I’ve known about Nancy Kilpatrick’s work since the earliest days of Borderlands Books. We started to correspond back in the Morbid Curiosity days, when I had the honor to reprint her story about a haunted doll in issue #5. She also featured the magazine in her amazing Goth Bible.

Award-winning author and editor Nancy Kilpatrick has published 21 novels, over 220 short stories, and 6 collections, and has edited 15 anthologies. She wrote the nonfiction book The goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined, the graphic novel Nancy Kilpatrick’s Vampyre Theater, and has contributed scripts to several comics and graphic anthologies. Her most recent project is the six-book novel series Thrones of Blood. Titles available now in print and ebook: Revenge of the Vampir King; Sacrifice of the Hybrid Princess; (out soon) Abduction of Two Rulers.

I’m really excited to interview you about your new vampire series. Did something in the real world inspire the Thrones of Blood books?  

Not that I’m aware of. I started this series 10+ years before book 1 (Revenge of the Vampir King) came out. I was in Florida alone one February for one whole month. Believe me, getting away from Montreal’s frigid winters was a reminder that a) I still had a brain; and b) I could actually sit in the shade and write outdoors, or with a window open. And that’s what I did in 2006. I wrote 80% of the first book, 60% of books 2 and 3, and 45% of book 4 & 5. Over the decade that followed I revised madly and strengthened the connections of the two overarching series plots. Maybe the sound of surf and a temperate climate lured me right back into vampires, which I’d written about before–well, I am allergic to direct sunshine.

What is your favorite scene in the series?

It would be difficult to pick a favorite scene in any of the books. When the dynamic between characters crackles always is interesting to write. The sexual tension and love/hate between characters is obvious, but I also love a lot of other interactions, for example, Wolfsbane and his twin sister, Hemlock. And the character Belladonna, who is wise, clever, fearless, cynical and funny, or so I’ve tried to fashion her, so when any character interacts with her, that’s a joy to write.

What was your writing process like as you wrote the books?

Once I returned from Florida, I worked a little on the books now and then because other work impinged. During those years, I edited or co-edited 6 anthologies and put out a collection of stories, plus wrote a whole lot of stories for anthologies. Besides that, I teach writing for a college’s Distance Ed program. That’s just the tip of the work iceberg. What I found with this series is that I worked differently. Not sequentially. I’d work on the book that caught my interest that day. Each book features new characters that ‘star’ in their story, but other characters appear as well, since this is a world and the larger story is ongoing. It was really fun to work in a new way, just by feel, whichever book I felt like working on that day. No stress because I had no plans to publish these and referred to them as The Unpublishables.

What was the best thing that happened during your promotion of the series?

One of the delightful things that recurs is how people on the internet and face to face at shows respond to the covers. My series is vampire novels for adults, not YA. Between the covers readers will find sex, violence, (sometimes a combo), treason, treachery, love, hate, jealousy, betrayal, misunderstanding, life, death, undeath, murder, you name it. These are vampires so not particularly PC. I think the gorgeous covers express the mature subject matter very well while presenting hot vampires. LOL The covers were designed by the very talented Istvan Kadar who, by the way, is from Transylvania, so he knows his vampires! Check him out at https://www.facebook.com/istvankadarphotography/

What do you have planned next?

Book 3 is about to come out so I’ll be working on book 4. I’ve committed to 2 stories for anthologies, and have a co-editing project to pursue. I also have a stand-alone SF novel I want to finish. SF isn’t a genre I’ve written much in so it’s taken me a couple of years to figure out how to make the ending work for SF fans who would launch an interstellar attack if it was implausible. I’ve consulted with a couple of space experts to make sure I’m on the right track.

This is the first time the cover of 3 has been shown.

The book descriptions:

Volume 1 – Revenge of the Vampir King – Moarte is king of the vampirii, creatures not prone to community or rule, but they have banded together out of necessity. He was recently a prisoner of the Sapiens King, whose daughter Valada tortured him, believing he murdered her mother. Moarte is bent on revenge and if he can’t get to the father, he will take it out on the daughter–now his prisoner–who he hates just as much. But a plan develops where he realizes he can use Valada to get to her father, the Sapiens King. The plan convolutes and backfires in many ways.

Volume 2 – Sacrifice of the Hybrid Princess – Part human, part vampir, the beautiful, stubborn, angry Princess Serene is a tormented hybrid. When her overprotective parents insist on an arranged marriage, visions of a grim future in a loveless pairing with the cold and dominating Wolfsbane drive Princess Serene into a desperate escape. Instead of freedom, she rushes headlong into the clutches of a human demon whose cruelty and violence threaten to destroy her and her world. The entire vampirii nation is helpless to rescue her, and war becomes a certainty. Rebellion will lead to many deaths, including those she loves. But to endure brutality until she can escape might be beyond her abilities.

Volume 3 – Abduction of Two Rulers – A conference between two species ends in disaster when Sapiens Queen Blanka and the Vampir King Thanatos are treacherously seized and imprisoned in a dungeon. War erupts as their jailers–an ancient vampir and a traitorous Sapiens usurper–each plot to reign over all of their own species. Desperate to end the conflict, the two prisoners escape, but en route to his stronghold, Thanatos disappears. His vampir allies want to find him, but attack is imminent, making defense the priority. Blanka knows the odds are against her surviving an all-powerful, ancient being whose goal is destruction but she is determined to rescue Thanatos. The question that tortures her is: does he still exist?

How to Follow Nancy:

Website: nancykilpatrick.com

Facebook: nancy.kilpatrick.31

Twitter: @nancykwriter

Occasional Blog: http://nancykilpatrickwriter.blogspot.ca/

Instagram: nancykilpatrickauthor/

Amazon author Page: amazon.com/author/www.nancykilpatrick.com