Spotlight - Gregory Marshall Smith author of Hunters

Hunters

By Gregory Marshall Smith

For centuries, vampires have owned the night. And in Fort Worth, Texas, master vampire, Louis Riordan, aims to keep it that way. With the help of Lin Tang, his lethal enforcer, he will unite sixteen of the continent’s top master vampires into the most powerful undead alliance the world has ever seen.

Rumors abound that Lin Tang’s most hated enemy, Cantrell Ryker, has returned from the grave and there are hunters in town, ready to take back the twilight. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, with dissension in the ranks and a traitor in their midst, these hunters fight for humanity side by side. They now have a weapon that could turn the tide of the age-old war between man and vampire once and for all.

Available on Amazon and Smashwords

About the author...

Gregory Marshall Smith, born in Somerville, Massachusetts and raised in historic Medford, is a decorated Navy veteran. Though sports writing is his profession, in his career, he has been, among other things, a national columnist, playwright, engineer, asset protection agent, editor, safety auditor, fingerprinter, training instructor and sometime actor (Heiju trilogy; Life As We Know It; The Odd Life of Timothy Green; Detroit 1-8-7; Contagion; Walker, Texas Ranger).

He is the author of the novellas Crawl and They Call the Wind Muryah, along with two anthologies (Dark Tidings Vol. I & II). He has had numerous award-winning short stories appear in Farspace 2, Writer’s Bump, Far Side of Midnight, Spectacular Speculations and SFH Dominion, among others. Hunters is his first full-length novel.

Ever restless, he currently resides somewhere in America.

What Gregory Marshall Smith has to say...

 

Is There Room for Old School In the New School

When I sat down and wrote Hunters, a lot of people asked me why I was bucking the trend. I was supposed to go with the flow and attach my name to the list of others copying the trends.

The current trend, of course, has been to glorify vampires as objects of desire, affection, friendship and other emotions most dads won’t talk with their teen angst-ridden daughters about.

This isn’t exactly a new trend. The television show Sons of Anarchy on FX glorifies a group of psychotic, murderous, drug dealing, gun running bikers while make the law either corrupt or incompetent. You’ll find this trend of making really bad guys into good guys in shows like Breaking Bad, Prison Break, Breakout Kings, The Sopranos and Weeds.

In the new world of the vampire, Twilight’s example can also be found in Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Vampire Academy, Anita Blake and a host of other vampire-themed books in the “Young Adult” sections of bookstores or online.

That said, is there still room on the shelves for old school vampires?

Hunters, currently available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Smashwords among others, certainly is old school, namely in that the heroes are humans who hunt down vampires.

The humans and vampires who inhabit this world are a very interesting lot. For the vampires, we have Louis Riordan, more than 400 years old and leader of a large and powerful Mafia-style clan of vampires who control the night and have thoroughly corrupted the system, including the police and city council. His enforcer is the exotic Lin Tang, a master swordswoman and mystic. Together, they will unite the most powerful master vampires into the most powerful alliance of the undead.

Fortunately, a brave band of humans rises up to defy Riordan’s plans. Most of them have had their lives torn asunder by hominus nocturna, including Jesus and Dolores Montoya, who had to hunt down and kill their own daughter when she became a menace to society; Marcus Van Niekerk, South African mercenary; Jessie Kellums, who lost three of her brothers to vampires, and Kelly White Cloud, herself a former slave of Lin Tang.

And then there’s Cantrell Ryker, the one hunter who antagonizes his own hunters as much as he does vampires. His reputation for destruction was once legendary among vampires and what he did to Lo Chang, the man who trained Lin Tang, has made him enemy number one for the exotic assassin.

Outnumbered and outgunned, fighting dissension in the ranks and a traitor in their midst, these hunters will take on overwhelming odds to save mankind. And they just might do it with a new weapon that could turn the tide of the entire war between man and vampire.

Yes, vampires may always have been portrayed as sexy and seductive, but don’t forget one little fact -- WE are their food!

Just like Blade and the Nightstalkers or all the way back to Van Helsing, the Hunters must go old-school and save us from ourselves.

Surely, there’s still room in the world for that.