Everything Girl

Colleen Gleason isn’t just the creator of a fabulous series of novels that combine all the best aspects of Regency romance with the action and excitement of vampire slaying, she’s also a reader and a blogger. We met (virtually) when she left a comment on one of my blogs suggesting that I might like her work. I did, and apparently a lot of other people do, too. Book four of the Gardella Vampire Chronicles, When Twilight Burns will be released on Tuesday, August 5th. While you wait for it, please enjoy this interview with the author, who talks about Regency England, Byron, and Buffy.

Please tell our readers a bit about yourself, and your background.

I’d been writing for as long as I can remember - from grade school on through middle and high school and college. I wrote eight complete novels before I sold my ninth book, The Rest Falls Away, to a division of Penguin.

That book, the first of the Gardella Vampire Chronicles, was released in January 2007. Since then, four books in the series have been published, and the fifth and final book will come out next March.

Before I was able to write full-time, I worked in sales and marketing for a variety of companies, including some health care corporations, two start-up companies, and I even owned my own business. I have three children and live with them and my husband in Michigan.

Most writers are also avid readers. Is there a favorite book or author that you encountered as a child? What are you reading now?

I was indeed a voracious reader as a child, and I could give you quite a list of my favorite books! However, here are just a few of the ones I read and reread: Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Sue Barton, the Three Investigators, the Willard Price Adventure books, The Little House on the Prairie books, The Mad Scientist’s Club, Step to the Music, by Phyllis A. Whitney, the Narnia Chronicles…oh, I could go on and on!

Right now, I’m trying to resist reading the new Vicky Bliss book by Elizabeth Peters (it’s my all-time favorite series ever) because I have a deadline approaching, and if I start reading it, I won’t be writing.

I just finished reading an advance copy of Robyn Carr’s A Virgin River Christmas, which I loved, and also Into the Storm by Suzanne Brockmann.

Tell us about getting your first book published. Do you consider the Gardella Vampire Chronicles romance, horror, historical, paranormal romance or some other genre? Do you feel that it’s more or less difficult to publish genre fiction?

I had signed with my agent, a very respected, well-known woman who’s been in the business for a long time, in 2003. We worked together for two years almost to the day, with her pitching three other manuscripts of mine before she sold the first Gardella book in a pre-empt, two-book deal.

The Gardella Vampire Chronicles is a series that truly straddles genres. It’s not horror, it’s not strictly romance or suspense, it is historical…but it’s good mixture of all of that. And then some.

New American Library, my publisher, leans heavily romance in the Signet Eclipse line, and that was something that I’d talked about with my editor because I was wondering how they were going to market the books. When I wrote The Rest Falls Away, I didn’t worry about it fitting into a genre. I just wrote the book, and left it up to my agent to market it to the right editors.

But when I spoke to my editor, who does a lot of romance, I asked her what she thought of the ending—which is a decidedly not Romance ending. (Genre expectations for Romance are that the hero and heroine end up happily together, just as in a Mystery, the killer is discovered, and in a Horror novel, the monster is killed.)

In my book, Victoria did not end up happily with her hero at the end of the book. That was a decidedly unromantic ending, and I asked my editor what she thought about it. “I love it. Don’t change it!” she said.

Despite the first book’s stretching of the Romance genre expectations, NAL decided to market the books as Romances because…and this is important….the overall series had the elements of a Romance…it just takes five books to get there. So it’s a romance series, about the journey and character arc of one woman, and the three men who love her. At the end, she realizes who she wants to share the rest of her life with, and the series does end happily.

But there’s a lot of fun and darkness along the way.

I know you blog, but did you keep a diary or journal as a child? Do you still?

I do blog, and I enjoy it. Because writing is a solitary occupation, and I do miss those water-cooler or lunchroom chats, I’ve begun to use my blog as a way to do the same sort of thing. The topics I write about are the sorts of things I’d chat with coworkers or friends about, and so now I do it online with other friends and fans.

I did keep a diary through high school and college, and I still have all six volumes. One day, I’ll let my daughters read them.

Many women struggle to balance their creative needs with the rest of their lives. How do you do it? Can you walk us through a day in your life?

Before I sold my first book and was able to write full-time, I wrote almost every night after my children went to bed; eg, 9-11 or so. I missed a lot of TV! But that was how I managed my time then.

Now, all of my children are in school full-time, and although one would think that I’d be writing all day while they’re in school…one would be wrong. It seems that I’ve fairly trained myself to be an evening writer, so I do most of my raw, new writing after 7 pm. Usually, I actually leave the house to write because there are just too many distractions here.

I often go to a coffee shop or restaurant (preferably one without free Internet) and write until I get my page/word count quota done for the day.

During the day, I usually spend the morning getting the kids off to school, writing my blog, answering email, running errands, thinking about what I’m going to work on that day. I have lunch, often with a book, and then start to write in the afternoon. But, really, the muse doesn’t usually kick in until later in the day….juuuust about the time the kids get home from school.

Summer has been harder, but they are now old enough to do much for themselves. And they understand when I say that “Mom’s writing. Do not bother me unless the house is on fire, you’re bleeding, or someone stopped breathing.” (I borrowed that from Nora Roberts.)

And most of the time, they’re delighted to leave me alone—because that means that I’m not telling them to turn off the TV or video games. They know they can do that without being interrupted!

My youngest has taken to making little signs that hang on the stairs leading to my office: Do Not Bother Me Until X Time. (PS I still love you.)

This book (When Twilight Burns) is number four of five. Did you plan a series when you began the first one, with an end in mind, or did it just sort of evolve? How do you sustain a plot over five books?

When I wrote the first book, I knew I wanted it to be a series. It became clear to me very quickly that Victoria’s story could not be told in one book. By the time I’d finished it, and was working on the second, I decided it would take five books to really tell the story. So from the second book forward, I knew where I was going in the sense that I had four more books to flesh out the story and let the characters wrap up.

The plot that arcs over the five books is really that of Victoria’s growth as a woman and as a vampire hunter—accepting her duty, and finding out who she is and what she’s capable of. What’s important to her.

Until she does that, and is comfortable with herself, she isn’t ready to commit to someone for the rest of her life—or to really settle into her role. At the heart, the books are one long romance novel, and so her relationships with the men in her life, and her own character growth are what drive the arching plot. I always had a feel for that from early on.

It was the Big Bad or the task they have to accomplish in each book that was something I had to work on…and in the scheme of things, that part is less important than the character growth. Those elements drove the character’s stories, and set them up so we could see their true characters…but that wasn’t nearly as important as what the characters did and how they acted.

Your novels use some very specific terms – vis bulla, Venator – are these made up terms or are they found in real history? How much of your time is taken up by researching the Regency period, as opposed to creating plotlines, or do you find the period and the plot to be intertwined?

The terms specific to the Gardellas, like vis bulla and Venator, are my own creations, and they’re all derived from Latin.

The background for the books started with research mostly about Regency Era England, and vampire lore and mythology, when I wrote the first book. But as the series developed and I became more comfortable with the time period, my research became much more specific.

For example, in Rises the Night, the second book in the series, I researched Lord Byron and his time living in Venice, because my heroine meets him in Venice. I also was intrigued by the fact that Dr. John Polidori, who wrote The Vampyre (which was the predecessor to today’s vampire fiction with the first sort of gentleman vampire), died a mysterious death. So I wove that into the story.

For the third book, The Bleeding Dusk, I spent time researching Rome in the 19th century. I learned about a mysterious Door of Alchemy, a real door that still exists today, and used its legend as the basis for Victoria’s adventures in Rome.

In When Twilight Burns, Victoria heads back to England, and I found myself fascinated by the underground (literal and figurative) waste recycling industry in 19th century London–so of course I had to send Victoria into the infamous London sewers. And there was also the fact that the Prince Regent, who was crowned during this book, refused to allow his wife to attend the coronation–and that she was literally refused admittance to Westminster Abbey. That event figured in my book as well, with a paranormal twist.

Finally, for the last Victoria Gardella book, As Shadows Fade [due out in early 2009], I sent my characters to Prague and I had a wonderful time researching that city.

Let’s talk about the leading men in this series. Max Pesaro and Sebastian Vioget are very different, but your heroine is obviously torn between the two. Are either of them based on real people (modern or historic)? Do you prefer one over the other?

I love both of the leading men. I’ve always known which one is Victoria’s soulmate, and that’s never changed since the first book. Both Sebastian and Max have elements of my husband!

I think that on the surface, Sebastian is the quintessential playboy, and Max is the stereotypical brooding hero…yet they both have many layers. And they both change, as well. The books are almost as much about them and their own character arc as it is about Victoria.

They treat her differently, they each want something different from her, and they go about getting it in very different ways.

The scenes where they’re interacting with Victoria are some of the most challenging scenes I’ve had to write—because they speak differently and act differently; so much so that I often have to stop and think—how would the other one react….just to make sure I’m not falling into mushy characterization.

And now let’s focus on your heroine, Lady Victoria Gardella Grantworth de Lacy. Readers of a certain age will no doubt see shades of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in her, but she’s very much her own person. Does the inevitable comparison concern you?

The comparison doesn’t worry me - I’ve done it myself, when trying to explain to someone in ten seconds or less about my books. The thing is, there are elements that are similar, and that doesn’t bother me. Because….there is so much more that’s different aside of the obvious setting.

First of all, Victoria isn’t a reluctant hero like Buffy is. She fairly embraces her role as a vampire slayer…perhaps too easily, and that causes her problems later on. And there are no Spike or Angel characters - Victoria doesn’t fall for a vampire. In my books, the vampires are the bad guys. Period. There are no gray areas. At least, so far.

Also, Victoria’s not the only vampire slayer in my mythology. So she’s not the only one with the weight of the world on her shoulders. (It always bothered me that there was only one Slayer in Whedon’s world, because while Buffy’s taking care of Sunnydale, I worried about what was happening everywhere else in the world.)

Victoria often seems more confined by the period and society in which she lives than by her vampire hunting duties. Do you see her as a feminist character?

The way I look at Victoria is that she has freedoms that women of her time couldn’t even imagine - she’s stronger than any man, she’s fast and heals quickly, and she has a job to do. A real duty. That element makes her different from anyone else, and so she has the freedom to act and to think differently.

I don’t know that I consider that feminism as much as adaptation. If I had, say, the ability to become invisible—a skill completely unimaginable to people in my world—I’d certainly act differently than any other woman—or man—that I know. The freedom, the responsibility, would allow me to do that. It’s not a gender-specific thing. It’s a character element.

Do you have a favorite scene or passage in When Twilight Burns?

I definitely do. It’s the chapter where Victoria and Company attend a masquerade ball. I had so much fun with the characters in that scene. And there’s another one too, “…wherein a taut string snaps.”

What’s next for Colleen Gleason?

The final book about Victoria Gardella will be out in March. I currently have another project under way (more on that in the future), and am discussing an idea with my publisher for another Gardella mini-series. More on that, too, when I have details.

Right now, I’m basking in the glow of finishing the fifth book and typing The End with a measure of satisfaction…and sadness. I’m really going to miss these characters.

Melissa A. Bartell earns her living by writing articles for an SEO marketing firm, and dabbles in essays and fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Senior Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page. You can find her at her blog as well as other places here and there.

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