Kimberly Pauley

Book Launch Party: Day 10: Tiffany Trent

All About Tiffany
My guest today is the awesome Tiffany Trent. She won her first major writing award (the Edmond Hamilton/Leigh Brackett Scholarship) at the ripe old age of 16. And she’s got THREE master’s degrees (English, Creative Writing, and Environmental Studies). Whew! I feel like such a slacker! Not to mention that she’s lived all over the place (like in Hong Kong) and she teaches writing at Virginia Tech. She writes the Hallowmere series and is currently working on some new ideas…the hints at which make me really anxious for more (medieval beastiaries?? Victorian cross-dressing?? Ah, a lady after my own heart!)!

You can learn more about Tiffany at her official website.

Hallowmere…
Whoever said fairies weren’t dangerous? In Hallowmere, a dark, edgy historical fantasy series, Corrine finds out just how dangerous they can be…and readers are enraptured with stories full of danger, intrigue, romance and deception.

In Queen of the Masquerade, Christina wakes in a new world with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Tasked with solving a riddle that will save the duke and duchess who rescue her and take her in as a changeling, Christina seeks to puzzle out just what she’s doing here and why her memory has fled.

But the riddle isn’t just a key to saving the duke and duchess–it’s Christina’s key to something far more dire, a mission she knows she must remember, one that involves the strange young man who keeps appearing in odd places. Is the riddle a prophecy or a warning?

 The Q&A
Here’s my question for Tiffany…

Can you tell us a bit about how your love of your home’s history influenced the Hallowmere series?

And her answer…

I think some of us Southerners just grow up with the Civil War from the cradle, almost like genetic memory.  My dad talked a lot about it and I remember visiting the museum and Lee’s tomb at Virginia Military Institute/Washington & Lee when I was very young.  I also took a steam train, the Powhatan 611, in sixth grade up to Appomattox and stood in the house where Lee surrendered to Grant.  I visited Charleston, South Carolina when I was in college and I found the old slave market just chilling to look upon.  I learned about the Gullah people there, and I wanted to make a story that celebrated them, about a young slave girl who had the magic of her people and wasn’t afraid to use it.  Mara developed out of that, as well as my love of the Hans Christian Anderson tale “The Marsh King’s Daughter.” 

I also had a friend who owned an old farmhouse not far from many sites of battle in Culpeper, Virginia.  She always told me Civil War ghost stories whenever I visited.  We used to joke that she’d like to have a school around there, but any place she bought would probably be haunted.  Falston was built from midnights spent on her porch telling one outrageous story after another and listening to a bobcat scream at the back gate.  (You haven’t heard anything more terrifying than a bobcat screaming in the middle of the night!)

So it really is true when they say that writers are mostly observers.  I just took the little shards of Southern history that I found interesting and pieced them together with bits of old fairy lore. And, lo, Hallowmere was born!

And Tiffany’s question for me…

I am dying (no pun intended) to know where the idea for SUCKS TO BE ME came from!  Please do tell!

And my answer…

The simple answer, of course, would be: from my wee little brain. :-P Seriously, I was lying awake one night and thinking about a couple of things: 1) how this vampire book I’d recently read was really annoying because it purported to be following along with Bram Stoker’s Dracula tale but it actually got a lot of details wrong and 2) how vampire books all (at the time) seemed to be so danged serious and all about the blood and slayers and whatnot and 3) wouldn’t it be funny if all of that were turned on its head?

The first line came to me that night, probably around 2 AM-ish. I got up and wrote it down and then just kind of kept going for a few paragraphs and then went back to bed. When I got up, I still liked it (that doesn’t always happen…). And then Mina just took over. Well, that plus a bunch o’ research into vampire myths all over the world.

The Giveaway

Want to win a signed copy of Queen of the Masquerade? All you’ve got to do to win a copy is visit Tiffany’s journal/blog and then email me at kim @ kimberlypauley.com with the subject line “Medieval Bestiary? Heck Yeah!” and tell me…what post did you read…and what did you learn? Be sure to enter by September 11th!

And don’t forget to check out all the contest details so you can find out how to win the Grand Prize!