Open Book Society is proud to announce that we will be doing an interview with Melissa Marr, author of ‘Radiant Shadows’. We will give  you the full details very soon. In the meantime, please submit to us any questions that you might have that you would like us to pose to the author.

In addition, there is currently a ‘book-giveaway’ on goodreads.com for her novel ‘Radiant Shadows (Wicked Lovely)’. Hurry on over here to enter, for entries into giveaway is set to close on January 12th.

Openbooksociety.com has had the pleasure of getting an exclusive interview with author of How to Catch and Keep a Vampire, Diana Laurence.

Diana… a storyteller, vampire lover, possessor of a very bizarre but romantic imagination.

Her novels Souls’ Embrace and Bloodchained, meanwhile, are romantic paranormals, suspenseful with a good dash of spiciness. While less “graphic” than my anthologies (and suitable for young adult readers), these novels deal with some of the same engrossing themes: attraction, intimacy, desire and trust, submission and dominance, and the bonds between souls. Lastly there is her most recent book, Looking on Darkness. It’s a mainstream novel about a kind of psychic vampirism, in which she explores her favorite concepts from Jungian psychoanalytic theory. And that’s a mouthful!

OBS: How did you get into writing? Was it a difficult process?
DL: To me it was as natural as breathing. Once I learned how to work a pencil, I started writing down the stories I made up in my head. I wanted to grow up to be a writer by the time I was nine! I used to make up fantasies at night before I fell asleep, for 30 to 45 minutes every night. I thought everyone did that, and I was pretty flummoxed when I found out my friends didn’t!

OBS: Who are your literary influences?
DL: I’m very eclectic. I’m actually not much of a romance reader except for the classics like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind. I adore fantasy/horror/science fiction authors like Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis, Robin Hobb, Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. I love John Irving, John Updike and William Goldman, from back in the 80s when I had more time to read!  Shakespeare creeps into my work from time to time, as do Rodgers & Hammerstein and other Broadway storytellers.

OBS: What inspired you to write How to Catch and Keep a Vampire?
DL: Robin Hayward, who was my editor, decided last spring that she wanted Sellers Publishing to produce a vampire dating guide. One issue she wasn’t sure about was whether a person could tame a vampire enough to date him/her. Robin googled “tame a vampire” and found an essay I had written three years ago for my monthly column on Novelspot.net. Seeing that vampires were near and dear to my heart, she looked more into my work and then invited me to author the book.

Needless to say, as soon as I heard her idea, I felt like this was the book I had been waiting to write. I’ve been into vampires pretty much since puberty and thought it was high time someone addressed the subject of how to have a relationship with one. (And no, they cannot be tamed!) Another subject I’ve given a lot of reflection is balancing one’s real life with one’s passion for vampires, so I was eager to address that as well.

OBS: What has been the reaction to the book?
DL:I’m not exaggerating when I say, fabulous! It’s gotten over a dozen reviews already and not a negative one in the bunch, even from a couple of people who aren’t vampirophiles themselves. The book is really resonating with fans of the undead. I was particularly touched by the review from TrueBloodNet, where the reviewer actually discussed how various characters from the show might benefit from reading HTCAKAV. She really appreciated that although my book is funny, it takes seriously how fang-fans feel about vampires.

Internet Reviews of Books chose it their #3 favorite vampire book. Chapters/Indigo (Canada’s largest chain) put it in their Top Five Vampire/Zombie/Werewolf Guides. It’s been featured by Glamour magazine and the UK’s top teen publication’s web site (Sugarscape.com), as well as dozens of other publications and sites. I just found out Target will be selling it in their stores and it will be a Recommended Read for them in January. And that means the first printing of 50,000 copies is tapped out… the need for a second printing arose by the time of the book’s actual release date (Oct. 23). I can’t believe that happens very often!

OBS: What is your favorite vampire book made into a series or movie, and why?
DL: I’ve enjoyed a lot of vampire books over the years, but currently I really love Charlaine Harris’s Sookie books and the wonderful interpretation of them by Alan Ball et al. on the show True Blood. I think vampires are best portrayed with a sense of humor, and Charlaine and Alan do that. They should be scary, they should be sexy, and ideally they should also be funny…that’s what readers will find in my book too.

OBS: With the current popularity of books/films/TV shows such as Twilight and Vampire Diaries, how do your vampire friends feel about the reputation they are receiving?
DL: Honestly, they certainly prefer this to the days when everyone thought they were utterly damned. And while my vampire friends now have to deal with problems like groupies and too many friend requests on Facebook, it beats the heck out of being chased with pitchforks. Since the advent of synthetic blood, it’s been a long time since they gave up needing to drain people to survive. Now that (to paraphrase Pixar) “folks are friends not food,” they really enjoy their newfound popularity among mortals.

OBS: How do you feel about the accuracy of these shows? Is anyone getting it close, if so how do the real vampires feel about their mystery being divulged?
DL: Personally I think True Blood gets it the closest, although they don’t incorporate “Liquid Shade,” the elixir my vampire friends use in order to tolerate sunlight. Otherwise Charlaine and I are pretty much on the same page. There are still some secrets the vampires prefer to keep under wraps. For example, they were very firm with me that I not discuss in my book how to kill them. If there is way. Which I will neither confirm nor deny.

OBS: Can you hook us single ladies or men with any of your vampire friends?
DL: I have no doubt that most of them would be thrilled to meet my readers. And certainly there’s no corner of the world where you can’t find them. I met Gunnar in a laundromat, after all! The book will give you lots of advice how to meet immortals who are looking for YOU. (Wow, did I just sound like a TV ad for Match.com?)

OBS: What future projects are you working on? Can you tell us anything about them?
DL: I will be doing a sequel to How to Catch and Keep a Vampire for release next year. It’s in development now so that’s really all I can tell you! Frankly, I’m happy to have only one title on the horizon. In 2009 in addition to this book, I published my novel of psychic vampirism Looking on Darkness, my latest collection of tasteful erotic romance stories Soulful Sex: The Darker Side, and the comic book Sign of the Bloodletters and novel Bloodchained II: The Secret of Secrets, both sequels to my popular vampire romance novel from 2007. Lots of fun but I’m a little beat!

OBS: Have you ever thought of writing a dating guide for any other mystical beings out there, werewolves, fairies, shapeshifters, elves, etc?
DL: Not to dis any of those cool creatures, but I’m strictly a vampire gal I guess. Although I did have a fling with a satyr once.

OBS: What is one thing you’d like your fans to know about you and your books?
DL: At this point, I’d like them to know I have a lot of them! HTCAKAV has brought me lots of new fans who may not be aware that I have eleven other books in print. My Soulful Sex series of story collections are spicy romance for those who don’t so much enjoy traditional erotica: they are tastefully done, and cover all genres of romance from contemporary to science fiction to Regency, and of course, vampires. I’ve also published five novels. I have a special section on my web site with information on all my works involving the undead: just go to www.dianalaurence.com and click on the “Vampires” link in the upper left. My other titles are typically not in stores, but you can order them from any store or online just about everywhere.

OBS: Which team are you on? Edward/Jacob, Eric/Bill, etc.?
DL: I love Jacob’s sense of humor (Edward could use more of that), but I’m afraid in the final analysis, I have to go with the vampire and be Team Edward. I love Bill to death (sorry!) but Eric just sends me. From the moment I laid eyes on him at Fangtasia I was pretty much his. Overall, just count me on Team Vampire…I love them all! (except perhaps Nosferatu…)

One last thing I’d like to mention to your readers:  Till the end of November, I’m running a contest for which first prize is a $100 Amazon certificate. To enter you just send in a photo of my book in any store.

Contest details are here:
www.dianalaurence.com/cakav/contest.html.

Check out all of Diana’s site listed below:
Diana’s website:
www.dianalaurence.com

Official book site:
www.howtocatchandkeepavampire.com

Diana’s blog: 
www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com

Bloodchained website:
www.bloodchained.com

OBS would like to give a special thanks to Diana for giving us this wonderful interview!! I can’t wait to meet my own personal vampire. Who knows, he could be reading this right now.

Science fiction author Michael A. Burstein has been nominated for ten Hugo Awards and regularly participates in Boston area science fiction conventions such as Arisia. Michael was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions for us.

OBS: According to your website you classify yourself as a science fiction writer. In this day and age when the lines of genre fiction so often cross and blur what would you say qualifies something as science fiction?
MB: People have been trying to define science fiction for years; it gets even harder when you want to distinguish science fiction from fantasy (which I also sometimes write) or ponder what the more catch-all term “speculative fiction” means. Despite these difficulties, I’d say that a story qualifies as science fiction if a new development in technology or science is somehow essential to the story. (I almost said “essential to the plot,” but I think that might omit some good science fiction stories.)

Of course, I’m already willing to take odds with my own definition. For example, I’d classify alternate history as science fiction, and there goes my own definition. Perhaps I’d best leave the defining of terms to people far more qualified than I.

OBS: How do you incorporate your writing into your everyday life? For example do you set aside x amount of hours for writing a day?
MB: I try to set myself a word quota instead of a specific block of time. So I’ll try to write something like 500 words of fiction a day at minimum if I possibly can. That said, depending on what’s going on in my life, I will often find my word quota slipping away…

OBS: How did you get into writing? What are your first memories of it?
MB: These are actually two very different questions. Let me tackle the second one first.

Very early in my life I knew that I enjoyed writing, although it took me until my mid-20s to consider making a career out of it. My first memories of writing are of taping a bunch of loose-leaf papers together to form a scroll, and then writing some sort of Biblical-style story on the scroll.

The first thing I ever submitted for professional publication was a description of a new alien race to the magazine devoted to the role-playing game Traveller. I think I was nine or ten years old. They sent it back with a form rejection note, but the lines asking me to consider them for future submissions had been underlined in blue pen.

My first publication, as far as I have been able to determine, was a letter in the Jewish kids’ magazine World Over, published in their October 10, 1980 issue.

Now, as to how I got into writing: that’s kind of a long story. The short version is that I tried to publish stories when I was twelve years old, but didn’t get anywhere with them. I submitted them to various magazines, but the only editor who sent me personal rejections was George Scithers of Amazing Stories, and he sent everyone personal rejections. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I really started writing and submitting stories again. And I didn’t make my first sale until after I attended Clarion in 1994.

OBS: Who were some of your biggest influences and who do you currently read?
MB: Probably the writer that most influenced me was Isaac Asimov.

Currently, I read a lot more nonfiction than science fiction or fantasy. But writers whose work I enjoy consistently include Robert J. Sawyer, Paul Levinson, Robert Masello, Spider Robinson, Mike Resnick, Allen M. Steele, Jack McDevitt, Tamora Pierce, Jennifer Pelland, Leah Cypess, Melinda Snodgrass, and Mona Clee.

OBS: Can you tell us about your most recent publication and what you are working on next?
MB: My most recent publication was actually a reprint of my vampire story, Lifeblood in the John Joseph Adams anthology By Blood We Live. To help promote the book, I gave John permission to post the story online, so anyone who wants to get a taste of the anthology can go read it.

I just recently sold a new story, Hope, to Destination: Future, an anthology edited by Z.S. Adani & Eric T. Reynolds and coming out from Hadley Rille Books next year. They gave me a chance to play with two themes I’ve been wanting to merge for a while: time travel and generation ships.

I’m currently working on a sequel to the story Things That Aren’t, which Bob Greenberger and I published in Analog magazine. Bob and I are collaborating on the sequel, which is another science fiction mystery that explores the consequences of virtual reality.

And of course, there’s always other stories kicking around in the back of my mind…

OBS: You recently became a parent to twins. How has that affected your writing and do you have any advice for authors that are planning on having children?
MB: I should start by noting that being a new parent is a wonderful thing, and I deeply love my children. Because if I don’t say that, then years later they will come across this interview and ask me why I didn’t.

On the one hand, having children has definitely affected the time I have to write. As I noted in my recent blog post Traction, when you’re taking care of twins it’s hard to get anything else done. And I’m not just talking about writing; trying to do dishes or laundry, read a book, watch TV, or check email – all of that takes a back seat when a baby begins crying.

On the other hand, I find myself wanting to write about families more. I’ve already developed one idea for a fantasy story that I never would have come up with had we not been expecting children.

But on the third hand, I’m not sure how much I could take writing stories about children, since stories are about problems, and I don’t want to give children problems. Or their parents. (I mean I don’t want to give their parents problems, not that I don’t want to give children their parents. Oh, never mind.) Nomi and I watched the miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth just before the twins were born. An essential component of the plot is the jeopardy that certain children find themselves in. Before I was a father, I could take such stories in stride. But now, I don’t think I could watch that show again for a while without being distressed by it. As a father, I think I would project and imagine my own children in jeopardy.

As for advice to writers planning to have children, I’d say try to figure out as early as possible when you can carve out your writing time, and don’t beat yourself up (metaphorically speaking) if you find your productivity drops for a while. The rewards are well worth it.

OBS: If you could recommend only one book to someone (other than one you’ve written) what would it be?
MB: That depends on what they’re looking for. Most of the time people ask me to suggest books on writing fiction. There are many excellent books out there, and I own quite a few of them. But if I could only recommend one book on writing, it would be Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block.

If you want to write science fiction and you want to read a novel that shows you how it’s done: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein.

OBS: You attend a lot of science fiction conventions and are involved in science fiction fandom. Can you tell us a bit more about that? How did you get into it and what keeps you there?
MB: I wish I had discovered fandom earlier, like when I was in high school. I kind of knew it existed, but I really wasn’t connected to it. Nomi was the one who brought me into fandom. We started dating in 1991, and in 1992 she brought me to my first convention, Arisia. I still remember sitting in on panels, listening to all the discussions, and thinking where has this been all my life?

We got involved with NESFA for a while; we were on the committee for Boskone in the 1990s and I even served as Vice-President for two years. We’ve cut back since then, but we still try to attend Arisia, Boskone, and Readercon every year; in fact, we were at Readercon the weekend before our kids were born. Sadly, though, I’m not sure how feasible conventions will be for the next few years, given the aforementioned kids. We’ll see what we can manage.

As for what keeps me in fandom: the camaraderie and intellectual stimulation.

OBS: Do you find that the internet helps and/or hurts you as an author and in what ways?
MB: On the one hand, the Internet is a valuable tool for everyone, not just writers. We can do research and business a lot more quickly now that communication with the rest of the world has gone retail and frictionless.

On the other hand, given that the same tool on which we write is the one that connects us to the Internet, it can be a powerful distraction. It used to be that writers hungered for community. Now we’ve got community coming out of our ears. When I surf the web, it seems like everyone I run into is either a writer or an aspiring writer. I sometimes wonder where the aspiring readers are.

OBS: Is your writing style very strict or fluid? Meaning do you create an outline and stick with it or do you jump around depending on what ideas hit you at the moment?
MB: I tend to be a non-linear writer, meaning that I will sit down and write whatever bits and pieces of scene come to my mind: dialogue, description, character action, whatever. This means that I will jump around in my active story file as I write. So during one session of writing, I might write parts of the beginning of the story, the middle, and the end. I leave a row of asterisks to remind myself where I need to go back and fill in things. Eventually, I just stitch the whole thing together.

But I find that in order to write my natural way, it helps to know where I’m going. So I will outline almost everything I write first, even the shortest of short stories. That also helps when I’m collaborating, especially when I collaborate with a more linear writer such as Shane Tourtellotte.

OBS: How do you get your ideas?
MB: Ah, the perennial question. I myself have committed the sin of asking this question of other writers.

Ideas come from all over. In general, I read about something or pick up a phrase in a conversation that sparks an idea. If I become obsessed with it, I eventually write a story about it.

It’s easier to answer this question with a few examples. I got the idea for TeleAbsence when someone suggested in the early 1990s that by 2000, the whole world would have email. I wanted to show that technological improvements might not reach everyone.

I got the idea for Kaddish for the Last Survivor when I read Deborah Lipstadt’s book Denying the Holocaust. In one sentence, she pointed out that one day, all the witnesses will be deceased and that it will be even easier for people to deny history. It was inevitable that I’d write a story about the last survivor of the Holocaust.

I got the idea for Paying It Forward when I visited the website of a recently deceased writer and discovered a link to send him email. I wondered what would happen if I emailed him; would I hear back?

I hope this will give your readers an idea of where my ideas come from.

OBS: As an author does the current state of the publishing industry concern you at all? Has it affected you and if so, how?
MB: I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the publishing industry wasn’t in some state of flux. It’s just more pronounced right now because of the types of changes we’re going through.

The current changes haven’t affected me that much in my role as a writer, and I suspect that most writers won’t be affected that badly. At the lowest level, we’re still doing what we always did, which is writing stories that we hope people will enjoy. How those stories get delivered to our readers, whether by print magazines or electronic media, is irrelevant so long as a market still exists.

The real problem isn’t the industry, but the market. Are there still enough readers of short stories out there, for example, to make it worthwhile to write short fiction? There’s been a lot of talk recently that writing short fiction is going to become a labor of love.

The problem is that editing short fiction looks like it might also be moving in that direction. There are some very good webzines out there whose editors don’t earn a living from their editing, and as long as part of their philosophy is to make sure that their writers do in fact get paid a professional rate, people seem to be fine with it. But an editor serves as a gatekeeper, an arbiter of taste, and you can’t just find good fiction by randomly visiting websites. And like writers, editors need to eat. My hope is that the more things change, the more they will stay the same.

Today marks the one year anniversary of Michael’s short story collection I Remember the Future.

You can find Michael on the web at his website and on Livejournal.

Author Inanna Arthen is near and dear to my heart as rarely have I met a person with as much, if not more, passion for vampires than I myself have. I count myself lucky to have been on panels with her at various conventions. She is an intelligent and engaging speaker and I am happy to bring you this interview with her.

How would you classify your writing? Speculative fiction? Horror? Fantasy?

I think of it as “magical realism,” because I present the real world, as authentically as possible, with the addition of a few fantastic (maybe) elements such as immortal vampires. I do extensive research into the real world history and locations, and much of the “fantasy” is based on my personal experience with magic and the paranormal. If I have to choose from some limited menu of categories, I classify my fiction as fantasy or dark fantasy.

How do you incorporate your writing into your everyday life? For example do you set aside x amount of hours for writing a day?

I have to write every day or I go into “writing withdrawal”–I found that out in the past two years of attending conventions. That doesn’t mean all fiction writing. I do a lot of journaling. But all my writing is mutually supportive. If I need to get myself into the mood to write a sermon or a short story, I can “prime the pump” by rereading my journal entries or reviews. I write like I breathe…I could almost say I keep breathing in order to write! That doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’m very concerned with craft, especially when it comes to fiction.

How did you get into writing? What are your first memories of it?

Unlike some writers, I didn’t write a lot as a child. When I was young, I drew constantly. I was always a story-teller, and I read avidly, but when it came to creative self-expression, I drew pictures–constantly, on any spare piece of paper that came to hand. All my school papers ended up with pictures on the back of them. I went through a dramatic and unexplained personality shift when I was 11 years old, and suddenly I stopped drawing so much and starting writing more. I still did a lot of art, and I consider myself an artist, in multiple media (including music). But I wasn’t really writing a lot of stories until I was in my teens, and I didn’t write fiction that other people read. I wrote and published non-fiction (enough to fill three pages on my graduate school application), but it wasn’t until I joined the e-group Vampyres List in 1994 that I started writing fiction and posting it in public for large numbers of people to see. I owe Vampyres List a huge debt for getting my fiction out of shoeboxes and into the world.

Who were some of your biggest influences and who do you currently read?

“Biggest influences” would be the authors I obsessively read over and over again when I was young, including Madeleine L’Engle, Scott O’Dell, Margaret Mitchell, “Carolyn Keene” (I read dozens of the Nancy Drew mysteries), Bram Stoker and Kenneth Graham. Authors I read in later life that absolutely influenced my own writing include Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Ursula K. Leguin and J.R.R. Tolkien (when he was being down-to-earth, not his high-falutin’ prose).

I currently keep up with P.N. Elrod’s Jack Fleming series and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain series, but my fiction-reading time tends to be monopolized by unpublished manuscripts and books I review for Blogcritics.org and my own blogs. Right now I’m reading a review copy of Jeaniene Frost’s Destined for an Early Grave, and I just finished Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse and started the unabridged audiobook of Breaking Dawn. I read Susan Hubbard’s Society of S because someone told me that I was mentioned by name in the book, which turned out to be true, and having read that, I read the sequel, The Year of Disappearances, as well.

Can you tell us about your most recent publication and what you are working on next?

My most recent published book is my novel, Mortal Touch, which is the first in the Vampires of New England series. One of the legacies of the fiction-posting heyday of Vampyres List for me was a whole file folder full of half-finished stories or ideas for stories. I developed one of those when I needed a story for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2005–which I joined because all my writing friends were talking about NaNoWriMo and it seemed like a great device to get me past my overweening perfectionism blocks. My 2005 NaNo “winner” became Mortal Touch. At that point, I started to look at some of the other story kernels that I just couldn’t let go of, and I decided to weave them all together into a non-linear series about a tiny, loosely connected community of vampires who all live, or return repeatedly, to the New England region. The second book in the series, The Longer the Fall, will be released in spring 2010. I’d written half of that book and posted it to Vampyres List and the list members gave it an award–but then I was stuck on how to finish it. I just finished it in one thirteen-day writing marathon last month. It took me fourteen years to figure out what I was doing wrong with that story and fix it! There is a lot of information about The Vampires of New England Series at The Vampires of New England. I’m getting ready to use NaNoWriMo again to get started on the third volume, which continues from The Longer the Fall with characters who appear in Mortal Touch, and has a working title of All the Shadows of the Rainbow.

Vampires are a big influence for you. Can you tell us more about that?

I’ve been absolutely obsessed with the topic of vampires since I was 11 years old–and I have no idea why. I can still recall the very first vampire movie I ever saw–The Brides of Dracula, on TV one afternoon–and I read Dracula when I was 12 in one sitting. I’ve made an intensive study of vampire folklore, which is very much misunderstood and misrepresented in common culture. Even academics constantly repeat the same hoary misinformation. My vampire interest is linked to my lifelong interest in and studies of all types of paranormal phenomena and forteana, which I see as all interconnected, and other types of folklore, including contemporary folklore or “urban legends.” I wrote a research paper for a Harvard seminar on the Greek vrykolakas tradition, and I’ve found it linked and cited in a number of academic works.

I’ve been studying vampires in folklore, history, culture, and the media for over forty years now and unashamedly consider myself an expert on the topic. I’m afraid I’m a bit fanatical about correcting erroneous statements about vampire mythology and trends. That keeps me busy because there is more misinformation repeated about vampires than almost anything else. But vampires or publishing–just don’t even get me started!

You also run By Light Unseen Media. Can you tell us about that?

By Light Unseen Media is the dream of a lifetime and the job I was born to do. I’d always had fantasies of owning my own small press, complete with a physical print shop that would only run at night and employ frustrated night owls like me. I never thought I’d have enough money to do it. But I spent my life collecting skill sets relevant to publishing (page layout, graphic design, typesetting, web design, editing, etc), just because they were all things I enjoyed doing and did well anyway. By the time I unexpectedly got capitalization to start By Light Unseen Media, in 2006, the industry had changed drastically. You no longer needed huge amounts of money upfront to start a publishing house, thanks to digital publishing and the computerization of everything. My biggest initial expenditures were upgraded computer equipment and Adobe InDesign software. I immersed myself into an intensive self-education program in marketing, book design, promotion and the business of publishing, and after a year or so, I was surprised at how much more I seemed to know than some small publishers who’d been running their companies for years (and were burning out). My business model is to embrace every innovation and exploit every possible platform for getting content to consumers that I possibly can. I was one of the first publishers to convert my titles for the Amazon Kindle, for example, and my books are available through the Espresso Book Machine.

I named my company after my vampire research website, By Light Unseen, because that gave me instant search engine optimization. By Light Unseen had been online for nine years and was very well known, so it made sense to piggy-back my new company right onto that. Dedicating my press exclusively to vampire fiction and non-fiction was a result of where my chief interest and energies have been for the last decade or so. My earliest publishing daydreams were about a press that would publish books about Paganism, the paranormal, and so on, but there are a number of houses that already cover that field, including Llewellyn and Samuel Weiser. I always hated the condescending way mainstream publishers treated (and still treat) vampire fiction.

I never intended to publish my own books first. Originally, I’d hoped that Anne Fraser’s novel, Gideon Redoak (August, 2009), would be our first title. For one thing, it was finished in 2006 and Mortal Touch was not! But Anne was diagnosed with cancer–she passed away last year–and I was already behind schedule because my mom died of cancer three months after I founded By Light Unseen Media. So I had to change my plans.

You attend a lot of science fiction conventions. How did you get into doing that and how does it help your career?

Well…for the past two years, I have been going to a lot of conventions. I’m now evaluating the return on investment that I’ve gotten from those. It’s been very mixed.

I’d attended fan conventions, large and small, over the years. My first convention was the second Star Trek Convention in New York City in 1973, and I went to the Boston Worldcon, Noreascon II, in 1980, and a dozen or so smaller regional conventions. I hadn’t been to a convention for twelve years when I saw that World Fantasy Convention was going to be in Saratoga Springs , NY in 2007 and decided that as both an author and a publisher, I absolutely had to go. As an author, I hoped to promote my own books, with readings, signings and other ways of making myself known to readers; as a publisher, I wanted to network with writers who had manuscripts I could buy, as well as other industry professionals. I attended five conventions in 2008 and six conventions in 2009. I’ve had some successes, notably in achieving some visibility for myself and my company, but I’ve often been disappointed, as well. I’m not sure that conventions are that fruitful for authors who aren’t already so well-known that fans come to the conventions specifically to meet them. I’m focusing more on in-person appearances like the talk and slideshow I did in June at The Rabbit Hole bookstore. My events will all be listed on my author website at Inanna Arthen.

Do you find that the internet helps and/or hurts you as an author and in what ways?

I don’t know what I’d do without it! The Internet allows a degree of direct interaction, at almost no cost, which is unprecedented in human history. The chief challenge it presents comes out of the fact that the Internet itself has become so fractured and compartmentalized in recent years. If I’d started By Light Unseen Media in 1996, I’d have known exactly where to find vampire fans online. Now, people have pulled into so many tiny sub-communities, it’s difficult to reach a large consumer base easily. But the Internet is still the only way to effectively connect with like-minded people with eccentric interests, all over the world.

Is your writing style very strict or fluid? Meaning do you create an outline and stick with it or do you jump around depending on what ideas hit you at the moment?

I have a very strategic mind, and I tend to map everything out in my head at great length before I get it down in concrete form. I definitely don’t “jump around,” because story and plot are second only to character in my fiction. But I never work with a literal outline, either. What tends to happen is that the general sequence of events will evolve in my head, like a string of beads, with key scenes and passages of dialogue popping into clarity, and then I have to string them all together into their final form. So, I work both holistically and in linear fashion. I work this way for just about everything creative I do, not just writing. I often don’t know how the “transitional” parts will develop until I’m actually writing them, too. I start at A and I know I have to get to B, but the characters can really surprise me along the way. My characters are very real people to me, and they have lives of their own. They’ve been known to make me change things I thought I was going to write.

How do you get your ideas?

For born story-tellers like me, the real issue is, “how do I NOT get ideas?” My imagination is always spinning off little mini-stories when I read or watch anything else. If I’m having a bad day, I can get into unpleasant tangents and have to firmly stop myself from running away with them. The challenge isn’t getting the initial ideas, but developing them from scenes and snippets and daydreams into something cohesive. The movie The Big Picture gives you a perfect idea of what it’s like to have this kind of imagination. The down side is that my mind is constantly wandering off when I try to read anything, fiction or non-fiction. I have the worst attention span. I’ve meandered off on fantasies sparked by math textbooks! I test off the scale in what’s called “divergent thinking,” and it’s a mixed blessing, believe me.

Do you listen to music while you are writing and if so what kind/who?

No, I can’t write, or do anything else involving mental focus, to music. I was brought up in a musical family and I’m hyper-sensitive to music. I can’t ignore it–if there’s music playing, it commands my full attention. When I write, I not only need silence, I usually wear ear plugs.

And last but not least what advice do you have for aspiring authors?

READ. And learn to read critically and analytically. THINK about what you read, as well as just enjoy it. And then learn how to read your own work the same way.

The worst problem I see with aspiring authors is an inability to honestly evaluate their own work. I get queries that are so bad, I’m simply aghast that the writer would even let someone else see this material, let alone submit it for publication. Aspiring writers now chatter away about critique partners and beta readers and writers’ groups, but they’re just depending on the feedback of others rather than developing their own judgment. Writers need to learn what makes good writing good (and bad writing bad), learn it so well that they don’t even have to think about it, and then apply those lessons mercilessly to themselves. Ultimately, the only advice a writer needs to listen to is the advice of people who are prepared to pay money for their work. It does no good to go to a writers’ group consisting of equally clueless would-be writers! Feedback from “beta readers” and “critique partners” is only useful when you understand how to accept it and perceive what is helpful and what isn’t, and that generally takes training. Become a perceptive, honest, humble but critical reader and read, read, read, read, the very best fiction that you can find. And then write–every day, write something. Write letters, write journal entries, write mini-reviews, write anything, narrate your life! That’s the surest path to becoming a good writer.

Thanks Inanna! That’s great advice! So what do you guys do to flex your reading and writing muscles?

OBS has had the pleasure of getting an exclusive interview with Sue Dent. Sue has written two fictional novels ’Never Ceese and it’s sequel ‘Forever Richard’ that bring new light to the genre of vampires and werewolves. Here is a little bit of background on Sue, from her personal blog site. “Forever Richard is the sequel to her first book Never Ceese, short-listed in 2007 for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Sue was an invited guest of Nicholas Grabowsky to the World Horror Convention in Toronto, Canada in 2007 as well. Never Ceese went to Comic-Con in San Diego with award winning graphic novelist Bob Luedke of Head Press Publishing. Sue writes for the general market but has garnished many readers from the audience that bigger Christian publishers appeal to. Of her writing, which continues to cross these two boundaries, Sue says, “Well, somebody was bound to do it. Might as well be me.”

OBS: How did you get into writing?
SD:“I’m creative by nature. I expressed this with art initially and thought I might move into an art related field. Deciding that there was no money in art, I gave up that dream. As Capn’ Barbosa would say of binding up Calypso in POTC3 [Pirates of the Caribbean], “That was a mistake.” But to scratch my creative itch, I began writing stories that would come to me . . . as they came to me. I had a friend who encouraged me along and eagerly awaited whatever I could come up with. I can’t say thank-you to her enough. She saw something in what I wrote and so I saw something too. Thank-you Teresa. ”

OBS: Who are your literary influences?
SD:“I really would have to say John Grisham but he would be more of an inspiration I guess. Movies and television influence me more than anything. Go figure.”

OBS: What are you reading right now?
SD:Actually, I enjoy writing more than reading. I am going through The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies by the Gaelic “fairy minister” Robert Kirk. It’s research for the next book in my Thirsting for Blood Series. Hmm. . . faeries and vampires and werewolves.

OBS: What is your favorite book of all time? and why?
SD:Believe it or not, False Colours by Georgette Heyer. Remember that friend Teresa who encouraged me early on. Well she and I share reading interests. She raved about this book and put it in my hands to read. I just looked at her funny but I did read it. Oh my gosh! Georgette Heyer is a masterful writer. IMO The story is of two identical twin brothers whose father was royalty. They spend the book switching places etc . . to get one or the other out of scrapes. That’s really not a fair description but you really should read it. I just love the way Georgette Heyer writes. You absolutely love and hate the characters.

OBS: With the current popularity of books such as Twilight and Vampire Diaries, how do you feel your books stand out?
SD: “If my books stand out to anyone it’s because of the story. It’s just a good story that has the added bonus of featuring a werewolf and a vampire as the lead characters. ”

OBS:Your books have a very spiritual theme, particularly faith. Is that related your own personal faith?
SD: “I’ll put it this way, I write what I know. A person’s faith is usually a big part of who they are. I considered this when I wrote. What are the odds that someone cursed as a vampire wouldn’t have, at one time in their lives, been impacted by religious views from one sector or another? The same odds that they wouldn’t be. Why then do so many authors never delve into the spiritual lives of their characters? I don’t know but I don’t plan to ignore it. My books are only spiritual in that I won’t hesitate to explore what makes that character who they are.”

OBS: How did you come up with the idea to put a cursed vampire and werewolf in the same family?
SD: “The story came to me as I wrote as did the idea. Initially, the vampire and werewolf weren’t related at all. I just toyed around with what I thought might make a good story.”

OBS: What other media do you use to help inspire you while writing (Music, Art, Movies, etc.)? Anything specific?
SD: “I really love a good movie, book and television. Music too. Yet I don’t need to be inspired. Writing is simply a part of who I am.

OBS: How do you develop your characters’ individual personalities? Are they inspired by anyone you know or do they have a little bit of you in them?
SD: “My characters are inspired by everything I know and many of them have a bit of me in them I suppose and a little bit of everyone else too.”

OBS: Are you working on anything not related to vampires/werewolves? If so, can you tell us more?
SD:“Indeed! I do love the speculative genre though. One MS [manuscript] I started years ago involves an electrical entity and I’ve also a nearly complete MS on a modern day western (rodeo) type story that involves intervention from “beyond the grave.” LOL Oh and if any of you larger publishers want to take a chance with these two MS’s you can contact me. I could really use the promotional help only big houses can provide.”

OBS: Are you working on anything else in the Thirsting for Blood series? Are you able to tell us more about it?
SD:“The third installment Cyn No More will be out late 2010, early 2011 or late 2011. It’s really difficult for me to say. I’m under no real deadline and since I’m published through a small house, have to work extra hard on promoting which cuts in to writing time. If anyone wants to see the third installment sooner, I suggest they recommend my books to others. ”

OBS: What is your favorite vampire book made into a series or movie and why?
SD:“*chanting* Buffy, Buffy, Buffy! I absolutely loved the first few seasons and of course Spike and Drucilla. And if the old daytime drama, Dark Shadows is in fact being made into a movie (with Johnny Depp as Barnabus Collins) then that one will probably become my favorite.”

OBS: What is one thing you’d like your fans to know about you and your books?
SD: “I would like my fans to know that I appreciate them giving a small press author a chance. It’s absolutely the most hostile environment you can imagine right now in the publishing world. One had to have a thick skin to make it past go and a thicker one to keep going. Y’all will be the ones to make the difference. I’ve done all I can do.”

‘Never Ceese’ is OBS’ Book Club for the month of October, and as a special treat, Sue has become a member of our forum. She participates in the discussion questions, character breakdowns, and even asks a few questions herself! It’s not too late to join the book club and get it on the fun, read more HERE

View Sue Dent’s official blog HERE
Also check back here at OBS tomorrow Sunday the 11th, I will be posting Sue Dent’s ‘Author Profile’

A special thank you to Sue Dent, for allowing OBS to cover her novel for our book club, and giving us this interview!