Layla and Rae’s holiday takes a sinister turn when they are transformed into vampires. How will they cope with the monumental changes their physical and mental processes face?
Darkly Dreaming is the first book in a new vampire series set in the UK and France in modern times.
The first chapter starts the book with a bang, There is sex, vampires, sensuous and sensual detail. The next quarter of the book then focusses on the friendships and past relationships of Layla and Rae. This gives us insight into their characters and develops their human side which will later contrast with their vampiric characteristics.
Next the vampire lore which governs the activity of the characters is described and explored. There are some brutal episodes as well as the softer emotional side. I enjoyed the new take on the traditional topic of vampires and how this virus affects vampires differently.
Layla and Rae are older women (my age!) so they have a past which continues to inform their choices even after their transformation. Their characters felt realistic and had depth. This was shown through being able to see their thoughts and feelings through their alternating first person perspectives.
Have you ever longed to leave your life behind? Sever all ties and disappear?
Even for just one second? What if it wasn’t a choice anymore?
Darkly Dreaming is a literary exploration into a sinister world where vampires lurk in our shadows.
As interested in our heroines’ emotional changes as their physical transformations, the story leads you through their infection, transformation, and difficult adaption to their strange new life. We experience their hopes and compromises, heartbreaks and rage as deeply as they do.
A modern gothic, these vampires aren’t the undead, they have been infected by a virus and undergone physical changes as radical as a butterfly during metamorphosis.
These vampires are as beguiling, cruel and fatal as cats, and just as irresistible.
Author Bio
Chloe Hammond is an Aquarius, and she’s very Aquarius. Born in Liverpool in 1975, she grew up in rural West Wales. She now lives in Barry, South Wales, with her husband and rescue cat and dogs. She studied Creative Writing as part of her degree always planned to write, but life got in the way.
Chloe worked in homeless hostels, particularly with vulnerable teenagers for twenty years, and saw too many of the world’s uninvited monsters. She developed extreme anxiety and depression, which caused terrifying nightmares and sleepless nights.
In her typically contrary way, she used this to her advantage and the nightmares became this novel, and the sleepless nights were when she found time to write it.
She created her own monsters to deal with the memories.
Her best friend, and number one cheer leader, was her inspiration and the person she could spin other worlds with. When her friend died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage, Chloe struggled to overcome her grief to start writing again. She had just found her rhythm again, when the worldwide pandemic hit, and she was gripped in the terror of losing more loved ones.
She dug deep, and is currently working on the third book of the Darkly Vampire Trilogy, as Rae and Layla are booting her brain, demanding their story is written, they have adventures to live.
Chloe has had several poems and short stories published in various charity anthologies. She was nominated for both Best Paranormal Author and Best Horror Author in Reality Bites 2018 Book Awards. Chloe won a Gold Stake award at the International Vampire Film and Arts Festival 2022, for her short story, The Caretakers.
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