Silk & Shadows

Accused by Booklist of writing “prose so steamy that it fogs one’s reading glasses,” Diane Whiteside is one of the reigning queens of hot romance. Her books—historical and paranormal—are also really great adventures: the wild west, river boat gamblers, and vampires! And who doesn’t love a book where an event at a SciFi convention can end the world? The lady’s bookshelf is nothing if not versatile.

Diane has kindly agreed to do an interview for us and S&S, and she’d like to give away one copy of CAPTIVE DESIRES and CAPTIVE DREAMS to a commenter. This contest will stay open until November 19.

PS, her website has a lot of wonderful book trailers. Do check it out.

Hi, Sharon! Thank you for inviting me to join you and your friends here at Silk and Shadows.

1. Tell us about your various series.

My Texas vampire series centers on Don Rafael, a 700 year old vampire, who was once a medieval Spanish knight and now leads all vampires in Texas and Oklahoma. A bitter war, rooted in centuries old betrayal, breaks out between him and Madame Hélène, the New Orleans vampire ruler. Into this walks Grania O’Malley, a very mortal veterinarian who shocks Don Rafael by possessing a two-way psychic link with him. She’s either his doom or his salvation – and he’s terrified to find out. Whatever happens to them will also affect the lives and happiness of every other vampire in his realm.

There are three books in the core trilogy – BOND OF BLOOD, BOND OF FIRE, and BOND OF DARKNESS. Each one has a core romance centering on a different couple. But the contemporary timeframe, which focuses on the present-day war, overlaps between the different books.

There’s also THE HUNTER’S PREY, a collection of short stories, which [mostly] occur before BOND OF BLOOD, “Red Skies at Night” (a standalone novella in the anthology UNLEASHED), and “Crimson Kisses” (a standalone short story in the anthology MAMMOTH BOOK OF VAMPIRE ROMANCE 2).

My Torhtremer series is based on two different books, CAPTIVE DREAMS and CAPTIVE DESIRES. (Some people call them the CAPTIVE books.) Two authors each find out that the heroes they thought only lived between the pages of epic fantasy novels are actually very real when they arrive on Earth. Torhtremer is based on Silk Road countries and is full of magic, dragons, and ancient kingdoms.

Mykhayl, CAPTIVE DREAMS’ hero, became Torhtremer’s High King after a long and bloody civil war. Only Corinne, the author who “created” the six Torhtremer novels, can cure the sterility she caused by having an ice serpent bite him during the final battle and give him the son he needs to stop his great enemy from returning. Unfortunately, his great enemy isn’t about to wait that long.

The Devils are a purely historical series, centered on an Irish-American family and the freighting empire they and their friends build amid the dangerous worlds of 1870’s America and 1900 Europe. THE IRISH DEVIL, the first book, is about William Donovan, the dynasty founder, who fights a corrupt silver mine owner for his true love during the Apache Wars’ worst days. THE RIVER DEVIL is a Missouri River steamboat pilot who must protect a young riverboat gambler (actually a runaway heiress) from her greedy fiancé and his past’s worst nightmares. THE SOUTHERN DEVIL follows two former lovers, who make a temporary alliance while racing to find buried Spanish treasure in the high Colorado Rockies. THE NORTHERN DEVIL sees a transcontinental railroad race in the dead of winter to save one man’s life, while a man who’d tear his arm off to protect his wife fights to save his unborn child’s life without destroying his wife’s love. KISSES LIKE A DEVIL pits a female student radical in 1900 Europe, who trusts no man and no country’s laws, against a handsome young American veteran, with the world’s most valuable secret weapon at stake.

2. Where does your current release, Captive Desires, fit in?

CAPTIVE DESIRES is the sequel to CAPTIVE DREAMS and the second in my Torhtremer series. It’s about Alekhsiy, the younger brother of Mykhayl, CAPTIVE DREAMS’ hero. He comes to one of Earth’s SF conventions to stop a new warrior from crossing the void to destroy Torhtremer. He doesn’t realize that Danae, the young dancer who saved his life dozens of times, is the only sorceress who can open the gate back to Torhtremer for his enemy – or him.

Alekhsiy has spent his life fighting far too many battles and making far too many bitter decisions. Danae was the only sure source of joy in his world. Must he make the most bitter choice of all and kill her, in order to save his world?

3. You have both very strong heroes and heroines. How do you balance their strengths so that one doesn’t overwhelm the other?

The hero almost always comes to me first, when I build a story. I like alpha males and I like to torture them. (So sue me.)

My acid test for the heroine is whether she is the hero’s nightmare – and his salvation. That makes her his equal, strength-wise. She can also be seen as his antagonist in some ways, for plotting purposes.

4. What do you feel makes your worlds unique?

I believe in making my stories’ worlds as realistic as possible and I love to do research. It’s easy for me, even fun, to do the work to make that happen, whether it’s pulling together tons of research or figuring out all the delicate little details of writing craft to sneak the worldbuilding into the story.

I also like to put in tactile details about the world. What does it smell like? Taste like? What do the surfaces feel like? There’s so much more to a new world than sight and sound.

5. What makes an interesting antagonist? Tell us about the best one you’ve written.

I’m usually not much interested in an antagonist who can be redeemed. I also believe he must be more powerful than the hero (and heroine combined, if this is a romance). It takes a lot of threat to sustain conflict throughout a book and my bad guys generally need both of these factors to pull that off. On the other hand, I believe the villain is always the hero of his own story. I may not be very interested in reading all of his book, which is why I don’t always characterize the antagonist as well as I might. But the villain should always have strong motivation and behave logically. Snidely Whiplashes need not apply for this job.

The best antagonist I’ve written is probably Hélène in the Texas vampire trilogy (BOND OF BLOOD, BOND OF FIRE, and BOND OF DARKNESS). All of the trilogy’s antagonists are motivated by love gone totally wrong. I understand them; I can even grieve for what happened to set their feet on these dark paths.

But Hélène? I contentedly loathed that vicious vampire queen when I wrote BOND OF BLOOD. But by the time I finished BOND OF FIRE and truly understood what she’d gone through…Well, I like to think I wouldn’t have made the same choices but I’m no longer quite as sure. Anybody who loves that strongly and then loses their beloved that violently and that suddenly might be entitled to a little mad grief.

Hélène scared me because I was no longer safely separate from my villains. I could no longer predict what kind of blackguards I’d write.

6. What do you have planned next? Are we going to see more of the Texas vampires?

My next book is THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS, the next volume in the Devil series, which will be published in June 2010. Gareth Lowell and Portia Townsend, the hero and heroine, finally get their story after being separately introduced in previous books and meeting each other in THE NORTHERN DEVIL. In 1887 Constantinople, only Gareth, a man who destroyed all of her childhood dreams, can help Portia save an empire – and stay alive.

I have a proposal to continue the Texas vampire series sitting on my editor’s desk. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she accepts it and lets me write more about them.

7. If you were to spend an afternoon with any of your characters, who would it be and what would you do?

I would enjoy a very leisurely, sensual, Latin style afternoon with Don Rafael, exploring the delights of the siesta. There would be beautiful guitar music, some of it provided by him, of course! Some tango dancing with him, during which my skill level would miraculously increase. And need I mention the lovemaking, or would that be too much information?

I’d like to invite everyone to visit me at my website. They can find out more about my books, read lots of excerpts, or sign up for my newsletter where I chat about my latest news and send out special, members-only excerpts.

Thanks again for having me here –
Diane
www.DianeWhiteside.com