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Overview
In a dark medieval age, Aleric the falconer meets his destiny in the bloody embrace of the seductive Pythia, sending him on a quest to unearth the mysteries of the ancient vampyre race.
Set in a dangerous world of ancient forests and buried kingdoms, of dark magic, and vengeance beyond lifetimes, The Priest of Blood is an epic dark fantasy of sword, sorcery -- and vampires.
Be sure to get the rest of the Vampyricon trilogy:
The Lady of Serpents, Book Two
The Queen of Wolves, Book Three
"Astonishing. Douglas Clegg writes of...nightmares with such clarity and passion you don't end up reading his books; you end up drinking them in. The Priest of Blood is a bloody gem."
-- Christopher Rice, New York Times bestselling author of The Vines and Heaven's Rise.
"A dark tale of swords, sorcery, and vampires."
-- Christine Feehan, New York Times bestselling author.
"Douglas Clegg has accomplished a rarity in the horror vein...This book will sink its teeth into you"
-- The Kansas City Star
"Richly layered, beautifully rendered foray into a past filled with sorcery and mystery -- and a rousing good story."
-- Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author
"Stunning...gives the iconic vampire a massive makeover."
-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Discover All of Douglas Clegg's fiction:
Lights Out
Neverland
The Children's Hour
The Halloween Man
You Come When I Call You
The Hour Before Dark
Nightmare House
Bad Karma
Goat Dance
Breeder
Afterlife
Purity
Dark of the Eye
The Words
Wild Things
Red Angel
Night Cage
Mischief
The Infinite
The Abandoned
The Necromancer
Isis
Naomi
The Nightmare Chronicles
The Attraction
Night Asylum
The Priest of Blood
The Lady of Serpents
The Queen of Wolves
Mordred, Bastard Son
My Father's Mistress
Mr. Darkness
The Marriage of Figaro
The World on Butterfly
The Moonlit Dark
Coming of Age
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780990464877 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Alkemara Press |
| Publication date: | 04/07/2015 |
| Series: | Vampyricon Series , #1 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
April 1, 1958Place of Birth:
Alexandria, VirginiaWhat People are Saying About This
Christopher Rice, New York Times–bestselling author of A Density of Souls and Light Before Day:
Astonishing. Douglas Clegg writes of...nightmares with such clarity and passion you don't end up reading his books; you end up drinking them in. The Priest of Blood is a bloody gem.
Interviews
Explorations Interview with Douglas Clegg
Paul Goat Allen: Doug, you're mainly regarded as a writer of modern horror and suspense thrillers, what was the motivation to write a historical vampire saga?
Douglas Clegg: History and mythology have always fascinated me since the time, at age 11, when I climbed up the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and felt the power of an ancient world. I grew up reading world mythology, almost as a secret love. Then, in my 20s, I lived in France and slept for several nights in one of the oldest forests in western Europe -- in Brittany. This inspired The Priest of Blood, which I began writing several years later. Then I spent nearly a decade researching the medieval era, learning swordplay, reading accounts of the Crusades, really digging into the 12th and 13th centuries as a place of life -- and shadows. I wanted vampires who echo harpies and gorgons -- mythological creatures of beauty and terror -- and so it began. And I wanted to write about life in a way I hadn't been able to with contemporary fiction. I wanted to write a novel of spectacle and wonder and heroism and create battles on the page that would take a reader's breath away -- and a sense of the greatness of existence within the novel.
PGA: How is your Vampyricon saga different from other bestselling vampire series like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain novels?
DC: I think Aleric, the Falconer, and the vampyres of the novel are very different in that they are a lost tribe of sorts, and of course my setting is not Paris or San Francisco or New Orleans, but a journey across the Continent -- from the ancient forest in Brittany to battles in the Holy Land -- and a quest into a buried kingdom where a vital secret of the source of all vampyrism lies. In some respects, the novel may have more in common with high fantasy or even [Elizabeth Kostova's] The Historian. Having said that, I've enjoyed Rice and Yarbro's fiction a great deal, and I can only hope that readers take to and love Aleric and his world as much as they've loved Rice and Yarbro.
PGA: I read on your web site that The Priest of Blood was a “personal story” for you. How so?
DC: The Priest of Blood came from three things -- first, my travels around the world, where I saw the intersection of an ancient, buried culture with the modern culture that had essentially buried it. At 11, it was in Mexico; at 16, I saw this in Spain; and then in my late teens, in Great Britain, and in my early 20s, in France and Germany. All my life, here in North America, as well. I responded on a very personal level to this -- and it also makes the world a bit of a treasure hunt. I'm an amateur mythologist and an enthusiast of archaeology and anthropology, so these loves came together in reinventing the medieval world and the cultures that contributed to it. Next, my parents both died within a year of each other, after illnesses that were devastating. This drove me into the world of The Vampyricon -- a world where life is both brutal and fantastic and where a hero could arise to combat shadows, even while existing in them. All my childhood loves came back to me after my mother and father died -- all the things I'd cherished: the storytelling; the world mythologies we discussed; the way my parents, taking us kids on travels or sending us on our own, opened my eyes to the greater world out there. Although I began writing this saga in the early 1990s, it would not have been finished if I didn't have those years when I wanted to escape into this other world -- the world of Alkemara and The Vampyricon. And finally, of course, that special time in my early 20s in that forest, which I call the Great Forest in The Priest of Blood.
PGA: What's next in the Vampyricon saga? And how many novels are you projecting this series to include?
DC: The next Vampyricon novel is tentatively titled Lady of Serpents and should be out in the fall of 2006. I really hate saying much about it because I'm still finishing it at the moment, and I tend to keep this stuff under wraps while I'm working on it. Right now, I know how the first three novels will mainly play out, and if I write the third and know the next one, the series will continue. I like to take the writing of a novel one at a time, because it means I pour everything I've got into it and really focus on its world. The world within The Priest of Blood is one of the richest I've ever created. I love living within it -- and I hope readers will as well.