5th Annual List of Sexy Vampires

Who knew that it's almost impossible to run out of sexy vampires to highlight every year.  I never thought I would still be doing this list all these years later, but damn, there are some fine ass vampires gracing our screens.  I know that vampires aren't for everyone, and the vampire as a sex object can get old over time, but when they look like those on this list, who cares how cliche it is.  I'm sure all of you would gladly bare your neck for at least one of the bloody thirsty fiends on this list.  For that matter, I think quite a few of us wouldn't mind if a few of them took an interest in us.  And if nobody on this list gets your blood pumping, why don't you check out the previous lists from 2009, 2010, 2011, or even 2012.  If nobody gets the blood flowing, then there is no hope for you.  So with no further ado, here are ten luscious vampire men and women for your perusing pleasure.

THE MEN

Vargas, as played by Taye Diggs in the movie Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.  What more needs to be said, look at him, he's frickin hot.  He's also hell bent on finding an ancient artifact, running a nightclub, and being an all around badass.

Barnabas Collins, as played by Ben Cross in the television remake of Dark Shadows.  There is such a dignified air about this man.  He's tall, dark, and sexy; plus he takes what he wants.  There is nothing sexier than a man who knows his own mind.

Armand, as played by Antonio Banderas in the movie version of Interview with a Vampire.  Normally long hair on a man turns me off, but there is something about the profile and accent that can make me overlook the long locks.

David, as played by Theo James in the movie Underworld: Awakening.  When a man that looks like this, has those eyes, and can fight rampaging werewolves as easily as most of us open up a book, why would you not want to have him around.

Josef Kostan, as played by Jason Dohring in the TV show Moonlight.  If only all of us would be this boyishly handsome after 412 years.  He's cute, rich, and extreme healthy, what more could you want in a mate.

THE WOMEN

Rebekah Mikaelson, as played by Claire Holt in the TV show Vampire Diaries.  Tall, blonde, deadly, and fun, a great combination if you like that kind of thing.

Harmony Kendall, as played by Mercedes McNab in two different TV shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.  Harmony lives up to the dumb blonde stereotype, but with her Nordic good looks, who cares that she has the brain of a unicorn.

Star, as played by Jami Gertz in The Lost Boys.  She has a carefree attitude and loves a guy who rides a motorcycle, but he has to have a heart of gold.

Lucy Westenra, as played by Bai Ling in the movie The Breed.  This version of Lucy is a tough as nail vampiric enforcer, who loves a little human meat.  

Solina, as played by Jennifer Esposito in the movie Dracula 2000.  Of all the women who made this years list, Solina may have had the smallest role, but with looks like that, it doesn't take a lot of screen time to make men take notice for years.

Hell House by Richard Matheson

Synopsis From Back Cover:

For over twenty years, Belasco House has stood empty.  Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, it is a venerable mansion whose shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity.  Two previous expeditions to investigate it's secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide, or insanity.

Now a new investigation has been mounted, bringing four strangers to the forbidding mansion, determined to probe Belasco House for the ultimate secrets of life and death.  Each has his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion, but can any soul survive what lurks within the most haunted house on Earth?

My good friend, Michelle of The True Book Addict, loves this book.  I'm not sure if it's one of her favorite books, but I know she really likes it.  Before this, I had only seen the movie, which was okay for me.  It was typical of the period it was made in, but it didn't blow me away.  I would gladly take the movie versions of Burnt Offerings or The Sentinel, over the movie version of Hell House.  But I still wanted to read this book.  I adore haunted house stories, so how could I go through life without reading one of the biggest of them all.

Needless to say, I went into this with high expectations.  In my head, I was comparing this to The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.  It's not really a fair comparison though, other than both books dealing with a group of investigators moving into a haunted house to find the source of the problem, they really don't have anything else in common.  Oh wait, they do have everything in common, so the comparison is fair.  Or at least, it's not unfair to the two books.

And it's with that comparison, fair or not, that Hell House just doesn't live up to what I was wanting it to be.  I'm a fan of Richard Matheson, I Am Legend is one of the best horror novels ever written, but his writing can not compare to Shirley Jackson.  Where Richard Matheson can creep me out, Shirley Jackson can mess with my head and have me creeped out for days after I've turned the last page.  So maybe this whole comparison thing won't work, maybe I do need to figure out a way to separate them in my head.

Belasco House definitely lives up to it's reputation of being the granddaddy of haunted houses.  It's a home with no working windows, so it gets no natural light from the outside.  It's surrounded by a moat with a miasma of evil hovering above it, shrouding the house in even more darkness.  And if there weren't enough, every type of ghostly phenomena, from apparitions to violent attacks, can be witnessed and experienced in the house.  Where Hill House screws with your head, Belasco House will rip it off and use it as a soccer ball.

Given all of that, I still think Hill House scares me more. And that's because of Shirley Jackson and in the way she writes.  Granted, I would never step foot in Belasco House, but it's Hill House that epitomizes the haunted house of my nightmares.

Vintage Mystery Challenge 2013, Completed!

The lovely Bev, at My Reader's Block, has been hosting The Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge for a few years now, and I never fail to sign up.  This challenge has broadened my reading habits, and it's a joy to participate in every year.  So now that I'm done, it's time to recap everything I read for the challenge itself.  I ended up reading 16 books, and here they are in order.

1.  Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie - Get Out of Jail Free

2.  The Sleeping Bride by Dorothy Eden - Wicked Women

3.  The Confession & Sight Unseen by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Psychic Phenomena 

4.  The Deadly Travellers by Dorothy Eden - World Traveller 

5.  Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie - Repeat Offenders

6.  Lost Ecstasy by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Yankee Doodle Dandy  

7.  That Which is Crooked by Doris Miles Disney - Amateur Night

8.  Puzzle for Players by Patrick Quentin - Staging the Crime

9.  A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Colorful Crime

10.  The Unsuspected by Charlotte Armstrong - Book to Movie

11.  Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie - Murder on the High Seas

12.  Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier - Scene of the Crime

13.  Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie - International Detectives

14.  The Great Prince Shan by E. Phillips Oppenheim - Maliscious Men

15.  Miss Silver Comes to Stay by Patricia Wentworth - Jolly Old England

16.  The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Dangerous Beasts

Changes by Mercedes Lackey

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Mags was a Herald Trainee in the brand new Heraldic Collegium in Haven, Valdemar's capital city.  Though his background of unimaginable poverty and abuse set him apart from most other trainees, nonetheless he had found his own special group of friends.  Bear, Lena, and Amily were all students whose situations in life set them apart from more usual trainees, and together the four friends struggled to help one another find the solutions to their individual problems.

But Mags' friendship with Amily brought him to the attention of her father Nikolas - the King's Own.  The seemingly immortal Companion Rolan had chosen Nikolas to suit the specific needs of the current monarch, and those needs were for an agent who could collect information surreptitiously - a King's Own spy.  Nikolas recognized the same traits in Mags that Rolan had recognized in him.  Both were inconspicuous with an almost uncanny ability to fade into the woodwork.  Both could mimic low-class behavior and pidgin speech.  Both were unusually expert at observing the situations around them, and at ferreting out hidden motives.

So Mags began training as Nikolas' partner.  They worked in disguise at night in one of the seedier parts of Haven, where Nikolas had set up a false identity as a pawnbroker and fence.  Hiding in the shadows behind the desk, pretending to neither hear nor speak, Mags could better "observe" the clients, and even the surrounding neighborhood.  And Nikolas could send him out on "errands" to chase down leads.

But this new job was far more dangerous than Mags had ever considered.  For there were mysterious agents in the city - agents who sought to bring down the kingdom, and no one knew where they came from or who they worked for.  They were smart, talented, and preternaturally fast.  And most of all they were willing to do anything - anything - to bring Valdemar to ruin.

I suck at reviewing fantasy, so it's a good thing that this wasn't a review book.  As usual, I adore anything Mercedes Lackey chooses to write.  Her books, even if some of them repeat the same themes, are comfort reading for me.  I love the world she has created with the Velgarth books, which feels like a second home to me anymore.  Whether the book takes place in Valdemar, Karse, Rethwellen, Haighlei, or the lands of the Hawkbrothers, I feel comfortable as soon as I open the cover.

This is the third book in The Collegium Chronicles, which is the only series in the Velgarth books that is over three books long.  There are other series that take place right after the previous, but no others that are longer than a trilogy.  I actually read this earlier in the year, and didn't realize that I have yet to write a review of it.  It wasn't until I was started reading the fourth book, Redbout, that I discovered the oversight.  So here I am, months later, getting caught up.

Changes continues the journey of Mags as he continues to come into his own as a Herald trainee, and a future spy for Valdemar.  He is still trying to piece together his past, which seems to be tied up with assassins from Karse.  The assassins are back and are determined to wreck as much damage as they can.  This time around they try to kidnap Amily, the daughter of Nikolas, the Kings Own.  For the most part, the action takes place in the last third of the book, which means the first two thirds are the build up and character development.  This isn't groundbreaking writing, but it's familiar and comfortable, and it's home for me.

Cher Comes to Wordsmithonia Radio

Every once in a while I get in the mood to listen to one single artist.  I'm never sure what triggers those moods, but when it happens I can latch onto all their songs or just a few of them, and listen over and over and over again.  The other night I really needed to listen to one particular song by Cher, "Just Like Jesse James."  I think I listened to it about a dozen times, and a few days later, I'm still in the mood to hear it.  So I thought I would share that song, and a few others of hers that I really enjoy.

The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Politics and poker... that was the occupation and preoccupation of the members of the White Cat Club.

Once on the inside, a man's business was his own and nobody gave a damn if he was mayor of the town or a champion pool player of the first war.

It was a noisy, crowded, masculine kind of retreat, which explained the sign that hung proudly over the door:  "The White Cat Never Sleeps."

But murder entered the wakeful chambers of the White Cat, and it's victims slept the deep sleep of the dead.

So this will be my last Mary Roberts Rinehart review of the year, and I'm really not sure when I will have a chance to review another one.  Not because I still don't love her books, but because I don't have anymore to read.  What's worse, I think I've finally emptied the used bookstores in Wichita of their Rinehart books.  I can still find the books I already own, but I'm afraid there are no "new" ones to find.  If I have to end my Mary Roberts Rinehart love fest for a while, at least it was with a book I really enjoyed.  After the last few books of hers that weren't strictly mysteries, it was nice to get back to her writing at it's best.

One aspect of this book that I don't think I have ever touched upon before is the way she is able to tell the story from a man's perspective.  Almost all of her books are told in the first person, and she is one of the few that does an equally good job telling the story from the perspective of male and female characters.  Either way, the narrative voice comes across as authentic and natural for the time period and for who the character is.  Even when the smallest aspects of romance are involved, which there always is in a Rinehart mystery, if the narrator is a man, it never feels forced or fake in any way.  I wish I could say that about most authors, but from what I have seen in the past, that's not normally the case.

The other side of her books that I almost always enjoy, and do so here, is the way in which she incorporates all the side characters into the story.  Whether they are family members, doctors, police officers, or suspects; the secondary characters are always fun, and almost always as well developed as the main characters.  I wish modern mystery writers would develop that skill, though I will admit that some, like Louise Penny and Tana French, do a great job at it.

Challenges: VM (Dangerous Beasts)

Oddities & Entities by Roland Allnach

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Set in the mysterious space between the everyday world and an existence just beyond reach, Oddities & Entities traces a path through the supernatural, the paranormal, and the speculative.  With moments of horror, dark humor, and philosophical transcendence, these tales explore a definition of life beyond the fragile vessel of the human body.

It's not often that I agree to review a book by a small press or a self published author, but when Trish at TLC Book Tours is the one offering the book to me, it gets my attention.  This last round of offerings, I ended up picking up two such books, and Oddities & Entities by Roland Allnach, is the first of those two to be reviewed.

The collection of six stories started off with a bang.  The first story, "Boneview," was so good, it surpassed every expectation I had.  In "Boneview" a young woman can see through to the bones of everyone she sees, it allows her to see their overall health.  Her sight attracts an entity from the other side, an entity who befriends her with presents, but is so creepy, that it's fairly obvious the creature has an ulterior motive.  The story tracks her life from childhood to adulthood, it tells the tale of a young woman who goes from a artistic loner, to a happily married woman, and all the pain in between.  I'm not going to go to far into the details, because of all the stories in this book, it's the one I would want everyone to read.

The next two stories, while not as strong, still held my attention and kept me entertained.  The final three stories, I really could have done without.  They didn't seem as well constructed as the previous stories, nor did they feel as if they were as well grounded.  It was like a movie that starts of so strong, that you know you are going to love it.  Then for whatever reason, the director decides to make the movie way too long, which weakens the story and leaves it's audience bored by the end.  I'm not saying that I was bored by this collection, but I wish it had been shorter.

I would like to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read other reviews.