Vampires in America Giveaway Winner

Congratulations Barbara Kuhl winner of our Vampires in America Giveaway here at From the Shadows!  Barbara will receive her choice of ebook from the Vampires in America series by D.B. Reynolds.

Thank you all for entering!

**Giveaway winner randomly selected using Random.org**

Paranormal Road Trip: Destination London with Brooklyn Ann

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.

This week's stop is London and our special guide is Brooklyn Ann the author of SCANDALS WITH BITE vampire paranormal romance series.

Brooklyn Ann's Top 5 Spooky Places in London

Hello everyone, I’m Brooklyn Ann, and I’m going to share some creepy places in London, the setting of my historical paranormal romance, BITE AT FIRST SIGHT.

Saint Pancras Old Churchyard
I've included this one because it features heavily in my series. Believed to be the oldest center of Christian worship, the church was actually moved in the 14th century. It was the burial place of many historical figures, including writers William Godwin, Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and Dr. John Polidori. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley allegedly had meetings at her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft's grave to plan their elopement. As for Polidori's burial, there's a fun scene about in my first book, BITE ME, YOUR GRACE.

Charles Dickens also mentions the graveyard in A TALE OF TWO CITIES as a frequent site for grave robbers who took cadavers for physicians to study.

Which is interesting because BITE AT FIRST SIGHT opens with my heroine, aspiring physician, Cassandra Burton doing just that. Unfortunately, Rafael Villar, interim Lord Vampire of London catches her and mistakes her for a vampire hunter. And that's when the fun begins.

Bleeding Heart Yard
Originally part of Hatton Garden, the courtyard got its name from the murder of the second wife of Sir William Hatton. According to legend, Lady Hatton was dancing with a stranger and stepped outside with him to view the gardens. She never came back in and later she was discovered "torn limb from limb, but with her heart still pumping blood."

Hunterian Medical Museum
This one isn't haunted. Just creepy.  A museum was founded by the Royal College of Surgeons which displays the artifacts of Surgeon, John Hunter.
Lots of creepy stuff, which my heroine, Cassandra would doubtless find fascinating.
I'll let the images speak for themselves.

The Spaniard's Inn
Since the hero in BITE AT FIRST SIGHT is known as “The Spaniard,” I had to include this one.

Built in 1585, the inn was a notorious hangout for highwaymen. In fact, it is said that the father of infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin, had been a landlord for a time. Down the road from the inn there used to be a tree where many highwaymen were hung.

The Inn got its name either from a visit from the Spanish Ambassador, or from two Spanish landlords who fell in love with the same woman and dueled over her. The loser of the duel is said to haunt the inn. Other ghosts mentioned are a woman in white and the spirit of Dick Turpin.

Romantic poets, Lord Byron and John Keats (both mentioned in my series) used to hang out there and allegedly, Keats penned my favorite poem , Ode to a Nightingale, in the gardens.

Charles Dickens and Bram Stoker also mentioned the Spaniard's Inn in their books.

Tower of London
Built by William the Conqueror in 1078, The Tower of London is considered to be one of the most haunted places in England. One of the first ghosts to be spotted there was Thomas Beckett, a priest who was murdered right at the Traitor's gate.

Other ghosts include Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Arbella Stuart, Princes Edward V and Richard (who'd mysteriously vanished in the tower until their skeletons were discovered beneath a staircase) and even whole squadrons of spectral soldiers.

Apparently the BBC filmed a paranormal investigation of the hauntings in the Tower back in 2001. I don't know about you, but I'm going to see if I can find it online or to rent somewhere!

Thank you Brooklyn Ann for giving us such a haunting tour of London!  

To learn more about Brooklyn Ann and her books, please visit her website.  You can add the Scandals with Bite series here on Goodreads.

Have you ever experienced anything spooky in London?  I know that I had a few scares and thrills when visiting the Tower of London. *shivers*

What did you think of Brooklyn Ann's picks for spooky places?

Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited London with Pippa DaCosta.  Next week we'll be traveling to Maradaine with Marshall Ryan Maresca.

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!

Q+A with Dan Wells (The Devil's Only Friend)

Please welcome today's guest author, Dan Wells!  Dan is the author of the John Cleaver dark urban fantasy series, including the new release THE DEVIL'S ONLY FRIEND.

Q+A with Dan Wells

EJ:  When did you begin writing?

Dan:  I started writing in elementary school--the stories I remember explicitly were in second grade, but I suppose I may have started as soon as I learned to write. I continued like that all the way up through high school, writing short stories and poems and comicbooks and even some attempts at long novels, but I didn't really take it seriously as a career until college, when a creative writing teacher told me that it was possible to make a living as an artist. No one had ever told me that before, and it changed my life.

EJ:  What brought you to the paranormal genre?

Dan:  I started writing fantasy because I'd always been a reader of fantasy, so I never seriously considered writing something that didn't have a strong speculative or supernatural aspect to it. After five failed epic fantasy novels--my writing group always liked the writing, but never really dug the stories themselves--I decided to try my hand at a modern mystery about serial killers, because I've always been kind of an armchair expert in the subject, and love studying about them in my spare time. I put a supernatural monster in it because, well, that's what I love. Why wouldn't I put it in there? I don't know exactly what genre the John Cleaver books are--some call them horror, some call them urban fantasy, some call them thrillers, some call them paranormal--but I just write what I love and let other people put a label on it.

EJ:  If you could be any paranormal or have any one supernatural talent, what would it be? Why?

Dan:  I want to fly. I can think of a dozen or so powers of paranormal categories that would be more useful--how great would it be to read minds, or stop time, or shapeshift?--but flight is just way too cool to not choose. Just launching myself into the sky, free to go anywhere and swoop around and feel the wind rushing past me, that would be the best thing ever.

EJ:  Tell us why readers will enjoy your new release.

Dan:  My new book is called The Devil's Only Friend, and it's the first in a new trilogy about John Cleaver, a teenage sociopath who hunts demons. There's a previous trilogy about him, starting with a book called I Am Not a Serial Killer, but this one's written so you can jump right in without feeling lost. I like to describe the series as "teenage Dexter in an X-Files episode," and it's a perfect fit for fans of things like Criminal Minds and Supernatural. The basic premise is this: John Cleaver is obsessed with serial killers, and has an innate skill in stalking people and planning how to kill them, and he uses that to help an FBI team hunt demons. The more they learn, though, they realize that some of the demons have noticed they're being hunted, and are starting to fight back....

EJ:  If your book were being made into a movie, who would you cast for the leading roles? Why?

Dan:  Funny you should ask, because the first book in the series, I Am Not a Serial Killer, was just filmed as a movie this Spring! They're working on editing and final effects right now, and the plan is to have a final edit done this fall, in time to submit to some of the major film festivals like Sundance and SXSW. The lead actors for that story are John, his mom, and his neighbor, who turns out to be the first demon John hunts; the actors are, respectively, Max Records, Laura Fraser, and Christopher Lloyd. If all goes well, we'll impress the festival crowds and get picked up for wide distribution, and be in theaters as early as fall of 2016. Fingers crossed.

Thank you Dan for joining us here today at From the Shadows!

The Devil's Only Friend (John Cleaver #4) by Dan Wells

John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can...

...but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war.

John doesn't want the life he's stuck with. He doesn't want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn't want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn't want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn't want to kill people. But as the song says, you can't always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it.

When John again faces evil, he'll know what he has to do.
The Devil's Only Friend is the first book in a brand-new John Wayne Cleaver trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Dan Wells.

Release Date: June 16, 2015
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Urban Fantasy
Add to Goodreads.

To learn more about Dan Wells and his books, please visit his website.