Unlike any vampire story you have ever read………..
Gerald Simpkin's Forever Young The Beginning
Short
author bio: Now retired, I had a lifelong career in telecommunications. I have a love of the written word and have
always admired those who can skillfully express feelings and events in writing.
My novel 'Forever Young The Beginning'
is my first attempt at fiction. It is
set in Europe in the mid-18th century. I
also wrote a book about Bible Codes in 1998 which is titled 'Secrets of the
Bible'.
YOU CAN FIND GERALD and Forever Young The Beginning at .....
Purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Young-The-Beginning-ebook/dp/B008PKQH3Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344894396&sr=1-1&keywords=forever+young+the+beginning...
Website / Blog: http://www.amazon.com/Gerald-Simpkins/e/B008RBHLJC
Facebook: gerry.simpkins.9@facebook.com
Twitter: geraldsimpkins@GeraldSimpkins
Book Synopsis: A 23 year old Scottish seaman/apprentice trader (Ian McCloud)
is on a ship in the Mediterranean and they are attacked by Moroccan pirates in
two ships. After a pitched battle at
sea, they prevail and are surprised to learn that they have inadvertently
rescued two captive Spanish girls being taken to Morocco. After several days of sailing towards Spain,
Ian and the 17 year old Alandra are both falling in love. The prize ship Ian is piloting is separated
from his uncle’s ship by a terrific storm, and Ian ends up in Marseille, France
with eight of his shipmates.
There he has a ferocious life or death
fight in an infamous tavern and inn, the result of which is that he is targeted
to be killed. Instead, he is infected by
a vampire and is saved by another one who witnessed the attack. After learning that he is no longer human, he
has some serious soul-searching to do and realizes that his former life is lost
to him.
I am sure that this next part is new to
vampire fans and is unique to my book only.
He learns that for his own good, he has to undergo a rigorous imprinting phase as his body changes
into the creature he will become. The
tolerances he imprints will be with
him for eternity. Successful completion
of imprinting requires a great deal of pain, but the result is that the convert
becomes an Adept vampire; one who can
freely mingle with human society day or night, eat their food, work with them
side by side and be undetected. The most
painful part of the imprinting process is the blood fast during which no blood may be consumed in order to
forever develop a tolerance for doing without it for periods of time. Male vampires must make love while imprinting
or lose their libido forever, which makes for an interesting dilemma for Ian. His mentors do not consume human blood and
really, Adepts mostly do not. After all, blood is hemoglobin, saline
protein, and other things no matter what kind of blood it is. Non-mentored rogue vampires do prey on humans
in the cities of Europe and elsewhere in my story.
The remainder of the book is a mix of his
warm new friendships, including some with children; tender romantic interludes,
a love triangle involving a human woman, some horrific and sorrowful events, eye-popping
fighting against rogue vampires, and being pursued by various enemies he has
made during his sometimes turbulent journey.
He is called to testify before the Supreme
Council, a group of nine powerful vampires who monitor vampire related
events throughout Europe with an eye toward keeping the existence of vampires a
secret from humanity in general.
Ian is schooled by a wise mentor in how to
approach and recruit young to middle aged officials in order to have their
services for the balance of their careers in government. One such recruit is tracked throughout the
story in order to show the intricacy and far reaching magnitude of Ian’s
mentor’s program.
His wealth is grown over the years by
means of inside information from his mentor and from members of the Supreme Council. He is taught how to make a generational
change of identity and how to conceal his true wealth in anonymous interlocking
trusts in various countries as a necessary part of being an immortal and
remaining undetected, yet increasing his holdings in order to live the life of
an Adept Prince among vampires; but
his heart sometimes longs for the simpler life he knew when he first fell in
love with Alandra. Tortured by his fear
of her reaction to what he has become, he resolutely goes about the business of
his mentor and his adopted family, and lives the life that fate has dealt him. Fate is a fickle mistress however as Ian
learns.
Being that I had only a little exposure to
vampire literature and movies, I have written what I believe is a completely
original take on the subject. The love
scenes are tenderly done with no sexually explicit content, and if ‘Forever Young The Beginning’ was a
miniseries on TV, it could be rated PG13 excepting for the violent and brutally
gruesome fighting scenes. No vulgar
language is used and the tiny amount of profanity that occurs is only as an
exclamation of extreme anger now and then.
Laughter and surprises are liberally sprinkled throughout my story, and
I guarantee that you will love the ending.
1.
How did you come up with the title? Vampires live forever
and if they are converted when young, then they will be ‘Forever Young’. Since this is the foundational story for a
series, it is titled ‘Forever Young The Beginning’. I plan to have it available on Barnes &
Noble/Nook soon.
2.
What inspired you to write this book? I think it was that
what little I had seen in movies regarding the subject seemed to fall short of
what such a genre could really be. I did
read Ann Rice’s book about the vampire Lestat, and I thought that it seemed
depressing. It seemed to me that such a
subject should be exciting, adventurous and romantic as well as dreadful. Since my vampires are extreme creatures with
extreme abilities, I thought it reasonable that extremes of happiness and
sorrow, of love and hate, of warm friendships and rage were all to be included
in a well-crafted vampire story. I
wanted to avoid some of the stereotypes that I have seen, while preserving
others that seem more worthy and not too corny.
In my story, there
is a scene where Ian is learning of a theory which his mentors have concerning
the origin of vampires. They tie their
origin to the 6th chapter of Genesis in the Bible and there is a
discussion of that in relation to vampires that takes place one evening in the
chateau of his mentors while human guests are present. I doubt that has ever been used in any
vampire story, but my exposure to such stories is limited.
3.
How are your story ideas born? For the most part, they
literally come to me as I am writing, although I sometimes think of something
when not writing. The story is always
lurking in my mind no matter what else I am doing on any given day when I am in
the process of writing. I recently
learned of a spy ring that George Washington is credited with starting during
the revolutionary war and I have resolved to incorporate that into my next
book.
4.
What is your
writing process? Few notes, but long hours at the keyboard.
I sometimes do 12 hour stretches with only a few breaks. When I am at an impasse, I quit and take a
note pad and literally make a map or diagram of where the story might go
next. That will happen in the basement
den as I watch a show or two that I have recorded. I will make a stick drawing and I will follow
maybe three or four branches and note several events on each path as they occur
to me. After looking at all of them for
a while, I will begin to get ideas so fast that I can barely write them
down. I am usually ready to get back to
it the following day. At least that is
how it was when I wrote ‘Forever Young The Beginning’. I
do make up a word document and add each character to it so as to never confuse
one with another while writing. I will
refer to it now and then. Even so, I had
to correct a few places in my book where I had inadvertently put one character’s
name in place of another. Their names
were similar, so that contributed to the problem. That is a good thing for anyone to avoid in
their writing process. I always keep
my manuscript’s latest version on three separate flash drives as well as under
duplicate files in ‘My Documents’. Ditto
for cover art and cast of characters.
5.
What’s your favorite part of the
writing process? I absolutely love it when I suddenly get an idea for something and then I
have to search for a way to integrate it into the story. I am consumed until I find the perfect place
to spring it on the reader. My thoughts
race as I weigh this new event and whether or not it is plausible given the
content of the story up to that time. If
it is in the future somewhere, I cannot wait to get the text there so I can fit
it in! Sometimes then I will backtrack
and adjust the text if needed to support this new idea. Then the best part of it all is to find the
proper words to convey the emotions felt
by the characters in that instant. I
often search for some way to highlight that instant, and to freeze that frame
briefly in the reader’s mind. It might
be the sound of the wind in the treetops or the sound of surf crashing in the
distance or something of that sort that in the real world, any of us would
remember later in recalling such an event from our memory of it. Sometimes I end a chapter right when it
happens or is revealed, and the next chapter opens with other characters in the
story somewhere else doing whatever they are doing at that time. I am hoping that the reader is in a state of
shocked surprise at that instant. Yet
other times the conclusion of such an event is uproarious laughter by all characters
present.
6.
How long did it take to write your
latest release? ‘Forever
Young The Beginning’ took me around
three months to write and then it took me three more months to edit and publish
it, including doing my own cover art.
7.
Did you hire an editor to review your
manuscript before publishing? No. I did go through
the entire book eleven times cutting some 20,000 words from it, catching typos,
punctuation errors, etc. I did add in
some extra villains with scores to settle.
That was for the next book.
8.
What are the future plans for you and
this book? This
is to be the foundation for an open-ended series that will span the time from
before the American Revolutionary War to modern times. The sequel will center on the Revolutionary War
itself and the behind the scenes role Adept
vampires play on both sides in the fight for American independence.
9.
Have you published anything else? Yes. I wrote ‘Secrets
of the Bible’ in 1998. It is about
bible codes at equally spaced intervals in the Hebrew canon of scripture and
how they amplify the events in the very verses in which they are found. For instance, in the verse where the bible
says Pharaoh pursued Israel into the Red Sea, it spells ‘stupid’ at equally spaced intervals. Thus the encoded word supports the events
detailed in the text itself, being that the Egyptian army perished there. There are hundreds of such things encoded at
equally spaced intervals in the Hebrew Canon of Scripture.
10.
Do you have anything specific that you want to say
to your readers? Oh my, yes! Thank you for taking a
chance on me. Thank you so very much for
investing your time and money on nothing more than the product of my
imagination. I am both humbled and
grateful. And I am very open and
approachable regarding feedback too, wanting only the very most enjoyable experience
for my readers.
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