Hey! I'm posting from Hawaii, where there doesn't happen to be eight inches of snow. Hooray! (*ducks*) I'm also on a borrowed laptop with resort wireless internet. I can't seem to fix the font issues below and the more I try, the more (and louder) I cuss. So forgive me!
Lucienne Diver answered a few questions for me about herself and her lastest novel, Fangtastic! This series has received some wonderful praise, including this from Kirkus Reviews:
“As ever, Gina's feisty, funny narration carries the day. Gina never fails to please, as she strides down the runway of afterlife with just the right mix of humor, make-up advice, youthful lust that never crosses the line and a kung-fu style all her own. This one doesn’t miss a beat.” —Kirkus Reviews
And now for the interview!
1. At age eight, what did you want to be when you grew up? And at age eighteen? And while you’re at it, what about at age twenty-eight?
I’m not sure what I wanted to be at eight. Did I still want to be a cryptozoologist? Yeah, I think I did. I wanted to discover some truth behind the Loch Ness Monster, chupacabra, big foot and all those legends. I wanted them to be real, for the world to be bigger than it seemed so that there were still secrets to be revealed. I don’t think that’s changed. At eighteen, I couldn’t quite believe in Nessie any more. I wanted to be an anthropologist, learning about ancient cultures, because piecing things together through artifacts and linguistics is like gathering clues to a mystery, like solving for secrets. I also wanted to be a writer, which is why my college degree shows double majors. And twenty-eight…you mean at my (*cough*) current age? Now I write books with elements of all of the above…magic and mystery, secrets and solutions. I describe my Vamped series as Legally Blond meets Buffy. You’ve got a snarky, fanged, fashion-conscious protagonist against sometimes pretty dark things that she’s got to get to the bottom of. I love the juxtaposition of light and dark.
2. Which Breakfast-Club-style label would have best fit your teenage self?
If you could mesh brain and drama geek together, that would be me in a nutshell. Something like a Gleek, only different.
3. Without giving away too much from your newest book, which character or scene from it are you the most pleased to have created, and why?
I think some of my favorite parts are my heroine’s snarks about Selene, who’s one of the powerful vampires behind the club where the lifestylers hang out in Fangtastic:
Behind me came a sound, like another panel sliding aside. I couldn’t help but swing around toward it, even though I didn’t really want to turn my back on Very Scary. A woman and two men stood in the doorway created, but my eyes were on her and her golf-pencil skirt. Ever seen a golf pencil? One-third the regular size, good for scoring. The woman exuded a sense of power the two with her lacked. Her hair was a wavy, glossy black, her skin like faded mahogany. Her nose was pierced with a very impressive diamond stud, and her eyes were ice-cold and dark as obsidian.
“Selene, would you please secure our guest?” Very Scary asked. “I need to confer with the council.”
4. Which are your favorite movies to watch again and again?
I’m lucky if I find time to watch films once, let alone over and over, but I adore Alfred Hitchcock, so just about anything he’s directed that doesn’t star Tippy Hedren I’m on board for. I’m also a huge fan of serio-comic films like Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, As Good as it Gets, Big Fish, Johnny Dangerously, Clueless, Legally Blond, Miss Congeniality…. Then again, I love musicals like Mamma Mia and Chicago. I own every season of Buffy.
5. And, now, the most important question of all: Beatles or Elvis? Please support your answer. ;-)
The Beatles. There’s no contest. With the exception of “In the Ghetto,” which makes me cry every time I hear it, I have to admit that I’ve never had much use for the King…except when he appears as Bubba in Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books. But the Beatles…I love them. How can I not love the group that gave us “Paperback Writer”?
Author bio:
Lucienne Diver is the author of the popular Vamped series of young adult novels (think Clueless meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer). School Library Journal calls the first book, “a lighthearted, action-packed, vampire romance story following in the vein of Julie Kenner’s “Good Ghouls” (Berkley), Marlene Perez’s “Dead” (Harcourt), and Rachel Caine’s “The Morganville Vampires” (Signet) series.” VOYA has suggested that the books “will attract even reluctant readers.”
Her short stories have been included in the Strip-Mauled and Fangs for the Mammaries anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books), and one of her essays appears in the anthology Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperTeen).