Indie Author Spotlight – Tony-Paul de Vissage and “The Clan Andriescu”

I’ve got another fantastic indie author to introduce today.  He’s Tony-Paul de Vissage, author of “The Clan Andriescu”, which will be released this month by Class Act Books.

 

Tony’s got a guest post for us, so I’ll let him speak for himself…

Tony-Paul de Vissage and the Day and the Way they Met…

 I’ve often joked that I was seduced at the age of five by a 500-year-old vampire.

Now…now…don’t get your knickers in a twist.  It wasn’t a predatory female and I came away from the encounter intact…physically, anyway, but mentally?…from that moment, I was hooked by the fanged fiend, the nosteratu…the vampir!

My mother was a moviegoer and since she didn’t believe in babysitters, whenever  she went to the cinema (which—since  we had five movie houses in town and each showed a different film and changed the marquee twice  weekly—was  several times a week),  I was dragged along.  Horror, romance, western, musicals…it didn’t matter what was playing. I was bought a ticket, supplied with popcorn and plopped into a plush-covered chair to have my impressionable young mind warped for the next 120 minutes.

I still remember it well…of being in the darkened theatre, Maman sitting next to me but it was as if I were totally alone…staring up at the screen at those faces enlarged to frightening proportions, accompanied by music designed to send a shiver down my spine and make good-bumps prickle my skin…

When I toddled out of that theatre, I was completely completely and thoroughly hooked as far as vampires in general and Dracula in particular were concerned.

And I still am.

That’s why I wasn’t all that frightened when I met the Brothers Andriescu, a duo of vampires who, with their cousin, were touring the South looking for the site of the Battle of Bloody Marsh. Perhaps I should say I was too stupid to be scared. That might be more to the truth. Whatever the reason, they were friendly and didn’t turn me into a Tony-Paul appetizer as I expected. Instead, they became my patrons in the Art of Writing All Things Vampire.  Take that with a grain of salt… or a clove of garlic, if you wish.

Whatever the reason, the story of The Clan Andriescu is now a novel and will be released this month by Class Act Books. Look for it.

To paraphrase the motto of New Orleans, where Mark, Val, and Tim now reside with other denizens of the supernatural persuasion, Laissez les frissons à rouler! (Let the shivers keep coming!)

In addition to “The Clan Andriescu”, Tony’s got several other books, which are all available now:

Vampires Are Forever

The Night Man Cometh

Dark God Descending

(all are from Class Act Books, and all are available at Amazon – just click to check them out!)

Blood Will Freeze: : https://spsilverpublishing.com/blood-will-freeze-ebook-p-1210.html

The Best Dentist in Orange County

Unpath’d Waters, Undream’d Shores

(the latter three are from Silver Publishing, and clicking will take you to the books for sale on their website).

You can also check out Tony-Paul’s personal site

Finally, Tony-Paul has been kind enough to provide us with an excerpt from The Clan Andriescu.  Click “Continue Reading” below to see it…

MARIUS, head of the Clan…He can’t understand why the woman he loved in 1968 doesn’t want to re-ignite their affair in 2013…

Marius dropped onto it and waited. For a few moments, she just sat there, studying her hands, quite a different woman from the self-possessed Southern lady who’d hosted the gathering only a few minutes earlier.

Silently, he studied her face. The blonde hair was now almost white, a lustrous gleaming under the incandescent lights of the sitting room. She wore it at the nape of her neck, an elaborate twist of a platinum chignon. The body under the sky-blue crepe gown was thicker, shorter than the slender girl he’d known in Paris, her face finely-creased, skin soft with crepe-like wrinkles and crow’s-feet.

Marius didn’t care. All he saw was Caitlin…his Caity…the girl he’d run away from forty-five years before because he’d begun to care too much.

 

VALERIUS, the baby brother… Ordered to marry, Val makes the wrong choice. Aneke’s all he wants but she’s human…all right to bite but not to marry…

Val liked America, its style, its joie de vivre, its élan, and especially the fervent vitality of its young people. Yes, indeed, he like living la vida American, and he was quite ready to continue that course for the rest of his immortal life…

…and then big brother had put the kibosh on his plan.

He’d been summoned to his brother’s office, told in no uncertain terms that the head of the Clan Andriescu and the heir to the House, had fallen in love with a human, and, obeying the Laws of their species forbidding procreation with mortals, was relinquishing continuation of the bloodline to his younger sibling.

“I’m not ready to get married,” Val protested.

“You’re nearly three hundred and twelve,” Marius answered calmly. “You should have all your wild oats out of your system by now.”

“What about Timon?” Val demanded, gesturing at his cousin who was leaning negligently against the opposite wall. “He’s older than I. Why don’t you pick on him?”

“Timon represents his father’s side of the family, not ours,” came the answer. “Besides, it’ll probably be another century or two before he’s prepared to wed.” He glanced at the languid figure, adding in a mutter, “…if ever.”

Timon buffed his nails against his sleeve and smirked.

Damn it, I’m not ready. I’ve still got a couple of handfuls of wild oats to be tossed about. Val wanted to argue, but he knew there was no use. The Head of the House had spoken. He had to obey.

 

TIMON, the cousin…being married to the most famous writer of vampire novels since Anne Rich can be exciting, until Laura writes an exposé proving vampires are real.

There was movement to her left and Laura’s attention was immediately riveted on the man standing there. I know him! He’d been a wedding guest, with a very tall man hovering in attendance, stiffening whenever anyone approached. There had been a suspicious bulge on the left side of under the man’s coat, and once or twice when someone came near, his hand reached inside and stayed there. That made Laura giggle behind her hand, whispering to Tim, “Those two look like refugees from a Sopranos episode.”

What’s his name? Oh, I can’t remember! She studied him as he walked toward her with the most graceful stride she’d even seen in a man. He moved like a dancer. Writer’s imagination briefly overcame her concern. Slender, not much taller than she, his most arresting feature, other than that statue-perfect face, was his hair. It was silky and pale ash-blond, hanging in a thick fall past his shoulder blades. Handsome. A miniature Apollo.

 

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