Guest Author Monday

Please welcome with me our Guest Author –G.D. Ogan

I had the opportunity to talk at length with G.D. Ogan about his Immortal Relations Series.

Q: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

A: I’m a retired Air Force Major. I have a pair of graduate degrees unfortunately not in English or Literature. I’m also retired from a second “calling” as a psychologist with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice where I treated inmates for addictions.

Q: Did you ever imagine yourself as a writer?

A: No. If anyone would have told me that someday I’d be writing adult paranormal-romance novels I would have laughed at them.

Q: You have two books already released in the Immortal Relations Series and with plans for the third book to be released this fall. Could you tell my readers what prompted you to write a series?

A: When I found out that what my mother had said when I was very young was about an affair my late father had had (shown with photograph on the first two pages of “Immortal Relations”) that is what spurred me to start the series. My character travels to where “his” father had worked and had the tryst and there he meets a captivating lady. It doesn’t take long before he realizes she isn’t “normal,” nor is love long in blooming between the two (and like they say, “love conquers all”). The story is full of action as the man trades in his human life for the supposed “half-life” of a vampire.

Q: What makes your vampire series different from other vampire stories?

A:  These are not the “Bram Stoker” type of vampires, rather than attacking humans they are dedicated to protecting the innocent from the out of control type of vampire, human criminals and dictatorial politicians.

Q: That is an interesting approach. How do your vampires sustain their life? Do they consume blood? If so, how to they get it?

A: The blood that the good vampires need is obtained from funeral homes that one of their corporations own. (I’m told this is a unique concept to the genre’).

Q: Yes it does sound unique. I haven’t read a series where the vampires would drink blood obtained in this method before. Stephanie Meyers had her vampires hunt wildlife and drink the blood. Lynsay Sands had her Argeneau vampires run a blood bank. Even the popular hit show Vampire Diaries did a combination of blood bank robbing and wildlife killing to survive. Are there any other unique aspects about your series?

A: There is a good amount of “explicit togetherness” (sex) in the first book to include the first known full vampire birth, followed by a human-vampire hybrid birth. There is “mind-meld” training involving tapping into the feelings and emotions between partners during sex.

Q: With so much sex in the series, do you feel readers will mistake it for erotica?

A:  Some may see this as erotic, but it was not written to be that, rather it was to show that the vampires don’t have the hang-ups that humans do about sex.

Q: With your military background do you draw on this knowledge in the series?

A: In the first book, an evil vampire gang is thwarted in their attempted frontal assault on the guardian vampires and a secondary attack on military units to gain “converts” and heavy weapons to use against the good vampires. Then the guardian vampires gain the support of the British Army and Royal Marines to keep the evil vampires from gaining nuclear weapons, followed by Russian Federation troops foiling the attempt to capture biological weapons to be used to blackmail human governments into allowing the evil ones to feed unmolested. One reader commented that this was his holy grail of vampire novels.

As you will see, I use the tactical and strategic knowledge gained during my military career in both books. The second picks up where the first leaves off by offering one of the heroes of the first book the chance to beat the cancer threatening his life by becoming a vampire himself.

Q: Do you use any “present day” threats or concerns within your series?

A: There is a terrorist attack that decapitates the leadership of the Russian Federation. Suddenly the human friend the guardians are offering their help to beat cancer is thrust into his county’s leadership role. During an ensuing fight with the terrorists, he determines that he wants to accept the offer of “conversion” and does very well as the change takes place. However, timing is not always so cut and dry, it quickly becomes apparent that rather than isolated terrorist actions, what has happened was a prelude to the invasion of Siberia by Communist China seeking vast oil and mineral reserves as well as land for their burgeoning populations. It takes all the skill and daring of our guardian vampires, aided by the newly converted President of Russia to keep the war from “going nuclear.” Like they say, solve one problem and others will pop up and that is what happens when greedy, rogue OPEC ministers decide to use terrorists to stop the distribution of cheap Russian Oil by setting off a low-yield dirty nuke to take out the pumping station and the oil field themselves. After solving that problem, our guardian vampires decide to tackle the failing cap over the Chernobyl Reactor and get a side benefit by construction of a series of warrens for covens in a location no sane human would ever travel. Then the idea comes to them that they could safeguard humans from the potential Extinction Level Event that the collapse of the reactor building at Fukushima, Japan has been called. With all the non-stop action it seems amazing that there could be the opportunity to create more full vampire offspring during this story but it does happen.

Thanks for dropping by today and for sharing with us about your Immortal Relations Series.