Pandora's Box Book Blitz -- Guest Post by Katie Salidas!!

Happy Release Day Katie!!!

It is my pleasure to have Ms. Katie Salidas as a guest blogger here today on the day of the release of her paranormal novel, Pandora's Box!!  I asked Katie to talk about the origins of vampires and their legends. 

Also, if you are tweeting about this event, please use the following hashtags:  #Giveaways, #PandorasBox, #KatieSalidas, #Blitz #VBTCafe, #virtualbooktours . BK (tour host) is tracking based on those tags. Her Twitter is @bk36 Katie's is @Quixotickatie

So, without further ado, here is Katie's guest post! 

What are the origins of vampires? While the word “vampire” is a relatively new term (circa 1800’s), the idea of bloodsucking undead has been around since the dawn of time. Some legends state that simply being buried improperly can cause a human to reanimate as a vampire, Slavic legends for example.  Other legends stat that one must have committed a heinous crime to become the undead. There are other legends about animals jumping over a corpse. Some popular ideas that have been adapted to fiction, have vampires as the children of Cain or Lilith. Still more involve demonic spirits and possessions.   If we seek far back into mythology you’ll find the Greeks and Romans believed in demonic spirits themselves and in many ways they were the prototype of the common vampire of today.

That hooked me! I love ancient mythology and happened across some very interesting similarities between creatures of the ancient Greek world and the vampires I wanted to create.

The Keres, in fact were dead ringers for what I had in mind. Daughters of Nyx, Greek goddess of the night, these creatures are described as winged female death spirits with an insatiable lust for human blood. Perfect!

According to my research they were also one of the evils released when Pandora opened the fabled box (You’ll find this link in my newest release, Pandora’s Box as well). While they sound fearsome and probably would be, they weren’t exactly evil. They existed in a murky gray area of morality. They were agents of the fates, also known as Death Fates.  They did not attack people openly or without reason. They did however; hang around battles waiting for someone to fall. That’s when they swarmed, finishing the poor dying man off, savoring their blood as they sent his soul to Hades. They essentially sped a person’s fate on to its course. If you were going to die, they’d be there to do it and drink your blood at the same time.

I fell in love, not literally of course, with the creature and knew I just had to base my vampire legend off of them somehow.

In the first book, Immortalis Carpe Noctem, Lysander explains to Alyssa the origin of the vampire species.  He tells her that the first “vampire” was created by a mating of one of the Keres with a dying man she encountered on the battlefield. The resulting child was immortal, like its mother, and carried the same insatiable bloodlust, but had the features of its father. Being a hybrid and the only one of its kind, Nyx (essentially Grandma) cursed it to the night so that she could keep watch and protect it.

The use of the legend doesn’t stop there however. As the Immortalis series progresses we delve deeper and deeper into the history. In Hunters & Prey, we are reminded of the fact that a human-turn-vampire is not a dead creature, they are “changed” but that change must happen properly. If not done correctly it will create a hideous abomination. In the third book in this series Pandora’s Box, we’ll delve even deeper into the legend’s origins and learn more about the first vampire and what became of it. Along with that, we also learn about other supernatural creatures and how closely they are linked to vampires.

Needless to say I really do love my vampires and the legends they spawned from and I hope you will too.  Please enjoy the Immortalis Series!

Now, before you go, participate in the giveaways!! It's going to be fun! Here's my post from early this morning with all the details:

http://lahongrais.blogspot.com/2011/07/pandoras-box-book-blitz-one-day-only.htmlAnd there you have it!!  Read 'em and enjoy!!

~~ML