NobleDead.org - High/Dark Fantasy Fiction by Barb Hendee and J.C. Hendee

Yes, your read that title right. This raffle is for a complete set of audiobooks for the first series: Dhampir, Thief of Lives, Sister of the Dead, Traitor to the Blood, Rebel Fay, Child of a Dead God. The winner will receive promo codes for a free edition of each through Audible­.com....

These days, tales of the undead (mostly vampires) are all the rage and have been for a decade plus. Much as we do use the undead (not just vampires) as prominent fixtures and even main characters, that isn’t what we really write. We’ve always considered ourselves “fantasy” writers first where the Noble Dead Saga is concerned.

Regardless, we couldn’t escape that alternative classification of our work. When S1B1: Dhampir first came out, it wasn’t even placed in the Fantasy section of book stores. If a Dark/Urban Fantasy category existed in a particular store, that’s where Dhampir ended up. Fortunately it didn’t matter, as fantasy readers found it just the same. But regardless, we always get questions related to being “vampire” writers, and so...

Now that the draft for S3B2: The Dog in the Dark is off to our editor, and the raffles have been finished off (for now), it’s time to get back to some Q&As.

Over the months since we moved our two web sites to the Blogger.com system (NobleDead.com became NobleDead.org, BarbHendee.com became BarbHendee.org), a number of readers asked what happened to the “Glossary” from the old site. This usually came up in conjunction with “How do I pronounce such’n’such’s name?”

The old NobleDead.com site had server-side ASP/database services; the new site at NobleDead.org doesn’t have such. We’re investigating ways to emulate database operations through AJAX, JQuery, and XML data, but as yet we haven’t found a solution. We’re determined to succeed, so please be patient. As to pronunciation of names…

They don’t all follow the simplified, four-diacritical shared system we use for languages. You can still find the Pronunciation Guide at NobleDead.org under “Books.” But perhaps we can help out a little with names, though it might not be as simple as you’d assume. We wonder (with a wink) how many of you are would-be “sages” who’ve caught little details along the way and actually pieced them together, because a few of those have to do with names…