Bio:
Hi to Carole’s fans! I’m a fellow vamper, as Carole so brilliantly puts it; that means I write about vampires. I write in the realms of dark fiction rather than paranormal romance. I like vampires with bite, so I wrote a book about vampires with bite. No sparkly vamps here.
This Freshest Hell was published in 2013 by Sydney publisher Lacuna and I’m now working on the sequel, and a third book. I’m not sure yet if the series will stretch beyond there – we’ll have to wait and see whether my vampires get up to any new antics.
When I started writing the book, I wasn’t aiming to write a vampire book or a horror novel. I was just writing about two psychic misfits Lily and Maggie, their high school antics and their disenchanted adulthoods, and the paranormal and horror aspects developed along with the story. It’s a story about the girls, their friendship and their battles with personal demons to begin with and then becomes about their fight for survival, real battles, and real demons.
As a result some horror fans get impatient through the first half of the book because there are no gross bits, just supernatural bits. But if you’re happy to go on a paranormal journey with two misfits and see how the horror develops into quite the crescendo in the second half, and you don’t need limbs flying and blood spattering from the first page, you’ll like This Freshest Hell.
TFH is loosely based on a book I started writing seventeen years ago, about a girl who becomes a vampire on her wedding night and takes to vampire life a little too well, dishing all kinds of colourful revenge and retribution and becoming embroiled in the crime world as an assassin. I was a teenager at the time so that book was quite violent and ‘out there’, but I never got to finish it or even develop it properly, so I took aspects from that and put them into TFH. I had Lily turned on her wedding day, but I split the characterisation so that Maggie revels in vampire life while Lily struggles with her conscience, though for a time both enjoy dishing out some bloody justice. Then I threw in some hot vampires along with some demons, werewolves (not the cute fluffy kind) and all-new freaky monsters to make a heady horror concoction.
So, with TFH I didn’t set out to write a horror novel, but I’m not surprised it turned out that way as I’ve been a horror fan for as long as I can remember. I was reading Virginia Andrews and Stephen King when my peers were still reading Babysitters Club and Thomas the Tank Engine, so you could say my perspective was always a little twisted! And if there’s anything I like more than a horror novel, it’s a horror movie or TV show. Against my better judgement, on the advice of friends who were rabid fans of the show I started watching The Walking Dead. I was addicted from the first episode, even though zombies give me nightmares! Give me demons and vampires any day …
I’ve found the horror community to be very supportive and through Women in Horror Month I’ve met some fabulous female horror writers who share my slightly, awesomely twisted perspective. It’s been great to see female writers getting the recognition they deserve this month. I find dark fiction by women tends to have great characterisation, depth and emotional substance, so if you want to read something powerful, read a horror book written by a woman.
Happy reading,
Natasha Ewendt
More info:
This Freshest Hell is available at all online stores and apps, some bookstores or by order from your local bookstore.
Get it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/This-Freshest-Hell-Natasha-Ewendt/dp/1922198064
Or for a list of stockists with links see Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17901427-this-freshest-hell
Or the publisher’s website: http://www.lacunapublishing.com/index.php/authors/ewendt-natasha/this-freshest-hell
Blurb:
Dark secrets shared …
Dark spells invoked …
Death desired and death defied …
Goth Maggie and misfit Lily unite against school, family, society, normality and life itself. But can they fight the darkness within?
When Maggie saves Lily from schoolyard bullies on her first day at a new school in Tasmania, the girls discover they share psychic abilities — and the same dark secret. Their high school rebellion culminates in a dalliance with the dark arts that could have eternal consequences. Those consequences come to bear a decade later when they are plunged into the demon world. Suddenly the darkness within and blood lust become literal matters of life and death. A new world of darkness and an epic battle force them to question what they really value — including each other, and life itself.
~*~
Thank you, Natasha Ewendt!
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