25 October 2012

Crossroads Tour: Lucienne Diver

Could you tell us a bit about – first as a writer, then as a reader – what the pull is for you when it comes to Paranormal/Supernatural characters & stories?

It all starts with characters for me. I have to be gripped by the characters in order to feel a tremendous amount of tension over what happens to them. Take Katniss Everdeen...what a great character! Suzanne Collins did a wonderful job making us sympathize and creating personal stakes for her with her family. (I say, trying to avoid any spoilers whatsoever, as if the entire world hasn't already read the books...and if they haven't, they should!) Seriously, all the suspense in the world doesn't matter if I don't care about the characters everything's raining down on.

I think paranormal aspects add that one more layer of tension in the how-on-Earth-can-they-ever-hope-to-combat-that sense. From an authorial standpoint, I love the problem-solving aspect of it.

Vampires will always hold a special place in my heart. While there are many variations of Vampire’s written, can you talk about what makes yours different?

I'm a little bit of a purist here, I must admit. I like my vampires to drink blood unapologetically and not sparkle in the sunlight (though I give Stephenie Meyer credit for coming up with a different spin on things). Thus, my vampires have the traditional strengths and weaknesses—they'll burn up in the sun, they have no reflection or heartbeat. They have to play at being human. That was, in fact, something I had a lot of fun with. There is no question of my vampires being mistaken for human, not unless they work at it. There's a definite transformation involved. In fact, that was where the fun came in for me. I like bringing together two things that ignite, like oxygen and a spark, and causing a reaction. That's my heroine upon being vamped. Gina Covello is a teen fashionista. She's all about image and appearance. Then to wake in the first book (Vamped) in a coffin and have to ruin her manicure digging her own way out of the grave, only to find out that she's got no reflection with which to fix her hair and make-up and that there's no going back to her old life in which she was queen bee...she could very well self-destruct. But she doesn't. In her words, she puts on her big-girl panties and deals with it. This is what made her a character I could really work with, as shallow as she seems at first. What I love about her is that she become more human as the series goes on, even as her humanity becomes more and more distant from her reality.

With each book in the Vamped series I start with three questions for myself: what mystery do Gina and her gang have to solve? What's the danger they have to face/the consequences should they fail? How can I torture my heroine?

Since you write for both YA and Adult, can you tell us a bit about any difference you have in your writing and how it is for you as a writer in switching between an older and a younger voice?

I don't find that my writing is any different, because many teens are reading adult books already, and many adults are reading teen fiction. The main difference has to do with my characters and how they would see things. For instance, my thirty-year-old heroine in my Latter-Day Olympians series would probably not be lusting after the same hotties as my seventeen-year-old heroine in the Vamped series. Or she shouldn't be, anyway! Though I have to admit to being closer in age to Tori (Latter-Day Olympians) than Gina and still going to see the Twilight films almost entirely for Taylor Lautner's abs, so perhaps their tastes wouldn't be so different after all! Also, while Gina knows all about fashion and could tell you who rolled out what line in what season and how exactly you should accessorize, Tori's eyes would glaze over at any such conversation. It wouldn't matter how cute the strappy sandals, if she couldn't kick butt in them, they'd have to go.

And lastly, how about a fun question? Being that it’s the scariest time of the year – Halloween – what’s your favorite?

Scary Book: I used to read all the "True Tales" books when I was a kid...about hauntings, unexplained phenomena, unsolved mysteries. I'd scare myself silly and stay up all night, but I liked nothing better!

Scary Movie: I love the Scream movies, because they're great horror films and a send-up of the genre, all at the same time.

Halloween Candy: Baby Ruths, hands down!

Costume from Halloween’s Past: Isis. I made my own costume when I was a kid, based on the old television show. (The heroine was an anthropologist and the living embodiment of the goddess whenever danger struck...how cool is that? Of course, when I rewatched this series as an adult, I was stuck by how like a bad after school special it was, but as a kid, I adored it.)

Title: Fangtabulous (Vamped, #4)
Author: Lucienne Diver
Publisher: Flux, 288 Pages (January 8th, 2013)
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis: Can a fanged fashionista take out a deadly Salem spirit?

Being on the lam from the Feds and the vampire council with no money is not as glamorous as it sounds, especially when I, Gina Covello, fashion queen of the undead, am forced to abandon my wardrobe. Salem, Massachusetts, seems like a great place to hide our supernatural gang. But who knew the city would be crawling with ghosts? The nasty spirit of George Corwin, infamous sheriff from the witch trial days, is on a killing spree. It's up to us to take down the breath-stealing phantom-without blowing our cover.

GIVEAWAY!

How the Crossroads Tour Giveaway works

All the authors got together and decided, instead of each blog getting one or two titles to giveaway - they'd have a single grand prize - a real doozie. With that in mind each blogger is asked to encourage readers to answer the daily trivia/research question on the tour main page. (http://judithgraves.com/events/the-crossroads-tour/crossroads-2011/) At the end of the tour all answers have to be emailed to judithgraves@ymail.com by midnight on the 29th.

So, it's your job, to head over to the mail tour page I've linked above, read the question and go find the answer in the posts for that day. Make sure you get your answers in by the deadline - October 29th at Midnight!

Entries will be put in a drawing and a winner chosen randomly.

And I bet you're wondering what the heck this amazing prize is? How about a FREE KINDLE PRELOADED with an eBOOK from each of the Crossroads authors???

The more questions you answer, the better, so be sure to check back each day!

Any questions? Please send them my way!