Book description
Since 1978, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced about two dozen novels
and numerous short stories detailing the life of a character first
introduced to the reading world as Le Comte de Saint-Germain. We first
meet him in Paris during the reign of Louis XV when he is, apparently, a
wealthy, worldly, charismatic aristocrat, envied and desired by many but
fully known to none. In fact, he is a vampire, born in the Carpathian
Mountains in 2119 BC, turned in his late-thirties in 2080 BC and
destined to roam the world forever, watching and participating in
history and, through the author, giving us an amazing perspective on the
time-tapestry of human civilization. In The Palace, Renaissance Florence
provides the background for this story of the collapse of the artistic
and literary life of the city after the death of San Germano's friend,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, followed by the rise of the fanatical
Savonarola. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a
Living Legend by the International Horror Guild and is one of only two
women ever to be named as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention
(2003). In 1995, Yarbro was the only novelist guest of the Romanian
government for the First World Dracula Congress, sponsored by the
Transylvanian Society of Dracula, the Romanian Bureau of Tourism and the
Romanian Ministry of Culture. Yarbro is best known as the creator of the
heroic vampire, the Count Saint-Germain. With her creation of
Saint-Germain, she delved into history and vampiric literature and
subverted the standard myth to invent the first vampire who was more
honorable, humane, and heroic than most of the humans around him. She
fully meshed the vampire with romance and accurately detailed historical
fiction and filtered it through a feminist perspective that both the
giving of sustenance and its taking were of equal erotic potency. A
professional writer since 1968, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of
genres, from science fiction to westerns, from young adult adventure to
historical horror.
