Blood Bonds is my first book in the paranormal vampire romance. As a fan of the genre, I have always wanted to give my own spin to the eternal story of a vampire falling in love with a human and vice versa. It took me a while to make it happen but eventually the story of Blake and Sophia emerged slowly in my head and I decided to write it.

Blake is a 250 year old vampire who has recently moved to the small village of Hutton Cranswick in Yorkshire. Sophia is the owner of a small gift shop. The two cross paths when Blake walks into her shop one day, with his sister Alyssa, looking for a mystical band, but of course, Sophia doesn’t have it.

The band is a crucial link in the story and it adds an element of mystery and back story because people start disappearing from the village, coinciding with Blake and Alyssa’s arrival. But the suspicion aside, there’s also a strong attraction between Blake and Sophia, one that neither of them can ignore. When Sophia’s best friend Natasha also goes missing, the stakes go up, but by then, Sophia is helplessly in love with Blake, and he finds himself unable to resist her.

Readers who enjoy paranormal romance with a dash of steamy between-the-sheets action will love Blood Bonds. There’s Blake’s personal dilemma about falling for a human whom he will outlive, yet again. There’s Sophia’s confusion, on whether Blake just wants to hook up with her and not have a relationship. Blake’s world-weariness is in contrast to Sophia’s naivete but their chemistry is scorching and undeniable.

The other characters in the story are equally important, whether it’s reckless and wild Alyssa, who is also a vampire, or Natasha, Sophia’s happy-go-lucky friend or Dr Stephen, the man who becomes obsessed with finding his missing girlfriend. When all these characters and motives intersect, it becomes one hell of a climax, and one I enjoyed writing immensely.

The reason I enjoy writing is so that readers can forget the various problems in the world around them, so they can sit back and enjoy an uncomplicated, yet intriguing book. I think Blood Bonds meets those requirements perfectly.

Blood Bonds is also the first book in a trilogy. I haven’t started working on the second book as yet, but it’s vaguely taken shape. I am looking at the response of readers as well before I embark on writing it. I have a feeling each book is going to get progressively hotter but also messier in terms of relationships and that’s just the way I like it!

Fans of the angsty relationship dynamics in The Vampire Diaries and the hot vampire-human sex in True Blood will enjoy reading Blood Bonds. It is the perfect companion for chilly fall evenings, when you just want to curl up with a book and a mug of hot chocolate.

An interesting titbit about my book is that it’s set in Yorkshire, quite close to the deserted village of Wharram Percy. Wharram Percy is known for various reasons, but there are myths that the villagers had turned into revenants(vampires) and their corpses had been burned, so that they wouldn’t rise from the dead, and terrorise other villagers.

I naturally found it very fascinating and decided to set my story in a village nearby. Blake and Alyssa have no connection to the revenants from Wharram Percy but I foresee some of the myth from the village making its way into the next book or so.

Maia Graves is a pseudonym for an author who lives for the stories she gets to tell the world. Whether paranormal or normal, I believe that if the heart of the story is true, it will find its way to the right reader.

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