Today I had
the pleasure to interview Mark Knight, author of ‘Blood Family’. Mark Knight grew up in
Massachusetts, USA. Settling in the UK, Mark continued to write novels of
differing genres, including horror and television scripts. Mark has worked on
scripts for Hollywood’s Little Slices of Death production company and one for Illusion
Studios, for which he has recently signed an Option Acquisition Agreement. He
also won several short story competitions, and has had his work featured in
published anthologies. Mark concentrates now on Young Adult urban fantasy
novels. Here is what he had to say:
I fell in love with books and movies very early on. Roald Dahl, Planet of the Apes, Tolkien, Star Wars...they were all part of my journey. From age
sixteen I was compelled to write my own.
I have always been fascinated by amazingly 'out there' type stories - be
it fantasy, horror, or science fiction - that have an element of reality in
them. You know, where you can say 'Oh yeah, I can relate to that' or 'I know
someone who has that problem'. To me, the more real your characters, their emotions, problems,
etc, then the more thrilling it becomes when the fantastic comes knocking at
their door.
For instance, Daniel Dark, the seventeen-year-old protagonist of Blood Family, has family problems that have led him to
smoke weed and chug beer with his equally indolent friend. But then he
discovers that he is a half-vampire with incredible powers. Finally, his dull
going-nowhere life is supercharged.
Fifteen-year-old Solomon, hero of Solomon Grimm and the Well of Souls, comes from a broken home
and suffers from hypoglycaemic attacks his diabetes. It screws up his
life—until a gypsy curse renders him undead. Diabetes is the least of his
problems now.
Dealing with the death of a parent was bad enough for Gunner Robinson.
He has a sixth-sense, the ability to know when evil is near. Other powers are
manifesting themselves as well, and they are getting him into trouble, at home
and at school. Which is why he wound up in therapy. Telling the doc that he is a
warrior angel reborn would definitely make things worse...
~~~~~
‘Blood Family’ is a must read, fellows.
Here’s a
blurb that might tempt you, just have a look:
Life as part of a debt-free, middle-class family in
the New England suburbs should have been heaven.
But when your father is a Man of God and you’re a
vampire, it sure can be hell.
Until the age of seventeen, Daniel
Dark had no idea of his true origins. Something
was ulcerating deep inside him, striving to claw its way free. Pastor Nathan
Dark and his wife, Annie, had adopted him and brought him up as their own. But
Daniel always felt that there was a secret they feared tell him…
Everything changes the day a
mysterious package arrives at his home. It contains blood – human blood. It is
a message from his true father – a vampire named Dominus. Daniel’s vampire half
awakens and takes its first step out of the shadows. Vampires, Daniel learns,
are not like in the movies. They’re worse, much
worse, and cannot be killed by sunlight or stakes.
The once lazy, goalless youth
transforms into sharp-sensed killer. Now, there is no turning back. On his
trail is Pastor Nathan Dark, obsessed with destroying the boy he’d adopted as
his own...
Armed with ever-evolving powers,
Daniel sets off to find and free his birth mother, imprisoned by Dominus since
the day of his birth.
It is a journey that takes Daniel to
Mexico and the mysterious Mayan shaman woman, Xochil, guardian of Vampire
secrets. From there the trail leads to misty moors of southern England, where
he joins forces with Logan DuPris, a vampire hunter as attractive as she is
deadly. Together they piece together the weird clues that lead to...
The Vampire Key
~~~~~
And to give
you a little taste, here’s an excerpt (quite tempting, isn’t it?):
CHAPTER 13
As evening painted the sky a deep purple, Daniel stepped
through his front door and looked around. As his life had changed, so too had
all that surrounded him. He was sensing something. Daniel had never been one
for deep thinking, but now his perceptions stretched themselves out over the
landscape, over time, feeling out new possibilities and new horizons. He
exhaled a big, purging breath, scratching the back of his head. Was he really going to do it? Leave home?
The ‘incident’ with Daelin had left him confused. Part of
him had wanted to take advantage of her in the most gruesome and bloodiest of
ways. Part of him wanted to protect her forever. Would it be best for her—and
for him—to stay, or to leave? This wasn’t exactly something he could talk over
with the town’s youth counselor. For the first time in his life, he had no one
to fall back on. Future decisions would be down to him and him alone.
No more of this
soul-searching crap. I want my bed.
Entering, he kicked off his sneakers and thudded up the
stairs. As he grabbed the door handle to his room he halted. Mom stood there,
down the hall, looking…defenseless.
“Daniel…”
“Just a minute, Mom.” He wanted to change his shirt a.s.a.p.—his
unbidden hallucination had made him very sweaty, not to mention the sex play
with Daelin.
He entered his room.
That was his first mistake.
Dad was waiting for him—he and six other pastors. Not one appeared
to be in a forgiving mood.
It was a shock to Daniel—he hadn’t even seen any cars parked
out front, not even Dad’s.
He then made his second mistake. He didn’t move quickly
enough.
Another pastor, who had been waiting next to the door,
kicked it shut. Then, the tallest of the ministers facing him shot him with
what looked to be a crossbow. The arrow tore into the boy’s left shoulder,
pinning him to his bedroom door. He roared in pain. Before the roar was over,
an arrow pierced his other shoulder.
“I know you hate me for this, Daniel,” said Nathan Dark. “But
I’m doing this to help you.”
“Help me?” spat Daniel. “You want to kill me!”
“It’s taken me years to put together this Deliverance Team,
Daniel,” Pastor Dark told him. “And unlike even my own church denomination, our
newly founded division knows about the existence of creatures like you.”
“Creatures like
me?”
“Yes,” said Nathan coldly. “Demons—like you.”
The pastors rushed at Daniel as he grasped the arrow shafts,
trying to pull himself free. The seven men began shouting out religious
passages at him, fear knocking their phrases out of unison. Five of them
restrained Daniel while two others (including his father) performed the laying
on of hands, placing palms on his head and chest. Enraged, Daniel bellowed back
at them, irises turning blood red as his would-be deliverers watched in
increasing terror.
And something else was happening: the arrows that impaled
Daniel were dissolving, actually
turning to ash and smoke before their eyes. Through the tears in his son’s
shirt Nathan Dark could see the arrow wounds healing before his eyes—flesh
growing and knitting, liberated blood retreating back inside the boy’s body
before the holes closed.
Revivified, Daniel flung his arms outward in a mighty push,
hurling the men to the floor. The deliverers howled in pain.
Nathan Dark regained his senses. His son was nowhere in
sight. Then, hearing a sound like the panting of a wounded wolf, he looked up.
Daniel clung there, defying gravity, hugging the ceiling like a bat. Nathan barked through gritted teeth to the
crossbow-wielder, who hastily reloaded his weapon of choice. He was good—very
good—and had no trouble in unleashing another duo of deadly carbon shafts into
the boy’s body—one in the leg, and the other in his shoulder. The idea was to
get so many of them stuck in the youth that he would weaken long enough for the
team to overpower him. In this case, ‘overpower’
would mean one of two things—either to free him of his curse, or to free him of
his life.
Detaching from the ceiling, Daniel landed in the center of
the pastors, now on their feet in a rough circle. He spun, elongated nails
gashing each face in rapid succession. Blood sprayed in all directions. The
deliverers reeled back in pain. But Nathan avoided injury, stepping back just
long enough to retrieve from his jacket the object that he had secreted there
as a last resort.
There had been
accounts of wooden stakes actually working against demonics and undead
entities, but Nathan had never verified any of these accounts. Sure, maybe it
was just movie nonsense. But this, right here, right now, was real. He was
going to put right this terrible wrong—this boy’s abominable existence—in God’s
name. He would succeed no matter what, even if -
Daniel had locked his gaze on to his father. The stake
dropped from his hand. Pastor Nathan Dark grabbed his head as though trying to
keep it from falling off. The look of sheer terror in his face was proof enough
that the hypnotic assault was working.
The other members of the deliverance team watched, transfixed.
“No!” Nathan was screaming. “Don’t leave me in this place!
Get me out! Take me out of here!” He was no longer in this world, not
consciously. Daniel had succeeded in making this devout Christian man believe
that he was in Hell.
It had not been difficult for Daniel to target his father’s
greatest fear. But he didn’t know how long he could keep up the illusion. This
ability was new to him, powered by raw instinct.
Sensing the approach of the other ministers, Daniel whirled
to confront them.
“Keep back!” he warned. “Unless you want me to invade your
little minds as well!” His own words frightened him. Never before had he spoken
words like that, nor with such rage. What had he become?
Pastor Nathan Dark screamed even louder. Even Daniel had no
idea as to what his Dad was seeing within his mind’s eye.
“Daniel! Stop it, now!”
Mom!
Daniel was shocked to see that she’d entered. He released
his father.
Jerking his head toward the window across the room, he
barked at it as though giving an order. The windowpane shot up with a bang.
Daniel’s exit was a blur—a dark streak that could have been
the boy taking flight. No one in the room would ever know.
He was gone.
~~~~~
For those
interested, Mark’s book can be purchased on Amazon. Here are the links:
I thank
Mark for being my guest today and wish him the best of luck.
I love this book, the story is easy to read, clean, and no deep words to understand. Lots of adventure and doubts, the story kept me reading. I got mine at this site http://topebookreader.com.au with cheaper price.
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