Well, my vacation is almost done, but I’ve got some more guest bloggers lined up for you all.

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Have you ever wanted something so badly you ached?  Maybe when you were five years old and your best friend had sleek, shiny black hair that smoothed perfectly into gleaming braids. (Your hair was frizzy and mouse brown, of course!)  Or when you were ten and your neighbor had a pony with a prancing trot, a happy neigh and soft velvet lips that eagerly nipped up the carrots she gave him. (You had a goldfish, of course!)  Or when you were seventeen and you sat three seats away from the most amazing, dark and brooding Byron-ish type in English class.  (And right beside a boy who thought “You’re hot” was poetry.)

Often, we ache for what we can’t have.

In Hunger, my vampire romance from Samhain Publishing, Holly Spinnaker is a “golden girl”.  A college student whose idyllic life is torn apart when she’s attacked and turned into a vampire.  What does Holly yearn for?  Friends, pizza, sunbathing, warmth, hugs, laughter, love…Hunger is a story that begins with great loss, but in losing everyone and everything she’s ever loved, Holly discovers a deep core of strength she never knew she had.  Hunger is a story about loss, but it’s also a story about holding on to hope when all hope is lost.

Holly sprang up from the bench and walked toward the end of the cemetery that now cradled her father’s remains in damp cold earth.  Before she’d gone very far, a big hand wrapped around her upper arm and pulled her back.  Now Winters touched her.  She tried not to feel his body heat, but it zinged through the arm of her sweater as if it wasn’t there.  She could feel each warm strong digit as if his fingers touched bare flesh.

Hunger rose up in her, climbing out of her belly where she’d kept it hidden away.  It was a dark hunger.  It urged her to drink that heat, to steal it and make it hers.  Worse was the very human hunger to cuddle against his heat and strength and bask in its glow.  She was so very cold.

She did neither.  She stood as quiet and still as possible and tried not to tremble as the contrast between his heated living flesh and the ice in her bones made her feel colder than ever.

“You can’t approach the grave.  Police will be watching for the killer to come and admire his handiwork.”

Holly laughed.  For some reason she couldn’t take her eyes off the long, slightly brown fingers on her arm.  They flexed beneath her gaze and the movement caused her eyes to seek out his face.  He knew.  The copper embers in his eyes were alive with knowledge.  He knew she was hungry and he knew the hunger wasn’t only for sustenance.

She pulled away.  Jerked actually.  And staggered back several feet.  The effort left her winded. . .and alone.  She would get used to it.  She had to.  The fact that she’d always been someone who touched others in life meant nothing now.  Monsters kept their hands to themselves.

I will never have smooth shiny black braids or a pony or a man who composes sonnets about my eyes.  Those were transient desires that came and went in my past.  I remember those aches with a smile as I look at my frizzy curls, my petfinder menagerie and my handsome husband who occasionally thrills me by saying, “You’re hot”.

Many times we ache for what we can’t have and often that encourages us to reach for the stars.  But sometimes, sometimes when the day is done and night’s shadows come on strong, we find that all we really need is housed firmly, deeply in the depths of our own hearts.

In all the years of her life, from her earliest memories to a few short months ago, she’d had her mother’s love. They had laughed and cried and grown together. They had planned for the future and tried to memorize the past with scrapbooks and videotapes and too many photographs to count.

It was that love that had seen her through the worst transition of her life. Her mom, her family, had given her a foundation of hope and optimism and spirit. Her mom might be a lost cause, but Holly would never give up on her. Never.

Is there something you once ached for, but you learned it wasn’t what you needed, after all?  Is there something you ache for still?

Holly Spinnaker is the strongest heroine I’ve ever created.  She retrieves her happily ever after from hell’s fingers because she simply won’t let it go.  She refuses to let the darkness claim her.  She won’t give up.

Holly brushed the rumpled hair back from Winters’ brow and held it back with both hands on each side of his handsome face…and it was handsome. At first, she had only seen the taunt dedication to death and the scar. Later, she had been drawn to a warmth that was only hinted at from time to time when he wasn’t guarding against it. Now, she saw the crinkles around in his eyes that hadn’t disappeared even with disuse. She saw the softness around his mouth as he leaned closer. She saw his smile.

As Winters kissed her, Holly smiled against his lips. She didn’t have to dwell in shadows. She didn’t have to give up hope. She didn’t have to consign herself to the world of monsters.

Hunger is all about burning and yearning and striving and trying and not giving up no matter what.  But it’s also about discovering that no matter what you might ache for,  all you truly need can be found in your own heart.

www.barbarajhancock.com

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