In Undead and Unwed a 300-Year-Old Vampire Still Doesn’t Have It Together — Read an Excerpt!

Undead and Unwed — a coming near near romance novel from Sam Tschida — solutions the query of what would occur if vampires began getting their very own Hallmark Channel motion pictures.

Out Oct. 28, Undead and Unwed arrives proper in time for Halloween and the kickoff to the vacation season, and it tells the tale of a 300-year-old vampire “hot mess” named Tiffenie who unearths herself the brand new proprietor of a mattress and breakfast in Vermont.

According to the authentic synopsis, Tiffenie sees the location as her “chance to live out her Hallmark Channel dreams.”

“It turns out that fixing up an old inn and getting your happily-ever-after isn’t as easy as it is in the movies. Throw in her newly turned undead neighbor, a sexy Christmas tree farmer and the arrival of her overbearing vampire ex-boyfriend, and Tiffenie is in a world of trouble. To uncover what she truly wants, Tiffenie will have to reconcile the bloodthirsty vampire she is with the woman she thinks she needs to be — for the first time in her immortal life. Luckily, it’s never too late to start therapy,” the synopsis teases.

Described as a wedding between Bridget Jones’ Diary and What We Do within the Shadows, the most recent from the writer of Errands and Espionage and Siri, Who Am I? is shaping as much as be an final rom-com second.

In a press liberate, the mom-of-four stated that she was once “fascinated with the idea of putting the most non-Hallmark heroine ever in a Hallmark universe.”

She additionally defined the radical’s willpower — to “all the unlikable women.”

“Writing a likable heroine is hard for me. I try not to think too much about that — is it me? Female characters have stricter rules for likability. They can’t just be doing tequila shots at noon and murdering people like dudes,” she defined. “You might say, ‘No, Sam, men who do that aren’t likable,’ but unfortunately, you’d be wrong. We’re totally cool with badly behaved men in real life and in fiction (unless you’re a cinnamon-rolls-only girlie, which I get).”

“It’s exhausting being a woman, partially because of the dudes and partially because of all the unwritten rules of likability,” the writer added. “It’s even exhausting writing a woman. We have to be so good all the f—— time.”

Read on for an excerpt from Undead and Unwed.

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Twenty mins later, I used to be sweeping up across the fireside like I used to when I used to be a tender girl, apart from I used to be enjoying “Listen to your Heart” at best quantity. My middle sought after a Christmas tree farmer. I used the broom for a mic and belted out the refrain. Just because the track ended, I heard Heaven’s voice sporting from the lobby.

“Come on in,” she stated, in the similar informal tone that she’d use when she requested me to feed her parakeet again in LA.

“Nooooooooo!” I dropped the broom and grew to become to the entrance door. “Don’t invite anyone in, Heaven!” I known as, despite the fact that it was once already too overdue. I’d heard the invitation go her lips myself. 

If it was once the center of the day, tremendous, but it surely was once 4 within the morning. Who dropped via at 4 within the morning? The record was once quick: emergency products and services (we hadn’t known as), serial killers (NBD), every other vampire (unhealthy information). 

In my haste to get settled on the town, I hadn’t talked to Heaven about any of the vampire laws. Not one. 

My pores and skin prickled with worry. This was once a vampire. I knew it in my 300-year-old bones. 

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Vampires can’t input non-public areas, which is among the handiest defenses to be had to a susceptible vamp like me. I couldn’t grow to be a bat or glamor, and even pay my bank card off. I used to be on the mercy of whoever this was once. You shouldn’t invite a vampire in except they aren’t an asshole — or from Parliament. Uninviting them is a ache within the ass. Once they’re in, they’re in. 

Heaven shouted, “Tiff, someone’s here for you!”

“It’s Vlad,” a voice I’d acknowledge anyplace stated.

“Vlad’s here!” she known as as though she had simply ordered a pizza.

How? I hadn’t informed him my cope with. Everything was once obscure. I had deliberately stored each and every point out of Vermont from him. All he must have recognized was once that we have been within the northern hemisphere.

“Tiffenie.” My title rolled off his tongue love it was once intended to be stated, quickly preventing my panic. 

“What are you doing here?” I took in his bodily shape. It have been 25 years since I’d closing observed him. Physically, he was once large shouldered and virile, the type of man people incessantly assumed performed soccer. It wasn’t soccer Vlad had performed however conflict. No subject what number of meditation apps he attempted, he nonetheless carried a life-time of risk and violence inside of him.

My pores and skin prickled with consciousness at his presence.

Vlad was once the type of guy who drowned out everybody else. Just being in a room in combination, folks light into the background, leaving simply him, along with his Hollywood appears to be like and aura. In the flicks, on occasion they blur out the entire different actors to concentrate on the 2 fanatics, typically at a pivotal romantic second. That’s how I felt each time I used to be with Vlad—everybody else simply light away. At the drug retailer looking for Q-tips, on the bowling alley, on the film theater—it didn’t subject the place we have been. He was once a solar that by no means dimmed, his mild too brilliant for others to polish round him. 

And it wasn’t cool. When I used to be younger and impressionable, I used to be greatly surprised via his aura. Now I knew it was once to not be depended on. That more or less aura left a girl powerless. Do you wish to have to combat the Ottoman Empire? Sure. Do you wish to have to look at every other motion film although we haven’t observed a romcom in a yr? Anything you are saying, Vlad. Would you be my vampire bride? Of direction.

I have been so younger, so naïve. We have been strolling during the wooded area in spring. The global was once lush with new enlargement. He and I have been assembly each and every evening I may just sneak away for what was once most definitely just a month. He was once my shelter from the chaos of my circle of relatives: my folks, my sisters, my very own young children, my grief, my hopelessness that the rest would ever trade. Even as a grown lady with young children of my very own, there was once no area for me to have concepts that weren’t about what was once for dinner and the way I’d serve God.

Vlad didn’t have me at hi — shoutout to Jerry Maguire — he had me at Have you learn Voltaire? I hadn’t, however the truth that he checked out me and concept I may have learn the rest, particularly a scandalous ebook that wondered the accredited order of items … that was once the sector I sought after to are living in.

When he requested me to marry him, I knew I had discovered my luckily ever after, regardless of that it concerned approval from the Parliament and candlelit rituals I didn’t perceive on the time. That added to the joy. 

Here I used to be, 3 centuries later, nonetheless looking for my means after agreeing to that one. What a silly girl I’d been.

“I don’t understand. How did you find us?” I smoothed my hair and straightened my garments, that have been a multitude from an evening of most commonly emotional exertions. 

His eyes adopted my determined try to glance much less like a scorching mess and a flicker of amusement crossed his expression.

 “I missed you,” he stated.

Excerpted with permission from Undead and Unwed via Sam Tschida, Quirk Books 2025

Undead and Unwed is on sale on Oct. 28 and to be had now for preorder, anyplace books are bought.