Judge: Lucienne Diver, you’ve been accused of torturing your characters. How do you plead?
Lucienne: Not guilty, Your Honor. I mean, yes, I’ve been hard on my characters. It’s hardly a novel without danger and suspense, but they're characters that I've created, not real people.
Gina: Hello, right here. Living and... well, not breathing, but that's hardly my fault.
Judge: Miss, we'll get to you in a second. (Looking back to Lucienne.) Please continue.
Lucienne: I mean, look at me. (Extends photographs, which bailiff brings to the judge, who labels them Exhibits A, B and C.)
Lucienne: Look at those puffy pink dresses. I was never the popular girl. I was certainly never the fashion icon. And you can't see my ever-present inhaler in the pics. Even if I could’ve gotten through all the floof, I was never going to kick any serious a... butt. But then the character of Gina started talking in my head. I had the chance to revisit high school as the popular girl. That's all I was trying to do.
Judge (consulting paper before him): So you haven't been heard to say in speeches that you got to, and I quote, "Torture the popular girl. Start with the girl who always had the perfect hair and make-up and take away her reflection and tanning options, and make her dig her own way out of the grave, totally ruining her manicure. Put her in her own personal version of hell."
Lucienne (looking uncomfortable): Well, uh, that's what authors do. We take a situation and thrust someone into it who's totally out of her element—
Gina (hands on her hips, foot tapping): Oh no! Authors always talk like that: when I created so and so, but Exhibit D right here—
Lucienne: D for diva.
Gina (ignoring comment): —is me, alive and kicking. She didn't "create me". I exist. Judge, does your paper say how many times she said something like, "I'd try to write in one direction and Gina would just boot me out of the way and say, "I'll handle this"? You know, almost like I'm a real person?
Lucienne: I did say that. Authors talk like that all the time, like their characters are real people. Makes us sound a little nuts. But, Gina, if you'd been writing your own story, would you really have let yourself buried in that heinous white eyelet gown you literally wouldn't be caught dead in?
Gina: That’s the whole point, I was dead at that time… I had no say in my death and all that, but once I rose again, I took over.
Lucienne: You can't have it both ways! Either I put you through the ringer or everything was all your idea.
Judge (raises gavel as though to pound it and decides instead to let them have it out).
Gina: Or maybe you got me into things and I got myself out. What about that vampiress Melissande, who had designs on my boyfriend Bobby? Or Alistaire, the crazy psychic who goes around calling me morsel and pretty, pretty and trying to eat my friends.
Lucienne: What's wrong with Alistaire? Readers love him!
Gina: What's wrong with Alistaire? Where do I start?
Lucienne: What about Bobby? I gave you a really hot boyfriend with some major powers.
Gina (gets a dreamy look in her eyes): You didn't give me Bobby. That had to do with the after-prom party and his vampire make-over.
Lucienne: But still—
Gina: And by the way, I didn't survive that party, so thanks for that.
Lucienne: You got over it.
Gina: And you'll get over this. Look, Judge, all I'm asking for is enough of a settlement to rebuild my wardrobe. I couldn't exactly go back home after burial, and in the months since, I've fought about a bazillion battles. Blood is never fashion forward, and let me tell you, stakes are holy hell on your clothes.
Judge (leaning forward for a better look): Miss Covello, you've claimed torture and emotional distress, but I don't see a mark on you. Do you have any evidence? Any photographs or police reports? Anything to back up your claims?
Gina: I have my obituary. But short of that, well, vampires heal pretty quickly and we don't show up on film. But she's written about all of it. Every single battle. Just look at these. (Plaintiff fans out a series of five paperback books. Submitted into evidence: VAMPED, REVAMPED, FANGTASTIC, FANGTABULOUS and FANGDEMONIUM, Exhibits E-I.)
Judge: Thank you. I'll take these back to my chambers to examine and consider my decision. In the meantime—
(The doors at the back of the courtroom open, and everyone but the judge who is already facing them turn to look.)
Gina: Hells bells!
Lucienne: Is that—
Gina: Agents Stick-up-her-butt and Stuffed Shirt. Yeah, it's them. In the flesh.
Lucienne: Sounds like an action scene to me. You want to take this one?
Gina (sending a side-eye to the judge): Then you admit I'm real.
Lucienne: You've always been plenty real to me.
Gina (kicking off her stilettos and preparing for fight or flight): Good, then maybe you'll go easier on me in the future.
Lucienne (dropping into a ready stance of her own): Maybe.
(The figures from the back close in.)
Gina (throwing Lucienne a glance): I've got this. Get gone.
Lucienne: And miss seeing you in action? Not a chance. Besides, it seems you've taught me a thing or two. Together this time.
Gina: On three...
Fangdemonium (Vamped #5)
by Lucienne Diver
July 17th, 2017
Publisher: Lore Seekers Press
Price: $6.99
ASIN: B073BMFDJ8
Fanged and fabulous…and hunted.
Judge (consulting paper before him): So you haven't been heard to say in speeches that you got to, and I quote, "Torture the popular girl. Start with the girl who always had the perfect hair and make-up and take away her reflection and tanning options, and make her dig her own way out of the grave, totally ruining her manicure. Put her in her own personal version of hell."
Lucienne (looking uncomfortable): Well, uh, that's what authors do. We take a situation and thrust someone into it who's totally out of her element—
Gina (hands on her hips, foot tapping): Oh no! Authors always talk like that: when I created so and so, but Exhibit D right here—
Lucienne: D for diva.
Gina (ignoring comment): —is me, alive and kicking. She didn't "create me". I exist. Judge, does your paper say how many times she said something like, "I'd try to write in one direction and Gina would just boot me out of the way and say, "I'll handle this"? You know, almost like I'm a real person?
Lucienne: I did say that. Authors talk like that all the time, like their characters are real people. Makes us sound a little nuts. But, Gina, if you'd been writing your own story, would you really have let yourself buried in that heinous white eyelet gown you literally wouldn't be caught dead in?
Gina: That’s the whole point, I was dead at that time… I had no say in my death and all that, but once I rose again, I took over.
Lucienne: You can't have it both ways! Either I put you through the ringer or everything was all your idea.
Judge (raises gavel as though to pound it and decides instead to let them have it out).
Gina: Or maybe you got me into things and I got myself out. What about that vampiress Melissande, who had designs on my boyfriend Bobby? Or Alistaire, the crazy psychic who goes around calling me morsel and pretty, pretty and trying to eat my friends.
Lucienne: What's wrong with Alistaire? Readers love him!
Gina: What's wrong with Alistaire? Where do I start?
Lucienne: What about Bobby? I gave you a really hot boyfriend with some major powers.
Gina (gets a dreamy look in her eyes): You didn't give me Bobby. That had to do with the after-prom party and his vampire make-over.
Lucienne: But still—
Gina: And by the way, I didn't survive that party, so thanks for that.
Lucienne: You got over it.
Gina: And you'll get over this. Look, Judge, all I'm asking for is enough of a settlement to rebuild my wardrobe. I couldn't exactly go back home after burial, and in the months since, I've fought about a bazillion battles. Blood is never fashion forward, and let me tell you, stakes are holy hell on your clothes.
Judge (leaning forward for a better look): Miss Covello, you've claimed torture and emotional distress, but I don't see a mark on you. Do you have any evidence? Any photographs or police reports? Anything to back up your claims?
Gina: I have my obituary. But short of that, well, vampires heal pretty quickly and we don't show up on film. But she's written about all of it. Every single battle. Just look at these. (Plaintiff fans out a series of five paperback books. Submitted into evidence: VAMPED, REVAMPED, FANGTASTIC, FANGTABULOUS and FANGDEMONIUM, Exhibits E-I.)
Judge: Thank you. I'll take these back to my chambers to examine and consider my decision. In the meantime—
(The doors at the back of the courtroom open, and everyone but the judge who is already facing them turn to look.)
Gina: Hells bells!
Lucienne: Is that—
Gina: Agents Stick-up-her-butt and Stuffed Shirt. Yeah, it's them. In the flesh.
Lucienne: Sounds like an action scene to me. You want to take this one?
Gina (sending a side-eye to the judge): Then you admit I'm real.
Lucienne: You've always been plenty real to me.
Gina (kicking off her stilettos and preparing for fight or flight): Good, then maybe you'll go easier on me in the future.
Lucienne (dropping into a ready stance of her own): Maybe.
(The figures from the back close in.)
Gina (throwing Lucienne a glance): I've got this. Get gone.
Lucienne: And miss seeing you in action? Not a chance. Besides, it seems you've taught me a thing or two. Together this time.
Gina: On three...
by Lucienne Diver
July 17th, 2017
Publisher: Lore Seekers Press
Price: $6.99
ASIN: B073BMFDJ8
Fanged and fabulous…and hunted.
Gina Covella, fashionista of the fanged, and her entourage are primed to reveal the existence of vampires on the popular Ghouligans television show, when their former federal handlers swoop in to shut them down and imprison the vamps in one of their super secret testing facilities. Or not so secret, as the gang knows all about the horror hospitals and has sworn to take them down.
Their daring escape runs them right into the arms of “the resistance”—a group of humans and vampires who’ve joined together to stop the fighting that’s made Gina and her boy Bobby’s hometown a bloody battlefield. Going home brings them back to old nemeses as well, including the psycho psychic who declared Gina “chaos” and Bobby “the key”. They hope he’ll unlock the secret of stopping the Feds’s freakshow experiments for good, because they’re building up to something big. Huge. And they’re consolidating their power in the Big Easy, aka New Orleans, where what’s cooking is nothing less than the final showdown.
I’d spent months fanged and fabulous and still I took an unneeded breath as the dye packs burst open and the fans blew the brightly colored powders straight for us. I slammed my eyes shut, but not quite fast enough to prevent some dye getting in and stinging to high heaven. Blood tears—the only kind I cried—formed at the corners of my eyes to wash out the irritants. Very sexy.
I looked to Bobby on my one side, hot as all hell even streaked in blue and purple—the blue totally matching his incredible eyes—and Marcy on the other side of me in flaming red/orange, and I cringed. I remembered my color wheel from elementary art. No doubt I’d been blasted with yellow and green from the middle of the rainbow. So not my colors. I looked down to confirm and wished I hadn’t.
Kill me now, I thought.
At least the cameras wouldn’t catch how badly the yellow and green dye went with my screaming purple mini-dress. Or my night-dark hair. And the green did match my eyes, even if only the Ghouligans’s studio audience would see it.
That’s what they were there for—neutral observers, randomly chosen, but for the background checks to keep out those who might want to end our unnatural lives. While we didn’t show up on film, the audience did. Their testimony and reactions would help flesh out the show. The dye packs made us visible for the those watching at home. Or, at least, they made our silhouettes visible in the voids we left on the canvas behind us. Because the dyes themselves didn’t help with our visibility.
Whatever weird magic stole away our images also prevented anything attached to us, like clothes and dye, from showing up on camera or in mirrors. So random.
The canvas was being sent on some kind of national tour after this before being auctioned off for charity along with a bunch of other things the Ghouligans had arranged. We were making history. Vampires finally coming out of the coffin. I expected it to feel a little less . . . silly.
I looked to Bobby on my one side, hot as all hell even streaked in blue and purple—the blue totally matching his incredible eyes—and Marcy on the other side of me in flaming red/orange, and I cringed. I remembered my color wheel from elementary art. No doubt I’d been blasted with yellow and green from the middle of the rainbow. So not my colors. I looked down to confirm and wished I hadn’t.
Kill me now, I thought.
At least the cameras wouldn’t catch how badly the yellow and green dye went with my screaming purple mini-dress. Or my night-dark hair. And the green did match my eyes, even if only the Ghouligans’s studio audience would see it.
That’s what they were there for—neutral observers, randomly chosen, but for the background checks to keep out those who might want to end our unnatural lives. While we didn’t show up on film, the audience did. Their testimony and reactions would help flesh out the show. The dye packs made us visible for the those watching at home. Or, at least, they made our silhouettes visible in the voids we left on the canvas behind us. Because the dyes themselves didn’t help with our visibility.
Whatever weird magic stole away our images also prevented anything attached to us, like clothes and dye, from showing up on camera or in mirrors. So random.
The canvas was being sent on some kind of national tour after this before being auctioned off for charity along with a bunch of other things the Ghouligans had arranged. We were making history. Vampires finally coming out of the coffin. I expected it to feel a little less . . . silly.
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Lucienne Diver is the author of Vamped young adult series (think Clueless meets Buffy) and the Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series from Samhain, which Long and Short Reviews called “a clever mix of Janet Evanovich and Rick Riordan”. Her short stories have appeared in the KICKING IT anthology edited by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price (Roc Books), the STRIP-MAULED and FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books) and her essay “Abuse” was published in DEAR BULLY: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperCollins). More information can be found on her website: www.luciennediver.com.
GIVEAWAY
There’s a tour-wide giveaway for copies of FANGDEMONIUM and a Rafflecopter gift certificate for 20 dollars! Open to US residents only. In addition, each blogger has a chance at a 20 dollar gift certificate.
