Guest Blogger -- Lizzie Leaf

Please welcome my good friend, Lizzie Leaf, talking about the fun stuff in her awesome books!


Humor is Good, Even in Bloodsuckers!

I like humor in my life. I like to read humor and to write it. So when approached to write a Halloween story, no surprise my mind went in the humor direction.
When I mentioned to a friend the possibility of a vampire story that wasn’t horror, she suggested making the heroine Jewish (which my friend is) and throw in Kosher (yet again, my friend’s food style) to add conflict to the drinking blood issue. I took the bull by the horns and off I went. Thus evolved Waking Up DEAD, where the heroine is a socialite whose grandmother, a Reform Jew, keeps a Kosher Kitchen.
Our gal, is a little on the wild side…think Paris Hilton…and a paparazzi darling. Her connection with the hot guy in a vampire costume at her Halloween party, leads to a life change she’s not too pleased about.
She wakes up smiling pine and discovers, thank to the helpful stranger lurking outside the mortuary, she’s not one of the living dead. And, her new main food supply is blood. Yuk! She doesn’t eat food that’s snuggled with blood, let alone drink the stuff.
Not to bore you with details, I finished the book and moved onto other work—my vampire days behind me—so I thought.
After Waking Up DEAD released, readers started to ask, “When’s the next book in the series?” Series? My mind hadn’t gone down that path, so what to write next? Then another friend said, “How about a vampire who faints at the sight of blood?”
Once she planted the seed, my mind wouldn’t leave the idea alone and DEAD Faint came to be and with that the DEAD series. After that came DEAD Hunter, about what else…a vampire hunter (or so she thinks…snicker).
My publisher, Aspen Mountain Press, strongly believed in the series and selected the first two for DEAD Done Right, as their rollout into the print arena at Amazon.
Vampires don’t always have to be blood thirsty beasts. They can have an attitude that will make you smile and love problems, too. Check out Mary Janice Davidson’s, Undead series (which I had not read until after Waking Up DEAD released and readers said I had a similar style, to which I say “thank you for the compliment,”) and you’ll find humor.
Are there more in my DEAD series? You bet! My publisher planted the seed for DEAD Memory that released October, 9th. Here we have a werewolf heroine who stumbles upon a nude male in her neighbor’s yard. Nursing him back to health proves interesting when he has no memory of who is, and she’s not too sure what he is. He doesn’t smell human, he’s definitely not were, but how can he be vampire with the cross around his neck?
People have to stop planting seeds in my head. Combined with all that appear on their own, I have a headache. I’m off to pop a couple of martin and write…which is the only true way I can purge the noise.

Lizzie