I Bathory, Queen of Blood is Coming Soon!

The blood-soaked tale of Countess Erzsebet Bathory will be out soon! Creativia Publishing has it. It was not an easy novel to write. She was a monster in real life with absolute power. The more I thought about her, the more of a challenge I knew I faced. I love challenges! 

How to do it was the thing. I knew I had to get into her skin completely, to see the world as she saw it, lived it and murdered in it. I worked on motivation and based her character on two things, insanity and deviancy, her motivation was, as I see it, jealousy and the young girls who served her paid the price. She was obsessed with her fading beauty, with the horror in the knowledge that she would one day be old. By the way, I did become Bathory as I use what I learned when I studied method acting many years ago. It gives realism to the character I've been told and it helps me write as well!

In modern terms we'd say she was a bipolar sexual sadist with complete power. She was free to do whatever she wanted and she did. Her family name was so highly regarded, her husband took it upon their marriage!

The fact that she never stood trial but was instead walled up in her castle, despite the king wanting her to be tried, speaks volumes as they say.

This is not the whole story as I've depicted it. More about that in another post leading up to publication, book cover, link--etc!

Stay tuned!

UPDATE ON NEW BOOK ABOUT THE BLOOD COUNTESS!

The darkest published fiction I have written is my Blackstone Vampires Series. I have often said I don't know where all the darkness came from, but it just poured out of me. After I wrote Justine: Into the Blood (first novel in my new series) I thought, 'well, I'll go a little lighter now.' But then I started to write a novel about Erzsebat Bathory, The Blood Countess.

Why'd I do that? I'm still not sure. I always say, we write what is in us to write. I think that's true. With Bathory, I found her the most puzzling. How could a woman do what she is purported to have done? Hundreds of torture killings, bathing in blood--perhaps there is an exaggeration but let's face it, any country that prohibits the name of a noble personage being SPOKEN for a century after her death, has to have some reason for doing that. Really.

She had children, they stood by her, from what I read. A son-in-law pleaded for her. She had to have been very complex at the very least. I don't think she was ever unaware of what she was doing. Nothing I have read suggested that.

She just had the power to do what she wished. A sadistic sexual murderer with unlimited power! That was her story. As I have said she is the same Bathory in my telling, albeit one that is more aware and conflicted. But the horror is there.

I began to think about all my published longer fiction and I realized, it's all very dark. As for the first series, each novel in The Blackstone Vampires is darker than the preceding one. I guess--it was a given for me to go on to a novel about Bathory.

There is a great deal of eroticism in the story. Eroticism and horror easily go together. They are two elements of a whole. There are relationships that have both present.

Power may be central to the equation. Unlimited power and a loyal lover can help a monster do anything. Her rages continue in my novel, they fuel the violence. Regret cannot be permitted to take over because the rage is too strong. Her realization of that is her curse. It's all pretty complex.

The book's release has been delayed because of my husband's sudden death in September. However, I am going through it now and will be sending it on to editing and then it will go in Creativia's line up. I'm glad about that. My husband liked the book and, as always, encouraged me. 

So just hang on a little longer. Bathory and her madness will be worth waiting for!