover; Colette lives in Southeast Louisiana with her historian husband and their dogs.

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What are your top 5 favorite books?
My five favorite books are The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick (one of his few forays into a genre other than-sci-fi), The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This may sound like the most disparate group of books ever, but they all have a large dose of irony. I think I love irony above all things!

What book do you think everyone should read?
The one book I think everyone should read is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It’s such an amazing work and immensely re-readable. And also Cartel Widow by me! That is, if you enjoy noir suspense with flawed, damaged characters and don’t mind steamy sex scenes.

Do the characters all come to you at the same time or do some of them come to you as you write?
For my novels that are not derivatives, obviously I know who the primary characters will be: the protagonists and the antagonist. Most of the time the minor characters come into play as the plot necessitates. I don’t think I will ever be one of those authors who has minor characters that will eventually break off to have their own stories, other than whatever side plot is contained in the novel.
I know it’s considered financially advantageous for romance writers to have a series where minor characters are introduced in book 1 who then go on to be the focus of book 2 and so on. I have never considered myself a romance writer per se, although most of my novels thus far fall into that genre. I primarily consider myself a writer whose novels have romance in them. Now for Pulse and Prejudice, obviously as a derivative of Pride and Prejudice most of the characters have already been provided by Jane Austen. Because this is a vampire adaptation, I had my tongue firmly in cheek and added bits of popular culture throughout so it’s obvious I was not taking it too seriously. One of the minor characters I always envisioned including was the dwarf from the original Twin Peaks series. He plays a minor role in Pulse and Prejudice, and I expanded his character’s role considerably in Dearest Bloodiest Elizabeth. He is a vampire hunter who incites a primary plot point for the second half of the novel. I also wanted to include a nod to Jane Austen’s favorite cousin Eliza, which inspired the character of Comtesse de Calmet. Having that character allowed me to add even more flesh to the plot of both novels.

What kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
When it comes to research for my novels, I have a tendency to be ridiculously obsessive. For the Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire, series, I traveled to London and all over Europe including Paris and Belgium as part of my research. Being married to a British historian, I knew all of my facts had to be accurate because his colleagues would catch anything I got wrong! The second half of Dearest Bloodiest Elizabeth moves the setting to Antebellum New Orleans. Because I live here, I didn’t think it would require that much research, but I was wrong. I read 14 books about the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans, Creole society, and the French Quarter at that time. We recently moved to a smaller home, and I had all of these books on historic New Orleans taking up space. My daughter who lives in New York City said that she would take them, and I sent them to where she works. Her coworkers were convinced I was trying to get her to move back home!
For Cartel Widow, I worked with a former ATF and DEA agent, as well as a former federal agent from an intelligence organization who prefers not to be identified. I wanted to be sure I got all of the little details accurate. I also had two software engineers help me with a computer virus.
For all of my crime scenes that pop up in some of my novels, I rely so much on Dr. DP Lyle. He has been wonderful. He never blanches when I ask him for help for some of the most audacious crime

Do you read yourself and if so what is your favorite genre?
I am a voracious reader, probably more so because I suffer from terrible insomnia. I primarily read psychological suspense and sometimes true crime, particularly John Douglas’s work. I also read a great deal of nonfiction, especially when I am researching for one of my novels. I love reading about history and learning new things. The more I learn the more I realize how much I don’t know.

Do you prefer to write in silence or with noise? Why?
Overall I prefer to write in silence, but if music figures into the novel I’m writing, I might have the music playing to get me into the mood. For Pulse and Prejudice, I often would listen to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Cartel Widow has several songs that figured prominently, which I would listen to as I wrote to help me with a scene. In The Proud and the Prejudiced, the song “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic plays a pivotal role. One cannot tell by the title of the song, but it is one of the most erotic pieces of music I’ve ever heard. That’s a great song to get into the mood for writing a sensual scene.

Do you write one book at a time or do you have several going at a time?
I have a big box labeled WIP, which contains all my ideas for my so-called works in progress – SEVEN as of this writing, under my name as well as other pen names. The easiest way for me is to get out a rudimentary outline of the basic plot and characters and then focus on one novel to flesh out at a time.

Pen or type writer or computer?
I always relied on writing longhand to get me started on a particular scene for a novel and then write the bulk of it on a laptop. There’s something about the process of putting pen to paper that always would get my creative juices flowing. Unfortunately, I’ve developed severe rheumatoid arthritis in my hands, and so now I am learning to dictate my novels from scratch. In fact, I am even dictating these blog posts. This is really cause me difficulty because it’s just not natural for me, and I definitely miss that stream of creativity that comes from writing with pen on paper.

Tell us about a favorite character from a book.
Usually my favorite character from my novels is the one I’m writing at that time. I really have to get into the head of the character and feel everything he or she is feeling. I loved David from Cartel Widow and felt him so much as I wrote it. On the other hand, I couldn’t get enough of Peter and Alice from The Proud and the Prejudiced. In fact I had to come back to them and add to their story because I thought they needed more.

Describe your writing style.
My writing style is deep, deep, deep third person point of view. I do not care for this recent trend of writing in present tense and find it such a distraction. When it’s done in first person present tense, I feel like the narrator has schizophrenia. Who goes around narrating their own lives? And now I’ve been seeing third person present tense, which is more akin to a play. I won’t read a book if it’s told in present tense. If I wanted to read a play, I would read a play. So all of my novels are written in past tense, from deep third person point of view.
Another device I enjoy is the unreliable narrator. We see this in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s told from Elizabeth’s point of view but through her prejudices, so not everything we see is accurate. I’ve done the same with Pulse and Prejudice but from Mr. Darcy’s perspective. He of course has his own prejudices and misconstrues so much of what is happening around him. Mr. Darcy does not appear in Jane Austen’s novel that much, but when we do see him, this is clearly one of his character flaws. I loved expanding upon that and, due to his pride, he is so confident in his own opinions and yet so often he has it all wrong. I enjoyed playing on that theme.

What are you currently reading?
I’m currently in listening to Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. I read this back in the 1970s shortly after it came out in paperback, and I would say that this book has had the greatest influence on me as a writer. After seeing the recent Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I decided to revisit the story. I find it just as enjoyable as I did the first time.

What is your writing process? For instance do you do an outline first? Do you do the chapters first?
Most authors describe themselves as either a plotter or a pantser (meaning they just write from the seat of their pants). I call myself a planter. I always have a general outline to begin with, the skeleton of the story. Once I have that, it’s a map to the destination so I know where I’m going. That does not mean that as were traveling towards that ultimate destination we cannot go off on little side roads here and there if something of interest comes along I decide to explore, but I need that map and the destination in mind before I begin the journey.
As I begin writing, I can “see” the plot and the characters almost like a film that I’m watching. Only then can I take that skeleton and flesh it out with all of the details and dialogue. Sometimes as I write, my characters make decisions that I never had intended when I started telling their stories. For example, in The Proud and the Prejudiced, I had never intended for the characters to sleep together, but they had something else in mind! Once when I was as I was writing a novel under one of my pseudonyms, I kept saying I was almost finished. This went on for weeks. My husband asked me what it would be done. I said again and again it was almost finished. He said, “You’ve been saying that for a month!” I told him, “I can’t help it. They still have a lot to say! They just won’t stop talking!”

Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
Obviously, The Confession of Mr. Darcy, Vampire series is a derivative, but so is the television show Sherlock and the new Joker movie and all the Batman films and Gotham. These are all “original” even though they are derivatives. Pulse and Prejudice and Dearest Bloodiest Elizabeth rely heavily on Pride and Prejudice and Shakespeare for inspiration, but overall they are my own original vision. Sometimes I enjoy putting my own spin on a classic. I have ideas for a werewolf adaptation of Wuthering Heights and a horror novel inspired by one of Shakespeare’s comedies.
I write the books that I want to read. Or the books my daughter would like to read! I realize many readers prefer reading a series by a favorite author. I haven’t been able to plan out a series like so many writers seem able to do so easily. I wish I could be that prolific! It would certainly be financially advantageous. I just have to write the stories churning in my brain.

Do you believe in writer’s block?
I definitely do believe in writer’s block and have been suffering with it terribly for the last couple of years. It began after I had major kidney surgery and 80% of the renal cavity was removed. I had begun to think that my muse had been located on that part of the kidney because I just hadn’t been able to get back to it. I think anyone with health problems, especially chronic conditions like I have such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, can empathize with how difficult it is to be motivated when dealing with pain on a daily basis. Fortunately, I do have more stories to tell. Now it’s just a matter of getting back to the process.