Awakening 3 Deleted scene

I told you all, I’d hook you up with links to buy your won copy of Awakening 3, but Jeanine Grey gave us something better!
I’m stepping aside and letting Jeanie take over.

Guest post by Jeanie Grey: Exclusive content – Deleted scene from AWAKENING 3

Thank you so much for letting me do this guest post on your blog in celebration of the release of Awakening 3, Mari! 🙂 I’m thrilled to offer you a deleted scene that’s available nowhere else. But first, a little about my new book!

Short description: A suspenseful science fiction vampire romance, Awakening 3 is the final book in the Lilly Frank trilogy, intended for readers 18+.

Books synopsis
Nearly fifty years after the events of Awakening 2, Lilly decides to stop running away and returns to Italy only to find the threat of a vampire civil war growing. With the help of Beth, Carrie and Jamie, Lilly learns how to face her feelings about her tragic past and to accept that, whether Torren wants her or not, her heart wants him. But when she finds Torren in Rome, not only is he still with Vittoria, he doesn’t seem to remember Lilly at all.

Can Lilly convince Torren to leave Vittoria to be with her and help the Organization find a peaceful solution to the conflict, or will Vittoria and a vampire war come between Torren and Lilly and their happily ever after?

Format: e-book
Length: 44,700 words (approx. 150 pgs)
Language(s): English
Price: $0.99 USD
Buy links: Smashwords – Coming soon to Amazon, the iTunes store, B&N, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Oyster & Scribd!

Deleted Scene
Lilly’s chest constricted and she began to tremble.

“Lilly! What’s wrong? What is it?” Beth reached across the table and took Lilly’s hands in hers.

“I— I’m so afraid, Beth. I think I’m a rogue vampire.” Lilly took a deep breath and found her courage even as the tears began to spill from her eyes.

“What do you mean?” Beth said, her eyes wide.

She’d been living with the guilt long enough, and if vampire law dictated that she had to die for her mistake, then at least justice would be done.

“I’ve killed someone.”

***

She’d been roaming the wilds of Canada for several months. It was harsh country and food was scarce, but it gave her an opportunity to test how long she could go without feeding. It had been several weeks at this point, and she was definitely feeling the effects. She was disoriented and shaky. She might have been hallucinating. There was a storm coming and she was making herself a shelter. The knife slipped and she cut herself. The blood took several seconds to ooze to the surface, and when it did, it was nearly clear. Lilly panicked. The experiment had gone far enough. She half-stumbled, half-ran. She didn’t know where she was going until she came upon the cabin and heard the heart beat. There was a horse in the stable, but as soon as she smelled the human she knew she had to have him.

The next thing she knew she was inside, the man cradled in her arms as he exhaled his last breath. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. They were blue and lifeless. His blood was still warm in her throat and belly, but his body was starting to cool. She’d left the door open and the freezing-cold air whipped around the room as the storm gathered speed.

It had been an accident. She hadn’t meant to kill him. She’d run from the cabin, run out into the storm that raged around her as her guilt and fear raged in her chest, had washed his blood from her hands and face in a stream so cold it burned. She’d left the wilds again and fled to civilization, ending her time of self-testing, but the guilt had followed her wherever she went.

***

By the time she finished telling them the story she was sobbing. She’d never been so ashamed of herself in all her life. Beth had come around the table and was holding her, rocking back and forth and making soothing noises. Carrie had tears in her eyes, too, and looked like she wished she could do something.

“Oh, Lilly. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“To me?” Lilly squeaked, incredulous. Hadn’t Beth been listening? She’d killed a man!

“You’re not the first to make the mistake of going too long without feeding, Lilly. Other vampires have tested their limits and lost control.”

Lily sniffled and sucked in a few shaky breaths. She waited until she thought she could speak again and said, “And then what?” Her voice broke again on the last word. As guilty as she felt for having killed the man, she didn’t want to die for it, and she felt even more ashamed to realize that she hoped she could somehow get out of it. Is this how all criminals felt?

“Lilly, it is written in The Pact that a vampire shall not kill a human because the founders of the Organization recognized that in order to stay hidden and avoid war with humans, we needed to respect human life and not leave bodies drained of blood lying around—“

A chill as cold as ice formed in Lilly’s solar plexus and she began to tremble more violently.

“—but an amendment clarifies that in order to be considered a betrayal of The Pact it has to be an act of willful murder, intentional and without a direct order from the Organization. The Pact was created to keep the vampire community safe, not to punish vampires who did not know their limits and lost control.”

“Really?” Lilly said. She sniffled again and began to calm. Then the image of the dead man’s eyes came back into her head and she began sobbing again. She realized she had never allowed herself to mourn him before. Who had he been? Had he had a family, perhaps a daughter who loved him the way Lilly had loved her mother? Who had found him? And what about the poor horse? What had happened to it, without a human to care for it?

She cried long and hard while Beth merely held her.

Eventually her breathing slowed and she could speak again. “But if I remain unpunished, what justice is there?”

“You must live with the knowledge of what you have done. Do you not think that is punishment enough?”

Author bio: Jeanie Grey is a feminist reader and writer of romance and erotica who lives in Oregon. Her short stories have been published on deadlyeverafter.com and thedarkerhalf.com. For more about her work and her views on writing romance and erotica, please visit her website at http://jeaniegrey.blogspot.com You can also connect with her via Twitter (@jeaniegrey), Facebook fan page (https://www.facebook.com/authorJeanieGrey) , or email (writejeaniegrey@gmail.com)

*** UPDATE *** Your link for A 3
Awakening 3 (Lilly Frank Series)

Awakening 3 :: Book Review

Awakening 3 by Jeanie Grey

Jeanie Grey is one of my favorite vampire authors of all time. I love how I can be sucked (LMAO sucked, that was so unintended.) into her stories. I don’t emerge from her worlds until I’ve finished the story. I can’t wait for her other projects!

Awakening 3 is the last book in The Lilly Frank series, and I personally loved it. If you aren’t familiar with Lilly Frank or the rest of the series, get them by clicking on these little links.
Awakening (Lilly Frank Series) and Awakening 2 (Lilly Frank Series)

In Awakening 2 Lilly (living in Italy with Torren) was brutally tortured at the end of the last book, she was on the brink of death. Yes, vampires can die from torture. Her creator/boyfriend (that’s really the best way to describe Torren) was unable to help her. He also found his first love at the time.

Still bleeding Lilly runs away, and Torren doesn’t follow her. I have to cut Torren some slack. He was in shock.

Book three. A few decades have passed, and Lilly returns to Italy. She meets with some friends from book two, but tries to stay away from Torren. She soon realizes she can’t stay away; she really loves him and misses him. Her friend gives her his address and she goes in search of him. Finding him in the most unexpected of places, she’s surprised to find he’s still with Victoria his first love.

I really don’t like Victoria from Book 2 so I’ve held a grudge, but I have to say….. I still didn’t like her for most of this book too. Anyways…. Torren and Victoria talk and she admits to erasing Lilly from his mind. He leaves and finds Lilly, there are some steamy scenes, Ms. Grey is an erotica author after all.

But, Oh, I could smack Torren for this. He didn’t find Lilly to live happily ever after with her, he just wanted to reconnect with her, but he does not intend to leave Victoria.

Outside of Lilly’s love life, the book has some interesting stuff going on too. It’s set in the future. New Roma, is built mostly in glass, there are hovercrafts for transportation, and scanners in your wrist. Vampire wise, the vampire council is trying to decide if they should come out, there’s talk about cloning blood. Cloned blood would make vampire feeding easier, and if vampires come out of hiding, there would be good reason to clone it.

During the debates on coming out are going one, Lilly and Victoria are becoming friends. I’m not going to give the ending away. It’s such a fabulous twist; I want you all to enjoy it without any spoilers.

Release date is tomorrow July 5th, I’ll get you guys the links as soon as I have them. 😀

Jeanie’s thoughts on vampires

I’m so happy to have the great Jeanie Grey guest posting another Vampire Wednesday. She is totally amazing and if you haven’t read Awakening or Awakening 2. . . What are you waiting for?

Without further ado….here’s Jeanie.

I’m so honored and thrilled to be allowed to take over yet another Vampire Wednesday on my friend Mari’s blog. Yay! She’s been doing some great research on vampires here, and I’m still catching up on all the posts. Compared to her, I feel like an amateur. Nonetheless I will try to add something to the conversation.

 

I’ve been fascinated by vampires–or rather, by vampire literature–since I was a young adult reading Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, L. J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries (so different from the TV show that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it) and Annette Curtis Klause’s The Silver Kiss.

 

What drew me most to these stories was–perhaps ironically–the vampires’ humanity. Or rather, the fact that they were complex beings with a sense of morality, beings who were conflicted about their vampirehood (to use a term we coined last week on this blog) rather than mindless, bloodsucking monsters.

 

Of course, it helped that they were strong, sexy and (usually) rich. It helped that they didn’t have to work for a living and could spend their days–or nights, rather–wandering around in the moonlight, brooding on immortality and being conflicted about stuff without other people expecting them to do anything different. (I *might* have been a moody teenager. Just sayin’.)

 

Well, okay, there was the whole blood-sucking thing. But in the vampire mythologies I grew up on, getting bitten by a vampire could be an incredibly sexy thing. Better than sex, even. (Not that I or the characters in the books I was reading knew much about sex.)

 

Which is why it’s interesting to me to hear people talk about vampirism as a metaphor for sexuality. I get that someone putting their mouth on your neck and sucking some of your life force out is an intimate act. I get that there’s a swapping of fluids (even if it’s just saliva for blood). I get that vampires are often portrayed as sexy. But they don’t have to be vampires for that. They don’t have to be super-humanly strong, be able to shapeshift, be immortal or be really rich.

 

I guess my point is: okay, maybe vampires are about sex. But even if that’s true, I don’t think that’s all they’re about.

 

When I started writing Awakening I spent some time thinking about my own attraction to vampirism. Why did I buy that ankh in high school, hoping that a vampire would see it and recognize it as a sign that I wanted to become a vampire too? Why was I more sympathetic to the vampires and to the humans attracted to them than I was to the people who were frightened by them?

 

That’s when I realized that, for me, vampires symbolized safety. Security. A vampire lives outside of the social norms. A vampire is virtually indestructible. And, from what I’d read, a vampire doesn’t have to worry about food or shelter. 

 

As a vampire I could do pretty much anything I wanted and not care what anyone else thought of me. I wouldn’t have to worry about getting hurt or killed (except perhaps by sunlight or by a vampire hunter). I would be truly, completely free. It would be safe for me to be exactly who I wanted to be, and safe for me to indulge my curiosity about life and the world.

 

Lilly was created in order to explore this fantasy. She too is attracted to vampirism because she sees it as the epitome of safety. She too longs to be free of the fear that restrains her curiosity about the world.

 

Which is why it became so important to challenge that assumption in Awakening 2. One of the lessons Lilly is learning–that perhaps we are all learning–is that the solutions to our problems do not lie outside of us. Becoming a vampire is a strategy Lilly uses to meet her need for safety–just as attaching herself to Torren in the first book is a strategy she uses to feel safe.

 

So when, in the second book, she learns that a serial killer is kidnapping, torturing and murdering vampires, it’s the ultimate blow for her. Here she’d thought she’d hit upon the ultimate solution to her problem–feeling unsafe in the world–only to have that sense of safety ripped away again. So now what? Where does she go from here? Will Lilly ever feel safe again? And if so, how?

 

That’s one of the things we’ll find out in Awakening 3. 🙂

Follow her on her blog at http://jeaniegrey.blogspot.com/

Vampire mythology in the Lilly Frank series

Today I’m so happy to have a great vampire author here to guest post for me. (Jeanie you are the first person to guest post here, and the first to ever take over Vampire Wednesday.)

Jeanie was kind enough to tell us a bit about the mythology of her series. Jeanie Grey has a great vampire romance/erotic series. If you haven’t read Awakening and Awakening 2 you can buy them on Amazon. I definitely recommend them.  

Now on to Jeanie’s guest post

I’ve been fascinated by vampire mythologies since I read Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series and L. J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries as a teenager. Since then I’ve read every book and seen every movie about vampires that I’ve come across, and one thing I’ve noticed is how the vampire mythology changes—slightly or drastically—with each author.

In some stories, vampires can’t come out during the day (e.g. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Blade, and Underworld), while in others they can (e.g. the Twilight series). Some vampire mythologies claim that vampires can only drink the blood of human virgins (e.g. Blood for Dracula, aka Andy Warhol’s Dracula), or that being bitten by a vampire either kills a person or turns them into a vampire (e.g. From Dusk Til Dawn). In some stories, humans and vampires can be bound to each other by the exchange of blood (e.g. Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling). In others, a psychic exchange accompanies the exchange of blood: vampire and human can see each other’s memories, hear each other’s thoughts, experience each other’s feelings (e.g. Annette Curtis Klause’s The Silver Kiss). There are rules about crosses and garlic and holy water. About stakes and beheading. Rules about whether being bitten is pleasurable, erotic, or painful. About shape-shifting and controlling the weather. And these rules change from story to story as each author creates his or her own mythology.

But there are three constants: vampires are stronger and faster than humans; they live a lot longer than humans (unless killed); and they drink blood.

When I started thinking about creating a vampire mythology for the Lilly Frank series, I knew I wanted to do something a little different, but I also wanted strong ties to the more traditional mythologies. I knew I wanted my vampires to be able to go out in daylight, but I asked myself, “Are there conditions under which vampires could go out in daylight but people would think they couldn’t?”

That’s how I came up with the idea that vampires are hypersensitive, especially in their first few years of vampirehood. (Is that a word? Well, it is now.) If vampires were hypersensitive to heat and light, it would make coming out during the day really uncomfortable, so they would prefer the nighttime.

(Vampirehood… I love it. I in the name of all that is vampire, on this day of the vampires, hereby state that vampirehood is now a word! At least on here it will be!)

The hypersensitivity would also explain their aversion to garlic: it’s a strong smell and offends even some human noses, so if vampires had a much better sense of smell, they might want to stay away from it (though it doesn’t kill them).

Here are some other characteristics of the Lilly Frank vampire mythology:

• Vampires can eat human food, but it does not sustain them; they need blood to stay alive, and human blood is best.
• Being bitten by a vampire can be either pleasurable or painful, depending on technique, but it neither kills you (unless they drink too much) nor turns you into a vampire. It takes a significant exchange of blood to become a vampire.
• Crosses and holy water have no effect.
• Wooden stakes hurt a lot (remember heightened sense of touch), but they do not kill a vampire. Vampires are immortal and heal quickly, and the only way to kill a vampire is to deprive them of blood for an extended period of time or to behead them and make sure the head and body stay far away from one another.
• They cannot control the weather or change themselves into bats, wolves, or other animals.
• Drinking blood from a human or vampire allows one to feel the blood donor’s dominant emotions—this is what happens when Lilly tastes Torren’s blood in Awakening.
• Drinking or exchanging blood does not create a bond between two individuals; bonds form between individuals for other reasons.

The one that surprised me the most, when I was writing Awakening 2, was the idea that there are more than five senses that can be heightened and that each vampire has a “gift”—one sense that is heightened more than all the others and whose sensitivity does not lesson through the years. I totally did not see that coming.

Jeanie Grey is a feminist reader and writer of romance and erotica who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her short stories have been published on deadlyeverafter.com and thedarkerhalf.com. She self-published her first book, Awakening in the summer of 2012. Awakening 2 was just released on Monday, July 1, 2013. Both are ebooks for Kindle and available to purchase on Amazon.

For more about her work and her views on writing romance and erotica, please visit her website at http://jeaniegrey.blogspot.com You can also connect with her on Twitter (@jeaniegrey) or email her at writejeaniegrey@gmail.com

I love your mythology, Jeanie. Some of it I’ve proven to be ancient lore here on this very column. Thank you so much for sharing with my readers.

Jeanie has agreed to another 2 posts regarding vampires in the following two weeks make sure you come back.