Welcome to the DESCENDANTS website. This is the home site for the "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles" series and the "Descendants: Forgotten Blood series." Currently there are two books published, "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles: A New Species" is the first novel of the Vampire Chronicles series and "A Vampire's Book of Knowledge" is the first release in the Forgotten Blood series, though it is not a novel. "A New Species" is available in print from Barnes and Noble and from most e-book retailers including Smashwords.com, Amazon.com, Apple iTunes, Sony eBook store, Kobo, Diesel and Barnes and Noble.com as an e-book. "A Vampire's Book of Knowledge by Hectar" is available in print from Unibook.com and from the same e-book retailers as "A New Species" as an e-book. When I release "Vampires of the Nile" it will first be available as an e-book through smashwords.com and after it has been there for one month I will release it through Amazon and have it available in print from Unibook.com.
This is an excerpt from "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles: A New Species" It's one of my favorite scenes. Kibwe's sister, Sanaa, made a mistake while experimenting with "changing" someone. She drained most of the woman's blood before bleeding into her victim. What resulted is an abomination. This is from Chapter 17: The Living and the Dead:
The changed ones sat at their small fire until the clan was asleep. They quietly left the camp and raced back for the village. It was easy to find the bloated abomination. She was standing in the center of her village, as she had done before. There were dead hyenas at the edge of the huts, freshly killed. The eleven slowed as they approached the edge of the huts. The bloated woman turned to face them with blazing eyes. Kibwe stopped.
“This won’t be like killing a person. She will be strong, like us. I don’t even know what we will need to do to destroy her. Sefu, do you have your knife with you?” He turned to look at Sefu. Sefu nodded slowly and drew his knife, still staring at the monster that his mate had created.
“The rest of us will try to hold her, you remove her head. Maybe that will work.” Kibwe set his jaw and nodded. The group rushed as one at the woman, she rushed as well, straight at them. Her speed was amazing, but not near what theirs was. Kibwe and Imani split and each grabbed at an arm. All they succeeded in doing was ripping the skin off of the slimy muscle. Zuberi flipped a spear into her chest and tried to flip her down on her back, but the spear simply burst the gas pocket in her body and spewed goo all over him. The spear slipped upward splitting the flesh but did not lift or flip her. She swung her arms and tore gashes across his face. The flesh was ripped down to the bone. Sanaa slid under both their legs and took both Zuberi and the abomination down in a heap. Tendaji pounced on the pile and Asha grabbed at a flailing arm. Sefu jumped in and swung the stone knife with all his might, severing its head cleanly and burying the knife and his hand into the earth. The body flailed harder and threw Asha off of its slick arm. Zuberi slid off the woman’s body and rolled out of the way, while Tendaji tried to keep her flailing legs from kicking him. Kibwe had spun around and now grabbed the severed head. He took the still animate head to the central fire ring.
“Sefu, start severing arms and legs!” Imani shouted as she danced around the flailing appendages, trying to get to Tendaji. Sefu jumped back in and landed with the dirty knife swinging at the shoulder joint. The stone easily slid through the flesh and stopped at the hardened bone. He worked the knife around, trying to find the joint. The other flailing arm reached Tendaji’s head and grabbed him by the hair. As Sefu finally hit the joint, the abomination ripped Tendaji’s hair out of his head, taking chunks of scalp with it. He roared and bit the putrid creature over and over, injecting useless venom into the dead flesh. Sefu threw the still grappling arm to Kibwe and swung the knife at the second shoulder joint. Having found the first one, he easily hit the second and cleanly severed the arm. Sanaa grabbed an ankle and dug her fingers in until she had the bones. She heaved and pulled the corpse out from under Tendaji. As he tumbled out of the way, Sanaa swung the corpse against one of the huts, shattering the delicate building, but leaving the corpse undamaged. Tieno grabbed the other leg and the two pulled them apart, Sanaa ripping the leg she held completely off of the body. The leg still kicked and flexed, but now had little weight behind it. Sanaa threw it across the village center to Kibwe who caught it and threw it in the fire pit. Nuru grabbed the main trunk inside the open gash and got hold of the ribcage. With a swing of the heavy axe, she chopped the remaining leg off of the body. The body she walked with over to the fire pit. Tieno walked to Kibwe and dropped the leg on the pile. The entire group except Tendaji gathered around the pit, covered in rotted flesh and goo. Tendaji was desperately trying to get the taste of the rotted flesh out of his mouth. Kibwe started gathering up wood and sticks to start a fire in the pit. All of the body parts still moved, but without direction or purpose. The head worked its jaws and the eyes followed the activities around it. When there was enough wood to make a large fire, Ekwan lit it. The fire flared and the sticks caught making a large, hot fire. The material from the demolished hut was thrown on and the dry grass drove the flames even higher. The body parts began to char and shudder. Kibwe kicked the head into the fire and her eyes widened in horror as the flames consumed her hair and began to char the flesh of her face.
~~~~ © J.A. Laughlin 2009
There is a forum for your use in discussion of the books as well as just meeting other people. I am active on the forum daily and read all new posts. I will respond to anything directed at me. There is also a Wiki in developement that will contain information not found in the books. I'm really looking foreward to that.
The writings page contains the started books in the two series as well as the Vampire Family Tree that applies to BOTH series. You can read the rough starts of all the novels that I intend to release. These are not updated frequently, but they are sometimes updated with continuations. I have updated "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles: Vampires of the Nile" on 03/09/2011. I also need to update "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles: Amazing Grace". There is also more written in that book. I'll get updates done as I can.
The news page is updated frequently with events that are pertinent to the books, the website or anything else I decide is interesting. Stop by and see what's happening.
The LINKS page has direct links to friends pages, pages of interest, and useful websites for authors and others.
The BOOKS page is dedicated to PUBLISHAMERICA authors. Any author that is published through PUBLISHAMERICA may request a listing on the BOOKS page. If you notice, not all the books are published through PUBLISHAMERICA, but the authors all have something published through PA. If you are a PA author and would like your work listed, e-mail me at
The E-BOOKS page is much the same as the BOOKS page except that it is dedicated to Smashwords.com. authors. The ebooks listed though are strictly published through Smashwords.com. and are NOT from the free selection. I can not list the free ebooks from Smashwords.com. as I would be infringing on their rights. If you are a Smashwords.com. author and would like your book or books listed, e-mail me or send me a message on the forum and I will send you instructions. I like to get new material up rather quickly, so you won't have to wait long to see your work up there.
All e-book sales now go through Smashwords.com. Most e-book formats are available through their main site including Kindle format, Sony Reader format, Palm format and PDF. My e-books are also availble through Barnes and Noble, Apple iTunes, Sony, Kobo and Diesel E-Books.
You can also find a wonderful selection of new and familiar authors whom have published their e-books through Smashwords.com. Read and enjoy.
For authors, there is the RESOURCE section. This is a growing page of the resources I have found to be helpful to me as I have broken into the publishing world. There is so much more than just writing a good piece. If you are going to publish and want your work to reach readers, the RESOURCE page is the place to go to get a start.