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HaBO: Gene Kelly Lovin’ Vampires

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Jami has the most insane inquiry, and I’m so curious what series this is.

Ever since your blog about vampires and werewolves, I’ve been trying to
remember this series I was telling another lady about in that same thread.
It all centered mostly around the one vampire, however in a side role was a
female vampire.

Here’s what I can remember about the series –

Both vampires in question were French. He was originally going to go into
the priesthood until he was seduced by his childhood friend who would one
day be the female vampire in this series. After they were both turned he
went on, being your typical tortured vampire while she enjoyed it. They
remained friends and would get together for rough vampire sex, but never
stayed together.

Eventually he breaks into the world of show business as the writer/composer
of many popular musicals. He’s obsessed with Gene Kelly. He meets a human
woman at an auction when they try to outbid each other on an autographed
poster for Singin’ In The Rain. She’s a virgin. Eventually they fall in
love but because he doesn’t want to turn her he dumps her.

In the next book he ends up involved with another woman who’s very cold
hearted. She’s just in it for the sex. Eventually his female vampire friend
turns this woman just to get her out of his life.

Next book has him not romantically involved with the cousin of his true
love. She’s in a boring, sexually frustrating marriage. He bites her just
so they can have a mental connection and he uses telepathy to teach her how
to masterbate. Her husband walks in on her and they end up with a happy
marriage again. Thanks to a relative in the Old Country they find a cure for
vampirism and our musical loving vampire becomes human and is with his true
love.

Fourth and last book I can remember. The female vampire by this time has
become romantically entangled with a human male who is the lead in the
musical version of The Scarlett Pimperel – with SP being rewritten as a
vampire. I can’t remember which book she started sleeping with him, but
anyway she does. (His description is an exact match, BTW, for real life
musical star Michael Crawford. I later found out the author is a Michael
Crawford fan.) She ends up turning him against his will. He decides he likes
being a vampire because it makes performing easier. In the meantime our
former vampire thinks he’s changing back because he’s sensitive to light
and craving blood. He’s not. He’s a migraine sufferer and the blood
craving is psychosematic. Oh, and his True Love/wife, she’s pregnant.

That’s all I can remember. I don’t even know how long the series went on.
However I wanted to find out the names because the lady in the
vampire/werewolf thread was interested due in the series and I wanted to
help her. Plus if it turns out there’s more I’d like to finish up the
series. I read them in high school so they had to be published sometime
before 1995, which is when I graduated. Oh, and the musical loving vampire
turned human tortured hero had a thing for blonds. Every woman he got
involved with was a blond.

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  1. marg says:

    I have no idea at all, but.. damn, I would love to find out!

  2. I remember this series!  Damn, now I’m going to have to rack my brain for the answer…

  3. Aha!  Lori Herter, the DeMorrissey series:  Here’s the PW blurb from “Confession”:  Vampire/playwright David de Morrissey isn’t your average chap: sensitive, intelligent and extremely moral, he studied writing with Shakespeare and longs to dance like Fred Astaire. David loves Veronica Ames, a mortal, but has refused to see her for a decade while she decides whether or not to become a vampire. When Veronica is told by a psychic that there is a “cure” for her lover, she sends her cousin Harriet Dvorak to him with the news. Harriet, whose marriage is floundering, is attracted to this dark and mysterious man, and David warms to her, because he is lonely.

    I read this series in the early 90’s.  It wasn’t bad.

  4. Annmarie says:

    Darlene, you saved my life.  I was going crazy trying to remember this series because I had read it too.  I don’t remember if I liked it.  Just that I read it.  It was sending me MAD!  Thank you!!!

  5. Glad I could be of assistance, Annmarie.  It was a good enough series that I remember specific parts—David tapdancing, when Harriet’s husband gets a piece of cluecake, and ISTR the female vampire was a 1920s flapper who has a yen for a vampire hunter.

    You should be able to find any of the missing books now.  Happy reading!

  6. JamiSings says:

    Yehaw! Thanks! Man, it’s been driving me nuts since that thread!

    I also remember the female vampire who seduced David when she was human and kept him from the priesthood telling him her first lover was the priest who was training him to take the collar.

  7. JamiSings says:

    Ug! Her books are HUGELY expensive on Amazon. Eternity alone is over $200.

    I found a UK site that lists them for cheaper –

    http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/lori-herter/

  8. Sarah says:

    I’ve never read this before, but it sounds really fun! 

    But damn!  I looked up the first one, Obsession, and at least on Amazon, is $40!

  9. @Sarah—Try InterLibrary Loan at your public library if you’re not interested in having your own copies.  I’m a huge fan of ILL for research and finding older or OOP novels.

  10. Katrina says:

    Not sure if it helps you. I am on two different book swapping sites and both have a couple of copies of Obsession and Possession. That might be another avenue if you would like to own copies.

  11. Laurel says:

    You can also try http://www.alibiris.com for hard to find books.

  12. JamiSings says:

    I probably have them packed away somewhere. My folks remodeled the house and we’re still getting all my books unpacked for the library. (We need more shelving first.) I still haven’t found all my Karen Marie Moning books yet.

  13. joanneL says:

    I’ve looked on Amazon and they have used copies starting at one penny so unless they’re probably at least readable.

    Great covers, by the way!

  14. egoscribo says:

    The idea of tap-dancing vampires who probably do jazz hands at critical moments is making me very happy. If I don’t read the books, I can cherish this image forever. 🙂

  15. Brandie says:

    Check half.com, I was just on there and they have Confession for $0.75.

  16. JamiSings says:

    @Ego – Well, to be fair he was trying to recreate Gene Kelly’s dance scene from Singin’ In The Rain.

    Like I said, he’s a Gene Kelly obsessed vampire.

  17. Mala says:

    I totally had these books, at least two of them, and still remember David and the tap dancing. Also, in one of the later books, the female vampire and NotMichaelCrawford had sex on his piano. They ended up being my favorite couple, because I thought David and Veronica were so wangsty.

    Chalk another regret up on the “why did I get rid of this?” list!

  18. Estelle Chauvelin says:

    First I was wondering why the lead in the Scarlet Pimpernel musical wasn’t a dead ringer for Doug Sills.  Then I saw the comment about these having been out by the early ‘90’s and was amused that it pre-dated the actual SP musical.  But that got less amusing when I realized that the last book came out a year after the concept recording although the show wouldn’t hit Broadway until the second half of the decade.

    Yeah, look at my screen name and you won’t be too surprised that this is what I fixated on.

  19. Caroline says:

    The prices on amazon are insane, but I’ve checked other sites and the books are $2-8 each. Any clue why amazon’s are so high? Did the author sign those copies or what?

    ::puts on librarian hat:: For ILL – according to WorldCat everything in the series has 20-40 owning libraries, so they should be doable for interlibrary loan. I’m a cheap bastard so that’s how I get 95% of the books I see on here that my public library doesn’t own, and it’s worked out quite well.

  20. DS says:

    Sometimes with Amazon used books it is how you search.  If you search for the ISBN then you are most likely to find the best bargains because that is how most sellers list.  Some sellers try to game the system by creating new listings for the book that are not connected to the ISBN.  I don’t know why, but these listings will pop up at times as the sole available listing.  Best to retry the search before paying an outrageous amount for a reading copy of a MMPB.

  21. Suz says:

    Looks like paperbackswap has most of her catalog available: http://www.paperbackswap.com/book/author/Lori+Herter

  22. @Caroline—Thank you, and all the public libraries in the US that make ILL possible.  I couldn’t research and write without it. 

    @Estelle—My favorite Scarlet Pimpernel production is the Leslie Howard version.  Raymond Massey as Citizen Chauvelin is amazing!  You should be very proud.[g]

  23. Estelle Chauvelin says:

    @Darlene: I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be proud, unless you think it’s my real name, which it’s not.  It’s just the online handle I’ve been using since I first needed one, which happened to be primarily in musical theatre circles around the time that the real musical version landed on Broadway.

    Leslie Howard is my favorite screen Pimpernel too, and the script of his version is undoubtedly the most faithful to the book, but my favorite screen Chauvelin remains Ian McKellen, good though Raymond Massey was.

  24. sandra says:

    I actually read the first book in the series, but didn’t like it, and never read any of the others.  Maybe if it had featured tap-dancing vampires I would have liked it more, but maybe not.  I don’t much like vampire romances since, lets face it, a vampire is a walking corpse who drinks blood, and if you get romantically involved with one, you have a choice between becoming a wrinkled old bag while he stays young and hot, or becoming a blood-drinking corpse yourself, and I doubt that ANY romance can really stay hot for all eternity.  I did make an exception for Karen Harborough’s The Vampire Viscount, since the hero of that one is looking for a cure.  Spamword always85, as in these days there are always 85 vampire romances in print, and don’t I wish that fad would be forgotten.

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