Lucy joins us one last time for Vampire month today, to tell us how much she enjoys her working life.
One of the things I love most about what I do is the variety. I work from home, and do lots of different things that make up a full-time job—I write, I edit, I run my own marketing and web design business (http://www.writermarketing.co.uk). So because of that, no two days are the same. 
When it comes to writing, I still have lots of variety. I write for several publishers, as well as self-publish. This enables me to write different lengths of story, with different pairings, heat levels and genres. I write contemporary and paranormal. I’m currently working on my first spy thriller, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I know some authors find a certain niche and stick with it, and if that’s what they want to do, then great. But I really enjoy the variety, and am very lucky in that many of my readers will check out my books no matter where they fall in genre, heat level, pairing, etc. Mainly because it’s tough enough to keep up with one name to write under and all the associated website maintenance and social media stuff—if I created pen names for all the different genres and pairings I work in, I wouldn’t be able to do it. So I embrace that variety, and am grateful to the readers that do, too.
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Author Bio:
Lucy Felthouse is the award-winning author of erotic romance novels Stately Pleasures (named in the top 5 of Cliterati.co.uk’s 100 Modern Erotic Classics That You’ve Never Heard Of, and an Amazon bestseller), Eyes Wide Open (winner of the Love Romances Café’s Best Ménage Book 2015 award, and an Amazon bestseller) and The Persecution of the Wolves. Including novels, short stories and novellas, she has over 150 publications to her name. She owns Erotica For All, and is one eighth of The Brit Babes. Find out more about her writing at http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk, or on Twitter or Facebook. Sign up for automatic updates on Amazon or BookBub. You can also subscribe to her monthly newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9
Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?
I think because it always seems relevant to the collective fears and desires of the culture. For example, back when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published, we had a world that was evolving and developing at a fast rate, and the older generation were frightened of the change. Today we are more relaxed about vampires, we can use them in jokes, and yet still they represent a fear of something unknown, something dangerous, something attractive.
All writers have their own way of getting their ideas down on paper. Some plan their story structure in minute detail, while others myself included, prefer to paint with broad brush strokes and see where the ideas take us. But why do we feel the need to regurgitate reality into something that is fiction? I believe it is an integral part of what makes us human beings. Storytelling is a way of passing on knowledge and information. That information can come from a real experience or by the example of a creation, a parable to explain something in the world, or an example to follow. It is both a sociable and a solitary pursuit. It doesn’t have to be real, but it is very real to us, the writer.
by it; to get into the minds of our characters and to become them as they follow through with their lives. Once we’ve finished we need to get out there again, because no man (or woman) is an island. We need to polish, to hone and to share. This is where the writers group comes in. This can be a group of like minded people meeting in a pub and discussing each others’ work, but it can also be a group of people meeting in cyberspace, like the Dragon’s Rocketship, of whom I am proud to be a member. The best of these groups help each other out, the worst bitch and criticise because some egos believe they are writing profound literary fiction. Me, I just like telling a story. If your audience doesn’t understand it, you not they are missing the point. 
When John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared in the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! they basically played themselves – the four cheeky lads from Liverpool – quick witted, dressed in collarless suits performing the best music of the day (and beyond actually) crafted by their own fair hands. But of course the plots that entwined the Beatles in those movies were fictitious: Paul’s fictional grandad in the form of Wilfred Brambell accompanying the boys on the train journey in A Hard Day’s Night and Ringo’s ring being sought after by an exotic cult in Help! Because they maintained their characters in fiction as in real life it opened up a door for their fans to somehow get an authentic insight of their idols, and no matter how absurd the storyline may be, it became a believable journey for the viewer (except perhaps the pursuit of Ringo’s ring!).
The first time I personally took note of a firm intention to mix fact with fiction in the literary world was through Dan Brown’s novels featuring the fictional character Professor Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology. Brown’s novels Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol introduces us to mind opening themes such as a bloodline of Jesus Christ, secret societies, the Masons, Opus Dei, the Illuminati and the Knights Templar. Some of these exist or existed. Fact. But as one reads Brown’s undoubted page turners it is often difficult to fathom exactly which is fiction and which is fact. And there you have it – suddenly the story is believable no matter how extreme the journey may take us. The reader can connect on an emotional level yet still be wildly entertained.
reality and I weave in facts with fiction to assist with that journey remaining believable. In Beneath the Floodlights I introduce the concept of vampires merging with a football team. Pretty random huh? One injection of fact I use in that particular novel is setting much of the book in Sutton Park, 2000 acres including ancient woodlands. Sutton Park is the seventh largest urban park in Europe and it is soaked in history. By the 10th century Sutton Park was established as a Royal Forest by the Anglo Saxon kings of Mercia and by the early 12th century, the Normans used it as a deer park. The land was then given to the people of Sutton Coldfield by King Henry VIII in 1528 and it had been used by that very same king for hunting. A bonafide roman road also cuts through a section of the park. So by using these facts, straight away I had a solid foundation to create a gripping tale.
* Still not as bad as 
and the motivations have the quality of myths; they have that do or die edge to them. It’s possibly why The Wire is one of my favourite TV shows, and Omar my favourite character in it. With a clear nod to Achilles, he pushes his revenge to the edge of insanity for his Patroclus. Characters in these stories tell themselves they have a code, that their world is run according to rules, but in the end, no one else is playing their game, and they meet tragic ends. It’s a hyper-real, exploded version of reality, of our emotions thrown up against the nonsensical blocks of existence. If we delude ourselves that there are rules, that we can feel so strongly without compromise, we’ll come to a sticky end.
I realised, when I started writing my vampire story, that there’s the potential to do either, or both. That writing gothic fiction can provide a larger than life mythic edge. But that, in the ambiguous potential of eternity, there could be one hell of a long time spent staring into the void.
I soon realised I was out of my depth. The best decision I’ve made, probably, is joining an independent writers’ group. This group was very open with sharing their experiences and when I saw some of the covers my colleagues were using I knew I had to change mine. My group recommended several avenues and after a few emails I went with Paradox Book Covers. If you shop and ask around you’ll find that professional is not always expensive. People really do judge a book by its cover, so make sure yours stands out.
