Audio Giveaway Awesomeness!

Just a heads up that Tantor Audio is running another awesome giveaway for three copies of the audio book version of Flesh and Blood! Get in on the giveaway here.

This time, the giveaway is on Goodreads, so even if you're not on Facebook, you can enter!

Don't miss this chance to listen in on the adventures of Mal and Chrysabelle. I'm kind of looking forward to hearing it myself. Is that weird?

Hey gang! My audio publisher, Tantor Audio (Tantor as in Tarzan's elephant - how cool is that?) is giving away a few copies of the Blood Rights audio book!!

Entering is super easy. Check it out here.

You can also listen to a sample of Blood Rights here.

Just think, if you win, you could listen to vampires killing each other while you're on the treadmill! Hey, we have to find a way to make exercise enjoyable somehow, right?

I'm giving away a $50 gift card!

To celebrate the release of the fourth book in the House of Comarre series, Out For Blood, I'm getting my release day party on over at Bitten By Books!

Stop by and leave a comment to be entered to win the $50 gift card for either Amazon or Barnes and Noble -winners choice!

Feel free to ask me questions about the series, too. I'll be checking in all day.

What are you waiting for? Let's party!





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What Scares Us Blog Tour

What Scares Us blog tour

Clay and Susan Griffith

Today we are thrilled to be visiting Kristen Painter, whose October release, Out For Blood, is already getting reviewers excited. And in celebration of her creepy, visual fiction, we’re talking about:

Scariest Movies

Susan

            Back in the 1970s, I was an unsuspecting, precocious child of seven or eight, and my mother looked for all intents and purpose like a normal housewife who loved going to church and worshipped naught but family values. Little did I know that she was also an avid fan of horror movies.

            So when my mother said I couldn’t watch television with her one day, I was stunned, and yes, a tad angry. It only made me more determined to be with her and find out what she was doing in the TV room. I masterminded a plan to sneak in under the ping pong table and then slip through the space between the couch and the end table, gaining a full view of what she was watching.

            And what I saw on the screen terrified me. I was frozen in shock and horror! On the screen was a beast of terrible proportions! A living brain with a spinal cord for a tail, which had wrapped itself around its victim and was choking him to death. I think it even had a small mouth with sharp teeth and was biting the poor soul.

            I stayed far longer than I should have and saw more than a small child could withstand. Sneaking out of the room, I fled to cower in my bedroom, seeing in every shadow a brain like shape that would leap out and devour me! My mother, of course, had no idea what I had done and found my refusal to go to bed that night annoying. I never watched another horror movie until I met my husband Clay. Now I watch them all the time, the classic ones at any rate. It was through Clay that I discovered the name of that particular movie which had haunted me for years. Fiend without A Face. I suppose then it was inevitable that horror seeped into my soul.

            Thanks Mom for the introduction!

Clay

I am a horror movie guy and have been since I was a kid watching late night creature features. I love monsters and aliens like the Mummy, the Creature, Godzilla, the Thing From Another World…but they don’t scare me. The movies that scare me have been ghost stories, and two in particular. The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963). These two movies were “Holy Crap, could we turn some lights on in this house” scary to me when I first saw them. They are both black and white, and better for it.

The Innocents is the film version of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, a psychological parable about insanity and reality. On screen, it becomes more of a straightforward “child in jeopardy” ghost story, but it’s still amazing. The Innocents has the single creepiest image I’ve ever seen in a movie. A ghostly woman dressed in black stands amidst cattails on the edge of a pond. That’s it. No screaming. No blood. No chainsaws. It’s an eerie image that I’ve never seen equaled.

However, no movie ever scared me like The Haunting did the first time I saw it. It’s based on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House about a group of investigators who stay in a haunted house. It has numerous sequences that are makers of sleepless nights. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom huddling together in bed while something bangs on the walls and the door. Near the end there’s a jarring appearance by the lead investigator’s skeptic wife after she unwisely demands to spend the night in the nursery. The shadows. The whispering.

As jaded as I am from a lifetime of horror now, I don’t think I would watch either of these pictures late at night at home alone.

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Because I Love My Readers

Whenever I get asked why I write, my answer usually boils down to one word - readers. I adore my readers, love interacting with them on my Facebook page, cherish the emails they send me and feel blessed by the support they've given the House of Comarre series. I've even been lucky enough to meet some of them face to face!

And because I have such awesome readers, I've decided to do something a little crazy as my way of saying thanks. For those readers who've posted a reviewed a House of Comarre novel, I want to thank you for your support by sending you a signed copy of Out For Blood, the fourth book in the series that comes out in October.

Send me a link to your review at kristenpainterbooksATyahooDOTcom and I'll get back to you. Supplies are limited, but I'm going to try to get as many books out as I can.

Thanks again and keep reading!

The End of a Series

Last Blood is the fifth and final book of the House of Comarre series. I'm currently working on it, pushing closer to The End every day and even though these are fictional characters set in a fictional world, I feel like I'm beginning to grieve. A strange emotion to associate with writing a book, but there it is.

Is feeling that way weird? Maybe, but consider that I started writing Blood Rights, the first book, in the summer of 2008. Four years, one novella and five books later, saying goodbye is understandably difficult. At times my relationship with these characters and this world has been love/hate. There are moments in these books that feel like triumphs and yet, some of the details written in earlier books caused me to make decisions in later ones that I might not have otherwise made. Some days felt like slogging through mud and some days like flying. (And those flying days? Those are the days writers live for.)

Such is the writing process when you commit yourself to basically writing a story that is five books long, because that's how these books work. You should really consider books 1-5 all parts of the same story, just broken down into manageable chunks.

Maybe some of what I'm feeling isn't grief, but exhaustion. *grin* It's tough writing something this long and this involved. These characters and plotlines show up in my dreams, pop into my head when I'm supposed to be thinking about other things and distract me daily from the most mundane aspects of life. They have become...part of me. And wow, just writing that sounds a little too precious, but there it is.

Have you as a writer ever felt like this? As a reader, what do you feel when you read the last book in a series?

Caturday - the brotherly love edition

Sometimes, even when there's not enough room, there's room.

Some fresh blood

Forbidden Blood, the novella pre-quel to the House of Comarre series, is now live and available for reading! (And only 2.99!) It's a glimpse into Dominic and Maris's early days.

Here's the blurb:

Maris's life as a comarré has come down to three options: escape her patron and spend the rest of her days looking over her shoulder, fight him for her freedom with the understanding it could mean her death or undergo dangerous experimentation to transform her blood into something even more powerful.

Before she can make a decision, she discovers the vampire who's been charged with sunproofing her blood isn't so fond of her patron either. In fact, Dominic is unlike any vampire she's ever met, but is she desperate enough to put her trust in another noble? Her heart says yes...


Check it out on Amazon,  Barnes and Noble, or Books On Board.

I hope y'all love it!

Caturday!

I really have no words for this. I mean, just look at it.
Feel free to add your own caption.

Caturday

This manuscript has been interrupted by the need for noms.

Caturday

Hiding: Ur doin it wrong.

Caturday

My belly. Let me show it to you.
Rubbings may commence.

The Return of Caturday!

With little regard to federal mail tampering laws,
Jack decides to eat the USPO property anyway.