HIS VAMPYRRHIC BRIDE – a story of forbidden love

Severn House cover 2012

When I was a young boy my father pointed at the river near where our family lived and said, ‘Look, Simon, that’s where the Vikings landed their invasion fleet.’

As I grew up in the North of England, a place conquered and settled by Viking warriors over a thousand years ago, I began to appreciate that those invaders from Denmark, Norway and Sweden had never really left.

Viking blood still flows in many an English person’s veins. One visible clue is a hereditary condition that causes some descendants from the Scandinavian ‘old country’ to develop a quirky kink in one of their fingers. All of which shows that every single one of us has inherited the blood of our ancestors.

I grew up with the notion that the past, and our long dead ancestors, can still tiptoe into our lives today. That notion – or should I say fascination? – prompted me to write Vampyrrhic over fifteen years ago. This story of Viking ‘vampires’ that haunt the town of Leppington struck a chord with readers around the world. So I’m delighted to report that the latest instalment of the ‘Vampyrrhic legend’ is out now as a hardcover from Severn House. His Vampyrrhic Bride tells the story of Tom Westonby being attracted to a beautiful, yet unearthly girl who lives deep in an ancient forest with her mother. The story draws on Viking legends as well as the ‘mythology’ that first appeared in Vampyrrhic in 1999.

Ladies and Gentlemen, His Vampyrrhic Bride silently awaits her groom, so without any more delay here’s an extract from the novel:

Tom Westonby’s life changed the moment he saw the woman. She shouldn’t have been there. Certainly not at this time of night.

But there she was. Tom looked out of the window and watched the stranger walk across the lawn. Moonlight flooded the valley. That other-worldly radiance gave the white cotton dress she wore a spectral glow. While her pale, yellow hair had the appearance of a luminous mist that cascaded down around her shoulders.

She was beautiful. Uncannily beautiful. Somehow dangerously beautiful. As well as tingles of physical attraction, he felt the cold, tingling sensation of an inexplicable fear trickling down his spine. So what was this striking, yet ghostly figure doing gliding across his lawn at midnight?

So, if you’ve bought His Vampyrrhic Bride for yourself, or as that unique wedding gift for a bride and groom who love vampires – or even for an actual Vampyrrhic bride and groom – then thank you, good health, good reading and take care.

—Simon Clark

PS LATE BOOK NEWS: Many of my books are being launched as ebooks at the end of August. One of these is the short story collection, Hotel Midnight, which has been a rarity for a while now, and which contains the popular Vampyrrhic spin-off novella ‘The Electra Suite.’