Hera’s Curse (American Noir Trilogy 1) by Shaun Griffin-review & guest post

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date May 27, 2024

A cell phone number triggers a deadly chain of events which pits assassins Matt and John against the enigmatic Anastasiya. She is a vampire who has lived in the shadows for two hundred years and is not about to allow the extermination of her kind by mere mortals.

When a desperate young woman named Faith joins the men, she becomes the key to Anastasiya finding them. The vigilante priest, the ruthless crime boss, the disillusioned PI, the unfaithful trophy wife — each has their part to play as Anastasiya’s hunt moves towards the inevitable deadly showdown.

Hera’s Curse is a blend of crime noir and deconstructed vampire myth unlike anything you will read.

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REVIEW:This is definitely not your typical vampire story. A pretty good plot. Good characters and twists that will keep you reading until the last page.

Matt and John are assassins, guns for hire. On the lookout for a target they’ve been assigned. One looks forward to the chase and killing, the other not so much. They’ve been friends for a while, but a rift is beginning to form…..

Faith made one bad choice and now she’s paying for it! But when a lifeline is thrown to her, Faith has to quickly decide to stay where she is (if she does then she won’t be around for much longer 💀) or to go with Matt and John her new heroes and help them find the guy she’s with. (I personally would go with option two.) Deciding on the second option, Faith hopes it doesn’t lead her down an even more dangerous path!!

And Anastasiya our villain of the story, but is she? Being persecuted by humans who feel threatened by her has Anastasiya on edge. Being hunted because of one silly mistake made by one of her progeny, Anastasiya will hunt them. And Faith maybe the key to finding the two killers…..

It has stories coming together from all the different characters, we get to see how they come to this point in their lives, why they are here, and how it’s all going to end!

The ending, although I vaguely saw coming, still surprised me.

But I’m going to be honest, I really struggled getting into the book and it keeping my attention. I usually inhale vampire stories. But this one…. I can’t put my finger on it, it just didn’t flow like the books I usually read.

But that’s not to say it’s a bad book, no it’s not. It’s written well, thought out pretty good, and executed nicely.

The characters felt just a little out of sync with each other and the book. But I could easily distinguish one from another.

A good read if you like a thriller with a noir feeling.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Julie B 🦋

EVOLUTION OF A STORY
By Shaun Griffin

How does an author come up with an idea? How does it evolve? Is there some secret formula? Could a simple algorithm be designed to create our stories? Input some values and, hey presto, your story is done. I suppose to some degree this is happening.
All hail the AI tech wizards of creative oblivion.

The extent to which the art of weaving stories will be successfully mimicked by AI is much debated. There are times I grow despondent at the idea human beings would even think to relinquish their creativity to an algorithm. But then the muse wakes me at three in the morning with an idea and it is something magical. A magic I think AI will never be able to replicate.

This brings me to how I came up with my novel, Hera’s Curse. Although it was not called that in the beginning. It began as a short story called, Compound Vision.

It was 1998. I was driving to work one morning when I passed an old Ford Cortina (for American readers the equivalent would be a 1980s Chevy sedan) travelling well below the speed limit. Two young men, obviously closely related, sat upfront. They stared blankly ahead, blithely unaware of the world around them. The word ‘Hick’ immediately came to mind. Then it occurred to me—what if there was more to these two than met the eye? Rather than the slow-witted individuals they appeared to be, what if they were hitmen? I had this mental image of two brothers in dungarees and hobnailed boots sporting Magnum revolvers.

A few weeks later I was filling up at a gas station when a white minivan pulled up alongside. Seated inside were two prim rows of high school girls. What struck me was that they looked identical—from their immaculate private school uniforms to the blonde hair pulled back in a regulation ponytail. Every school principal’s dream. But what if that conformity hid something far more sinister?

That weekend I wrote a short story about two country bumpkin hitmen hunting a thug named Manny, who has been lured to a boarding house by some young women with the promise of sex. In the men’s search they meet Faith, a runaway who has been forced to work for Manny. She leads them to the boarding house where they discover the vampire women feeding on Manny. The story was told in a tongue-in-cheek style from the perspective of a fly-on-the-wall, hence the title. Everyone who read it remarked that I should expand it into a full-length story.

Work commitments got in the way and the story was shelved. Fifteen years later, I finally sat down to write. I thought about the original story. The characters in it were just caricatures and would not sustain the interest of anyone reading a novel. But where to start?

The first to change were the hitmen. They evolved into Matthew and John, two young men waging a war against drug dealers, though each for different reasons. Next were the young vampire women. Who were they? How did they become? For this story I felt things should be grounded in a plausible reality. Out went the usual tropes. These vampires would be a product of a virus and though enhanced in strength, agility, longevity and so forth, they could be killed like any human.

An infectious disease needs an origin and so the character of Anastasiya was born. Her noble origins and her motivation for creating her cult fell into place easily. It was then that I saw that the main conflict would be between Anastasiya and Faith, the last of my original trio. Mother and Maiden but who to be the Crone? Tammy is my interpretation of this aspect of the Goddess. All that was left was a way of connecting these protagonists. Enter Don Stone, the quintessential PI.

Once I’d completed my first draft, I realised I had the makings of a trilogy. I called it, American Noir. I hope you find the first part, Hera’s Curse, as enjoyable to read as I did to write it.