Awakening

I wrote this series after reading 'Twilight" and wishing that I knew more about Edward Cullen than Bella. He seemed 2 dimensional to me, and that was such a shame. After all, we all know what being human feels like, but vampires? There is the story. Think 'Twilight' meets 'Game of Thrones" and you are in the right mind-set to enter the world of 'Fire & Ice'. If you want to enter the dark and, at times, harrowing world of Doctor Connor and experience his human obsession, then you can find it here. 'Fire and Ice: Awakening" begins a journey which spans 5 novels and is much more than a vampire tale, it is an emotional roller coaster ride. If you hate vampires, or hunger for something different - something that grips you and will not let go - then read the first chapter... London, 1910. Bram Stoker's Dracula had made barely a ripple in the pool of human consciousness, and it would be another 12 years before Nosferatu breathes life into a vampire on the big screen... but even then, in human society, vampires existed. Like a seam of gold running through the coal, they are there, but you have to look for them. For centuries, vampires were content to exist as creatures of myth and legend, barely making a footprint in the shifting sands of human consciousness, until Mother Nature unleashed the global pandemic which wiped out most of humanity. A predator emerges and humans become a valuable food source. Vampire survival instincts have an edge of desperation, and they are forced out of the shadows. The London of 2010 becomes a vampire hive as they cluster around their decimated food supply, and 'survival of the fittest' is a stark reality. Humans wish their world had ended, when, as a protected species, they are imprisoned, farmed as cattle, and siphoned for blood. The cloud on the vampire horizon is that humans age and die. Suddenly, vampire immortality has an expiration date. Connor is that rarity, a vampire and a doctor, who can treat a bleeding human - and not kill them. Tending to stricken vampires remains part of his duty; immortality has always been a tightrope walk over an abyss of insanity, and there are always those who fail to get it right. After a century of living on his wits and feeding on humans he considered deserving of death, Connor views the human farm with distaste. His passion remains to find a synthetic blood substitute. Against this dark, forbidding backdrop, Doctor Connor does the unthinkable; he falls in love with a human girl. When he treats Rebekah, alarm bells ring. He realizes she is a free-range human, and hiding her carries the death penalty. 'Turning' her in is a no-brainer, and yet... Their worlds collide when Rebekah awakens in a vampire hospital and faces her worst fears -- discovery and capture. Her euphoric relief, when it seems the beta-blockers have protected her from detection, turns to terror. Connor grips Rebekah's arm and her thundering heartbeat resonates through him. The tingling joy of being alive rushes through him again, and his journey into madness begins. His admiration for the human spirit punches a hole in his shell of indifference. Rebekah cannot escape without the doctor's help. Her fear of vampires tilts on its axis as Connor becomes her safe haven. Connor's stagnant existence is shattered as he embraces the feeling of being alive once more. Outwitting the vicious intent of a vindictive councilor, surviving attacks by the vampire councils' guardsmen, and being sentenced to locked-in syndrome were never in Connor's wildest imaginings and falling in love with a human girl was something he never expected. Flying in the face of everything he should do, Connor risks everything and embraces the exhilaration of saving Rebekah and her group. Awakening is the first in a series five vampire books set in post-apocalyptic England.