Wicked Wenches

A few years ago, a critique partner suggested I give the YA market a try. She said I had a youthful voice and it came through in my writing. Now since I loved writing the hot stuff as much as the sweet stuff, it took me a little bit to think about what she said. Then all of a sudden, I had this idea about a teenage sorceress written in diary format that I knew would work as a young adult tale. I wrote it, and found it was much fun for me to write as the grown up stuff .

Now as a teenager myself, I read a lot of Judy Blume. I loved the fact that she didn’t shy away from the taboo subjects, like teenage sexuality. In most of her teenage geared books, with the exception of Forever, sex was mentioned, but the main characters just didn’t do it. Her main characters were very real to me because of this. Because they went through all the same emotions I went through. Currently, I’m reading her Fudge and Peter books to my son now, which are geared towards younger kids, and I’m happy to see that the work still holds up. It’s as much fun for me to read now as it was when I was a kid.

I think I was about sixteen when I discovered the work of Christopher Pike. His teenage paranormal tales were fantastic and I still love reading them. The Remember Me series written from the POV of a teenage girl ghost are all fantastic reads. Maybe that’s why all of my young adult tales seem to lean more towards the paranormal, because reading his stuff inspired me to go that route.

My current project is actually inspired by my son, PJ. The little man asked me why I never write anything that he’d want to read. I told him about my uncompleted manuscript about a teenage boy vampire slayer, and he said that would only be fun to read on Halloween. Leave it to PJ to be so honest and blunt . Then I got to thinking about what PJ likes. He loves space, science, rockets and wants be a rocket scientist when he grows up. So, I came up with an idea for a Science Fiction Young Adult Romance with an alien princess heroine and a fourteen year old hero, who like PJ, wants to be a rocket scientist when he grows up, and I told the idea to my son. He loved it. We read the first chapter together after I completed it, and PJ loved it too. He even gave me some great suggestions.

I really think the key to writing a great young adult tale is to not overload with slang, but still keep the attitude young. And really a great young adult tale is something that people of all ages will enjoy. Just look at Pixar Studios and their movies. Yep, they are animated and generally geared towards kids, but hubby and I have seen all the Pixar movies at the theater and loved all of them, even the ones that came out before we had our son. That’s what I want to do with my writing. Write a fun tale set on Earth and worlds beyond that transcends the age boundaries. I hope I’ll get there, because if I do, I can get one or more of my tales published .

I used to write vampires. A lot. I got deep into it all, did research, read everything I could get my hands on.

Which Vampire stuck out for me?

None of them. All of them.
Even Vamps have the good, the bad and the downright horrible. There’s Sebastian, in Michelle Hauf’s Dark Rapture. The musician… and, oh, he’s SUCH a fiend! He’s not nice. Not really. I love him to bits.
There are the vampires in J.C. Wilder’s series. Damn, I loved them. I really did.
There’s Nosferatu. Now, that fiend couldn’t be called romantic or nice, or sexy by any stretch of the imagination — but I still like him.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Jean-Claude… I will never forget that bathroom scene. But alas, here is a writer who has gone too far for my tastes. I used to read everything she put out — then I read Narcissus in Chains (I was already apprehensive after the previous one) and that was the end of it for me. I just couldn’t get into it anymore. Where earlier there had been sexual tension, we now had the other extremes which looked too much like orgies. It turned me off an otherwise very well written series.
Silhoutte Nocturne has a series within the series — Bewitching the Dark — which puts a great slant on what hurts a vampire.
Kreseley Cole’s Vamps are kinda cool too, but her books span so much more than just vampires.

There are a lot of facets to Vampires, I haven’t really found one I didn’t like and I can’t wait what others will develop. I don’t really have a favorite, other than I like them dark and a bit nasty. Vampires shouldn’t be nice. They should have an agenda. They are predators after all. It’s a bit like taming a wild beast, with a bloodsucking evil minion from Hell being possibly the most dangerous of all the beasts you could try to tame. It might just end deadly.

But if I absolutely have to pick one… At the moment it would be Michelle Hauf’s Nikolaus Drake, who got suckered when he drinks from a witch who got drenched in a love potion. The whole concept made me giggle, and watching a lovesick vampire try to romance a witch who’d rather kill him… oh my. LOL.

I definitely love vampires–love their strength and the fact that they aren’t good. There is always some bad in a vampire–something that probably comes from their need to feed.
I think you could probably extend this out to encompass all creatures of the dark–demons, werewolves, the whole lot of them. They all harbor their secrets and their sense of self hatred that makes them the flawed and brooding heroes we have come to know and love.
Throw into that mix a vampire hunter or a woman who doesn’t know what she’s in for and you’ve got a great story on your hands.

Since the ladies so nicely elaborated, I’ll do the same.
Why do I write paranormals… hmm. I blame Anne Stuart. It’s all her fault.
Way back when, I got my hands on “Night of the Phantom” and I practically devoured it. (Which reminds me that I have to re-read that one.)
That got me started on paranormals. Then I read Tanya Huff’s Blood series and that got me started on vampires. I love em to bits, blood and death and all. I wrote vampires in a time when everyone went “Vampires don’t sell”. Friends of mine wrote them too, told the same thing. It never stopped us.
As a result I know way too much about death and dying.
Today, a vampire romance is nothing out of the ordinary. Take Christine Feehan for instance. Her Carpathians are essentially vampires, dressed up a little differently. Still vampires though.
You have Sherri Kenyon and her Dark Hunters – they’re also vampires. In a sense. Again, dressed up differently, with a different slant and a different history but alas… a rose by any other name – is still a rose.
Today, I’ve moved on from the vamps. My critters are different, they don’t fit with the monsters, yet in a sense that is what they are. Still big bad and not domesticated though. You wouldn’t want one of them living in your basement.
Or maybe you do.
As for why… You think I know the answer to that? The bad guys turn me on, that’s all there is to it. I guess the paras are badder than your average biker dude, or maybe not.
I’ve read some pretty hefty bad guys before that didn’t come equipped with a set of very sharp teeth.
I write because I have to write. I can’t not write, I’d go insane. Certifiably so.
So I do what keeps me sane and put pen to paper… hopefully someone will like it and then maybe you get to read it too.

No, I’m not talking about loving or hating the books written about vampires. I’m talking about how the vampires are perceived and which way do you prefer it. As long as there have been vampire stories, they have been depicted as dark, deadly, and seductive. Many authors have taken these two different ways. Vampires are either the heroes or the antagonists. So are you with Buffy who says she likes her men evil? Or would you prefer the hunter of vampires? I can go either way. After all sucking blood and killing people really isn’t that sexy however you dress it up. But that thrill of the bad boy or the lost soul. In popular culture, Angel springs to mind as the soulful vampire remorseful of his past deeds. Here’s where it gets tricky, the bad guys on Buffy… The Master, yeah, he’s not hot and there is definitely no question that he is evil. But if you take Spike, hmmm. He’s sexy and the British accent is always a plus. He’s evil but he’s willing to change. And even when he’s evil, he’s a vamp in love. Whether you believe vampires are another evolution from the beginning of time or created by a person betraying or renouncing God or created by a God or Goddess, they will continue to entrall us.

What role do you prefer for the blood-suckers, hero or antagonist or both?

I’ve always loved reading romances–since I was a kid. I got stuck for a while on the historicals–loving westerns, anything taking place in England, Scottish highlander stories, etc. Then I discovered the series by J.R. Ward about a brotherhood of vampires and they were so damned hot and alpha male, that I was converted! Ever since then, I’ve read a ton of paranormals and in reading them, I started thinking about my own storylines and coming up with my own characters. Then I just put my ideas to paper (or computer, I guess) and haven’t stopped since. I’m finished with one book now and on my way to my next.
As for my favorite para authors who have really influenced my own work, I love Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series. I’m also on the fourth book of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series which is great so far although I’ve been warned it gets weird later on. I just finished a book about demons by Jenna Black and that was fantastic. I would say my interests border on urban fantasy/ paranormal. Somewhere in the middle.
That’s about it!

They say there is a time for every purpose, blah blah blah and it seems that my time to attempt to write my first blog has arrived. I am supposed to cover the topic of why I write, so instead of actually writing, I am now going to write about why I write. Not logical, I know but there you go.

For me writing isn’t an option, or a passion. It’s an obsession. You see I have no real control over my characters. Its more a case of they control me and they tend to choose what stories I write. Oh yes, at the beginning of the book I have a basic idea of where I’d like the story to go but then all of a sudden, along come these interesting, feisty, eccentric, larger than life characters and they take over my story, like a bunch of rowdy barflies. They send my plot off in directions I’d never have thought of and all I have to do is hold on tight for the ride.

And if you don’t think writing is an obsession, try writing a story and then leave a character mid-scene for a day or two. Go on, all you fanatical writers. Give it a try. I dare you. You can’t, can you? No. And I’ll tell you why: because your characters wake you up the middle of the night – accusingly, loudly, demanding immediate release from their prison you call your latest chapter.

So. As you can see. It’s not really my choice, however I wouldn’t swop writing paranormal for all the tea in china.