In this third installment of the author mailbag, I'll answer a few more questions from readers. You can read these mailbags in any order, but here are the links for mailbag #1 and mailbag #2 if you want to read in chronological order. Today's theme is how I come up with the ideas from my books.
For The Clan-Vampire Clash book series, first and foremost is the love story between Lila and Gabe (starting in A Brush with Vampires coming out this March!). I have several pivotal scenes throughout the series in mind as I write, which are usually from or inspired by my own dreams. From there, it's all about figuring out how Lila and Gabe get to said pivotal scenes. I also want a mix of supernatural and and totally-normal-human obstacles for them to overcome, so I have a plan there too.
But I don't want my books to be only about a supernatural romance. I want them to be about friendship and growing up too. Enter Val and Marina, Lila's main two friends who don't really get along (huge understatement there). From there, it's all about the conflict between Lila and Gabe, Gabe and Marina, Lila and Marina, Lila and Val, Val and Marina, etc.
Last but most definitely not least, I love an epic good versus evil battle. So there we have our vampire villains of Kane, Duncan, and Adara (and of course their various lieutenants and soldiers) taking on the Warriors and Diviners (or vampire hunters).
There you have it. My three main ingredients for my books are: a love story + an epic good versus evil struggle + totally-normal-human coming of age conflicts.
Ha! So much! I mean, some of it I had already. I've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer more times than I can count and I've read and watched the Twilight books and movies, so I had a baseline knowledge of vampire mythology going into writing my own books. I also love reading and watching teen/YA fantasy, which also helped for the totally-normal-human coming of age plotlines.
From there, it was all about picking and choosing which parts of vampire mythology I wanted in my world as well as coming up with my own twists. For instance, the Buffy "vampires turn to dust when they die" was convenient to keep since I didn't want my Warriors constantly burying bodies. On the other hand, Twilight's "vampires can drink animal blood and be totally fine" didn't work for me since I wanted my vampires to have no choice but to kill humans. Because I wanted some magic in my books in addition to the usual vampire versus super-strong vampire hunter, I added in Diviners as a sort of magical support system for the Warriors. As you can probably tell, my vampire mythology choices were sometimes matters of convenience and sometimes needed to enable the plot of the entire The Clan-Vampire Clash book series.
Side note: I didn't just rely on whatever happened to be lurking in my brain about vampires. I also did a fair amount of googling to find my mythology options. I did the same for creating my fictional boarding school, figuring out what classes everyone takes, what sorts of extracurriculars they might be involved in, talent show options, decorations, etc. You name a detail in one of my books and odds are I googled it at some point.
Oh, for sure. In fact, one of the pieces of advice my mom constantly gave me growing up (at least in regards to writing) was "write what you know." Now, I'm not saying I hunt vampires in my spare time (or do I? :p), but a lot of the non-vampire stuff is inspired by my real life experiences.
Let's do locations first. Eversfield Preparatory Academy is a mix of my boarding school research combined with my own experiences in high school and college. Juniper is more or less a smaller version of a combination of Ann Arbor, MI (where I went to college and where I currently live), and Boulder, CO (where I lived for a few years post-college). Fruitvale (the setting of The Impossible Creation) is loosely based on Grand Rapids, MI, where I grew up. Sometimes I even find myself in a location or at an event where I go, "Oh! This would be perfect for character-y after x-thing happens!" That said, I keep all my settings and events fictional since then I have far more freedom to adapt them to the plot instead of the other way around. Plus, who wants to spend hours and hours on google maps when you can just make up a map yourself?
Now, characters are a little bit different. Sometimes, they're inspired by little quirks and characteristics of people that I've known. More often though--and especially for the main characters--they're little pieces of me. (Again, "write what you know.") Their characteristics might be exaggerated versions of my own, they might be what I was like as a teen, they might be what I wish I was like, or some combination of all three. And some characters take a little more time than others to get to know (I'm looking at you, Marina).
That's it for now! Tune in next time for more questions and answers.
Miss the last mailbag? Check out Mailbag #2.
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