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[Vampire Month] Doing what you love by Isabella Favilli

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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My name is Isabella Favilli and I was born in Rome in 1973, I moved in UK in 1999 and after spending nine years in Manchester I moved in Yorkshire with my boyfriend, my daughter and my pooch and lived there since. Isabella

I like to think about myself as born with a pencil in my hand, as I cannot recall a moment in my life in which I didn’t like drawing.

I can remember myself drawing as early as back to my first childhood memories; all I wished for were colours and sketch pads, I loved nothing more than to spend hours drawing the fantasy stories I created in my head.

I used to copy Manga cartoons, as they were incredibly popular in Italy back in the 80s and 90s.

At school I truly excelled in Artistic subjects so it seemed like a natural step when it came to my education to pursue my love for drawing too.

I always thought that I would have ended up attending Art Lyceum and then Art Academy, but when the time to make the choice came, I was advised to go for Graphic Design instead, because at the time it was a very sough after job and many schools in Italy were creating courses to be trained to such a career.

Nataliya_human I must admit, when I graduated I did leave with a much more refined hand and more expertise in various techniques but with hindsight, my first idea would have suited me best.

After spending a year working in a Graphic Design studio it became clear to me that Graphic Design was not my passion at all and that Fine Art was what I truly loved.

There was no room for an artist in the employment world, especially in Rome, where you are lucky if you get a cleaning job with recommendation. For many years I didn’t know what to do with myself but never stopped drawing just for the pleasure of it.

Eventually I gave up on making my talent a bread winner and left it for my pleasure only, I would just grab whatever job I could, and at some point I moved in UK.

I think I never really put the pencil/brush down for a long time, until I moved to Yorkshire and I became a stay at home mom.

I suppose I was too immersed in my new role that I felt like I really didn’t have time for myself, in fact at some point I felt like I forgot who I was.

I could feel I was unsatisfied with my life but could not really grasp why, until one random evening one year ago I found myself talking to a total stranger on Twitter.

This person had just spoken of how they totally moved from one career to another, doing what they really loved, they had described their feeling before deciding to become who they really wanted to be, and I saw myself in them: deep inside I was unsatisfied with who I was just like them had been.kiSS

So, I told them that, I told them I was feeling that way and I didn’t know anymore where I was going; they asked me what I enjoyed to do, and it came out as easy as a breath “drawing”, and I haven’t done it in ages.

Their reply to me was very simple and to the point “Then draw, do whatever makes you happy”.

It’s strange how sometimes, a random person can give you more insight to your true self that your own self, but that’s how I came back to my first love.

Together with drawing there is always been another passion/obsession, and that was vampires, so it is really no surprise my first subject after my re-awakening happened to be the character of Ninfa Hayes’ novel The Last Of The Blood.

KatrineI am currently working to turn the novel into a comic/manga, but I have noticed how  this subject seems to find me when I am planning to draw something else  too.

There is something incredibly sensual in drawing by hand, I cannot find the same feeling when I use a computer tablet or a graphic software. It is in the holding of your pencils, the brushing through the paper or the feeling of the colour, it is a physical sensation just as intense as a vampire kiss, not that I have ever been kissed by a vampire, but I guess the idea that I have of it mirrors sometimes my art: while consuming the graphite, squeezing the colour and spreading it on a piece of paper I create a new, strange immortal life, a bit like a vampire kiss.

I put my whole soul in any drawing I do, because most of all I draw for the love of it, and if it becomes my bread winner jolly good.

 

[Guest Post] Paige Dearth – write what you know.

18 Sunday Aug 2013

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Making Connections Paige Dearth

Today we focus on the work of Paige Dearth, author of Believe Like a Child and When Smiles Fade.

In her debut novel, Believe like a Child, the main character Alessa is the victim of child abuse from her uncle. The story is one of redemption and of a woman taking control of her own life.

In When Smiles Fade, her latest novel released this year, the main character Emma is also abused as a child as you can see from this synopsis:

Emma was unloved from the moment she was born. Her earliest memory is being severely beaten by her father, Pepper Murphy, when she was just eight-yearsold. Seething with resentment over the sacrifice of his dreams for a woman he cares little about and children he never wanted, Pepper chooses to blame his older daughter. Her mother, Valerie, makes matters worse with her verbal abuse, leaving Emma isolated with a man that had no boundaries in punishing his daughter, taking his abuse to unimaginable levels. Emma’s father’s coldblooded beatings and the ultimate abuse to which he subjects her, lays the foundation of the person she becomes. As she matures into a resourceful teenager, she is unwilling and unable to stifle her desire for revenge. Reaching her breaking point she can no longer control the impulse to fight back and finally takes matters into her own hands. Having learned the art of hatred from her father and the mastery of manipulation from her mother, young Emma now sets out to make a better life for herself, leaving the memory of the abused child she had once been behind her. Hardened by the heartless brutality she encounters and the dangerous situations she must overcome in the course of her journey, she faces every challenge that comes her way in her quest for a normal life for herself and for those she loves. Finally a person emerges from within that guides her toward a better life until she learns of a secret that sets her on the path of ultimate redemption.

Both stories contain inspiration taken from Paige’s own life. She herself was a victim of child abuse at an early age and spent her childhood not believing that she had the potential to much in the way of ambition. When she finally went to college at the age of 29, she did not even believe that she was capable of passing the college level courses and yet she finally left college with an MBA 8 years later and a feeling that she had conquered her fear of learning. There followed a successful career in corporate America and finally a writing career that has seen her earn a finalist place in the thriller category of the National Indie Excellence Book Awards. Paige’s own life is an example of someone seeking to improve their lot.

So, both novels mirror events in Paige’s life, she has used her real life to inspire her writing. This ties in with the common author’s adage of ‘write what you know’. This saying is often mocked, especially in fantasy and SF, because you cannot ‘know’ what it is like to be a Dragon or an Orc or a wizard. However, this is applying an ad absurdum argument because there are still elements of a person’s life which will apply to any fictional character. Likewise in a suspense thriller, there are almost certainly going to be things in there that an author has not experienced but the trick is to take the things that have happened to you and apply them. Writing what you know is all about adding a level of emotional veracity to the writing that is conveyed to the reader. The use of the term ‘what you know’ is actually a misnomer as it really is not about knowledge at all. Knowledge is what you get from books and, these days, from the internet – whether by looking something up on Google or (as commonly happens) asking a question on a forum populated by experts in that area. Instead it is all about the experience – the emotional and physical impact that this has on you as an individual. I believe that this level of veracity is important. You don’t need to necessarily add emotional context to every event in your story but it does help if you have some personal life experiences you can call upon if needed. They may not be as traumatic as those described here, I would not wish such things on anyone if it could be at all avoided, but any life event can be useful – the tastes of food, the smell of the inside of a car, what it feels like to spend all day in a library reading ancient books. An author should be prepared to reflect upon their experiences and consider what they can learn from them and what they can use to improve their writing.

You can find out more about Paige on her website: www.paigedearth.com.

You can buy her books on the following links:

Believe Like a Child (US)

Believe Like a Child (UK)

When Smiles Fade (US)

When Smiles Fade (UK)

Later this year she also plans to release her third novel so please keep an eye out for that.

Dianna Hardy Giveaway!

26 Friday Jul 2013

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Yesterday you were treated to an extract from Cry of the Wolf. Today you are to be treated to a giveaway of swag related to all things Dianna Hardy. This swag bag contains goodies such as a fangs and fur fridge magnet and quote bookmarks.

Tameside-20130725-00291

To enter this giveaway, click on the Rafflecopter link below and perform each of the tasks listed to gain extra entries. If you comment on this post below you also gain an entry into the big giveaway on Dianna’s own blog as well. You only have a week to enter this giveaway so you had better get clicking before the timer runs out!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tennis and Football stars from Newcastle by Dr. Jo Bath

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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Today’s guest post is by Dr. Jo Bath, co-author of The Newcastle Book of Days, which is a collection of ‘On this Day’ style anecdotes and historical snippets centred around the city of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Being as how it is a city close to my heart, being close to where I was born, my interest is especially piqued by this book. I even remember some of the events described, including the building of the Metro described below. Here she talks about some of the stories she came across when writing the book, including one that is very relevant in Wimbledon season…

Muriel Robb

One of the best things about writing a Book of Days has been the freedom to explore more or less any aspect of local history that caught my eye. Of course, some things were always going to be included in one form or another. You can’t cover Newcastle’s history without referring to, for instance, the Great Fire which devastated the Quayside on October 6th 1854, the development of Grainger Town or the birth of the Metro (the largest urban transport project of twentieth-century Britain). But what really excited me were the nooks and crannies of the city’s history, the almost-forgotten figures and stories which have all, in their way, made the place what it is today.

I’m sitting in my office listening to the tennis, and that reminds me that Newcastle has a Wimbledon champion all of its own in 23-year-old Jesmond-based Muriel Robb. Admittedly her victory was on July 2nd 1902, so the contest was very different from the modern game. Wimbledon merely hosted the English National Championships (though participants did come from further afield – Robb had already won the Irish, Scottish and Welsh Championships). At the time, the women’s game was quite sedate, with underarm serves delivered by refined ladies in floor-length dresses and straw hats. But Robb was a blast of fresh air. Despite the handicap of corsetry, she was a relatively speedy mover and probably the first woman to serve overarm. Contemporary Arthur Myers said that “her command of the ball was so striking, her forehand drives so deadly, and her overhead service so effective, while her self-possession was so apparent,” that her opponents were often placed at a disadvantage.
Remarkably, due to a strange decision Robb’s Wimbledon final, against defending champion Charlotte Sterry, was the longest women’s Wimbledon final in history. The match was drawn at a set each when rain stopped play. Rather than playing a deciding set the next day, the committee decided to wipe the scoreboard and start from scratch! This time, Robb won comfortably – after playing a total of 53 games. Despite her powerful play, her health was never that robust, and she retired later the same year. She died less than five years later, of unknown causes – the youngest Wimbledon champion ever to die.

armstrong_munitionettes

Armstrong Munitionettes

Speaking of female sports players, Newcastle’s ladies (as you might expect) were also pioneers on the football field. The British Ladies’ Football Club played at St James’ Park on April 20th, 1895, only a month after they formed, and a crowd of 8,000 gathered to watch the “spectacle”. The reporter for the Sporting Man was obviously confused by the whole thing, and spent all his time describing the women’s attire. He concluded that “the young women presented a pretty appearance on the field, and this was in great measure due to the nice assortment of colours, as well as the dainty way the women set them off”! The quality of football played on this occasion is unclear, but certainly twenty years later a new generation of teenage girls embraced the sport with enthusiasm. The Munitionettes League was formed in 1917, made up of teams from the women workers of the factories of the north-east, and was the first ever league for women’s football. Made obsolete by the end of the war, the League lasted less than three years, but St James’ Park, host to the cup final, saw some remarkable young women in action. Mary Brown, playing for Palmer’s of Jarrow, not only played in the 1919 final (March 22nd) but at 14 was the youngest-ever footballer, of either gender, to play for England!

Interview with Neelima Vinod

09 Sunday Jun 2013

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Today we are back with Neelima Vinod, author of the recently released novella, Unsettled. Neelima was originally supposed to be contributing this interview to Vampire month but circumstances conspired and instead she sent us a piece of fiction. I promised her the chance to answer the Vampire month questions when her book finally came out and so here are her answers…70112929-019 copy

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

I remember writing  letters to my grandparents on blue envelopes that doubled as writing paper. I wrote to them at great length about the things that I did and the books I was reading. I wrote poems a great deal as well. When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step? After my sons were born. It’s been seven years since I made that decision. I had always chosen to do jobs that had a lot to do with language like editing, and literature, like teaching. But  it was not enough. I needed to write more. So I wrote for magazines and blogs. I worked on writing fiction and poetry that I would like.  I searched a long time for my voice. When I was presented with an opportunity to write a novella last year, it happened easily.

2) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

My strength has to be my love for poetry- that gives me a sense of rhythm when I write. The amazing part of the digital age is the immense access you have to poetry. Although poetry books are not flying off the shelves, there are archives and archives of good poems and readings. This ability to read almost any poem out there has opened my world.  My weakness is that I keep editing what I write. That slows my pace. What I try to do now is write continuously without being overburdened by the possibility of change. Yet I keep faltering….

3) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

Well my ebook ‘Unsettled’ is straight out of the place where my ancestors lived. The same hundred roomed house, no ghosts though! I’m romantically attached to Kerala in southern India,  especially my mother’s ancestral homeland. I visit Kerala often and  the images of the sunny green palm studded landscape seem to have seeped into my heart and mind.

4unsettled-200x300) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

Wuthering Heights is a book that I love- it’s the first book about haunted love that held my undivided attention.  The Victorian writers set the stage for the paranormal excesses that we see today.

5) What drove you to write about Vampires?

The story ‘Unsettled’ has a vampire seductress- what is called a yakshi in subcontinental literature. I grew up listening to stories about yakshis- my mother and grandmother are good story tellers. As they spoke about their lives, I lived those lives too and the idea of a yakshi appealed to me a great deal.  A yakshi is normally pictured as insensitive in stories and movies, though she is also worshipped in some parts. The female stereotype irked me a great deal- the idea seemed absurd that a beautiful woman would hang on a tree and devour innocent men who could not help being tempted by their delicious floral scent. The yakshi will make a night of it and then devour the innocent man and leave his nails and hair like trophies for all to see. Why is she so angry? I often wondered. So I decided that my yakshi would be less woman, though she is terribly attractive, and more human.

6) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

There are so many people in one person- a part of each of us is fascinated by negativity as it is as much a part of life as all things bright and beautiful. People read vampire fiction for thrills- it makes you feel terribly alive when you read it.

7) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

You can’t beat Count Dracula….he’s a precursor of all the fanged blood suckers that come after.

8) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

I’m hoping Thathri, my yakshi would win that one Her kohl drenched eyes and lustrous hair give her a slight advantage.

9) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

Well the Count may just get smitten by the yakshi…she’s far too seductive to ignore.

10) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

The story is about a search for love. When a couple who fall out of love go in search of the scrolls of love, they come face to face with a paranormal reality. A yakshi guards the scrolls at the hundred roomed house- she has been haunting the Big House for centuries. Although the book is about an outward search, it is a psychological drama of a seductress who is angry at the deck of cards called life she’s been given. The story goes back and forth in time- there is the present disillusioned Indian couple and there is a story that happened five centuries ago.  We all search for love but suppose our search is the very basis of the existence of someone else’s memory? What then? That’s what I wanted to talk about.

Unsettled: A summary by Neelima Vinod

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

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You may remember Neelima from her appearance in Vampire Month in March this year. When Vampire Month was going live, she was on the verge of releasing her new novella – Unsettled – but did not really have much to tell us about it. This has now been rectified. Unsettled is out now and here Neelima tells us all about it…70112929-019 copy

Unsettled: A summary

The e-novella ‘Unsettled’ is about a search. We all go out in search of something, don’t we? Life is that. This story is set in the subcontinent- a young couple, Divya and Raghav,  have fallen out of love. They meet Dr. Ray with his unconventional methods. He zeroes in on the primary problem in their marriage. The only thing that can fix it is a search for the Scrolls of Love. Anyone who gets their hands on these scrolls will fall in love again, so goes the myth.

There’s a story behind the Scrolls of Love as well- I go back in time, five centuries ago in fact, to tell you the story of these scrolls of love, actually poems written by a court poet who was banished into Cherakad, a snake-infested forest land. Once a court poet, now a homeless man, the court poet walks into a house with one hundred rooms.

The unhappy couple walk into the same house centuries later. There they meet a femme fatale Yakshi spirit, drowned in centuries of loneliness. She’s a vampire seductress who refuses to bury memories and has a taste(a serious hunger) for young men. She knows what the couple are looking for and she is not the sort who will part with what Divya wants most.

unsettled-200x300Where does the search take them? That is what ‘Unsettled’ is all about.

Here’s a link to the book page: http://indireads.com/unsettled

Here’s a link to my author profile at Indireads: http://www.indireads.com/ir_author/neelima/

Bio: Neelima writes fiction and blogs poetry @ neelthemuse.wordpress.com. She’s written a book with a paranormal twist which will be coming out soon.

A tale of World Book Night

26 Friday Apr 2013

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So, this Tuesday gone was World Book Night and yours truly was there in Costa Coffee Prestwich for a night of books.

The lucky recipients show off their acquisitions

The lucky recipients show off their acquisitions

It was actually quite a while ago, on one of our regular writers’ group meetings that R.A Smith suggested that we do something for World Book Night. The plan: All five of us apply to be Givers on the WBN webpage and we organise an event together in a local library in order to give them away. At the same time we would do readings and give aways and other things to keep the punters amused. We support the cause of spreading the love of reading, get some local community kudos and maybe a bit pf publicity for our own projects as an added bonus side effect.

So, with alacrity we set this plan in motion by us all logging into the WBN website and submitting our applications. We each applied for different books as our first choices and enough variation in second and third choices in order to hopefully avoid any overlaps and began to discuss the event itself.

Our initial plan of using libraries fell a little flat. We got no response from any of the libraries in Stockport, where a good number of our members lived, so at a quite late stage we had to expand our search to other areas. Being selfish and lazy and not wanting to travel more than a short distance, I offered to check out the possible venues in Prestwich, all of which are only a short walk from my house. Prestwich library were very helpful when I visited them and told me that they were closed on Tuesday afternoon (insert rant about local council budget cuts and their impact on local services here…) which was why they could not host (unless they could find a member of staff willing to work overtime for no pay) but suggested that I talked to the Coffee shop just over the plaza from them as they sometimes hosted events for them. I did just that and very soon we had a venue set. All that remained then was publicity…

The books laid out ready

The books laid out ready

Another problem was when we got the notification of what books we had got. We found that only three of us had been appointed givers (myself, Joy Phillips and Ed Fortune) which was more than 50% which was good. However, despite our careful planning, we got two batches of the same book. This meant we had 40 copies of John Wagner’s The Dark Judges and only 20 of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses. Nevertheless, this gave us the challenge of having 60 books in total to give away to anyone who wanted them…

On the day itself, we got to the coffee shop by 530pm to be ready for a 6pm start. We laid our books out on one table and on another we put all our publicity stuff – bookmarks and leaflets and so on. Ninfa Hayes had thought to provide a double sided A4 sheet with extracts from two of her stories on it which I thought was a nice touch and we’d also each thought to bring along copies of all our in print books for guests to browse through. Since Transitions is not (yet) in print, I had a copy of Pirates and Swashbucklers for this.

I had been concerned that we had not done enough publicity, that no one would bother to show up. However, these concerns were soon dispelled as people began to filter in. Some people we already knew, friends of ours who lived locally, but there were also a good few who were not known to us who had been drawn here by the leaflets and posters. There were discussions, with each of us drawn off into small groups to talk about the books or our books or publishing in general and while there was an initial mistrust of the ‘free books’ (a number of people asked how much they cost…) they were soon snapped up by all there. The ‘demo’ books were also much read, being passed around from person to person. It is to be noticed that Oblivion Storm is not shown in the photograph of the ‘swag table’ This was because it was at the time being ardently read by someone. Ninfa was even nice enough to let one of the guests take one of her paperback copies of Bites away with them – signing it for her too.

We ended the event with two readings, both done by R.A Smith. One was from Oblivion Storm the other from Bites. I had intended to do a reading from Transitions but realised that the only copy of it I had on my Kindle was actually a pre-edit copy and so not the best for a reading.

By 8pm, the official end of the event, the pile of 60 books had been reduced to a much smaller pile. We had only a couple of copies of

The swag

The swag

Noughts and Crosses and about 15 of The Dark Judges. Several of these were snapped up by the event guests as they left. One copy of each was taken to be put into the library of a local school (which I personally consider a win) and several of the rest were grabbed by some friends of ours to give out to random people they saw on their way home (at least one copy was given to the staff of the chip shop we all stopped at for dinner). At the end, we were left with 8 copies of the Dark Judges and none at all of Noughts and Crosses.

I hope that all those out there who took books will enjoy them… I do feel proud of what we achieved on that day and I think a number of the event guests enjoyed the event a great deal. Next year we plan to do the same again and this time make it bigger and better!

As for the 8 books we have left… well, they are there to be given away and we *could* just give them away to people we meet in the street or leave them in a pub or on a train or something like that. However, we have discussed it and decided to run a competition to decide who gets the books. Therefore, myself, R.A Smith and Ninfa Hayes will be taking at least two of the books each and will be announcing how you can win them very soon…

World Book Night

19 Friday Apr 2013

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You may have noticed a new page on the top of this page. This is a page covering the details for World Book Night which, as you may or may not know, is this coming Tuesday (the 23rd of April, which is a special day for lots of other reasons…). On that day,darkjudges I will be at the Costa Coffee in my home town of Prestwich, giving away copies of The Dark Judges by John Wagner. This is a graphic novel based on the famous 2000AD character who also starred in one absolutely awful film and one which is, by all accounts, not bad at all.

Others will be there giving away other books for free including copies of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses which, from the blurb, seems to be an intriguing alternate history where apartheid and race relations work in reverse and those with dark skin (crosses) are seen as superior to those with white skin (noughts).

Both books look to be splendid and well worth checking out…

Of these books we only have limited supplies. 40 copies of the Dark Judges and only 20 of Noughts and Crosses. I expect these to disappear quite quickly so anyone who has set their heart on getting hold of either book should make sure they get to the coffee shop early.

The event starts at 6pm and runs until 8pm and as well as the book give away we also hope to have other things to entertain you. There should be readings and discussions and maybe some other giveaways. And we also have the staff of the coffee shop staying in late to keep us in hot drinks. Feel free to pop in and say hi. We will be upstairs…

If you are also a WBN Giver and want to give away your books, feel free to come along and share our space with us. The more we have there the merrier. If you are an author with some giveaways or swag to dispose of, you are also welcome to join us and do a talk or a reading or a competition of some form.

Of course, World Book Night is a charity so you should also check out their website to see how you can help them out. Their aim is to provide access to reading to those who either are unable or unwilling to be regular readers. You can volunteer to be a giver for next year’s event and get a box of books all to yourself to give away for free or you can make a cash donation. Apparently £10 will buy one of the WBN special edition boxes which ensures that twenty people get a free book to read.

A few things here and there

05 Friday Apr 2013

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Well, Vampire Month is finally over and I have just got back from a brief holiday during which I had my birthday. It’s been a rather successful month with some great vampire writers contributing some really good articles on a range of subjects. In this first week of april, however, there have been a few things cropping up here and there which need to be shared.bookmarks

First of all, I was interviewed by Michael Brookes over at The Cult of Me blog. The interview went live yesterday and in it you can find out all sorts of things about me. Go over there and check it out. I talk about the first book I ever wrote which, thankfully, no longer exists save as a bad memory and a few other things.

Secondly, I have signed up for Authorgraph. This is a system which allows signatures to be added to ebooks. You can find Transitions on there by following this link: http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/areteus. Basically, you can click the ‘request authorgraph’ button and I will get a notification telling me you are wanting a signature. I can then choose to do this freehand (using a touchscreen or mousepad but be warned my ‘handwriting’ is terrible using a mouse…) or using a font. I can also add an inscription. You basically get a pdf of this with a picture of the book cover sent to you. This app seems to be a good way to fill a niche caused by the ebook revolution. I have heard many say that one thing you cannot do with an ebook is sign it. Now, I will not say that this is going to replace ‘signed copies’ in any way (I am not convinced, for example, that you will be able to sell the signed ebook copies for a greater value) but it is a step in that direction. It will be interesting to see how it works out over the next few years.

Scan this using your mobile phone and an appreopriate tagging app...

Scan this using your mobile phone and an appreopriate tagging app…

Finally, preparations for World Book Night are progressing. Myself, Ninfa Hayes (author of Bites), R.A Smith (author of Oblivion Storm), Ed Fortune (columnist for Starburst magazine) and Joy Phillips (upcoming debut novelist and organiser of innovative new LRP Fall of Vusoria) are getting together to give away free books to anyone in the Manchester area who wants to come and get them. We will be announcing a venue sometime soon (hopefully). It should be a good night and we have around 60 books between us to giveaway. As part of this I have decided to have some bookmarks made up and I have also sorted out a couple of QR tags so that people with mobile phones can scan them and quickly and easily buy a copy of my books in any ebook format. I am rather proud of the bookmarks, which I designed myself using elements of the cover for Transitions.

So, if you fancy meeting any one of us, getting any of our work signed or just want a free book, feel free to pop along on the 23rd of April and all of this will be possible…

[Vampire Month] Erica Hayes interview

22 Friday Mar 2013

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Our final Vampire Month victim is Australian writer, Erica Hayes, author of merica_smany books including the Shadowfae series which has some of the sexiest covers I have ever seen. Shadowfae is all about fairies and succubi but there are vampires in there too. Despite being decidedly antipodean, she has somehow found herself in Northumberland in the UK…

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?
I recall writing a kiddies’ adventure tale when I was in primary school. Scribbling, more like. I was awful at handwriting. The last kid in my class to be allowed to write with a pen… but yeah. The story was a bit like The Famous Five,  except my characters went around digging holes and discovering underground cities. Or something. Sadly, the manuscript is lost…

2) When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?
Not so much a decision as a thing that happened. I just kept submitting stuff until something stuck. It never occurred to me to stop. My first novel was terrible… the owner of this blog may recall that one 🙂 My second was a little better. My third got ‘good’ rejections. The fourth – the one that got me an agent and my first publisher – was the one that broke the mould. It was different and sparkly and a bit demented. It stood out. That’s the key.

3) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?
Weakness? Time management. I write kind of slowly, and I am too easily discouraged or put off when my day doesn’t go well. If I have a crappy start, it often screws the rest of my day. I lose a lot of writing time that way. To solve this problem, I try to do my word count first, other stuff (like promo, emails, research, crits etc.) later in the day. That way, my best creative energy gets spent on my own work. And If I get discouraged and mooch off to watch TV and feel sorry for myself, well, at least I’ve done a few words for the day.

PK_cover4) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?
My first urban fantasy series (Shadowfae Chronicles) is set in Melbourne, which is the nearest big city to where I grew up in Australia. It’s a charismatic, moody, vibrant place. Perfect for vampire gangsters.
Right now, I’m living in Northumberland, England for a few years – long story – and hey, it’s certainly added authenticity to my ‘cold, miserable weather’ scenes 🙂 No, seriously, it’s a lovely place, steeped in history. Maybe I’ll be moved to write an historical…

5) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?
Eh. I’m not sure. Maybe all the bad ones that sell a zillion copies, and I go, ‘hey, I can do better than that!’ There’s an awesome speech by Stephen King somewhere on YouTube where he talks about being inspired by mediocre books. Priceless.

6) What drove you to write about Vampires?
I’m not sure I’m ‘driven’ to write about them. But I do find them interesting, and fun to write about. It’s good fun being inside their heads.

7) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?
In my genre – romance – it’s because of sex appeal, first and foremost. Vampires are hot because they’re dangerous and magical and immortal and could kill you in an eyeblink… but they don’t, because YOU ARE THE ONE. It’s a powerful fantasy.
Also, we find the society they live in endlessly fascinating, in all its possible iterations. There’s so much you can do with a monster subculture. Vampires as hidden, vampires as slaves, vampires as overlords, vampires are the only people left. They’re our enemies, our allies, our protectors, our predators. Or hell, they just mooch around drinking beer and picking up girls. The choices are endless.
But you know what? I think we like monster literature, and vampire literature in particular, because we’re desperate to believe that this – the mundane world in which we live – isn’t all there is. We want secrets, bigger pictures, higher purpose. We want there to be something out there.

8) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?
Well, it’d have to be someone who can move about by day. Otherwise you just wait until they’re asleep in their coffin and BLAM! hit them with a shovel or something. Dracula was kind of disappointingly easy to kill, once they got the hang of it.
Still, you’d have a hard time defeating Anne Rice’s vampires. Lestat is basically a god, by the time a few books go by… author wish-fulfilment, much?

9) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?
Hmm. Eric from the TV series True Blood is pretty hot. At least, he was before he got wussy. I like to pretend that season 4 of that show never happened…
Dress sense? Gary Oldman wears some pretty sharp suits (and blue eyeglasses!) as Dracula.
Honorable mention to Lacroix from Forever Knight, who always managed to look dead cool despite the fact that everyone else in the show looked like a bad-hair eighties refugee.
Scariness? Salem’s Lot scared the piss out of me when I was younger. Also, the boss vampire from the movie 30 Days of Night is one scary mofo.

10) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?Redemption_Cover Image
Ha! In my later Shadowfae Chronicles books, Poison Kissed and Blood Cursed, I have this metrosexual vampire called Vincent. He’s a second-rate gangster and no one take him seriously, so he was feeling sorry for himself one night and had a little accident with a vampire threesome, and got himself infected with the vampire disease. It made him a little crazy. He eats everything that moves.
He’s good-looking and has pretty cool dress sense, if you like clubby and sexually ambivalent. But he has more enthusiasm and malice than real power. Lestat would probably kick his ass.

11) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.
Oh, okay 🙂 My latest book is called Redemption, and it’s a fallen angel/vampire apocalyptic romance. In near-future New York City, demons are hijacking the seven signs of the apocalypse to bring on the End and create hell on earth. Warrior angels must stop them.
In Redemption, my frosty angel hero, Japheth, is tracking down Rose, an angel-slaying vampire minion of hell. They meet. They kiss. They try to kill each other. Violence, action, angst and hot romance ensue.
You check it out at my website: http://www.ericahayes.net/redemption.html