Dead is the New Black

“Marianne Stillings is now firmly planted on my
auto-buy list—
the first and only romantic suspense author there.”
—All About Romance

STRANGER—AND SEXIER
—THAN FICTION

Broke and desperate, failed romance author Stephanie
Scott reluctantly accepts a position as a live-in housekeeper…to a
Vampire. The very handsome Dr. Jonathan Van Graf, owner of Moonrise
Manor, has sworn not to harm Stephanie, and he offers room and
board to her ailing mother as well. And those eyes, those gorgeous
blue eyes….

But the mansion is a crazy place populated by
stranger things than the undead, including a Morticia Addams
lookalike named Leech and a film crew making a docudrama to show
the world that Vampires are just regular folks. Except, one of them
is murdered the same day Steph and her mom move in. When bite marks
appear on someone Stephanie cares about, she finds herself thrust
into a real whodunit, or a who’s-sucking-on-whom. Is it possible
Dr. Van Graf is everything she feared…or is he the hero she’s never
dared to create in her novels?

www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living
or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have
any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or
third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

DEAD IS THE NEW BLACK
Copyright © 2015 Marianne Gilmore
Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no
part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a
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known or hereinafter invented, without the express written
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illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of
copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

ISBN 978-1-942886-17-4

To Kristine Cayne, Charlotte
Russell, Sherri Shaw, Dawn Kravagna, Shannon O'Brien, KL Mullens,
and Clare Tisdale—the most talented, caring, professional, fun,
funny, and simply wonderful writing group on Earth. I love you all
to pieces.

Chapter 1
Chapter
2
Chapter
3
Chapter
4
Chapter
5
Chapter
6
Chapter
7
Chapter
8

Epilogue
About the
Author

“Beggars can’t
be choosers. Beggars can’t be choosers. Beggars cannot be choosers,
dammit!” I all but snarled Mom’s oft-quoted mantra to my reflection
in the rearview mirror.

I felt my eyes sting and quickly blinked away
the tears.

My throat closed. Chin dipped. I let my
shoulders droop. I could repeat
Beggars can’t be
choosers
a thousand times and it still wouldn’t be enough to
overcome the shame and humiliation.

At the age of thirty-five, my life was a
shambles—bank account empty, credit cards maxed, no job, nothing of
value left to sell, a sick mom who needed constant care, and a dog
with mailman issues. My house was in the final phase of foreclosure
and I had to be out by the end of the week. I’d already sent my
teenaged twins, Kimmie and Jace, to go live temporarily with their
dad and his “new and improved” wife. At least until I got on my
feet again, I hoped, before Christmas.

Oh, that reminds me, the dog went, too.

Any way you sliced it, I was up the creek
without a paddle. I needed a job—any job that paid any amount of
money. Now.
Today
. At this point, I was
prepared to claim expertise in whatever undertaking a potential
employer might require of me.

Lying is
wrong
,
except when you’re applying for a job. Looking for work changes
civilized rules of behavior, and while a responsible applicant
might never tell a lie under normal circumstances, in a job
interview, lies are called “skill set enhancements” and are
accompanied with either a straight face or an ingratiating
smile.

Unless the job necessitated performing
open-heart surgery or anything involving higher math (such as
calculating my own retirement age), you could usually get away with
it.

Can you juggle
coconuts?

Yes. Five at a time with
one hand tied behind my back.

Can you perform a
somersault off the high dive?

Yes. My mother was an
Olympic gold medalist.

Can you tune an
engine?

Yes. My father was Mario
Andretti.

Are you willing to relocate
to Farflungistan?

Yes. My grandmother was
born there. I am fluent in Farflungish.

As far as I knew, the housekeeping job I was
on my way to interview for required none of those aptitudes, but it
never hurt to be ready, just in case.

Approaching an intersection, my GPS
instructed me to turn at the next corner. I did, after which it
claimed I was, “Arriving at destination, on right.”

I slammed on the brake, jolting to a hard
stop as my skull bounced against my headrest.

Destination
turned
out to be an enormous iron gate. The accompanying fence to which it
was attached disappeared on either side into lithe willow branches
and whitewashed birch. Pine trees rose high overhead, poking the
inky October sky with sharp needles, while gnarled mahogany-skinned
manzanita clung to their trunks like frightened gnomes.

I studied the gate. No call box, no button to
push, nothing to give me a clue on how to proceed. The agency
hadn’t said anything about a ten-foot iron fence or how I was to
get through it. As I reached for my cell phone, the gate began
sliding open; not like the Red Sea, split down the middle, but to
the side, like a stiff living room curtain made of rusty metal
bars. The mechanism grated and groaned as though it hadn’t been
opened since Heck was a pup—as my mom would say. Nothing a little
WD-40 wouldn’t fix.

The gate, not my mom.

The atmosphere was creepy, especially given
the nature of my potential employer, one Dr. Jonathan Van Graf.
According to the agency, just knowing who this Van Graf guy
was—rather,
what
he was—had apparently
been enough to keep most applicants away.

But desperation is a mighty force that turns
cowards into
cowards-pretending-to-be-brave-but-who-are-still-really-cowards,
and that was me, Stephanie Scott, in a nutshell.

Assuming the house must be around the corner
just ahead, I slowly drove through the gate. Immediately, the iron
bars squeaked closed behind me.

All righty, then. I was in. I peered through
my windshield at the predatory-looking vegetation. Boy, this place
sure was out in the boonies. I felt goose bumps tighten my skin,
and though the day was on the chilly side, it wasn’t the weather
that had caused them.

As soon as I rounded the next curve, the road
began to rise sharply. I forged ahead, up and around, and up again,
curving left, then right, until finally, I was nearly at the top.
One last curve and there it was…the house. Ostensibly,
I hoped
, my new place of employment.

The thought made me a little queasy.

In my brain, theremin music began to play,
high-pitched and ominous…

Hold your horses right there.
Theremin music?
you ask, as well you might. Yes. The
theremin was an electronic musical device patented in 1928 and
named after its Russian inventor,
Léon
Theremin
. Its creepy, squeaky sound was all the rage in B-grade
sci-fi and monster flicks.

See, when you’re a writer—even a washed-up
has-been such as myself—you pick up a lot of useless information,
knowledge of the theremin being one of the more obscure facts I
have vying for space inside my storage-shed brain.

I shook my head, but the eerie music
remained. Its high-pitched whine played on like a sound track to my
life as a telephone conversation from a year ago played out in my
mind, in spite of my efforts to stop it.

“I love it, Stephanie. It’s the best thing
you’ve ever written. Really, it’s just fabulous, absolutely
wonderful.”

My agent, Raymond Basil of Basil, Basil, and
Basil Literary Agents—Ray was the second Basil—didn’t display this
level of zeal when his horse came in at Pimlico paying ten to
one.

“Methinks thou dost extol too much, Ray,” I
said dryly. “Sounds to me like you have a big but.”

Ray chuckled. “Too true, but I was hoping
Jenny Craig would take care of that.” More hee-hawing and a slight
snort.

I tried to keep a tight rein on my fear of
abandonment. Even though I’d published ten Debby Destiny, Private
Eye novels, there were no guarantees future manuscripts would enjoy
the same fate.

Ray cleared his throat as if readying himself
to sing the national anthem…naked.

“Uh, well, Steph,” he hemmed, “um, see, as
good as the manuscript is,” he hawed, “and it is good. The thing
is, Prescott Publishing is going to take a pass on this one. They
asked me to tell you that they wish you well, and the best of luck
in your, you know, writing career…in the future…for some other, uh,
publisher.”

I clutched the phone to my ear while the
silence that followed Ray’s proclamation reverberated through my
body. My brain continued to function, but only to keep involuntary
vital systems going—vision, respiration, digestion. But my
synapses, instead of firing, fizzled.

I tried to swallow the salty tears and bitter
bile clogging my throat. It took several attempts, but by the time
I was ready to speak, all I could manage was, “Why?”

“Okay, here’s the deal, hon. P.P. will be
flowing in a different direction. They’re planning to target
younger readers looking for a quick pace with lots of sex, which
means they are buying authors who write hot, intense, deep, sexy
manuscripts.”

“I can do that,” I squeaked. “Can’t they let
me—?”

“The truth of the matter is, hon,” he
interrupted. “P.P. felt your sales numbers weren’t as strong as
they’d’ve liked, and they’re dropping you.”

Numbers. I know what numbers are. They’re
dollars. The bottom line was The Bottom Line; I didn’t make enough
money for Prescott. I had a loyal readership, a nice following,
wonderful fans…just not enough of them to pull down the big
bucks.

I pressed on. “Just how flat is this market
of which you speak?”

“Think of an envelope without a royalty check
in it.”

“Oh.” It was an image not only graphic, but
painful.

Just that quick, stage three on the grief
chart, aka bargaining, kicked in, and I whined, “What if I rewrite
number eleven and make it hotter and hipper? I can retitle it…how
about, uh, I don’t know…um…”

As I desperately grappled with a new concept
that would keep me published, Ray said softly, “The market has
changed, hon. You need to get with the times.”

“Okay, Ray,” I said, keeping my voice steady.
“What should I write?”

“If you want to stay published, Steph,” he
offered, “you’re going to have to update your style, basically
reinvent yourself. A new manuscript. Conflicted characters. Lots of
sex and maybe a torture scene or two. Rough, raw…a gruesome
killing, lots of blood, more sex. Bigger, broader, deeper. And more
sex, of course. Sort of a cross between
No
Country for Old Men
and
Friends
.
Even better, a vampire story.”