Grey Francis

I have always written — first as a journalist, later as a screenwriter, then finally as an author, discovering my true passion lay in writing books. I have always worked within the paranormal genre, writing about reincarnation, witches, magicians, and ghosts. But Love was always the common thread running through all of my work.

I took a break from writing after the birth of my two children. However, the ideas never stopped coming to me and Cassandra was born in my mind while driving around on a cloudy Halloween afternoon. My daughter’s first day of preschool was the day I set up a laptop and worked in a coffee shop next door to the school. I have never looked back, even if it meant working long into the night. Which it usually still does.

As a writer, I feel my best teachers are other writers. I have always been drawn to vampires, my early years filled with books by Anne Rice. But I didn’t truly fall in love with vampires until I read J.R. Ward’s The Blackdagger Brotherhood series. What I found in her books was a world I had never seen in vampire fiction. You could say I was officially inspired.

Over the years, I started noticing certain patterns in my writing, certain books or characters that affected me on a deeper level. It all finally came together in my mind when I read the magnificently erotic and compelling works of Joey Hill. Her vampire’s sexual expression through BDSM spoke to that deeper level. To say a lightbulb went on in my brain would be a vast understatement. Her characters and stories emboldened me to take my own unique path as a writer and create a vampire world all my own.

Other than my two wonderful children, nothing has been more exciting and rewarding than giving life to these characters. My greatest aspiration is for them to move beyond my own alternate reality and into yours.