You know I love a good vampire book, so I was delighted when this week’s author decided to join us. I hope you enjoy the book and give the cocktail a try safely at home. The air smells like burnt tires in NJ from Canadian wildfires, so I’m staying inside and reading today. Enjoy!

This week we’re hosting M. Flagg on our blog. Here’s a little about the author.

I’m a multiple award-winning paranormal fiction author whose imaginative world building echoes with the promise of destiny. Adventure, suspense, and romance are woven through plots brimming with supernatural tension where fate will always have one last card to play. After spending 40 years in education and administration, I’m now retired and loving it. I’m a member of Liberty States Fiction Writers, NJRW, and the NJ Author’s Network. Always an avid reader, paranormal anything is my favorite genre. I enjoy the edit process and snuggling with my rescued Maine Coon. You can easily consider me a Jersey Girl, being a life-long New Jersey resident. Find out more about my novels at www.mflagg-author.com

Amazon Buy link:Amazon.com: Memories of A Hunter’s Moon (The Champion Chronicles Book 5) eBook : Flagg, M. : BooksAmazon Author Page: Amazon.com: M. Flagg: books, biography, latest updateSocial Media links: 

Facebook – @mickey.flagg    X – @mickey_flagg       

TikTok – @micheleflagg7   Instagram – @mickeyflagg   

Excerpt from Memories of a Hunter’s Moon:

He stood in front of a massive desk. Reaching out, her fingertips gently ran down his face. Their gaze locked to each other, drawn like magnets as he took her hand away and kissed her open palm. His touch trembled through her. Blood tears glistened in her eyes. They both stepped in at the same time, falling into an embrace she had yearned for every single night of this undead existence. Her head rested on his shoulder as his hands pressed to her back. Anxious to hear his rich, deep voice, she whispered, “My eternal love.” 

            “You should not be here,” he whispered in reply.

Luna heard just a trace of a French accent, yet his tone sounded like a scold, like she’d done something wrong. Her body stilled. Something inside shattered. It felt as if invisible shards of glass ripped open every vein. His hands braced her shoulders, pulled her away from the place of comfort she had longed for throughout decades without him. The study of his face told her nothing, the hollow look in his eyes, as though she stared into an abyss. The vampire standing before her appeared to be less about who he was and more about who he had become.

She took a step back. “Is this what the modern world has done to you, or was I so blinded by love that I did not see this coldness, Henri?”

            “One sees what one wants to see. And please do not call me Henri. I prefer Draven.”

            “Ah, yes, Draven,” she said with a tilt of her head, “The Gatekeeper of the portal, the owner of a trendy club, the worldly investor for sorcerer and sire alike. So many facets to this new persona. I suppose you had to destroy—to rebuild yourself.”

He appeared distant, disengaged. The reunion she had hoped for didn’t seem right. Instead of hearing a profession of love, perhaps even an apology, she’d been admonished for coming to him? Michael had said he needed her. Oddly, she didn’t see or feel his need at all.

It wasn’t upset that snaked through her. Not disappointment, either. What bloomed within felt like anger, at herself and at him. Had her romantic fantasy of this reunion been distorted by love and longing? Had she failed to realize that he had experienced many, many things while she stubbornly held on to the security of sameness? After eighty long years of waiting for his return, which had never happened, perhaps anger was bound to surface.

“Do I remind you too much of your past? Is that why I shouldn’t have come here?”

            He replied without emotion, “You were safe where I left you.”

            “Really. How would you know? You never returned. Yet every Hunter’s Moon I stand on the very spot where you left me to search the sea. How foolish I’ve been.” The realization caused another revelation, and her shoulders straightened.

            “You have had a protected existence, which I have provided,” he said in arrogance.

            “I have had a sheltered captivity, thanks to you.” She aimed the comeback perfectly and oh yes, she had much more to say. “Michael is right. You abandoned me. Left me vulnerable. That is not love. Seeing you now, I question why you ever chose to be so burdened with me.”

            “You will stop speaking at once,” he snapped at her, as if he were in command.

            “I choose to continue. Eighty years alone is more than a lifetime for most humans, and no, I will not stop speaking.” She eyed him from the top of his pulled-back hair down to the shine on his shoes. “Look at yourself. Put together in an ensemble that foretells the darkness in you. It is worshiped, isn’t it, this new persona? You, the lord and master over minions with your pockets overflowing. It gives you the thrill of power, of displaced ownership. I am thankful that Michael was candid, instead of coating the truth like honey coats a spoon.” Yet on the plane, she had insisted that he could not possibly be talking about her Henri. Well, she had been wrong.

            “My brother in blood has loose lips,” he growled with a sneer.

            “Oh, were that true. I should have listened more and defended you less. You take what is offered and crave more. You suck dry the victims and then thirst for more. Calculating. Cruel. No mercy is in you because, indeed, you believe yourself lord and master. This office screams of wealth and power. So does what I see through that door behind your desk. Yet all of this is barren. Just like you.” Her eyes slid to the side before coming back to his. Then, one strong sniff told her more about him, something he’d regret. “I smell her… The last woman you had. Do you think so little of me that you clothe yourself in the scent of sex?” She let the remark sink in, took in another nose-full of female coming from the front of his trousers. “I have remained faithful, but to what, I ask myself. Decades of dreaming of your touch, your mouth on me. For what? From the moment of awakening in undeath in that room beneath Veronique’s villa only you have touched me.”

             “You expect me to believe that you have never taken a human lover?”

            Thinking his smirk rude, she stepped into him. That question fueled her anger.  “I do. There were never lies between us. You may have changed, but I have not.” Yet again, that annoying smirk angered her.

“I have provided financial security. Had I known, I would have gladly provided that type of service as well.”

            “You would have paid a man to be used for sex?” Her eyes narrowed, yet he continued to show nothing on his face, kept an arrogant stance as if he were above her. “It would have suited you to see me in someone else’s arms, with someone else’s mouth on me, yet you show no shame? Like a common pimp?”

            “There is nothing common about me,” he replied with a lift of his chin.

            “Oh, I believe that underneath this impressive display common thrives in you. So does emptiness because that’s where you reside. You might have made the suggestion to take hundreds of lovers. We had all that time on the ship together. You could have sat me down and said that you’d never return, that it was goodbye forever. I might have taken the next ship back to Europe. I’d be a very different vampire, wouldn’t I?”

Now onto the cocktail. This week we’re sipping a Hunter Cocktail.

This one is pretty simple to make and you could make one cocktail for yourself or make up a bunch for friends. It’s all about the ratios.

We’ll be sipping this one slowly while we enjoy our book, so put on your comfy clothes, and make it a night in. Trust me when I tell you to let the ice melt a little while sipping this strong drink.

Here is what you’ll need:

Glass

Ice-I prefer a lot of ice for whiskey drinks-get fancy with one of those skull shaped ice cubes if you want, just make sure your glass is big enough.

3 Parts Rye Whiskey (1.5 oz if that’s easier)

1 Party Cherry Flavored Brandy (0.5 oz if that’s easier)

Add alcohol to glass filled with ice and stir. You’re done. Pretty simple older drink back from over a century ago, so some of you vampires might remember it. Though this recipe may have been circulating for a while, it appeared first in Jack A. Grohusko’s 1908 book Jack’s Manual: Recipes for Fancy Mixed Drinks and When and How to Serve. Ah, the dangers of a photographic memory and a library card. Enjoy your cocktail safely, please don’t drink and drive or do anything else dangerous, like texting for that matter.

Enjoy the book and cocktail. Please, like and share.