Meet Rue Volley, author of Blood & Light

This new writers' blog features Rue Volley who authors a vampire series. The story how Rue came to write and subsequently relate to her character is a candid one. Maybe you will feel the line is blurred between author and character, fantasy and reality, as you read this account in Rue's own words...

I am Rue Volley and I never expected to be a writer. My backstory is as complicated as anyone else's and I claim no great fame. I am just an artist who has created things my whole life. When I was younger I liked to sketch a lot and as time passed I stopped drawing and moved on to playing music. I have played violin and guitar for over 20 years and love them both. When I graduated from High School I was torn, I either wanted to go in to cosmetology, become a veterinarian or join the peace corp. I ended up joining a band and played and toured in that band for 12 years. After I lost my interest in touring and never feeling like I had one place to call home I settled down and started working in retail, it was then that I met my wonderful husband Von and within a year and a half we were married. I would guess that I was a handful when we moved in together as I was not used to getting up, sharing housework, going to work and not driving from state to state playing shows. My hats off to my husband who patiently watched me settle into a normal quiet life, which I absolutely love now (but in the beginning it was a huge adjustment).

For years after that we simply lived quietly, enjoying our mutual love for Japanese anime and visiting parks and art museums and then in February of 2010 I had a birthday that I thought was no big deal, but come to find out it was. I turned 40, and with this something strange happened with me...I started to write. Now people often ask me if I had written before and if you count High school papers, then yes...other than that I had written lyrics for my band. This was different though. I wrote the first two chapters of book one in my series (Blood & Light) in a journal, and quite honestly I had no idea what I was going to do with it. It was a story of one girls life...that of my own, but I mixed my favorite things into the story making it about vampires and anything else in the paranormal genre. I read, and re-read the first two chapters and realized that I was in fact writing the story of my life, as I based the main character on myself and the characters in her life on the people that I love in my world.

Then I received a call from my mother that my biological father had passed away on vacation from a sudden heart attack, they had not found him for 13 days as he was at home and a very private person in life. Suddenly I found myself helping to arrange a funeral for a man who I had not seen since I was seven years old and with that came many mixed feelings. I had always felt a deep remorse from his absence and a feeling of abandonment and as I sat there in the funeral home, staring at his urn, I lost it. Everything I had buried deep inside of me suddenly became a reality and when I returned home I started to sink into depression. I tried to function at my retail job but everyday became more of a struggle for me and within a couple of months I left that job and stayed at home, staring out the window and hoping that the feeling would pass, but it did not. I considered therapy but one day I pulled out my journal and there it was, "Blood & Light" and I purchased a laptop, transferred everything I had started to write into it and then I wrote, and when I say "wrote" I mean every single day for months on end. When I started to write book three in the series I was honestly at my lowest point in my depression and because of that my main character spent 11 chapters in an insane asylum as I felt that was where I trapped. Now I can say that the Blood & Light series is not depressing, although there are points in the story that you will feel the sorrow, it is packed to the brim with sarcasm, romance, battle scenes and everything else in between. What I did with this 6 book series (which I wrote in 11 months) is save myself. It was a do or die situation and any close friends to me will attest to that. I dumped everything of myself into it, how I feel about family, love, sex, loyalty, stories from my past and things that happened during the writing of the books. All I did was wrap the story of me in a veil of vampires and paranormal situations. So...this series is my legacy, and a testament to the will that we each have to survive everything we endure.

I appreciate anyone who gives the series a chance, as I am a new author...but I guarantee that reading it will be something you will never forget.I wrote every single word from my heart, in fact no one will ever know me better than reading this story that spans 5 years and beyond in the main characters life.

About Blood & Light...

Blood & Light is a conceptual series, a painting if you would like to think of it like that. Each book follows "Rue" from one birthday to the next as she tries to navigate her way through a world that she was not aware that she was even a part of. She is the author of the books and I think of her as a "recorder of time" more than an actual writer. Each book changes slightly in writing style as she matures and you will notice that as I wanted it to feel as if you were growing up with her. In book one Rue is struggling with abandonment issues as her Mother "Grace" has been committed to an insane asylum and her Father "William" has moved out to sit at her Mother's side, hoping for her recovery. This leaves Rue with her only sibling "Kai" who is only a year older than her and not mature enough to step into the parenting role for her. Rue is a private person, spending more time at the library than with friends and Kai convinces her to step outside of her self made box and attend a party with him. She reluctantly agrees and at this party the first paranormal situation occurs giving you the first clue that this story is not your typical teenage "finding your way" novel.

Rue is in a fact a vampire, as is her family...from an ancient race that lived in a city called "Valon". Rue's parents escaped the city and basically hid their children away from a group of vampires that felt as if humans were cattle, to be used as a food source, and not wanting their children to grow up this way they moved to a small town, using spells to glamour their existence. Protecting them from those who would want to do them harm for rebelling against the vampires in Valon. In my story the vampires do not receive their full powers until they turn 21, thus the reason that Rue and Kai are unaware of what they truly are. Now, I also wanted to add a new twist, so my vampires mainly feed on energy from people and the earth's core (as I practice in energy myself, that of the Chakra) and I mixed this element into it, blood is still a factor but it is mainly something that pops up when a sexual situation occurs or for some of the more devious vampires in my story...they also feed on the blood, even though they do not have too. Now, each vampire in my story is assigned a "color" based on the chakra, each color represents a "strength" so if you lead with your heart in life your color is red, with your mind...it is green and so on and so forth. The reason I mention this is because these vampires can see the colors swirling in the air when they track for food or track each other, it also swirls on their skin (like oil in water) when they are battling or in a sexual situation, they also "draw" this energy from the earth's core and into their katana's when they battle, poisoning the blade to any they stab with them. The colors swirl on the blades too. This is the reason it is called "Blood & Light".

There is also a love triangle going on in Rue's life in book one and a pretty intense one at that. She is trying to handle her new realization of what she is, her old infatuation with a boy by the name of Johnathan Graph and a new boy, who is one of my favorite characters in the series...that of Joshua Barrington, a vampire himself who has a beautiful way of anoying Rue right into insanity and seduction. Book one is an introduction to a deep and epic story of Rue Volley, and it twists and turns taking you on a wild ride. Each chapter is written as if you are watching a television series and each book a season. I invite you to take this journey with the characters of Blood & Light and become engulfed in a world of vampires who are relatable, struggling with their own problems as we all do. You will laugh, cry and never forget it...I can guarantee that.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Rue-Volley-Blood-Light-Series/166002266766880 ...facebook fanpage.

http://ruevolley.moonfruit.com/ ...my website.

http://www.vamptasypublishing.co.uk/# ...my publishers website (Vamptasy Publishing)

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/74866 ...buy the books, on smashwords.com

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-and-Light-ebook/dp/B005DSAQRG/ref=sr_1_14?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1311282173&sr ...amazon.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/ruevolley#p/a/f/2/Kt6qMeUtG18 ...youtube book trailers for my books.

Other information...

I am signed to Vamptasy Publishing in the UK. Currently I have two titles out, that of book one & two in the Blood & Light Vampire series with them. "Blood & Light" and "Smoke & Mirrors". Both are available in ebook, but book one will soon be available in print, book two will print in November 2011 and book three will release in ebook form in October. Book four will release after the first of the year and the final 2 books in the series will be out before the end of 2012. I am also one of four authors of a book that just released through vamptasy called "Red Wine" available on vamptasypublishing.co.uk and I am currently writing another series in the erotic fetish genre called "The Razor Saga" https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Razor-Saga/248345401874913 (facebook fanpage) and http://therazorsaga.moonfruit.com/ (website). This book series will also be out very soon straight to print, it is a mini series and adult in nature. The Blood & Light Vampire series is also adult in nature with language, sexual situations and violence and as the series progresses it gets more graphic in nature as the characters mature.

I am also the owner of "Volley View Photography" https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Volley-View-Photography/186452858074246 (facebook fanpage) and I have been shooting the characters and designing book trailers, posters and book covers for the last year and a half.

I also have an online group called "Volley View" https://www.facebook.com/groups/174661032606225/ . Which is a wonderfully talented and very supportive group of artists in all genres to network and help each other out. Please feel free to join.