Vampires for Valentines Giveaway Hop & Interview with Susan Squires

Interview with Susan Squires

Kayla: Hello Susan! Thank you for stopping by Simply Kayla’s Book Reviews today! I am excited to hear more about your book One with the Darkness, and the inside process of your finishing this book. Could you tell me a little about how you started writing this book, and an overview of One with the Darkness?

Susan: ONE WITH THE DARKNESS is part of my Companion Vampire series which started with THE COMPANION. Vampirism is a disease, an infection of a parasite in the blood. The parasite gives its host unusual powers and eternal life, but requires he or she drink human blood in exchange. Makes for lots of tortured heroes and heroines.

In this story, a beautiful Italian vampire goes back in time to the Roman Empire to correct a terrible mistake. She watched the barbarian slave who was her lover age and die because vampire society forbids making new vampires. Of course, once she arrives, things aren’t that easy. Since two versions of herself can’t exist in one time, she merges into the Donnatella of ancient Rome and no longer remembers her purpose in coming.  And then there’s the fact that she was one of the chief conspirators in a plot to kill the Emperor Caligula and save Rome from his cruelty. With Caligula closing in on her, and his sisters threatening to confiscate her slave lover, can she decide to live her life differently than she did once before? And if she does, how will that change history?

Kayla: How did the idea of One with the Darkness come to you? 

Susan: The origin of this book was actually fairly unusual for me. I had finished ONE WITH THE SHADOWS, and I really liked one character in it--the Italian Countess vampire who is actually the hero’s mother. She stole every scene she was in. And she had lived a life of regret when Jergan, her one true love, aged and died as she did not.

While I was wondering what to do for my next book, I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Characters don’t come alive like that every day. So I decided to write her story.  I thought, why not give her a chance to go back and correct the mistake she made? She was a prime driver of the Renaissance, so she would have known Leonardo DaVinci. I had him make her a time machine, and leave it under one of the famous churches in Rome for her to find just after the close of ONE WITH THE SHADOWS in the nineteenth century.

Kayla: In this book Donnatella ends up going back in time. If you could go back in time, would you change anything about your life?

Susan: Actually, I wouldn’t change much. The kind of things you want to change most probably aren’t in your power to change anyway. For instance, my mother died at age 60 of colon cancer and I would have liked to have more time with her, but my going back in time probably wouldn’t have changed that outcome. So you have to concentrate on your own actions. I suppose I would like to change the fact that I let myself be intimidated by the business of writing, and stopped writing and trying to get published for a while. When I finally went back to my passion, I had let years lapse. I should have been more persistent earlier. 

Kayla: Did you end up making any changes to this book that were unexpected?

Susan: When I suddenly realized I had to deal with Donnatella already living in the past when the modern Countess comes back to Rome, and I decided to have them merge into one being, it changed the whole tenor of the book. Now the Donnatella from the future has to fight to make her wishes and thoughts known in the woman she once was. It was like writing two characters in one. That was really fun.

Kayla: Donnatella is madly in love with Jergan but decides not to make him a vampire because it’s against the law, if you would have been Donnatella what would you have done concerning Jergan (your one true love)?

Susan: Damn the laws of vampire society. I would have made him vampire. But even as I say that, its more complicated than just disobeying the law. You have to have a lot of faith in love to believe it can last, not just a lifetime, but forever, since vampires have eternal life. I think she was as much afraid of love dying as she was of vampire law. I like to think I have that kind of courage, and that belief in love.

Kayla: Which character in this book did you have the most fun writing about, and why?

Susan: Well, I loved writing the two versions of Donnatella in one body. But I also loved writing Jergan, her barbarian slave. He’s very alpha. He is NOT happy about being a slave in Rome, and he’s pretty difficult. He vows to be the worst investment she’s ever made. He only comes to respect and love Donatella over time. I enjoyed writing that very reluctant transition. 

Kayla: Do you have any upcoming projects? If so, when can we expect to be seeing them?

Susan: I am really excited about my next series, CHILDREN OF MERLIN. Merlin wanted nothing more than to pass his magic on to the next generations, but his powers were dissipated until they were lost over time. Now the magic is gathering again. The Tremaine family has a shred of Merlin’s DNA. As each of their six children come of age, they are drawn to another with Merlin’s genes, and their latent magic is awakened. Of course, there are also modern descendants of Morgan le Fey who are gathering magic for darker purposes.

The first book, DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?, is about the bad-boy second brother, Tristram, who doesn’t believe in the Tremaine family destiny. He’s not even sure he’s a Tremaine, he’s so different than his brothers and sisters. He’s drifting around the U.S.A. on his motorcycle doing odd jobs fixing engines when he meets a spitfire rodeo rider named Maggie O’Brian in a diner in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. And that changes everything for both of them.

I’m thinking of making at least the first in the series available electronically in the next month. It takes so long for things to be published by New York these days, I’d be waiting close to two years to see it out there. I guess I’m getting impatient these days. This series is burning a whole in my creative life--I’m already half through writing book two, HE’S A MAGIC MAN.

Watch my website, susansquires.com for news of publication, or join through the members’ section and you’ll get an announcement.

Kayla: For the DA VINCI TIME TRAVEL NOVELS, do you recommend that the books be read in order or not?

Susan: Of course you can read them in any order. But I enjoyed the concept of the heroine of one book passing the knowledge of the time machine to the heroine of the next book. So One with the Darkness is the first one in which Leonardo’s wonderful machine appears, and in TIME FOR ETERNITY, she passes it to Frankie, the vampire bar tender in San Francisco who uses it to go back to the French Revolution and kill the lover who made her vampire, the enigmatic Duc d’Avignon. And Frankie passes it to Lucy Rossano, a timid bookseller in A TWIST IN TIME, who longs to go back to a time when magic is possible. When she lands in middle of a battle in the Dark Ages, she comes back with a wounded Viking warrior and a load of trouble. Lucy passes it, in The MISTS OF TIME to Diana Dearborn, romance writer, who uses it to go back to Camelot, which is nothing like she imagined. This one has several big secrets in it that surprised even my editor, so I won’t say more.

Kayla: What genres of books do you read? Do you have any favorite authors of your own?

Susan: I read just about everything. I love mysteries. My favorite mystery writer is James Lee Burke. I just put a mention for him in DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?. I read young adult. THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy blew me away. Think I read them all in a week. I have read every Georgette Heyer book at least five times I think, so I’m a fan of Regency Romance. Right now I enjoy Julia Quinn for Regency. Loved her Bridgerton series. But I also read thrillers and women’s fiction and all kinds of romance from contemporary to historical.

Do you have a current favorite book, movie, or song?

Oh dear, I’m very bad at these questions. I loved THE ARTIST, which I hope wins best picture this year. It shows you that stories really are timeless, though a silent movie that’s so engaging might put we wordsmiths out of business. But I also loved MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Time travel, meeting characters from history....how could I not love it?

Do you prefer paperback books or hardcover?

I like books of all kinds. I consume a lot of books, so paperbacks are most practical. But I have hardbacks of books I know I’ll want to keep, and hardback reference works. Our house is chock full of books. Instead of paperbacks, I often now order electronically. A house can hold only so many books.

Kayla: Do you prefer bookmarks or dog-ears?

Susan: Prepare to hate me, I’m a dog-ear person. I think a dog-eared book looks like people have read and enjoyed it. That’s what a book is supposed to look like--lived in.

Kayla: Are you a morning or a night person?

Susan:Morning. I have never understood people who can write all night. Admired them, but not understood them. My husband is a night person, by the way. It’s a miracle we see much of each other at all, though over time we’ve both adjusted our schedules somewhat.

Kayla: If you could spend the day with anyone who would it be?

Susan: Choices, choices. I’m never good at choosing just one person. Fascinating actor like Lawrence Olivier? Beloved author, maybe Agatha Christie or Jane Austin? Abraham Lincoln? I would like to know how he felt about the hard things he had to do. Famous literary hostess like Gertrude Stein? She was great at encouraging authors, and we authors can always use encouragement. I guess I’m lucky that I’ll never actually have to choose just one....

Kayla: Thank you for taking your time to stop by and let us know about you and your book? It has been a pleasure and I look forward to getting to read the rest of your series! Thank you!

Contessa Donnatella di Poliziano has power, beauty, and—as a vampire—eternal life. Her overwhelming regret is a mistake she made centuries ago when she chose not to transform her one true love, Jergan, into a vampire too. Donnatella’s choice has deprived her of the only true love she’s ever known. But just as all seems lost, the discovery of a 300-year-old note leads her to a gift left by her old friend, Leonardo da Vinci: a machine to take her back in time to rewrite the history of her heart…

Once back in time, Donnatella’s memory of the intervening years is lost. Yet when she sees the breathtaking Jergan from afar, she feels like she has always known him. The instant attraction she feels draws them together. For Donnatella, the romance is tantalizing, awakening a passion that feels both old and new. But as the two fall in love again, a new danger threatens to tear them apart. Now Jergan’s love for Donnatella will be tested in a most perilous way—and if he fails, the two lovers will be separated again…for eternity.

Once, Frankie Suchet loved Henri Foucault—and it cost her everything. For two centuries, she has cursed the French duke who gave her his blood and then disappeared forever. Today, this sexy vampire is a bartender living in San Francisco. Now Frankie has been granted a chance to go back in time…and kill the man who made her what she is. But becoming “Francoise” again means losing all memory of the risk Henri poses to her future…and her heart.

France, 1794. The Reign of Terror is in full swing. From the first, Henri is an enigma, saving Francoise from an angry Parisian mob. Drawn to his seductive vitality, Francoise discovers there is much more to him than she once knew. Henri’s devotion to rescuing innocents from the guillotine is his sole passion—until he encounters Francoise’s intoxicating blend of innocence and warmth. And as their attraction explodes to dangerous desire, the only way to save each other may be to sacrifice their timeless love…

Since beginning her career in 2000 with a Golden Heart from Romance Writers of America for Danegeld, which became her first sale, Susan has published fourteen novels and three novellas. She has been a finalist in the Rita contest for Best Romance Novel, won the Holt Medallion, the Bookseller’s Best and the New England Bean Pot contests and many Reviewer’s Choice awards. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the most influential mass market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows a Best book of 2007. Time for Eternity, the first in the DaVinci time travel series, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Her work has appeared on both the New York Times and USA Today Best Sellers lists. She’s known for breaking the rules of romance writing, but whatever her subject, historical period, or theme, her work always contains some element of the paranormal.
Susan recently gave up her day-job as executive at a Fortune 500 company and nowwrites full time. She does agility and obedience work with her three Belgian Sheepdogs. The training techniques she learned for her dogs don’t seem to work on her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, at least they haven’t for the last thirty-five years.
They currently live at the beach in Southern California.

Now for the Giveaway  

Susan was so sweet, she sent 4 of her autographed books for this giveaway! So there will be 5 winners; 1 person will win the 2 autographed books (One with the Darkness & Time for Eternity); and 4 people will win a copy of One with the Darkness by Susan Squires.... I will be giving away the other two autographed copies she sent in another giveaway (: So be on the lookout. Thanks for stopping by! Thanks Susan!!


To visit Susan's website to learn more about her and her books Click Here.

Click read more to enter the giveaway :D

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