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The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Cavaliers featured in Pay it Forward Friday at Emily Guido

29 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Yesterday, as part of her Pay it Forward Friday series, Emily Guido, author of the Light Bearer Series had a post about me and my books. She’s also holding a giveaway to win free e-copies of Oxford Blood. To enter, you just have to comment (and her blog, not mine) and say what subject you’d study at Oxford. Check it out here: http://emilyguido.com/2013/06/28/pay-it-forward-friday-with-author-georgiana-derwent-and-giveaway/ 

While you’re there, check out her books too. I haven’t read them yet, but they sound pretty cool and I’m planning to give them a go soon. The description of the first book in the series, Charmeine, is below:

Can romance develop between a Heavenly Light-Bearer and a Hellish Vampire Blood-Hunter?

“Charmeine” the First Novel in “The Light-Bearer Series,” was released January 2012.

Tabbruis is a Blood-Hunter, he drinks blood to survive. Over millennia Tabbruis has wandered the Earth alone aimlessly living through many historical events.

Charmeine just came to the Earth in 1997, unable to remember anything.

When Tabbruis meets Charmeine the attraction is immediate and passionate. They are polar opposites and clash together in a strongly romantic and dramatic way. When she meets Tabbruis, Charmeine’s powers as a Light-Bearer, one who throws lightning, is triggered and grows exponentially.

Will Charmeine and Tabbruis fulfill their destinies?   Will they realize their importance in both the Blood-Hunter and Light-Bearer world? 

Midsummer Murders (and parties, and rituals)

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

midsummer, personal, the cavaliers

Today is the 21st June, Midsummer’s Eve. In the world of the Cavaliers, it’s the most important event in the calendar – the night of the Summer Party.

I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with Midsummer (and indeed Midwinter). I think I’ve mentioned on here before that I love the changing seasons and I like celebrating all of the year’s events properly. In this case, there’s something that catches my imagination about it being the longest day of the year. Even though summer is only really just getting going, it feels like the climax of something. I think it helps that it’s my birthday two days before so I’m always in a bit of a celebratory mood. Sadly, it’s not a big event in modern Britain, but it is something that seems to have been celebrated in a variety of cultures for whom the changing seasons were important.

My first year at Oxford, my college held their Commemoration Ball on Midsummer’s Eve and made a big deal of the fact. It was the last night of the academic year and some the combination felt perfect. For me, there was no better time for my imaginary society to have the climax of their year of monitoring and selecting students.

And of course, the bittersweet thing about Midsummer (for most humans at least) is that while it may be the longest day of the year, that means it’s all downhill from here in terms of the nights starting to get longer. But for a vampire, of course, what better thing to celebrate than the fact that there’ll soon be less of those pesky hours of sun light and that they’ll be able to hunt and seduce their prey from early evening?

In my books, the Summer Party has taken place every 21st June for centuries. It’s something of a recurring theme in the novels, with Oxford Blood opening with one year’s party and closing with another’s. Screaming Spires climaxes with a third party, and readers also get to see a party from the eighties in one of Adelaide’s flashbacks.

***

For anyone unfamiliar with my novels, the Cavaliers are a society of aristocratic vampires at Oxford University. There are two important points to the Summer Party – firstly, to have a wild and wonderful party and secondly, to turn the year’s five most promising students into vampires.

The structure of the party has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. All of the current Society attend, along with the ten candidates for membership. Each of them are allowed to bring a guest, albeit with a bit of room for vetting and vetoing by the Senior Members.

Human attendees are picked up by an unordered taxi driven by a thoroughly mesmerised driver and taken to an unknown location in a clearing in the Oxfordshire Forests. The clearing is magical, lit by torches and fairylights. Music drifts out from unseen torches, leaving most people unable to resist frenzied dancing. The champagne flows freely, along with all kinds harder substances for those so inclined. All of the guests are beautiful, and all of them have made a special effort for this most prestigious of occasions. After a few drinks, some couples can’t resist the privacy of the woods. There are however two things  that might make an observant guest nervous. Firstly, where are the actual members? Shouldn’t they be enjoying their own party? Secondly, why is there a huge scaffold in one area of the clearing?

torches cropped

The moment  that the sun goes down, these questions are answered. The torches extinguish themselves, and when they are relit, the Cavaliers are standing on the scaffold, almost as if they’ve appeared out of thin air. Of course, they want a few glasses of champagne and a taste of the other delights of the party for themselves, but before long, it’s time for business.

Suddenly, a man appears, as he has every party since the event began. He seems to be about forty, which ought to make him stand out like a sore thumb at this gathering of bright young things, but he is sufficiently attractive that he blends in perfectly. This is Augustine, the leader of the Cavaliers, and probably the oldest vampire currently in existence.

There is a speech from one of that year’s senior members. Its words are timeless, almost with the status of a sacrament, but inevitably, each speaker will put his own spin on it, imbuing it with more gravity or humour or terror, depending on their personal tastes.

And then the ten potential candidates are summoned onto the scaffolding. The names of the five who have been selected for the ultimate honour of Cavaliers membership are called, and they are each invited to call their chosen guests to them.

At this point in proceedings, most of the guests find themselves feeling a little confused, but at the same time utterly placid and happy to go along with whatever is going to happen. Anyone trying to rationalise it would suspect they’d over-indulged, but most aren’t thinking that consciously.

And then suddenly, at a signal from Augustine, one of the existing members bites down on each of the potential members. They drink their blood and force-feed them their own, repeating the cycle a few times until the inductees finally collapse, seemingly dead. Those who were not selected for membership are staked to the ground, those who were are gently revived.

The new members are confused and disorientated, but the old members get them a celebratory drink, then line them up opposite their guests, promptly bite into their necks then offer them to the new recruits to drain of all blood.

This sacrifice is necessary to complete the transformation. Most new inductees don’t understand what’s going on, but some instinct compels them to drink the blood anyway, going against all their feelings of repulsion. Those who resist are forced by the existing members, and most thank them for it once it’s all over.

Once the girls are dead and the new members have become fully-fledged vampires, it’s back on with the party. The cover-ups and the plans to get the new Cavaliers into positions of power will be arranged tomorrow, but now it’s time for fun.

***

Most of the instances of the Summer Party in the books are far too spoilerific to be presented to new readers, but to celebrate the lengthening of the nights, here’s the opening of Book One (Stephanie’s Summer Party) and a flashback from later in Oxford Blood (Adelaide’s rather more successful Summer Party)

Adelaide’s summer party

Prologue

Top Ten Tuesday – Summer Reading List

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Top Ten Tuesday

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

booker prize, books, curtis sittenfeld, fantasy, grave mercy, neil gaiman, rivers of london, shining girls, summer reading, top ten tuesday, ya

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. It’s a nice simple one this week: books you’re planning to read over the summer. I’ve kept this down to eight on the basis that there are bound to be things I want to read on a random, spur-of-the-moment basis, not to mention things I suddenly find myself desperate to read once I start browsing other people’s lists:

 

teleportation shining girls ocean rivers sisterland throne of glass seraphina grave mercy

1) The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) – the new Neil Gaiman. I think that’s enough said.

2) Sisterland (Curtis Sittenfeld)- and the new Curtis Sittenfeld. A few months ago, when there was a Top Ten Tuesday about autobuy authors, she was high up my list. Besides which, the theme of psychic twin sisters sounds intriguing, even if it’s a bit too similar to my favourite story in Girl Reading.

3) Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch) – London based urban fantasy (in the most literal sense of both words) that was recommended to me by someone whose taste in books hasn’t failed me yet. And since they expectantly lent me their copy, I’ve kept seeing praise lavished on it from all quarters.

4) Seraphina (Rachel Hartman) – All through my teens, Seraphina was my favourite name. I used it as the name of the character in my first novel (which possibly tells you everything you need to know about said novel!), used it as my default internet screen name and seriously planned to lumber my first born daughter with it – actually, don’t tell my fiancé, but I’ve still not entirely ruled that out.  When I saw there was a fantasy novel with this title, I almost wondered if I’d written and published it myself whilst drunk. Beyond the name though, I’ve heard good things about this, and I love the idea of a proper hardcore fantasy novel written by a woman.

5) Throne of Glass (Sarah Maas) – And while we’re on the subject of female-authored fantasy, this always seems to be mentioned in the same breath as Seraphina, and also sounds potentially fantastic.

6) Grave Mercy (RL LaFevers)- the more reviews I’ve read, the less sure I’ve been, but when I hear there’s a novel about an assassin nun in fifteenth century France, I’m sold.

7) The Shining Girls – as a general rule, I hate books about serial killers (books about crime full-stop really) but love books that make clever use of time travel. I’m desperate to see which side wins out when I read this tale of a time-travelling serial killer.

8) The Teleportation Accident (Ned Beauman)  – I always try and read my way though those bits of the Booker Prize shortlist that look vaguely interesting, and this entry from last year with what appears to be a weird, time-bending structure has been hanging around on my TBR list for months.

So, anyone want to warn me off any of these or encourage me to hurry up and start one of them?

 

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