Hope Dawns Eternal

Can soap stars live forever? If they’re vampires, anything’s possible. In the hotbed of intrigue that is daytime television, sometimes the deadliest dramas are unscripted, and passions transcend anything the censors dare allow.

Hope Dawns Eternal is the first in a new series of romantic paranormal thrillers set at the fictional QMA television network in New York City. The novel features Jonah McQuarry, the new cop in town on the beloved soap opera Sunlight and Shadow, his lady love Abigail Hastings, and his arch-rival Tony Giordano. Played by the actor Mark Westgate, Jonah is tall and slender, with dark good looks and piercing blue eyes. Thanks to his years on Hope Dawns Eternal, a recently cancelled soap, he already has millions of fans, so the showrunners bring him along to S&S when the QMA network replaces Hope with a self-help reality show, Brand New You.

His first day on the set, when Jonah meets the raven-haired Abby, the erotic chemistry between them is instantaneous and off the charts. Soon Jonah suspects he knew her in another incarnation, when Mark played a vampire on the long-defunct soap opera Oak Bluff and the actress who played Abby was his leading lady.

When the host of Brand New You turns up dead and drained of blood, there’s immediate buzz about vampires, and Jonah becomes a prime suspect. Even worse, he begins to suspect himself. He’s been having black-outs, with long periods of time he can’t account for, and he’s developed a ravenous appetite for bloody rare meat. Could the reclusive Mark Westgate be suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and could Jonah be just one of several personas who inhabit the actor’s psyche?

Tensions escalate as Jonah tangles with mobster Tony Giordano and his enforcer Mick Hastings, Abby’s dangerously possessive hulk of a husband. As Jonah’s relationship with Abby heats up, he also finds himself increasingly drawn to Gloria Kemp, an evening news anchor about to launch her own daytime show on the QMA network. She wants him as a confidant and a friend with benefits. But does she truly lust after Jonah, or is she just chasing after the most sensational journalistic coup of her career? Can Jonah trust her? More importantly, can he trust himself? As the bloodthirsty killings continue, all bets are off.

Hope Dawns Eternal is the first in a darkly humorous series of romantic paranormal thrillers featuring the characters of the last remaining soap opera on the QMA network. Watch for the sequel, Sunlight and Shadow.

Julie Lomoe is the author of the mystery novels Eldercide and Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders. Both books draw on her decades of professional health and home health care experience, and both explore issues of vital importance to today’s society. Eldercide focuses on the ethical dilemmas that arise when quality of life declines with age and illness, and families confront life-or-death decisions. Mood Swing features a feisty heroine with a bipolar diagnosis who confronts the stigma of mental illness while investigating mysterious deaths at a psychiatric social club on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Julie attended Radcliffe College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard. She received her MFA in painting at Columbia University and exhibited widely in New York City and at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. In 1979 she received her MA in Art Therapy from New York University. Her work as a creative arts therapist at a psychiatric hospital inspired her to turn to fiction as a creative outlet for processing her feelings about spending her days on locked wards in the company of the mentally ill. She lives in upstate New York with her husband, dog and cat.