Hello Bellaholics,

As I watched the first episode of the new Interview with the Vampire series, I'm reminded about how Anne Rice inspired my writing when it comes to vampires.

This fall, the final Odin Chronicles book will come out, bringing the tale to one hell of an ending. This is how it started.

Read on if you're curious.

I didn't read the books before I saw the movie. But when I saw the movie, I was blown away. She did everything different from what everyone else was doing.

Gone we're the bothersome do-gooder humans that had to save the damsel from the evil vampire.

Gone was the trope that if you kill the head vampire, all the sad humans can return to normal.

Gone was the trope of the vampire hating vampire who just wanted to be with his human female and be human again.

Anne took the humans out of the main story and made them footnotes. Food. Because this was all about the vampire.

Even some of the best vampire movies and books had those tropes in 1994 when I saw Interview with the Vampire.

And even more astounding was the homosexual overtones and the fact that you got to see a vampire family. The bonding. How they found companionship, and a reason to enjoy their immortality.

All of these things were plot points no one else was doing. Sometimes it just takes one person to change the game. And for me, Anne Rice was that person.

Fast forward to 2014 when I'm sitting at my computer screen. Wanting to see something I hadn't seen before. A human rebel turned into the very thing he hated, but didn't even know he wanted. He just needed a firm hand.

I wrote the story I had been dying to read about. Where I didn't want the vampire to be looking for his soul mate. Where the humans weren't a bunch of hunters who could take them out. Where the hot, superhuman men who fucked like sex was as good as the blood, and they couldn't get enough. Where their world was about power, territory, family, and dominance.

Werewolves and dragons weren't even on my mind when I wrote the short story, Embraced. I didn't even have the title of the series, because I didn't think it'd become the epic behemoth it did.

As I delved deeper into that world, I began to expand. But still keeping true to the roots. The New Haven and Odin Chronicles series wasn't about romance, dark or otherwise. It wasn't even about erotica, I just wanted a lot of kinky sex in the series.

It's about the story. The relationship these characters forged, the struggles between factions. The thirst for power, and their quest for pleasure.

I wanted intrigued, betrayal and loyalty and I wanted to make it all about the supernatural creature, not the humans.

I also didn't want anything to be predictable, or easy for the characters. I wanted to show the fight, and power play. I wanted to have it where outcomes didn't always go as expected.

I wanted to give readers my own paranormal world to explore.

It all begin with Embraced, then became Chained in Darkness, then it became the New Haven series.

If you've never read the series and love vampires, werewolves and dragons as much as I do, here is where you can find it.

https://www.nicholasbella.com/the-new-haven-series