Title: Reign of Blood
Author : Alexia Purdy
Genre: Upper YA Urban
Fantasy/Horror
Format: print & eBook
Tell us the story
behind the story. What inspired you to write this novel?
Reign of Blood is about a vampire hunter named April, she’s
17 and lives in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas one year after a viral epidemic
has wiped out the human race. In the ruins of the neglected city, wild vampires
and others roam the night. April’s family is taken and she must endure the
horrors of the city to track them down. This ultimately brings her face to face
with what she thought was the enemy, but now, she isn’t so sure.
I am a big resident evil/I am legend fan- the books mainly-
and I was inspired to write this book by a dream I had about the opening scene
in Reign of Blood. I took it from there, wanting to pay homage to the novels I
have read about vampires and zombies alike. I really enjoyed the action sequences
and I hope I did the concept justice. I don’t see a lot of people writing those
kind of stories anymore, especially after the recent stuff that has hit the
market. I wanted to pull back to the terror these creatures should evoke and
work with that.
Tell us about the
book cover. How does it represent your book? How did you choose the artwork?
I had it made by Stephanie Mooney, an awesome graphic design
artist. She captured the dark, forlorn mood that I wanted to capture and the
essence of how tough April is. Vegas is in the background and represented in
the crumbling sign up front. I think it gives the mood and sense of danger that
I was going for and goes with the story line very well. Some photography on the cover was done by my
brother. He is a freelance photographer and got some great shots of Las Vegas for
me.
Giveaway!!
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Sample Chapter
Chapter One
Never tease anything that wants to eat you. The
ravenous eyes that bled death all around and peered from their windows drooled
at the sight of us. The buildings loomed above as we rushed across the concrete
and asphalt, hurrying to beat the sun as it set. They lurked in every window,
shrouded by the shadow from the searing sun. The east sides of the buildings
were crawling with vampires. They smirked and sneered their inhuman growls,
hissing right at us as we jumped from sunbeam to sunbeam, racing to the
awaiting van. Only the light kept them at bay. Only the light kept us from
their sharp, gripping fangs.
Each block
felt like it stretched longer and farther, growing with each of our steps. My
mother ran hurriedly, as fast as she could with my little brother wrapped
around her, molded to her chest, afraid to look up. I was dashing right next to
her, afraid to get left behind and afraid to be first in any place. My backpack
bounced on my back with each jump and step. I tried hard to not look up. To
look upon them was to feel your soul drain of life, to wither away. Mom always
said not to let them look into your eyes; they can steal your humanity and
freeze you in your steps. But I did look, and I did study their red searing
eyes. Even while running, I had glanced up into their pale, grey ashen faces. I
waited for them to take my soul; I waited and discovered that I was immune.
Immune to their mind control and their deepest desire. I wanted to smile and
flip them off but I didn’t think that my mother would appreciate that. I wasn’t
sure if she or my brother were immune. I wasn’t about to piss her off by
admitting that I had given in to such a temptation and had stared eye to eye
with monsters.
So for now,
we ran. We ran to our awaiting van where mom tied my little brother into his
seat and slid quickly into the driver’s seat, turning the ignition and slamming
the gas as though our lives depended on it. Actually, they very much did. Soon
the sun would fade, inhaled into shadows and we would be surrounded by monsters
capable of draining our bodies of every little drop of crimson blood. They did
not discriminate. They would rip even me and my younger brother to shreds. For
now, they waited in their makeshift graveyard; the city’s dilapidated buildings
and streets.
I stared out
the windows of the van and hugged my knees to my chest. Mom had her serious and
stern face on. Sometimes I wish I could see her smile again, like the old days,
before any of this happened. Before foraging for food had become an absolute
for survival. Before running was a daily occurrence. Seeing her hair streaked
with grey was not something I thought I would see so soon. She wasn’t that old.
Times like
these, even I felt old.
We left the
city limits well before sunset. We were safer in the rural areas, where
vampires feared to tread, too far from the shelters of the concrete jungles. I
learned early on that some part of their humanity must still be intact because
unlike the stories and movies I had heard and seen about vampires, these ones
hated to sleep in the dirt. Oh, and all that crap about mirrors and garlic?
Definitely not true. Stake to the heart? I had found that it did work but
decapitation was a much more successful option. Missing the heart was too easy
a mistake. Crosses and holy water? Well, that does work but you must be a
believer for it to work as intended. If you did not believe, well, let’s just
say you might as well be throwing plain water at them.
An arsenal
of swords, crosses and faith was pretty much all I needed. It had been just a
year since the virus had turned more than three quarters of the population of
the Americas into blood-seeking walking dead. Most died within days of
contracting the strange ailment. I’d had all the practice I needed for a
lifetime in learning how to kill vampires. It definitely made for an
interesting life but I would give anything for my old one. Nothing beat a cold
soda and movie on a Saturday night. High school issues seemed petty compared to
the ones I had now. Stability, security, all gone. Staring out the dusty
windows of the van as the trees grew thicker and the dusk seeped into the sky,
I felt nothing but numb. Everything was all but gone.
Chapter Two
My name is
April. I live in a bunker, somewhat hidden in the sparse forests surrounding
what is left of Las Vegas, Nevada. I wish I could say that the nights would
bring bright lights and slot machines ringing and an endless party, but that
would not be so. The valley is a graveyard, black as pitch at night and a ghost
city in the day. All that is left of a city that never sleeps.
My mother
Helen and my younger brother Jeremy live with me in this makeshift home buried
in the side of the mountains. It’s pretty cool considering we could be out in
the open where the vampires roamed at night. It was simple; we had found a door
in a mountain cabin to what would’ve been part of a basement that led down a
long hallway and into a cemented-in bunker. Located deep inside the bowels of
the forest near Mt Charleston, this had become our home. It was ventilated
somehow, and had stores and stores of non-perishable food lining shelves and
storage areas in a separate room. Gallons of water sat in drums as big as me
and a filtration system was set up for recycling water that we did use. It was
wired with solar energy and generators if needed. The sleeping quarters were in
a corner of the first room and consisted of three beds lined up next to each
other. My mother and I took turns for watch during the night while Jeremy got
to sleep the whole night. It wasn’t much, but it was home.
The luck we
had felt when we found this place was more than we could have hoped for. By
chance we had searched the plain log cabin house that sat atop the bunker and
discovered this entombed sanctuary. Whoever had built it had had some money to
burn and probably was some sort of apocalypse-now junkie. It didn’t matter in
the end, it had not helped them anymore than any money could’ve have helped in
the end of times. The owners had not made it back here and it had remained untouched
until we had found it. I often wondered who they had been, it wasn’t like they
had lived here much, there had been no family photographs splayed across the
walls or sitting on the coffee table. Nothing to mark it as lived in at all,
like an abandoned and forgotten place, a just-in-case sort of place.
We still had
to run down to the city for supplies. My mother did not like using up the
stores in the bunker; she said she’d rather use what was widely available now
in the abandoned stores and shops in the city than use what we had. It made
sense; the city’s abundance was for now, the bunker supplies for later. That
didn’t mean I didn’t hate going down there, the city was crawling with
vampires. They lurked in shadows of the evenings and stared hungrily at you as
you walked about. A thousand eyes watching and sizing you up, it was the most
uncomfortable feeling ever. As long as you didn’t stay out too late, you
wouldn’t see them as much in the morning and afternoon hours. Dark buildings
were an absolute no go. They holed themselves in the guts of structures until
nightfall, when the burn of the sun no longer seared their ashen skin.
I hadn’t
always been so physical, but since I’d had it out with a vampire or two
already, I had insisted on watching tape after tape of martial arts and weapons
training after those near fatal attacks on me and my family. My mother
participated in these training sessions with me too. Our slender muscles proved
our dedication. We were femme fatales. I liked it that way. Delicate flowers
were for the dogs.
The days
went by slowly. Some weeks we didn’t venture out at all, some weeks we explored
the city every day. My mother really didn’t want to go all vigilante and kill
the hives of vampires we tended to find. I had killed some smaller ones, but my
thirst to extinguish them grew with every kill. I spent my days sharpening my
knives and arrows. I’d spend hours in the hunting stores, running my hands over
the variety of weapons, guns, crossbows, all sorts of contraptions. I would settle
on some shorter swords, machetes, daggers and crossbows. I had guns of course,
but they were loud and tended to awaken the hives around us, getting them
stirring earlier than we’d like.
That was the
reason we were running that day. I had gotten in a bind and had to shoot a
large hive of about 6 vampires that I had come upon in small grocery. I had
cursed myself for letting them surprise me. I should have noticed their putrid
smell before coming near them. But for some reason I had been distracted and hadn’t
been at my most alert that day. Mom had been pissed. She had had to join me to
extinguish them, leaving my brother outside in the open daylight. This was a
definite taboo. He was defenseless, at six years old, his haunted eyes made him
older than he should’ve been. He couldn’t handle a gun, let alone a sword or
crossbow. He always had a knife which we had taught him how to use, but with
his scrawny body, he was sure to not last long in a world of death all by
himself.
After
getting an earful that day, Mom had banned us from going to the city for at
least a week. I hated being cooped up in the cabin and bunker. I spent my time
hunting animals for fresh meat, but it being the end of summer and the
beginnings of fall, the animals were not so frequently available. Occasionally
I would track a deer, but rabbits were more common. Coming across any kind of
beef would be nice, but the vampires had ravaged the few farms around the north
end of town ages ago. This had left us with little options in the meat department.
Especially since the electricity had shut down in the city, the freezers stank
of the rot of death in every market. Beef jerky was all we could really find in
troves to enjoy any kind of red meat.
So here I
was, stuck on the mountain, staring down at the city that used to be our home.
Watching the evening sun sink over the crests of barren rock near Mt.
Charleston, at least the vampires didn’t venture up here. Their inherent fear
of being out in the open when the sun rose kept them near the buildings of
downtown and the strip. They were such territorial creatures that seemed to
like to group together in small hives. We thought it curious that we did not
find them in the outskirts of town, proving our theory that they preferred the
clusters of buildings in the center of town. Still, the casinos were rich with
food stocks that were near impossible to reach for us. It would mean treading
into the bowels of darkness that remained of the interiors. It was a darkness
infested with death.
As the
shadow fell across the cabin, we locked the huge, heavy metal door that was the
entrance to the bunker and flipped the lights on inside to illuminate the
concrete sanctuary of our isolated home.
Where can readers
find out more about you and your work?
My blog and Facebook are the best places to find updates of
my work and books. Here are my links:
Follow Alexia Purdy
Blog:
Website:
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/AlexiaPurdy @AlexiaPurdy
Goodreads Author page:
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BIO:
Alexia currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada–Sin
City! She loves to spend every free moment writing, or playing with her four
rambunctious kids. Writing has always been her dream and she has been writing
ever since she can remember. She love's creating paranormal fantasy and poetry
and loves to read and devour books daily. Alexia also enjoys watching movies,
dancing, singing loudly in the car and Italian food. She is also the author of Ever Shade: A Dark
Faerie Tale with Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing and ‘Whispers of
Dreams (A Poetic Collection)’, both available via Amazon.com. Ever Fire: A Dark
Faerie Tale #2 will be released Oct. 2012. She is currently working on the
third installment of A Dark Faerie Tale series: Ever Winter.
