It's 1952, a time of upheavals and social tension as America rockets through the years between world war and domestic revolution. Diana Chilton, raised within a secretive magical organization, the Order of the Silver Light, has reached a crossroads in her life. Over 30, her marriage ended, burned out on political activism and frustrated by the restrictions of the male-dominated Order, she leaves Boston for a tiny town in Maine. There she tracks down Thomas Morgan, a member of the Order who she believes may be immortal. She hopes he can help her find, or create, a more dynamic and worldly organization that will use magic to catalyze social and political change. Thomas Morgan is indeed immortal, but Diana never expected that he would also be a vampire, transformed by the faery folk two centuries earlier when he made a rash bargain to cure a disfiguring illness. Now he enlists Diana to assist him in his struggle against the power that he feels enslaves and controls him. Together, Thomas and Diana dedicate themselves to the most ambitious and dangerous magical working either of them has ever attempted. Their plan spans two years and draws several other people into its vortex. Both Thomas and Diana have hidden motives behind their decision, and neither of them is fully aware of who else knows about their plan and is subtly influencing it. Their refusal to be fully honest with themselves and each other leads to a disaster beyond their worst nightmares. They are forced to confront the deadly consequences of their fully developed spell turning against them and those who helped them. Ultimately, they learn that the only way to get what they each wanted is to accept the very things they wished most desperately to avoid.
Inanna Arthen is the author The Vampires of New England Series (http://vampiresofnewengland.com), an open-ended non-linear storyline set in a realistic fantasy universe very like our everyday world. Book One, MORTAL TOUCH (July, 2007) is set in 2004 in Massachusetts. Book Two, THE LONGER THE FALL (June, 2010) takes the story back to Maine in the 1950s. The third volume, ALL THE SHADOWS OF THE RAINBOW (due out in 2012) will follow the characters through the tumultuous 1960s.
Inanna has studied vampire folklore, media, culture and fact for more than forty years, and runs By Light Unseen Media (http://bylightunseenmedia.com), an independent press dedicated to publishing vampire fiction and nonfiction.
An initiated Witch and Pagan activist, Inanna worked for ten years with the Boston-based Pagan network, The EarthSpirit Community, whose magazine FIREHEART published a number of her nonfiction articles. Now archived online, some of these pieces still attract many readers. Inanna holds an M.Div degree from Harvard and spent a decade working in a central Massachusetts battered women's shelter. Genderqueer and a strong advocate for LGBTQ issues, Inanna includes positively presented characters of alternate gender identity and experience in her fiction.
Inanna's nonfiction articles have been cited in numerous academic books and countless online sources. She is a member of Independent Publishers of New England, the Independent Book Publishers Association, Broad Universe, Horror Writers Association and New England Horror Writers.
