A lifelong creative, Jen has played with words for as long as she can remember. She’s been honing her craft as an expert web content writer, copywriter, and wordcrafter since 2010, creating brand copy, blog posts, landing pages, and social media content across a variety of industries.

While she loves to infuse vibrancy and personality into branded content, Jen is a creative writer by nature. As such, she always has a fiction project or poem cooking on the back burner.

A familiar, metallic scent violated Vivien Faust’s senses before her bootie-covered flats hit the threshold. She stopped short, steeling herself against the blood’s ambrosial bouquet before entering Suite 1512 with her game face on. The functional but well-appointed corporate suite wasn’t one of The Georgian Terrace’s coveted penthouses, but it offered a high view of Midtown Atlanta most would kill for—although she certainly didn’t think that was the case in tonight’s homicide.

“Dr. Faust! Glad you could make it so soon.”

Vivien nodded, her neutral gaze scanning the room and glossing over her colleague’s presence. If Lieutenant Solomon Briggs didn’t know any better, he might have thought the gesture was absent-minded or rude, but Vivien was already homing in on clues his team had probably missed. He’d expect no less from Atlanta’s best medical examiner – vampire or not.

          Cordelia Cleary sat across the table from her latest date: a toned, fair-haired specimen with expertly sheared stubble, haphazard fashion sense, and a heavy-handed spritz of musk that somehow fused with the pasta sauce lingering on her tongue. She pulled at the crust on the last piece of bread from the shared basket, attention already lost to devising an exit strategy rather than on dinner and her date’s conversation. He was cute – she could admit as much – but so were the last three men she’d had dinner with this month alone. As her gaze skimmed his animated face, which was engaged in detailing Sunday night’s football game, Cordelia’s mind blanked. What’s his name again? Morgan? Mason? Manson?

          “. . . then they tackled this guy at the one-yard line right as time ran out. You wouldn’t believe . . .”

          Ah, but Cordelia could believe it. Every date she’d been on this year had been a total snooze fest. Whether she’d connected with a guy on a dating app or agreed to a blind date negotiated by a mutual friend, the result was always the same. Close but no cigar, as they’d say. “Hey, it’s a free dinner,” her cousin Luna would encourage with a wink. “And who knows, you might get lucky.”

          The Birchfield Inn wasn’t quite what I expected. I’d imagined an updated Victorian, not an oversized dollhouse with a witch’s cap turret and a baby-pink paint job that was so shocking I snorted on approach. Even the home’s decorative elements resembled white lace sewn on a doll’s dress. I suddenly felt like Gretel from the Brothers Grimm story, half-believing I could tear off a piece of siding and it would melt on my tongue like spun sugar. It had been some years since I’d visited, but I didn’t remember the inn being so. . . frilly. Surely this was the wrong address.

          “You have arrived at your destination.”

          “Guess this is it,” I said to the GPS, steering my old Subaru parallel to the curb. She might have guests, and I didn’t want to block anyone in.

          I barely had time to open the hatchback and reach for my suitcase before she came bounding out the front door and down the concrete steps.

          “Jorie! Is that you? I’ve been watching for you all day! Come here and give your grandma a squeeze!”

          “Hey, Nan,” I said, pulling the wheeled bag behind me as I met her halfway up the walk. She had me in a chokehold before I knew what was happening.

          “It’s been ages! How was your trip? Did you stop for lunch? I saved you a plate. Are you hungry? Do you like pulled pork? How is your mama doing? Did you run into any traffic?”

          Does this woman ever take a breath? “I’m fine, Nan. Thanks. And Mama’s good. She told me to call her when I got here.”

          Nan waved her hands in the air. “Of course! Come on in and use the phone. Then you can pull your car around back so we can unpack your things. Let me help you with that.”

          Before I could protest, Nan grabbed the handle and wheeled the suitcase toward the front steps. I readjusted my purse and sprinted to catch up. She’d chopped off her white locks since the last time I saw her and was now sporting a youthful pixie cut. It suited her clothing preference, which seemed to only consist of layered workout tees and black capris.

          “It’s okay, Nan. I can call her from my cellphone.”

          “Oh, that’s right!” She laughed. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about long-distance charges to Chapel Hill. Not that I’d mind, dear. You can use the phone anytime.”

          I couldn’t help but smile. Mama and I didn’t even have a landline.

I was still a child when I was brought to the Thornapple kitchens, shivering from an early autumn dampness that never poured, but rather choked the countryside in a thick mist. The ruddy man driving the wagon had lent me a blanket, and though it had an equine stench more suited to stable animals than little girls, I bundled myself in the scratchy wool and settled between vegetable crates for the day’s ride.

Most of the crates were empty; their contents had no doubt been used to purchase the rolled-up tapestries, carved wooden chairs, and silver candelabras that were my fellow passengers. Not that I had seen any of the items under their expert packaging; they’d only been described to me during the ride through the rolling Shropshire countryside. Each precious luxury was better wrapped and protected from the elements than I was, and each had been given choice seating from the moment we were collected at Shrewsbury railway station. Of the crates that still contained vegetables, I could have my pick of the scraps, he had said, so long as I only ate my fill and didn’t stuff my pockets. Dining on dirt-laden carrots and hard yams intended for nobility was a novelty compared to the gruel I’d been living on at the workhouse. In that dank and dreary moment, I considered myself the luckiest girl in England.

  The first time Gram heard the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” on the old-time radio, she scooped up my then-seven-year-old momma from her listening spot on the carpet and the two boogied across the living room floor, much to Pap’s chagrin.

“Turn that down, woman,” Pap grumbled through the clenched teeth safeguarding his tobacco pipe. “The neighbors down on Maple can hear you carrying on!”

Gram twirled around and leaned over the open magazine in her husband’s hands and bellowed, on cue of course, “Oooh baby you knooow what I like!”

In spite of himself, Pap smiled. The old coot tossed aside the TV Star Parade, left the pipe in an ashtray, and took his girls’ hands and let loose. It was one of the few fond memories Momma had of Pap—one in a long stretch of childhood years filled with alcoholic rants and hot afternoons alone in the passenger seat of his blue GMC Suburban while he’d run in another woman’s house for a “visit.” It’s no surprise my mother grew up as nervous as she did . . . or ended up leaving me to Gram for my own raising; but that song, on that evening, was a precious thing—and it was that tender memory, and a bit of urging from Gram, that possessed her to name me Chantilly.