Bad Blood Books 1-3

Chapter I

Chapter I

I STARED AT THE INTERVIEW questions, wondering why they baffled me. I knew them by heart, but I kept looking, as if I would eventually see beyond the words on my computer screen and understand how and why they had been written and sent to me. When my vision would get too blurry, I’d hit “Alt + Tab” on the keyboard and switch to the enticing and surprisingly high-quality photo that accompanied the online profile of the man who had sent them.

Whenever I got an idea I considered brilliant, I’d somehow convince myself it was just as marvelous to the rest of the world. That was why I had talked myself into believing not only that I’d make it big as a writer, but that I was a gifted marketer, so I’d started promoting my book long before I’d gone past drafting the first page. Getting people acquainted with the characters and promoting the story idea right from the start meant I’d have plenty of time to build tension. Then everyone would be dying to buy the book by the time it was finally published.

It wasn’t an entirely innovative idea, though. I wasn’t the first author to start making waves about a book before its release, but most would have at least half of it written before the full-on PR campaign. Even HBO used role-playing Twitter users to help promote True Blood!

I was writing a vampire story and those types of characters always had a strong appeal. I was also one of the genre’s raging fangirls, but I felt I needed to put my vampire version on paper. So why not create a Twitter account and f*******: page for the main character? Why not write a blog about her, the novel, how I experienced the whole writing process, and so on? You could have asked anyone, they would have agreed it was a brilliant idea.

I had gotten quite a few followers on f*******: and Twitter, and the traffic stats of the blog (which I’d obsessively check throughout the day) were getting better and better. After a long struggle, I had the plot, the main characters’ bios, and something that could pass as an outline, but I had only written ten pages and it was going at a never-before-seen slow pace. A snail would crawl faster than I’d type an opening for, well, any paragraph in any chapter. My creativity would normally flourish when I was sad and depressed, but that happened because I almost always still liked myself or still thought I had any brains. That wasn’t exactly how I was feeling when I’d started working on this book, however.

But these interview questions were seriously digging for way too much information. What had gotten me staring at a stupid email for over an hour, though, was an eerie feeling that the person who had written it had looked deep within my literary brain, getting a first-hand tour of everything even remotely related to my book. As if that alone wasn’t enough to get me worried, the journalist, Anthony, wanted us to meet in person. He had sent me the questions so I could have time “to prepare”, but he wanted to see me and record the interview one evening. He’d said he could fly to Bucharest in a couple of weeks.

This was not your average friendly blog. This was All Things Vampire, an online magazine dedicated to everything about the fangers: books, movies, actors and actresses in said movies, games, art, comic strips… anything under the sun even remotely related to vampires, they covered it. Sure, they were known for paying attention to indie authors, but I wasn’t comfortable calling myself a writer and I was far from becoming an author. I was still struggling to get past the first few chapters. So why would a magazine with hundreds of thousands of monthly readers be interested enough to send a reporter to interview little old me?

After another session of ogling over the photo, and a few deep sighs yanked out of me by his onyx eyes, raven-black hair, and full lips, I was still wondering why on earth they would care? I kept trying to find clues of a hoax. Anthony had the sort of smile that said “I know every woman and gay man wants me. I’m even making straight ones fall in love with me”, along with the dose of smugness and cruelty such knowledge comes with. He wore a leather jacket, tight shirt, and even tighter jeans in the photo, as if the magazine wanted groupies and not just readers.

It eventually registered that the issue was easier to deal with than I’d thought because I wasn’t even in Bucharest. On the first of February, I had landed in Malta and made my way to Silema. I had booked a month-long stay at a small beach hotel. As it was the off-season, I got a room with an ocean view for a smidgen more than my rent in Bucharest. The official reason for my stay was writing my novel, but I was also doing freelance work for an old client to support myself instead of depleting my savings. Back in Bucharest, I was a freelance web developer working with a few designers to build the apps and websites they had created, but I had stopped doing most of that. The only client I was still helping needed something extremely basic that required 5% of my skills, at best, so my brain was free to dream up the plot. My initial one-month stay got extended so I kept busy with the client project and did some writing. My startling progress of five pages a month wasn’t bad. It was terrible.

I eventually emailed Anthony and told him that, sadly, I wasn’t in Bucharest for the time being, nor did I know when I’d return. I then switched off my email client and returned to turning more PDF pages into HTML code. Later that night, when I checked my email again and deleted a whole bunch of spam messages, I also read the reply from Anthony.

Valletta is actually closer so I could get there soon. Would ten days from now be a good time for you?

I stared at the email, jaw slack, eyes wide, and just didn’t get it. I was hardly the big name that would prompt a reporter to book a flight and a hotel room to come see me. The wheels started turning and my “very fishy” alarm went ballistic. What magazine would have the travel budget to have him chase a writer wannabe around the world?

In the end, the photo helped me decide. He was too hot for anything else to matter. I wrote back and agreed to the interview, then re-immersed myself into my work. I had this feeling he wouldn’t reply that night because it just seemed like the sort of thing a man like that would do. I was wrong, though. Anthony let me know he’d have his assistant make the arrangements and asked which hotel I was staying in so that he could book his room at one close by. He sent me all his contact details, including his cell phone number, and promised to let me know exactly when he’d arrive and where he’d stay.

After spending a large part of the night going over the hotel’s security and trying to use all my TV and movie knowledge to figure out what could happen if I did say where I was staying, I realized if Anthony really was on a killing spree, not saying where I was staying would just slow him down, not stop him. So I sent him the hotel name and my own cell number, then waited for the details he’d promised.

The big Anthony interview, as my mind chose to think of it, completely changed my routine. I actually left the hotel a few times within those ten days for more than just an evening walk or my morning exercise. I went shopping, got my hair done, and went to a small beach-side café, where I got that month’s five pages written. I also made time to look over everything I’d made public on the website and f*******: to see what everyone knew about it and try to figure out why Anthony’s questions felt so weird. Most of the information he’d hinted at was there, but some details had never been disclosed. How did he know about them? I told myself it was nothing more than guesswork on his part but, on some level, that didn’t feel like a good enough explanation because his “guesswork” was spot on.