Welcome Guest Blogger Stacia Kane

It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.


In the past several years, I have learned more about certain aspects of life and the world we live in than I have ever wanted to know. I’ve spent hours, for example, reading about internal parasites. About how to clean your heroin works. About whether gout looks like a fleshy lump or a reddish boil.

I’ve studied medieval love poetry and medieval forms of birth control, including how to make condoms from intestines. I’ve discovered exactly how the bubonic plague affects the human body. I’ve learned that visiting mental institutions to gape at the inmates was considered a really good time for a lot of people in the past.

Why have I done all of this?

Research.

It’s amazing where these little flights of fancy can take me. One minute I’m looking up a quick factoid, the next I’m off on a tangent, trying to find out exactly what color tablecloths might have been used at a medieval banquet (white) and ending up reading transcripts of correspondence between a Countess and a priest in the twelfth century.

It’s maddening, it really is. You wonder why it takes us so long to write a book? It’s not because the words just don’t come (well, okay, it is a lot of the time.) It’s because writers are an insatiably curious bunch. We cannot resist these little journeys down the alleys of the internet, or spending time leafing through some filthy pamphlet on techniques for making cabinets that we found at a garage sale for a nickel.

I shudder to think what someone might infer from my internet search history. Probably that I’m a disease-riddled junkie with an insatiable desire to see people chained to walls, and that I am currently planning a world tour of volcanoes.

But I’m not, I promise. I’m just a writer, cursed with being interested in everything, no matter how boring, disgusting, archaic, or lame.

Have pity on me, please. I can’t help myself.





Fantastic Fives Interview





Five words and/or phrases that describe you:

Busy.


Short.


Grumpy.


Impatient.


Opinionated.

Five people and or things that inspire you:

Hmm. All kinds of people and things inspire me.


Lance Armstrong.


JK Rowling (despite the latest legal silliness.)


My family, of course.


Abandoned buildings--I love them and they make me sad.


My friends.

Five of your favorite authors:
Here's five I don't know personally:

Neil Gaiman.


Barbara Michaels.


Herman Wouk.


Jeph Loeb.


Marian Keyes.

Describe five of your heroes/heroines through your eyes:


Megan from Personal Demons is a psychic and a psychological counselor, smart but insecure. She's always been an outsider and figures at thirty-one she always will be. She's clever and can be funny but rarely gets the chance, and she can be prickly, especially if she's pushed too far. She doesn't tend to let people get close to her, figuring they'll disappoint her eventually, and her job can take a lot out of her emotionally at times but she does it because it's a way to interact with people without giving up too much of herself.

Greyson from Personal Demons is a demon, and a child of privilege. He grew up wealthy in Georgetown and has always managed to use his charm and his edgy looks to get just about anything. He's very self-focused and ambitious, and will do whatever it takes to get what he wants--he's always looking for an angle. He also keeps people at a distance, preferring to let people see only what he wants them to see, and he keeps his own feelings well under wraps. On the other side of that, though, he's extremely generous when he wants to be because he believes the people he cares about deserve the very best, and will risk anything for them.

Julian from Blood Will Tell (a December Quinn book) is a vampire, very suave and wealthy, with a dominant streak and a good sense of humor. He sees life as something to be enjoyed, and is very loyal. He takes care of people, and doesn't mind the responsibility, but it's also made him a little too used to having his orders obeyed without question.

Cecelia from Blood Will Tell is a scientist who loves her work. It's very important to her and she really devotes herself to it. She's always been a science geek and has trouble seeing herself as anything other than the girl who hangs out with the geeks in the corner talking about Batman. But she's also at least marginally aware that she's attractive, and won't take any crap from Julian.

Yelina from Day of the Dead (also December Quinn) grew up in a traditional Cuban household in Miami. She's an accountant who's had a huge crush on her boss for years, but is convinced he wouldn't be interested in a girl who still lives with her parents and likes sweets a little too much--she's very self-effacing. But she's very brave, too, with a quirky sense of humor and an openness that draws people to her. Yelina is one of my favorite heroines, actually, simply because she's so pragmatic and proud--she refuses to settle for anything except a real man who loves her beyond reason.

Five reasons to read your books:



Well, I need the money, ha ha.


I think they're fun books, a good way to spend a few hours.


They're sexy.


They're interesting. (I feel like a used-car salesman.)


The feedback I've gotten on them has been good, so I guess other people enjoy them. Can you tell I'm really uncomfortable with self-promo?



-Stacia Kane

http://www.staciakane.com/



Extra!Extra! Check Stacia's blog http://stacia-kane.livejournal.com/ tomorrow, contest info will be announced.