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Halloween is still two days away but get your vampire fix with this special podcast. Richelle Mead visited the Penguin office about a month ago en route to her Australian book tour and she talked to us about her fabulous YA series, "Vampire Academy".

 Blood Promise

Richelle Mead - author

$16.99 - add to cart

Book: Hardcover | 8.26 x 5.23in | 512 pages | ISBN 9781595141989 | 25 Aug 2009 | Razorbill | 12 - AND UP years 

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I practiced pediatric emergency medicine and community pediatrics for seventeen years. During that time, I faced rapists, child abusers, gang-bangers who would kill over a pair of shoes, sociopaths, psychotics, narcissists, and even one killer our prosecutor classified as a serial killer.

You know the scary thing about evil? It looks just like you and me.

When I left medicine to fulfill my life-long dream of becoming an author, I knew that I wanted to explore the various faces of evil. Because I've faced it in real-life, I knew how different it was from most of the "bad-guys" portrayed in fiction.

Evil doesn't spend its days plotting dastardly deeds of cunning or intricate, diabolical plots involving red herrings and webs of intrigue.

Rather, the evil I've seen is driven by one simple desire: they know what they want, they want it now, and they don't care what they have to do to get it.

The boy-friend baby-sitting while mom's at work who brutally beat and raped a three year old because she wouldn't go to bed when he told her the first time. He's currently on death row.

The woman who shook her baby so hard the baby hemorrhaged into his brain....because the baby wouldn't stop crying during her favorite TV show.

The gangbanger who shot a kid because he said "hi" to the wrong girl on the wrong street corner while wearing the wrong color of hat.

These are just a few of the faces of evil I've seen.