Day Unto Night by TammyJo Eckhart - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Hi, lovelies!!  It gives me great pleasure today to host TammyJo Eckhart and her new book, “Day Unto Night,” here on FAB!!  For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!  Also, come back daily to interact with TammyJo and to increase your chances of winning!!

Thanks for stopping by!!  Wishing you all lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!!

Day Unto Night

by TammyJo Eckhart

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GENRE:  Vampire

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BLURB:

A Sumerian child named Ningai survives the murder of her entire family and cries out to her people’s gods, who answer her prayer in an unexpected way. Now, as the first of the Akhkharu, the living dead, Ningai embarks on a journey across the millennia to rebuild what she lost. The best of her offspring must maintain some shred of goodness to prove worthy to their Child-Mother while fighting the deadly impulses of their kind. Join their journeys across time in a series of interconnected stories from the earliest cities to a brutal future where humans are mere pawns in the hands of near gods. Like all of us, Ningai and the best of her children will stop at nothing to protect her family. Can they succeed before they lose what’s left of their humanity, or will all of humanity become enslaved to the Akhkharu forever?

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EXCERPT ONE:

I remember running.

I ran between their bodies as they did things to her that I didn’t even have words for.  I ran over the cold stone floor, slipping on the cooling sticky substance that dripped from my mother’s still body.  I ran over the door and my brother’s cold mass trying to block it.  I ran over the earth and grass, matted from my father’s slaughter.

I remember running.

I ran until I fell into the Great Water, what you call the Euphrates, but we only called Puranum, and was carried until I could grasp a branch with my hands, tearing at it until my blood also covered the ground as I pulled myself up.

I remember my pain.

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GUEST POST:

Developing the Akhkharu for Day Unto Night

When Ally asked me about how I invent and develop mystical creatures for my work, that was a perfect opening for me to write specifically about the Akhkharu, or vampires, that are the main creatures in Day Unto Night. The term Akhkharu is Sumerian, and as with much of that language, what we know is little. Experts in the field – I am not one, even though I’ve done graduate-level work in ancient Mesopotamian history – define it as “vampire.” What precisely that means is difficult to pin down. That is true for several other Sumerian terms that we commonly translate into English such as “demon” or “king.” The Sumerians lived in a region full of loosely affiliated cities and shared polytheistic religious figures across a diverse physical environment. The fact that they had any word at all that we could use to mean “vampire,” though, opened the door for me to be creative.

I placed boundaries upon my creativity using three considerations. First, I wanted to be as true to the Sumerians as I could be. I picked the names of the vampire families and the words for their sacred terms and titles from accepted English translations of Sumerian texts. I re-examined the scholarship on what it meant to be a king, a scholar, a wisewoman, a solider, a prostitute, a wife, a family, a slave, etc. in Sumerian society. I considered how someone nearly immortal might understand and manipulate that over generations to maintain or to steal control over others of their kind and to gain or maintain power over unaware humans and those mortals they more openly used.

Second, my creatures needed to be recognizable to readers. This meant that they needed to adhere to some of the powers and limitations of most vampires, such as a craving for blood, being harmed by sunlight, near immortality, strong mental powers, and other such clichés. The degree to which every author plays with the vampire trope varies greatly, so this is where I was most able to overlap the two considerations. I did so via the Sumerian gods, which we know more about via versions of those gods from later Mesopotamian cultures as well as artwork and texts from other civilizations where they are mentioned.

Each of the eight gods that Ningai, the main character of Day Unto Night, calls out to gives her a “gift” or a “curse” that becomes a reason for one of the Akhkharu’s strengths or weaknesses, and those come from the personality and domain that each deity oversees. My doctoral minor is in folklore with an emphasis in mythology, so I knew how to do my research and how to interpret and play with the entities. The Sumerian gods are not nice. The Akhkharu are not nice.

Having your main characters be the potential bad guys is no way to draw in much of an audience, though, so the third and final consideration I had when creating the Akhkharu was making them relatable to the reader. Each vampire was once a human being, so I had to think about what would make Ningai pick those first five mortals to change and what would inspire those five to make more like themselves. Then I had to ask: What truly makes a vampire a monster? Is it just being a vampire? Is it their behavior, or the motivation behind their behavior?

I believe the reason vampires are so popular is that they can be so close to human and yet so far from human at the same time. It really comes down to why they do what they do and not merely what they do. If we think of drinking blood as the equivalent of eating food, how you acquire what you eat and how much you consume may be far more indicative of your morality than simply the ingredients. This is why some vampires in entertainment are heroes while others are villains, and why some can redeem themselves in the eyes of viewers and readers, or not, with the decisions they make.

How do you keep your humanity when you could live forever? I created the need and desire for human servants, especially the Arammu-Wardum, or love-slave, who is blood-bound yet also able to speak up to and influence the Akhkharu. There! The fully fleshed-out vampire is crafted and given a renewed conscience to make their choice to be good or evil, or, like most of us, somewhere in between. 

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AUTHOR BIO:

 

TammyJo Eckhart, PhD, is the published author of science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, horror, and historical fiction. Her non-fiction works covering subjects ranging from history to alternative sexuality to relationship advice and the challenges of trauma recovery. She holds a PhD in Ancient History with doctoral minors in Gender & Sexuality and Folklore.  Her blog, The Chocolate Cult, has been the go-to guide for chocolate lovers since 2009. She loves visiting conventions as well as organizations to read, sell books, or share her experiences and insights on various topics in the form of lectures or workshops.

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CONNECT WITH TAMMYJO:

Website:

https://www.tammyjoeckhart.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/The-Worlds-of-Tammyjo-Eckhart-497503123647950

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/thetammyjo

Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/thetammyjo

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thechocolatepriestess

Dr. TammyJo Eckhart’s Edgy World:

@thetammyjo

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/102009.TammyJo_Eckhart

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59207617-day-unto-night

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BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon US Kindle eBook:

https://amzn.to/3nMz083

Amazon US Paperback:

https://amzn.to/2ZN20EO

Amazon CA Kindle eBook:

https://www.amazon.ca/Day-Unto-Night-TammyJo-Eckhart-ebook/dp/B09DF7MLBH

Amazon CA Paperback:

https://www.amazon.ca/Day-Unto-Night-Tammyjo-Eckhart/dp/1950502597

Barnes and Noble Paperback:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/day-unto-night-tammyjo-eckhart/1140234056

The Book Depository Paperback:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Day-Unto-Night-Tammyjo-Eckhart/9781950502592

BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:

https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Day-Unto-Night/Tammyjo-Eckhart/9781950502592

The Bookshop Paperback:

https://bookshop.org/books/day-unto-night/9781950502592

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

TammyJo will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions.  Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.