Diana Rubino's Bloody Good Cruise

Yay! Diana has agreed to stay another day and take questions and comments!

Boy, do I feel sheepish! I had this blog set to go for Tuesday, but I was thinking my guest Diana Rubino was going to be with us on Wednesday to visit about her BLOODY GOOD CRUISE. (My excuse is that my DH and I are getting ready to go on a cruise ourselves starting Friday, so my brain is a little frazzled trying to get ready!)

But let me introduce you to Diana. Here's her bio:

Diana Rubino has written several historical novels set in England and the U.S., a time travel romance, and a futuristic/fantasy romance which received a Romantic Times Top Pick award . Diana is a member of Romance Writers of America and the Richard III Society. Her hobbies include golf, racquetball, bicycling, playing piano, and she has been pursuing a Master's degree in archaeology. She loves to visit historical sites all over the world for book research. Diana and her husband own CostPro, Inc., an engineering business based in Cambridge. She is Director of Marketing.


Whew! I'm impressed! So, Diana, please tell us about your new release.
A Bloody Good Cruise is set on an Italian cruise ship. Romance author Mona is a human, and Fausto is a vampire, and although they love each other, their different backgrounds create a lot of problems. He can never be one of her kind and she’s deathly afraid to become one of his. As they sail the Mediterranean on a writer’s cruise that Mona’s organized, Fausto’s job as the ship’s doctor is hard to perform when he realizes hunters (or the Vampire Ball Busters, as vamps call them) are after him and his fellow vamps. Fausto’s ex-wife shows up after four hundred years, hot to snatch him back. She’s Lucrezia Borgia, history’s most notorious gold digger and husband-killer. When Mona and Fausto team up with the hunters to capture Lucrezia and get her to confess to her crimes, Mona thinks all is lost because Lucrezia refuses to talk. But Mona gets her creative writer’s juices flowing, and tricks Lucrezia into a confession. The tabloid show The Cutting Edge, on shipboard to tape the writers’ cruise, beams the story all over the world. Mona and Fausto become instant celebrities, but hunters are still after Fausto. One of them shoots Mona while aiming for him, and she realizes she must let Fausto turn her or she’ll die–so she makes her decision, which she never regrets. Instead of looking for the next big market trend, she helps Fausto and Quintus write their memoirs, so the world can see what vampires really are about.

Note to self: Watch out for vampires on the cruise ship next week! What will readers love most about your hero?

Even though he's a vampire, he's very human. He 'comes out' before an audience of millions, imploring the human race to accept vampires. Because they're different doesn't mean they're harmful. He teaches the world a valuable lesson about tolerance.

Commendable. Where did the idea for this story come from?

I love vampire romances and cruises, and thought blending the two would make a unique love story.

Authors always have more than one pot boiling. What are you working on now?
A biographical novel about Alexander Hamilton. It has no fictional characters, and I'm keeping as close to the historical record as it will allow.

Ok, so I'm guessing you're pretty serious about that Masters in Archaeology. Wow! I'm totally in awe of non-fiction writers. One of the joys of what I do is making things up (not the historical details, I promise!) Where can readers buy your books, Diana?

There are links to the booksellers and my publishers on my website, and they're all available on Amazon.com in Ebook and print.

WWW.DIANARUBINO.COM

Thank you for visiting with me today, Diana (even if I seriously messed up the day!) Those of you who visited earlier were treated to some naked email posts, so it just goes to prove to the rest of you that if you snooze, you lose! LOL! Sorry for the mix-up. But Diana Rubino signs off her emails with a quote from Michaelangelo, "I am still learning." Ain't it the truth?

I'm going to try to talk Diana into hanging around for another day so more people can read about her BLOODY GOOD CRUISE! If you leave a comment you're entered in the drawing for a copy of Diana Rubino's BLOODY GOOD CRUISE!