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Monday, November 1, 2010

Ten Tantalizing Questions for Rachel Caine, Author of The Morganville Vampire Series & Giveaway!



Have you ever wanted to learn more about your favorite authors? Ten Tantalizing Questions is designed not only to showcase exciting new books on the horizon, but to also provide a glimpse into the personalities of the authors behind them.

"There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes." ~William Makepeace Thackeray

Today I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Rachel Caine. Rachel is the author of the popular Morganville Vampires series and she has stopped by to discuss her latest book, Ghost Town, which recently released on October 26th. Rachel brought along a pair of hilarious vampire bunny slippers to give away and an ARC of Ghost Town. Details below. 

Rachel Caine is the author of more than fifteen novels, including the Morganville Vampires and Weather Warden series. She was born at White Sands Missile Range, which people who know her say explains a lot. She has been an accountant, a professional musician, and an insurance investigator, and still carries on a secret identity in the corporate world. She and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Pop-eye and Darwin, a mali uromastyx named (appropriately) O'Malley, and a leopard tortoise named Shelly (for the poet, of course).


1.       In Ghost Town: Morganville Vampires, Book 9, Claire and Myrnin create a computer program that will control the memories and boundaries of Morganville. Things take a drastic turn from the worse when humans and vampires start acting very strangely.  Can you tell us a little more about the book and share with us a favorite line, scene or passage?

The theme of GHOST TOWN is really about coping with loss ... almost everyone in the book has suffered some kind of loss or serious life change in the past three years, and seeing how they cope with learning about those losses, or changes, all over again is what I wanted to explore. Are you the same person if you don't remember the things that helped shape you?

Here's an excerpt from GHOST TOWN that gives you a little taste:

“Get her out of my sight,” Amelie said, and looked at the other fallen vampires. The one who’d been burned badly by Claire’s silver nitrate got up and limped over, looking thoroughly terrified. “This one too. And release those others.” She waved a hand at the vampires Shane had nailed with the crossbow bolts. One of Oliver’s black-coated troopers glided over and pulled the arrows out. The two downed bloodsuckers, released from their paralysis, coughed and sputtered blood.

They’d live.

“Michael,” Claire whispered. Eve broke free and ran to him, throwing herself down on the floor and taking his head into her lap. He looked—oh, God—he looked . . . dead. His eyes were open, and he looked so pale, so still; there was a hole in the side of his throat, but not much blood. Claire skidded to a stop and put her hands to her mouth, trying to hold in a scream. She felt Shane’s hands close hard around her shoulders—that was probably his version of feeling the same rush of horror and denial.

Then Michael finally, slowly, blinked. Eve screamed. “Michael? Michael! Talk to me!”

“He can’t,” Amelie said. She had come up behind them, and was looking at Michael with a slight softening of her usual cool expression. Maybe, Claire thought, because Michael still reminded her of Sam, her lost love. Apart from the color of their hair, they’d looked a lot alike. “He’ll be all right once we get some nourishment into him. I’ll have my people take him directly to the blood bank.”

“I want to go with him!” Eve said.

“I’m not sure that’s wise. Drained and hungry vampires, even ones you know well, can be very unpredictable. I would hate for anything to happen that Michael might regret later.”

“What about what we might regret later?” Shane asked under his breath. “Oh, right. Humans don’t count.”

Amelie heard him, and her head swiveled smoothly as she focused her cool gray eyes on his face. “I only meant that you would likely not be around to regret anything, Mr. Collins. Ms. Rosser. Explain what happened here. Now.”

Eve was combing her fingers through Michael’s blond hair, but now she looked up, startled. That lasted only a second, though, and then her attitude snapped back in place. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe a vampire attack?” she snapped. “It was a party; then the frat idiots crashed and started boasting about how tough they were; then these freaks showed up to teach us all a lesson. That’s what they said. They wanted to put us in our place.”

“I see,” Amelie said. “And you did nothing to provoke them.”

“My friend—” Eve’s voice failed. Claire could see she was trying once again not to cry, and how much it hurt. “My friend Cory was just trying to have fun. That one, the redhead, she grabbed her and just . . . tore her up. Cory’s dead. I saw it happen.”

“Oh, man,” Shane whispered. Claire put her hand on top of his, where it lay on her shoulder. “Eve . . .” It sounded like he wanted to say something, but he had no idea what. She loved him for that.

Amelie waited a moment, and then said in a very low voice, “I am sorry for this experience, and for the loss of your friend. All who broke the law will be punished.”

Eve’s eyes grew brighter, but not with tears. With fury. “Punished? What, like little kids going to bed without their blood supper? No TV for a week? Time-out?”

“I can assure you that the punishment will be severe.”

“Not enough!”

Now Amelie’s voice turned cool again. “It is enough for me, and that will be enough for you, Ms. Rosser. Enough for all of you. Do I make myself clear?” She didn’t wait for an answer; she turned to Oliver, who was standing nearby, hands folded behind him, watching as the vampire prisoners and humans were herded out. “Vampires are dead here. I will expect a full investigation.”

“Of course,” Oliver said without turning. “And I expect the appropriate punishments will be meted out, according to the law.”

“Sir,” called one of Oliver’s men, who was kneeling over the red-haired girl with Claire’s stake in her chest.  “You should see this.”

Oliver walked over, frowned, and crouched down to examine the girl more closely.  “Silver,” his man said, and Oliver nodded.  Oliver tugged on a pair of leather gloves and grabbed the stake, which he pulled out and immediately dropped with a clatter to the floor.

The girl didn’t breathe, move, or react.

Claire gripped Shane’s arm tightly, and waited, but the vampire stayed still on the floor, unmoving. There was a burned patch where the stake had gone in that continued to slowly burn outward.

“She’s dead,” Oliver said.  “Silver poisoning. She must have been unusually allergic.”

Claire had killed her.

And the appropriate punishment for a human killing a vampire was death.


2. What three words would you say best describe Ghost Town?

Love, grief, and desperation! 

3. When comparing this series to your Weather Warden or Outcast series, was one in particular more challenging than the others to write?

I think all of them are challenging, but in very specific ways. Morganville is generally less of a stretch in the research area, but more work in terms of the type of research I am doing ... physics, alchemy, and a lot of history. But overall, I'd say that the Weather Warden series was more challenging, simply because of the scope of the problems and the amount of technical knowledge I needed.

4. If the world of Morganville was to be made into a movie, do you have certain actors you envision in the lead roles of Claire, Shane, Michael and Eve or do you think unknowns would be best suited to play them?

I honestly think that unknowns would be better for the four leads ... mostly because anyone I could name now would probably be out of the age range by the time it gets made! I'm on better ground with the adult characters, like David Tennant for Myrnin, Gillian Anderson for Amelie and Anthony Head for Oliver.

5. If you had to pick a theme song for the town of Morganville, what would you pick and why?

Oooh, probably "Enjoy the Ride" by Morcheeba!

6. What were you like as a teenager and did you have any books in particular that were your favorites? If your teenage self was to read your novels what do you think she’d say?

I read constantly, but I can't say that I was completely fixed on any one set of books. I did really love Roger Zelazny's Amber series, though.

If I had read my books, I think I would have honestly enjoyed them a lot. Don't know if they would have been my favorites, but I think I would have read them and liked them.

7. What do you love most about the inhabitants of Morganville (vampire and human)?

I love that everybody is just trying to get by ... humans and vampires alike. It makes the story more real to me, and somehow more desperate.

8. On your website you mention that there are a total of twelve books planned so far in this series. Do you have a clear idea of how you see all the storylines tying up or are you letting the creative muse guide you as you go?

I have an idea of what's going to happen as the over-arching plot for the last three books, but each one will have its own independent storyline as well. I can't really let the creative muse wander around too far off the track -- my deadlines are way too tight!

9. What would you say is the best advice you’ve been given as an author?

I think the best advice ever was to spend every day writing -- whether you want to or not. Give yourself vacations, just like from a day job, but treat it like work and have specific hours - it helps to avoid issues with writer's block, for one thing. And for another, it helps train your mind to keep the creative juices flowing.

10. The next book to be released in the Morganville Vampires series will be Bite Club, due out in April 2011.  Can you give us any insider scoop on what we can look forward to next? Any other upcoming projects in the works?

In BITE CLUB, Morganville's more or less back to normal (which isn't normal at all, of course) ... but something's bubbling under the surface. A new gym has opened up, but there could be more to it than just personal training and martial arts. As vampires start dropping out of sight, it's obvious something has gone wrong -- but when the first online videos surface of what looks like a vampire fight club, it becomes a concern to everybody in Morganville. These vampires are fighting to the death ... and now, humans are being dragged into it, too. When Shane and Michael disappear, it's only a matter of time before they, too, end up fighting in the pit -- for the entertainment and profit of a whole new enemy.

Also premiering in August 2011 is a brand new adult urban fantasy series, The Revivalists, and the first book is WORKING STIFF! The story follows a young, fresh-out-of-school funeral director who discovers that her bosses are reviving the dead ... for an under-the-embalming-table profit. When the scope of it becomes clear, she has a choice to make ... be one of the bad guys, or work for the inventors of the process, who may actually be worse.

Thanks so much for inviting me to talk to you! It was a pleasure!

 The Morganville Vampires Series 


Glass Houses (Morganville Vampires, Book 1)The Dead Girls' Dance (Morganville Vampires, Book 2)Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires, Book 3)Feast of Fools (Morganville Vampires, Book 4)Lord of Misrule (Morganville Vampires, Book 5)Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires, Book 6)Fade Out (Morganville Vampires, Book 7)Kiss of Death (Morganville Vampires, Book 8)Ghost Town (Morganville Vampires, Book 9)


GIVEAWAY  
 One ARC of THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES, BOOK 9: GHOST TOWN
AND
VAMPIRE BUNNY SLIPPERS!

 

BY RACHEL CAINE 

While developing a new system to maintain Morganville's defenses, student Claire Danvers discovers a way to amplify vampire mental powers. Through this, she's able to re-establish the field around this vampire-infested Texas college town that protects it from outsiders.

But the new upgrades have an unexpected consequence: people inside the town begin to slowly forget who they are-even the vampires. Soon, the town's little memory problem has turned into a full-on epidemic. Now Claire needs to figure out a way to pull the plug on her experiment- before she forgets how to save Morganville...




Official Rules:
1.You must be 13 year or older to enter.
2. Open to entrants with a valid U.S. mailing address only. 
3. Entries must be received by Midnight EST on November 14th 2010. 
4. Once contacted, winners have 48 hours to respond with their mailing address.
5. To enter to win, simply fill out the form below. Good luck!  

28 comments:

cait045 said...

Those are the best vampire bunny slippers ever. It makes Claire more adorable. I love Morganville.

markmmm74 said...

Morganville vampires, great series.

My Life With Books - Jennifer K Jovus said...

I started reading the Morganville series only a couple of months ago. I couldn't wait for Ghost town to come out and am happy that Myrnin is in this one more. I think he is the funnest character in the books.
I am a little sad that there are only 3 books left in the series. I could read about the citizens of morganville until Clare graduates...with her PHD.

Jessica @ a GREAT read said...

Love the slippers! Must get me a pair!!

Tina said...

I like the bottom Ghost Town cover (black,red,white). It's stunning.

SandyG265 said...

I'm still working my way through The Morganville Vampire series - I'm up to Fade Out but I'm glad to know that I have another book to look fowards to.

Sita said...

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo, or would that totally throw off your writing process?

Linda Henderson said...

I can't wait to read this one. I like the bunny slippers too.

Jessy said...

I'm glad to see we have some kind of idea when this series will end. Now I can prepare for it! Love the bunny slippers by the way.

Kate said...

Those are such cute slippers! I'm so excited for this giveaway and am crossing my fingers!

elaing8 said...

I love the Morganville series. I hope one day it is picked up for tv or movies.

Brynne said...

Awww... those vampire bunny slippers are strangely... cute.
I LOVE the Morganville series!! I REALLY hope that it will someday become a TV show (the only reason I'm not saying movie is because there's gonna be 12 books in the series... so wouldn't you probably have 12 movies? And 12 movies based on one series is a bit lengthy; don't you think?)

Vivien said...

I love this series. Myrnin is my favorite! He is hilarious.

throuthehaze said...

I haven't read this series yet but it is on my TBR list. Love those slippers!!!

Jen said...

Hi Rachel! I have had the pleasure of getting to know you at Murder by Books in Houston and you are by far the most entertaining author I have yet to meet. I absolutely MUST have the bunny slippers because Myrnin is by far the most interesting vampire in Morganville!

Maidenveil said...

Awesome interview! The bunny slippers are cute!

debbie said...

The book sounds really good. I think the slippers would protect me from the savage dust bunnies living under my bed.LOL.

Nikki said...

Adorable slippers! Love the series!

Tales of Whimsy said...

Ooo desperation! Sounds good!
Great post/interview :)

You're so gracious and good with authors!

(not an entry)

Andrea said...

I love the Morganville Vampires! And I'm excited to learn about the new adult series for next year. I'm adding it to my WL!

belle2211(at)yahoo(dot)com

latishajean said...

I love the books can't wait to read this one great giveaway thank you very much!

hockeygirl said...

i love the slippers, i want a pair!

Ginny said...

This looks like such a great series, I will have to locate the 1st one it!

Jolene and Family said...

OMG, love the slippers, supper cute. I have a feeling if I had those my kids would be stealing them :) Thanks for the post, I love hearing from authors, connects me more to their books

Melissa said...

hey, b.b.
thx for such an AWESOME contest love the slippers!!!! hope mez winz.......................
Hey R.C.
thx for writing such a great an awesome book series, so awesome got my friends hooked 2!!!!!

Bella said...

I LOVE those slippers! lol And I am looking forward to reading this! It looks great. Thanks for the chance.

Candace said...

This series is one of my favorites! I love that they are shorter, quicker reads so I don't put them off. And once I pick them up I can't put them down!
And those bunny slippers are AWESOME!
Thanks for the contest! I'm glad I found it even though I'm barely in time!

Ladytink_534 said...

I absolutely love this series! I've never seen Anthony Stewart Head as Oliver before but he'd probably make a good one!