Friday, December 5, 2014

Talking with Amelia Faulkner and a Giveaway

Welcome Amelia Faulkner today to the Reading Nook blog. I am very excited because this sounds like one wildly fun book to read. Remember to enter the giveaway at the end of the post.

Could you please tell us about your latest book?
Hi Dawn, of course! This is my first novel, but it’s the first part of a series. Blind Man’s Wolf an M/M Paranormal Romance set in London, England, and introduces us to Ellis and Randall.
Ellis is an art dealer who owns his own gallery in Mayfair. He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in his Twenties and by the time he became a vampire he had become almost entirely night-blind, and suffers severe tunnel vision. Ellis is convinced that his sire was a complete idiot, but we find out that might not have been the whole story.
Randall is a werewolf who freelances as a dog trainer. His pack’s very disparate, and convinced that to remain functional as a pack they need an Omega; and Randall’s it. They aren’t interested whenever he points out to them that there’s no such thing in wild wolf packs, and he’s getting sick of the bullying. He’s very much at the end of his tether where staying with his pack is concerned, but wolf shifters have this terrible habit of losing their tempers around the full moon, and only an Alpha can keep them in line.
Randall meets Ellis when Ellis’ guide dog begins to behave oddly, and soon they get caught up in the beginnings of a far larger scheme…

Do we need to have read your novellas first?
No, not at all. All my books are set within the same world, so if you have read the novellas you’ll already be familiar with the ins and outs of vampires and shifters from the perspectives of those characters.
Blind Man’s Wolf is set in London, as was Kiss of Winter, and we do have a cameo from Kiss of Winter’s Aaron Hughes, but everything you need to know is contained within Blind Man’s Wolf.
If you’ve read Wolf in Geek’s Clothing you will find that Randall’s experience of shifter life is very different from Sauri’s. Sauri comes from a place – Washington State – where there are still vast tracts of mountains and forests where humanity hasn’t taken over, and so his pack still live the way that shifters have done for thousands of years. Randall’s life is essentially the result of a decision like Sauri’s – to move into a human city and blend in – taken by wolf shifters six hundred years ago, while humans were hell-bent on exterminating the entire wolf population of England.

What is your writing process?
Oh, gosh. I sit and stare at a blank screen quite a lot!
The very first thing which comes to me is the kernel of an idea for a character. I work on it a little, poke it and prod it, until the personality is fleshed out a little better, and then I wonder what kind of person it would take to breathe life into him.
From there on in, both characters are developed side by side. I write their backgrounds, I work out what it is they do and don’t like, figure out who they are as people and why they’ve made the choices in life which brought them to where they are today, and then I begin an outline by thinking “What does it take to make them meet?”
From there comes the outline, driven entirely by what each character does, how they feel, what they think, and the way they react to one-another and the things which occur within the story.
I’m very character-driven. I love stories which are moved forward by the characters’ actions and choices rather than by plot; to me the characters create the plot.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever Googled in the name of research?
Ahem. Don’t look at me like that. I’m probably on a list somewhere, but I’ve certainly Googled questions such as:
                Mechanism for death by drowning
                Best place to stab someone
                Tensile strength of mahogany
That’s normal, right?
As for those questions (you naughty perv!) I don’t Google those. I just call friends and ask outright ;)



 Now about Blind Man's Wolf....

A night-blind vampire. A werewolf with lousy self-confidence. And a whole hell of a lot of danger…

Tooth & Claw, Book 1.

Ellis O’Neill is an art dealer with too many problems: his eyesight has deteriorated to the point of night-blindness; he’s estranged from his family, to whom he owes a considerable sum of money; and his guide dog went right off him the night Ellis died. Without his dog, Ellis is trapped in a life bouncing between home and work, dependent on his personal assistant.

Werewolf Randall Carter has problems of his own. He loves his pack, he really does, but as their Omega he’s always the one to bear the brunt of their rage. It’s a role he can’t avoid, and Randall isn’t sure he can take it for much longer, so he buries himself in his day job. Randall’s the best dog trainer in the city, and when he’s offered a client who needs him to work evenings he’d be a fool to turn it down.

Soon Randall is falling for someone he should despise. Everything about the undead is anathema to his kind, but Ellis is exactly the kind of guy Randall would want to ask out on a date – if he were still breathing. 
Worse, they may not have too long to figure their feelings out. Someone or something is gunning for Ellis and anyone else who gets in the way; they won’t rest until the vampire is destroyed.

Buy Links:

Excerpt:
What’s to stop you taking Randall out? You like him, he likes you. Just one date. Live a little.”
“And what happens when he sits up in bed one morning and throws the curtains open?”
“Eh.” Jay sat again. “Obviously you don’t go straight from date to bed, dear. I know you’ve been off the scene a while, but have some restraint. You just take it easy, and if it looks like it’s going somewhere tell him. Who knows? Maybe you could find someone who’d be willing to let you, you know.” Jay’s tone turned dirty. “Suck on more than just his swizzle-stick.”
Ellis snorted. “Pervert.”
“You could be partners in every sense,” Jay crowed with glee.
“Is this it? Your ultimate goal? Some homoerotic vampire sex fantasy?”
Jay sniggered. “It’d be hot.”
“God, where the hell did I find you?” Ellis shook his head, unable to keep the smile from his lips. “Anyway, it’s all pointless. It wouldn’t work. What happens longer term, when he gets to grow old and I don’t?”
“Well, do you know whether you’re actually going to live forever and never grow old and all that stuff?”
Ellis tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, and he leaned back. “Well, no. Jonas said the Council of Elders were all, well, Elders, but-”
“-But he was full of shit,” Jay stated. “Well maybe you should find out. You can’t just carry on not knowing anything. There’s got to be enough of them out there to need a Council in the first place.”
“And that Council has rules against us letting people find out what we are. You could be in serious danger if they ever work out you know even half the things I’ve told you.” Ellis sighed and brushed hair away from his forehead.
“My lips are sealed, I promise you. I don’t want to get eaten. Well, not like that.”
“And I don’t want you to get eaten. Not like that.” Ellis frowned.

About the author

Amelia Faulkner was born in the rolling green countryside of Oxfordshire, and moved to London once she was mostly grown up. She has a degree in Computer Science, and spent quite a long time working with computers until her childhood love of writing could no longer be ignored.

Since then she has written for corporate clients and personal pleasure, and finally stepped away from office-bound working in 2011 to freelance from home.

Amelia is also a keen photographer and film-goer, and resides in the city (not the City) with her husband. She is notoriously camera-shy, so please enjoy this picture of her cat!



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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Amelia! I'm so glad she got interviewed, this book is so good.

Serena S. said...

I like several old horror movies but some time ago I watched An American Werewolf in London and it was pretty good.

ShirleyAnn said...

I don't really watch horror films the last really frighting movie I watch was "Aliens" Oh god never again had bad dreams for ages.

ShirleyAnn(at)speakman40(dot)freeserve(dot)co(dot)uk

Unknown said...

I don't watch horror movies either.

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