by Tracy Cooper-Posey, guest blogger and author of Kiss Across Time.

I’m writing this post as we travel across South Dakota, North Dakota and into Saskatchewan, on my way home from the Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention 2010. We’ve just crossed into North Dakota, and are battling the mother of all cross winds. Yesterday it was thirty-three degrees Celsius in Madison County, Iowa. Today it’s four degrees and it’s snowing as I type. The land around us is the flatest I’ve ever seen, and I live on the prairies, so that’s saying something.

I’ve see the landscape and weather change so dramatically just in the two days that we’ve been driving that it has made me very reflective of journeys and travelling. And that’s just been two days.

What must vampires think, as they move through history, and watch whole cultures and civilizations change right before their eyes?

More specifically, wouldn’t those near-immortal vampires ever want to interfer in some way? To change things to suit themselves? To redress wrongs? To adjust social imbalances, and channel causes to arrange things in beneficial ways? What’s to stop them? Nothing really.

Human behaviour patterns keep repeating throughout history. Wars, social upheavals and political disasters repeat. Over and over again. Countries rise and fall. Civilizations build and collapse with regular monotony. History teaches us that humans rarely evolve beyond the base needs and wants, despite all the rhetoric.

A vampire moving through all that history could use that knowledge to predict the next movements and outcomes of human societies and use it to their own advantage, or for the betterment of his friends and fellow vampires, if he were less self-centered than that.

Here’s an example of how vampires can manipulate history just by being near immortal: Because they live so long, they can use the power of compound interest to build the most fantastically large investment accounts known to man. They can have cash and investments spread around the globe, squirreled away in every financial corner of the world. That financial clout adds up to financial influence that can bend world markets at the crook of a finger, if they have a mind to. They could start an economic depression by selling off in a concerted effort.

They have memories that go back centuries, and quite possibly possess books and materials that are rare originals that refute or support facts that have been in dispute since recorded history lost track of those materials, and could give back pride and dignity to races of people and families who have lost their history and cultural roots...or the reverse; their knowledge could bring to light the truth about war crimes, atrocities, and other historical memories best left forgotten and buried, that could bring further shame on groups of people and families who have finally cast off old hatreds and biases.

Either way, a vampire with such knowledge could use history, and in some cases even manipulate it, and there is very little, perhaps nothing, to stop them from doing it. Certainly, no short-lifed human could do so.

Only self-regulation amongst vampires would ensure than human history remained untampered...or at least, that’s the theory I used for the subplot in Kiss Across Time.

Kiss Across Time

Taylor Yates just got fired from her university for insisting that the 5^th Century British poet and playwright, Inigo Domhnall, existed. When she hears the poet’s lyrics in a death metal song, she engineers a meeting with the dark-eyed, dark-haired lead singer, Brody Gallagher. An unintended kiss sends them spinning back to the poet’s time, when Saxons were pillaging King Arthur’s Britain, and a warrior expects a proper farewell from his woman before he sets off for war.

Brody’s all for kissing her again. More, he’d like her to try kissing his friend and lover, Veris, just to see what will happen. His blond, tall, blue-eyed Saxon friend Veris.

_______________________________

Chapter One

“And blood-dipped spears waved beyond thy doors

Foretelling thy doom to me this day of days.

I knew of thy love before thee spoke of it to me

Say not of what is in thy heart for it must not be spake.”

Taylor shivered as she listened to the poetic words, sung at a fever pitch, thundering out of dozens of speakers ten feet high, accompanied by the screech of heavy metal guitars, while fifteen thousand screaming fans pummeled and thrashed around her.

She really was here listening to this, she reminded herself. And she really had heard the words. It hadn’t been her imagination. She gripped Andy’s arm even harder.

“Told you,” her next door neighbor yelled in her ear. “Can we go now?” He was anxious to get her the hell out of here before he was spotted with his uptight, anal and not-cool history professor neighbor. At least he could give her brownie points for trying to dress the part. She’d squeezed herself into a lace-up leather miniskirt and black leather bustier she’d borrowed from a Goth ex-student, poured on the black eye makeup and slid into black stiletto ankle boots. But she knew she stood out like a flamingo in the Sonora desert here. Mentally, she’d shrugged. At least she hadn’t worn her usually business suit and put her hair up. That would have been even worse.

“Are you kidding?” she yelled back. “How do I get backstage?”

He looked like he was choking. “Are you fucking kidding?” He waved a hand toward the stage. “This is Nocturnal Rain! You don’t just wander backstage!”

“I have to talk to them!” she screamed in his ear. “I have to find out where they got those lyrics!”

He shook his head, mulish. “Not unless you fuck one of ’em, Taylor! It ain’t happening. Not with their security.”

Taylor gripped the railing of the first tier balcony and stared down at the stage in pure frustration. She had to find a way to speak to whoever had written the lyrics, because whoever that person was, they’d had access to the works of Inigo Domhnall and that made whoever it was her new best friend.

The lead singer was gyrating at the crowd and the mosh pit was going crazy. From where she stood on the second balcony, most of the pit seemed to be women and those women were showing a dazzling amount of cleavage.

A couple of wranglers were on the stage now, working on something behind the singer.

“Shit…damn” Andy turned to Taylor. “Stick your chest out, Taylor,” he yelled in her ear.

“What?”

“I forgot about this. Look as fuckable as you can manage.” Andy lifted his hands as if he was going to arrange her clothing to add to the fuckable quotient, then he dropped them, as if the task was beyond his capabilities. “What about just smiling, then, huh?” he suggested.

“Thanks,” Taylor said, gritting her teeth and smiling. She turned to face the stage.

The singer had been attached to a pair of wires and now he began to soar into the air above the heads of the audience, out beyond the stage. The crowd went wild, screaming and waving. Everyone around Taylor began to shove and press closer to the balcony and she realized that they were trying to get the singer’s attention.

And the singer was coming closer. The hysteria around her seemed to rise in exponential proportion. Now she could get a much better look at the guy. He was older than she had first thought. Perhaps it was her complete ignorance of heavy metal in general and death metal in particular but she had assumed that only teenagers and people in their very early twenties would want to listen to the stuff or play it. This guy looked like he was his early thirties. That put him just a few years older than her.

And he was gorgeous. No wonder the audience was packed with women verging on hysteria. Dark hair, darker eyes, white skin. She classified the combination almost automatically as classic Celtic looks. He was broad shouldered, defying what she was sure was supposed to be a wasted, frail look for head-bangers. Black jeans, black designer tee shirt, with designer rips and tears and chains looped across the open spaces. Touches of red among the black. A black iron belt buckle down low over an impressive bulge.

Then she blinked. He was looking directly at her. Floating on the wires straight toward her.

Andy was tugging on her arm. “Taylor, he’s spotted you!”

She barely heard him.

The man’s hand came up and pointed at her, obviously giving the people controlling the wires directions. At once, he drifted toward her and the hysteria around her intensified. Everyone was screaming, not just the women. Even Andy was banging on the balcony rail.

The man’s hand curled around the back of Taylor’s head. She understood that this was probably a standard ritual at these concerts and tried not to freeze or look bewildered, even though she didn’t know for sure what was going to happen next. But her runaway heart had a pretty good idea and her suddenly throbbing clit actually thought it was a good idea, and that horrified her.

He kissed her and Taylor closed her eyes. She could still hear the screaming but it changed in quality and became fear-filled. That made her open her eyes again. Fear was not good.

She was not at the concert any more. She looked around the rustic room, blinking. What the hell?

_________________

To buy Kiss Across Time click here.

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cultures and civilizations, history wars, human behaviour patterns, political disasters, power of compound interest, romantic times, social upheavals, Teal Ceagh, tracy cooper posey, weather change