NEW DREAM AWAKENING

This is but a preliminary cover done by the incomparable Leonora Roy

for the new Victor Standish novel, THE RIVAL,

whose rough draft is just now awakening across my keyboard.

Victor Standish discovers to his dismay that the key to saving the future of New Orleans lies in its past.

The year 1834 to be exact.

The year he barely survived when DayStar threw Victor and Alice back there the first time.

{In the last chapters of UNDER A VOODOO MOON :
http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-VOODOO-ebook/dp/B0064CKPJ4/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_2 }

Now, he and Alice are back. Undead enemies they first met in 2005 are meeting the star-crossed lovers for the first time :

Abigail Adams, Empress Theodora, and the dreaded DayStar, he whom many believe is Lucifer himself.

And two startling new enemies join their ranks :

President Andrew Jackson, recklessly pursuing plans to allow his revenant wife, Rachel, to turn him into one of the living dead so as to be with his beloved forever.

Meilori Shinseen, (that's right - the namesake of the haunted French Quarter jazz club)

18 years before she is destined to meet Captain Samuel McCord aboard the cursed Demeter.

Their allies only make things worse :

SERGEANT Samuel McCord

and the recently dismissed cadet from West Point,

the dashing Edgar Allan Poe, who falls in love with the surprised Alice,

calling her his Annabel Lee (which is the title of the last completed poem by the artist).

How will Victor keep this younger version of his mentor from meeting Meilori before she becomes the kind of woman McCord can love?

And just as maddening, how can he keep Alice from succumbing to the charm, gallantry, and poetry of Poe?

As Alice tries to unsuccessfully calm Victor’s unfounded fears, one of her own appears :

a warm-blooded, living girl from Victor’s past, flashing long lashes and legs at the teen who is her whole world.

What is an undead ghoul to do against such competition?

And how did an orphan girl born in the Detroit of the late 20th Century end up in the New Orleans of 1834?

Some mysterious Entity is playing with both Victor and Alice.

Suddenly, the dangers of 2005 don’t appear quite so deadly to the star-crossed pair.

(LOOK FOR IT SUMMER OF 2012!)
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