Author Melissa Graves is here today on the blog for her tour of Tainted Heart.
Welcome to Love Bytes, Melissa!
Author Name: Melissa Graves
Book Name: Tainted Heart
Series: Mi Corazón Sangrante Series #2 (Series should be read in order)
Release Date: November 5, 2015
Pages or Words: 294 pages
Publisher: Interlude Press
Cover Artist: RJ Shepherd, Buckeyegrrl Designs
Blurb:
A year after meeting and falling for the young, mysterious vampire, Dr. Brian Preston is now living and working side-by-side with Kyle Hayes for the agency guiding vampire-human relations at a secret underground facility. As the couple adapts to the demands of Brian’s career tending to vampires, Kyle’s return to school and the needs of their evolving relationship, a dangerous conspiracy puts everyone they know and everything they have been working for in danger. The sequel to 2014’s Bleeding Heart, Tainted Heart is Book Two in the Mi Corazón Sangrante series.
Categories: Erotica, Fiction, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, Paranormal, Romance, Thriller, Urban Fantasy
Today I’m very happy to be interviewing Melissa Graves author of Tainted Heart. Hi Melissa, thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Is there a character in your books that you can’t stand? (Antagonist for example) And what makes them someone you don’t like?
This is a really interesting question, because I don’t often write characters I hate. I much prefer to make all my characters a mixture of endearing and frustrating. There’s a new character in Tainted Heart that presents a temptation to Kyle who readers might want to push off a cliff. But I have to say, Brian’s father makes my skin crawl. He’s a pretty nasty character, made all the worse by the fact that he thinks he’s morally superior and smarter than everyone around him. He’s a grade-A jerk. If you’re a queer kid who ever had to deal with a difficult parent, you may be doing some fuming after you meet him.
Are there misconceptions people have about your genre?
There seems to be this huge divide between romance that contains explicit sex and romance that doesn’t—putting explicit erotica firmly on the outskirts of fiction. This drives me nuts. A story can have an awesome plot, great characters, and steamy sex scenes without any aspect suffering from another. This notion that erotica needs to be hidden away and kept separate from the mainstream is detrimental to fiction in general—embrace the many ways that people share intimacy without shame!
Is there message in your novel that you hope readers grasp?
It’s hugely important to me that people realize family is not just the people you are biologically related to. Embracing “found family”—a thing that I mention in the dedication in Tainted Heart—can save your life in so many ways. It can afford you happiness, acknowledgement, and respect. It can remind you that you are loved and wanted as you are. It can help ease the pain and result of abusive and negative treatment you have suffered. Actively forming a group of people around you who accept and support you is empowering and will teach you a lot about yourself.
How has your writing evolved since your first book? (If this is your first book, how do you hope it evolves?)
Oh, by leaps and bounds! My first novel, Bleeding Heart, the sequel to Tainted Heart, taught me so much about story crafting. It sounds silly, but I learned more about the English language and grammar in edits than I did in high school! And I loved every minute of it. I learned how to really let my characters speak without overpowering my reader. I learned how to let my supporting characters shine. I think the difference in an author between their first and second books is always significant.
One food you don’t care if you never eat it again.
There’s this hilarious story about me attempting to eat a raw olive at a farmer’s market that led to instantaneous, projectile spitting of said olive and lots of shrieking, but I’m not sure that counts…
Not really a fan of shellfish. I could definitely live without that!
When it gets dark, he texts Brian that he’s going to be out late, and avails himself of not one but three vampire-human nightclubs set along a dense strip of Chicago nightlife. Going alone to places like this always attracts immediate attention, and he isn’t surprised when he has to pry both humans and vampires off of himself. But he doesn’t mind—the blood from the center is humming in his veins, and that buzz takes on a new dimension every time that he swallows a thimbleful of blood from a donor, which he does at least a dozen times over the course of the evening. When he’s more relaxed, he allows bodies against his own, dancing with strangers until strobe lights become normal and everything outside is too dim and still.
The blood changes the world around him. Every color, every sound and every source of light takes on a life of its own.
He loses track of how many donors he pays. All he knows is he’s spent all of the pocket money that Brian gave him for the weekend.
He feels like a bloated tick. He’s been away too long. Brian. He has to get back to Brian.
Buy the book:
A veteran writer of fan fiction with thousands of followers, Melissa Graves wrote her first story at age thirteen, and by age sixteen had met her future husband in an online vampire fiction chat room. A fan of science fiction and fantasy, she has a degree in anthropology and a passion for good chocolate, amateur erotica and fan worlds that celebrate diversity. She is mother to two cats.
Bleeding Heart, book one of the Mi Corazón Sangrante series, was her debut novel for Interlude Press.
Where to find the author:
Connect with Melissa at msmelissagraves.com
Tour Dates & Stops:
5-Nov: Bayou Book Junkie, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Mikky’s World of Books
6-Nov: Because Two Men Are Better Than One, Divine Magazine, Hearts on Fire
9-Nov: BFD Book Blog, Jessie G. Books, MM Good Book Reviews
10-Nov: The Jena Wade, Bike Book Reviews
11-Nov: TTC Books and More, Elisa – My Reviews and Ramblings, Havan Fellows
12-Nov: Unquietly Me, Love Bytes, Molly Lolly
13-Nov: Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews, Three Books Over The Rainbow, Up All Night, Read All Day
16-Nov: My Fiction Nook, All I Want and More Books
17-Nov: Prism Book Alliance, Vampires, Werewolves, and Fairies, Oh My
18-Nov: Happily Ever Chapter, Inked Rainbow Reads
Rafflecopter Prize: $25 Grand Prize plus five multi-format eBook editions of Tainted Heart
Thank you for hosting my tour!
Jemaine Clement as Vladislav in WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS!