Click on the illustration above to be taken to the publisher’s page for From My Cold, Undead Hand. Once you’re there, click on the cover illustration there and you can read the whole of the first chapter as a preview to the novel!
Make the most of your desktop with these cool, noir wallpapers, and help me celebrate the publication of my first teen-vampire novella. There is a lot of empty space so that your icons don’t appear as ‘clutter’. Choose glacier white or nightwalker black – just click on a thumbnail below and a full-size image will open…
The artwork is © Millie Ho; permission is not granted for use other than as a desktop wallpaper.
News just in!
I’m pleased to announce that From My Cold, Undead Hand, the first of a planned trilogy of teen-vampire novels, will be published in e-book form on 15th September! Don’t go looking for it just yet, as the plan also involves some free extras for pre-orders and/or early purchases – more news about that when I have it. I will also keep you informed as and when it becomes available at Amazon or elsewhere.
There are some preview opinions of From My Cold, Undead Hand here. If you’re on Twitter, you can keep up with the news by following @ColdUndeadHand.
Chevonne Kusnetsov, mid-21c vampire hunter on the streets of NYC, reads the words of her 19c counterpart in Finland, from an old journal.
I do not know how long I stood rooted like one of the graveyard yews, but there came a moment when I realised that the vampire was looking directly at me. Two mocking, red eyes were fixed on mine. Then with something like a gasp or a sigh, the monster released its hold on the girl. She slumped to the ground, her skin paler then even the old monster’s; I did not need to examine her to recognise the pallor of death, and to know that I was too late.
The lower half of the monster’s face glistened red with its victim’s fresh blood. Its mouth gaped open, and I could see its terrible canines stained with the same redness. With an awful murmur of satisfaction it licked its lips, its eyes burning. I acted as best I could, I raised my crucifix and made to walk forward. In a blasphemous parody of the holy object, the monster stretched its two arms out to the side and, before I could do anything, dissolved slowly into a wisp of smoke.
All light disappeared from the crypt. I was in darkness. The only faint glimmer came from reflected moonlight at the top of the steps. As I groped my way up them and back into the ruined nave, tears streamed down my face, and I keened uncontrollably. I was ashamed – and I am ashamed still to admit it – that the fate of the victim was not uppermost in my mind, but the dreadful dashing of my pride, because I had failed doubly. Firstly I had failed to rescue the monster’s victim, and secondly I had failed to destroy the vampire.
Follow @ColdUndeadHand
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From My Cold, Undead Hand, excerpt, © Marie Marshall – available direct from the publisher here.
Got your stake? Got your garlic? Got your gun?
Gun? Hell yeah! Even vampires have constitutional rights, and if they’re armed we’re armed! Not too long now until P’kaboo Publishers release From My Cold, Undead Hand to the reading public. Will you be one of the first to get in on the action? As a taster, here’s a preview by P’kaboo’s Lyz Russo. And if you’re on Twitter, follow @ColdUndeadHand for updates.
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Something completely different now. Writer Angélique Jamail asked me to share a recommendation for a ‘summer read’ with the followers of her blog. I picked the bleak, pessimistic Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, just because I think it’s a book everyone should read. It’s the 2oth century’s greatest political satire, and you can read my essay/review here.
© Millie Ho
The wonderful thing about having cover art by Millie Ho is that it feels like a collaboration, it feels as though we are making something together, that the book and the cover artwork are a seamless whole. Hers is not the work of a hack cover-artist, but of someone who has read the book and understands what it’s driving at. This is one reason why I’m rather sorry that we had to abandon our attempt to turn From My Cold, Undead Hand into a graphic novel – but we both had other work to which we needed to give priority.
© Millie Ho
Anyhow, here Millie has given us an insight into how the cover illustration evolved from a sketch to a finished piece of ‘noir’ artwork; it is fascinating to watch the video of the hand-drawn and computer-finished picture being executed. Exceptionally, Millie produced two completed works, one with a white background and one with a black. The black one fitted my vision for the cover perfectly. However, my publisher might go with other design, because of thumbnail issues, and put it on a coloured background – maybe red. We’ll have to see. Whatever is the case, I am grateful beyond words to Millie for her work, and I hope I have the opportunity to produce more writing that she will be able to illustrate in the future. By the way, as we did with The Everywhen Angels, after publication I hope to offer some free wallpapers based on the book cover. Wait and see what turns up!
Click the pic for more information.
I’d like you to look into the eyes of Chevonne Kusnetsov. Chevonne’s a teenager from New York city, a few decades into the future, and when she’s not barging her way through street-gang members and a neo-goth cult of vampire-fans at school, she’s a ruthless, nighttime destroyer of vampires on the streets of the city. She has few friends at school – maybe only slightly nerdy E.J. and wannabe goth Di – and the cell of vampire-fighters she belongs to isn’t exactly an environment that fosters friendship. Vamps keep things too busy for that. Hers is a story of how, ultimately, if you’re young you’re shoved to the sidelines, you’re someone to whom things happen rather than someone who makes things happen, from the beginning when a mentor dies to the end when there’s an attack on a famous American landmark. As her story unfolds, Chevonne finds love, death, blood, and heartbreak; she fights vampires on a plane, witnesses a school massacre, and learns, from the story of a famous 19c vampire-hunter, how the contagion of the Undead spread from Europe to America.
All this is in my new novel From My Cold, Undead Hand: Chevonne Kusnetsov vs the Sharp Teeth Krew. It’s due out soon, I’ll let you know when! It’s the first in a series of three novels, the second of which – KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE – is already being written. The series is aimed at the teenage / young-adult readership, a niche readership I never planned to write for but somehow I ended up here. I’m not complaining, it’s fun. The sketches here are by Millie Ho, and are preliminary artwork for the cover. Millie has already provided the cover for The Everywhen Angels, my previous teen/YA novel; as you already know, as well as being an artist Millie is a writer with a wonderful way with words. She’s currently hard at work on a YA novel of her own. If you want to know more about her, click on either of the two images in this post.
Want to know where I got the title From My Cold, Undead Hand from? Well here’s Chevonne to tell you about an encounter on a rooftop:
I spin round. There’s a vamp – another one to its right – and it’s holding my kite by the pack strap. Meck! They look like teens, all gang colors and handanas – must have been sired pretty young. And they’re smiling. I hate it when they do that. I also hate it when they have gats. This one right in front of me has one of those neat little Saudi machine-pistols, and it’s pointing right at me. Y’know, I’ve seen the old movies, read the old books, and nobody ever thinks to arm a storybook vampire. Hunters come armed with swords and stakes, vampires come armed with teeth. Real life, real life now outside the books and the old films, is different. In real life vampires carry guns. This is America, after all, and the vamp facing me is exercising a Constitutional right.
Stay tuned!
Just when I thought I had enough balls in the air, someone throws me another one. Instead of dropping them all, running, and hiding, I catch it and add it to the juggling act. Okay, last time I reported in, I was doing the final edit of From My Cold, Undead Hand, progressing the sequel KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE, finishing two short stories – ‘Gravity’ and ‘The Warlock’s Hat’ – for a competition, and contacting a Ukrainian university about Vera Rich’s translations of Ivan Franko’s poetry.
Well, it all seemed manageable. I now have the finalised manuscript of From My Cold, Undead Hand here. It will ready for publication as soon as we have cover artwork and layout. I return to KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE as often as I can. The short stories have had their final edit, which involved opening up the sealed envelope I was about to mail them in. I have been looking at Vera Rich’s translation of ‘Death of Cain’, comparing it to an earlier translation by the Rev Perceval Cundy, wondering why she rendered ‘город’ as ‘city’ and not ‘garden’ in the context of the poem, and surprising myself at my own cheek at questioning an expert! So, all balls describing a neat arc in the air above my head. Then I found another ball in my pocket – the threequel to From My Cold, Undead Hand (working title KLONE vs OVERLORD) – and added it to the juggled bunch, rather shakily at first, then it too joined the arc. Equilibrium.
Then blow me down! An idea casually tossed to me by a fellow writer exploded in my head, and suddenly I have a plan for a sequel to The Everywhen Angels. With the working title of Among the Grove of Stones (which readers will recognise as a line from an extempore poem in the first book), it will tell the story of Connor Shaw, King Shaw’s nephew, and of how Ashe Sobiecki went missing, of what had been happening to the tulpas of dead Angels as they tried to pass through one last, forbidden door at the moment of death, and of why Angela and the other Unified Angels feel disturbances in the flow that even they can’t control. All of a sudden my control on all the juggled balls is becoming unsteady. I’m hoping I can prioritise and get everything in some semblance of equilibrium again by autumn, and then maybe I will be able to concentrate on finishing one of these jobs at a time.
I think I’m addicted to writing. My hits keep getting bigger.
Marie Marshall 