The Immortals - Robin T. Popp

I’ve just spent the last year working on two new Immortals books. The first is Immortals: The Haunting, being released next week (Oct. 28) and the other is an anthology in Immortals: The Reckoning titled “Beyond the Mist” (March, 2009). The Immortals series began back in 2006 (released 2007) and the intent was to do four books. Jennifer Ashley – who came up with the initial concept – wrote the anchor books while Joy Nash and I were asked to write the two books in-between.

We had no idea the series would be so popular, though I’m thrilled it was. After getting to know the fifth Immortal warrior through the first four books, it seemed inevitable that he have his own story – and of course, it was logical that Jennifer write it. I never expected Joy and me to be asked to do another story in the series, much less two.

There were only five Immortal warriors and they’d each had their story and happy ending. What were we to write about? We had a clean slate.

I had two characters from my first book (Immortals: The Darkening) that had potential: Ricco the First Fang of the largest local vampire gang and Mai the wood nymph reporter. Having done the Night Slayer Series, I was in the mood to try something different, so I decided to write a story about Mai. But what? At the end of The Darkening, she and Ricco were dating. It’s no fun writing stories where the romance is over before the story begins. The fun is in the chase, not the catch.

Solution? They broke up. :)

Because Immortals: The Haunting was slated to come out in October, I wanted to do something spooky and what’s spookier than seeing things that aren’t there?

Immortals: The Haunting begins eighteen months after the big battle in Immortals: The Gathering. Mai has been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ever since. The hallucinations she’s been having have caused her to lose her job. Just as she tries to get back in the game as a freelance investigative reporter, she’s attacked in her apartment by a masked assailant who warns her off the story. He nearly beats her to death before he’s chased off by a handsome stranger, whose sexy voice and gentle touch soothe her injuries. Then he, too, disappears leaving her alone and bleeding. When she’s finally able to tend to her injuries, she’s shocked to discover she hasn’t any. There’s no blood, no bruises and no swollen eyes. In short, there was no attack. It was yet another horrific hallucination – and the handsome stranger, no more real than the attack.

Thinking a change of scenery is needed, she moves into a new apartment, not realizing it’s haunted. When one of her new neighbors mysteriously vanishes, Mai seeks help from spirit walker Nick Blackhawk. His ability to move about in the spiritual realms allows him to track missing persons when the police can’t.

What follows is a thrill ride through the streets of New York City and the shadowy realms of dreams and wishes. With a steamy attraction to one another to distract them, Mai and Nick soon find themselves in Trouble with a capital “T”.

Check out the video trailer for this book at http://www.robintpopp.com/ or go to http://www.immortals-series.com/ to see all the Immortals book video trailers.

To make sure I was in the right mood to write this story, I listened to a compilation of music that consisted of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (that great organ classic), Chopin’s Funeral March sonata No. 2 in B Flat Minor, Op. 35, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King (from “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1”), Overture (from “The Phantom of the Opera”) and for those who aren’t into classical music, #1 Crush (by Garbage). These make great Halloween Party tunes as well.

In March, look for the conclusion to the Immortals series with Immortals: The Reckoning. This books contains three anthologies by Jenn, Joy and myself.

"Blood Debt" by Joy Nash Jackson Cabot's bright future went dark in 1896 Paris, when he died and was turned vampire. After three decades of slavery in the service of Europe's brutal vampire master, Jackson discovered a secret that has allowed him to hoard power. Now, at last, his strength approaches that of his rival, and he exists solely to take vengeance on the two beings responsible for his eternal nightmare: the monster that turned him vampire -- and the beautiful Sidhe muse who killed him.

"Wolf Hunt" by Jennifer AshleyJeanne Fergusen was the lowest of the low in her werewolf pack, a captured wolf who could never rise in the pecking order. When she becomes the victim of demon wolf-hunters, she instinctively turns to the one man she trusts - Logan Wright.

"Beyond the Mist," by Robin T. PoppHaunted by her past and reeling from her sister's murder, Jenna Renfield takes a cruise hoping to have a little fun – and escape the company of sexy, but obnoxious spirit walker, Dave Runningbear. Almost from the start, the cruise turns out not to be what she expected – prickles of death magic, ghostly wailing in the night and an creepy albino stalker. When Jenna realizes her life might be in danger, she’s more than happy that Dave followed her on board the cruise ship and turns to him for help, hoping they can both escape with their lives when the ship carries them "Beyond the Mist."

My best to all and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Robin T. Popp

http://www.robintpopp.com/

Random Thoughts with Robin T. Popp

Give me a “P”. Give me an “R”. Give me an “O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.” What’s that spell? PROCRASTINATION!!!

Have you ever felt like that should be your anthem cry? Boy, there are times when I really feel like it’s mine. In fact, there are days when the only thing I excel at is procrastination. I do it best when I’m under deadline to finish a novel that’s not coming easily. At first, I simply think I’m multi-tasking. You know, thinking about the plot of a book while taking care of something else that “needs” to be done.

What I need to be asking myself is - does the kitchen floor have to be mopped now? Can’t the laundry wait? Do I really have to read the fourteen new emails that came in from my friends and respond to each and every one this instant? Is it critical that I practice the song Possum Kingdom on Guitar Hero II during this quiet time while the rest of the family has left me alone to write? (Probably, because we’re a competitive family and right now, I really suck at the game.) Can’t all these chores be put off until later? (Don’t you love procrastination? It has so many layers.)

It’s all about priorities. My normal schedule is already tight. I work a fulltime day job with almost an hour commute between my office and home. Add in the time that it takes me to shower and dress in the morning, and that’s 12 of my 24 hours just for that. Subtract 2 hours to fix and eat dinner with the family and then another 2 hours to help with homework and/or exercise and I’m left with 7 hours to get in 2 hours of writing and 8 hours of sleep. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day - so clearly, there’s no time in my schedule for procrastination – and yet…it’s a skill, I argue, and must be honed daily to keep it sharp.

Because I’ve spent so much time “honing” that skill, I doubt I can just give it up. I mean, it’s practically an art form now. Therefore, I simply need to make it work to my advantage. Thinking about it today as I was checking the mail (because, you know, the mail had to be retrieved NOW!), I wondered if I could make procrastination a source of writing motivation. For instance, if I could find something I wanted to do less than work on a difficult story, then I should assign myself that task and procrastinate doing it by writing! Ah – the beauty of a carefully developed scheme.

Yeah, I know. I’ll let you know how it works for me. Mind if I get back to you later? Like after I practice Free Bird on Guitar Hero II a few thousand times. We’ve got a family competition coming up and I’d like to not go down in a burning flame of humiliation.

So what story am I working on that has spurred this waxing poetic on the subject of procrastination? It’s my second Immortals book (seventh book in the series I did with Jennifer Ashley and Joy Nash.) The first four books (The Calling by Jenn, The Darkening by me, The Awakening by Joy and The Gathering by Jenn) were apparently so well received that Dorchester commissioned us to do four more. My second one is called The Haunting and I really love the story but I’m trying to take my writing to a new level and it’s not a level that comes easily, so hence the procrastination.

This is the story of Mai Groves, the wood nymph investigative reporter friend of Lexi Corvin who was the heroine in The Darkening. She’s suffering from post traumatic shock syndrome following the big show down with an ancient demon in The Gathering. It’s left her suffering hallucinations. On top of that, she’s being threatened by a dream demon and has just unknowingly moved into a haunted apartment building. Mai doesn’t know what’s real and what’s her imagination and that’s a problem, because what’s real might just get her dead. When one of the other residents in her building mysteriously disappears, Mai turns to chameleon Nick Blackhawk, personal bodyguard and survival guide, for help. He’s the only one she knows who can enter the spiritual realm and follow the energy trail of the missing girl. Working together, what Mai and Nick discover is more then either bargained for. Immortals: The Haunting is out in Nov. 2008.

Just out – and also a survivor of my procrastination attempts – is my December 2007 release, Lord of the Night. This is the fourth in my Night Slayer series.

This is Erik’s book. He is one of the original four Winslow brothers who started the Winslow family tradition of vampire slaying.

Angus, Sean, Ewan and Erik Winslow were born and raised in Hocksley, England back in the 1600’s. They were raised to be warriors; defenders of family, home and country. One night, when the four brothers were in their early twenties, they went out hunting and came across an unfamiliar creature in the woods. Sensing danger, the eldest brother, Angus, advised them to leave the creature alone and return home. Ewan and Sean, the middle twins, agreed, but the youngest and most foolhardy, Erik, thought it would be great sport to hunt the creature. Pulling his sword, he attacked it – and died. Before the remaining three could react, the creature had run off.

Of course, the creature was a chupacabra and Erik rose two nights later as a vampire. Over time and with great effort, he learned to control his bloodlust and spent the next four hundred years living in the dungeons of his familial castle, training each successive generation of Winslows to be vampire slayers.

Since the moment of his inception, Erik intrigued me as a character. How had he survived four hundred years? What kind of life had he lived? How had it changed him? He lived with his brothers’ descendents, but it had to be lonely. Did he have any vampire friends?
If so, I didn’t see Erik as the type of man to let his family hunt his friends or vice versa. That meant he’d probably spent what felt like an eternity secretly manipulating both family and friends to keep them from killing one another. Such manipulations would, by its very nature, get complicated. As Sir Walter Scott wrote, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

It was just a matter of time before something happened to upset the tenuous balance Erik worked so hard to keep. I decided that something should be Kacie Renault, the adopted daughter of Erik’s current living relative.

Because her natural parents had been slain by vampires, Kacie aspired to become one of the deadliest vampire slayers in Hocksley - and she succeeded. No vampire was safe from her and only out of respect for her adoptive father – and the fact that Erik was a better swordsman – kept Kacie from killing her vampire instructor.

When she went off to college, Erik thought his life would become less complicated.
Now three years later, Kaci is back, one of his closest friends is dead and the leader of the local vampire gang – the dead vampire’s brother and Erik’s best friend – wants Kacie dead. Though a part of him longs to avenge the death of his friend, Erik vows to protect Kacie. But it’s hard to protect someone who hates your guts and doesn’t want your help. And it certainly doesn’t help that the rebellious teenager who left home has returned as a contentious but incredibly attractive woman that is proving much too hard to resist.

Okay – time for me to get back to writing. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to blog with you. I will try to jump online throughout the day to respond to postings. I’m going to give away a signed copy of Lord of the Night as well as a signed copy of a debut book by a good friend of mine, Sharie Kohler (aka Sophie Jordan). She writes historicals, but I’ll be giving away a copy of her debut paranormal Marked by Midnight. Tell me your favorite ways to procrastinate and I’ll pick a winner (randomly selected) on Monday from all the postings.

Happy reading (also a good way to procrastinate – I call it doing research)!

- Robin T. Popp

http://www.robintpopp.com/