Danielle J. Dresser: Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Cassandra, Genevieve, and Caitlin! We are excited to chat with you about WALK AMONG US, set in the world of the RPG game, Vampires: The Masquerade. Were you all familiar with RPGs and this one in particular before you started the project?   Cassandra Khaw: Oh my god, yes. Genevieve Gornichec: I was not, but I always wanted to be! The world just always seemed so big that I didn’t know where to start. Caitlin Starling:  I was obsessed with the source books and clan novels back in the mid-2000s, though I never got a chance to play! I definitely screamed a little when I saw what project I’d been brought in on. * Vampires have always been popular—what do you think makes them so attractive to readers?   Cassandra: The prospect of immortality, of someone who is ancient and ageless and able to have anyone in the world but chooses you to satisfy their needs, I think people like that. I think people like the elegance and sophistication too, the gratuitous amount of black, the tragic nobility. Genevieve: I think there’s something about them that people are drawn to. It’s like, a lot of…

1–What is the title of your latest release? My latest release is called THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS. It’s my debut novel and I’m very excited! 2–What is it about? It’s a dark retelling of Cinderella which I’ve set in Victorian London. If you like your fairy tales dark and you’ve always been a bit suspicious of all those fairy godmothers who go around handing out magic for free, then this is the book for you! 3–What do you love about the setting of your book?  Victorian London is full of contrasts and contradictions all crammed into one city – you’d find fabulous wealth right next to abject poverty. And of course, it’s full of gothic potential. All those flickering lights and spooky old houses are such fun to write about! 4–How did your main character(s) surprise you?  Eleanor is one of those characters who’s very good at twisting things around so that it doesn’t seem like anything that happens is her fault. Even when I was writing her, I was surprised just how far she ended up going! 5–Why will readers relate to your characters?  One of Eleanor’s biggest goals in the novel is to make a better life…

His First Letter One day into the voyage, one day in Earth time  I said goodbye to the guys, as they won’t be seeing me until the wedding. In four years and four months, to be precise. They all said they’d come. We took photos and I gave each of them a small leather frame on a lanyard to hold the pictures. The wedding venue gave them to me for free when I paid the deposit on our booking. I told them to come to the ceremony wearing the photos around their necks. That way I won’t make a fool of myself asking each of them who they are. They made fun of me. “It must be great to be getting married. Leaving your pesky friends behind, huh?” “You interstellar marrying types are all traitors.” I told them it wouldn’t be an easy time for me either. I almost got punched when I added it was going to take me a whole eight weeks to get to our wedding day. A month to get up to the speed of light, and a month to slow down enough to make a safe landing. That’s how it works. And that’s even with…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Bladebone.   2–What is it about?  The Bladebone is the final installment in my Khorasan Archives fantasy series (which began with The Bloodprint, followed by The Black Khan and The Blue Eye). Two women warriors named Arian and Sinnia are in a race against time to save their world from being destroyed by the One-Eyed Preacher’s holy war. Only the powers of an ancient magic weapon called the Bladebone can help them to defeat him. But Arian and Sinnia are surrounded by enemies, while Arian is cut off from the man she loves–the Silver Mage, her powerful ally. As their world burns down around them, Arian must find the Bladebone and face off against the Preacher in a cataclysmic battle for the future.   3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Tenacious. But I could also add courageous, vulnerable, literate–important qualities in Arian’s world.   4–What makes your story relatable?  The characters in this story care deeply not only about each other, but also about the common good. The Bladebone is a story about hope, love and the right to human dignity, and I think those themes are always relatable.   5–Who…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Ian! Please introduce yourself and tell us about your latest sci-fi novel, ALIEN SECRETS. Well, I’m Ian Douglas, also known as William H. Keith, H. Jay Riker, and a few other names. Alien Secrets is the first book in the Solar Warden series.  Solar Warden, in real life, is a conspiracy theory about a top secret US government program of the same name, involving our government back-engineering crashed flying saucers, trading abductees for advanced technology, working with various alien species, and keeping it all hidden from the public. This is the first book in your new series, Solar Warden. What do you enjoy about starting a new series? What will readers find within the world you’ve built in ALIEN SECRETS? Unlike much of my SF writing, the Solar Warden series is set pretty much in the present day. While I get to imagine the various alien technologies available, I can also reference recent world events without having the characters think of them as ancient history.    There’s quite a bit of history throughout ALIEN SECRETS. Did you initially intend for this? Where did the idea come from? I’m a history buff anyway, and much of the current conspiracy…

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction! Can you catch us all up to speed with the Crown of Shards series and a little bit about PROTECT THE PRINCE?  Thanks for hosting me. I appreciate it. 🙂  PROTECT THE PRINCE picks up a few months after the events of KILL THE QUEEN, book #1 in my Crown of Shards epic fantasy series. Everleigh “Evie” Blair might be the new gladiator queen of Bellona, but her problems are far from over, something she realizes when someone tries to assassinate her in her own throne room. Magic, political intrigue, a steady stream of assassination attempts, oh and a will they-won’t they romance… PROTECT THE PRINCE has it all! In fantasy series, I’m always impressed by the amount of worldbuilding that goes into, well, everything! Was there anything in particular that inspired the “realm” in Crown of Shards?  Thanks! I appreciate that. When I was first coming up with the series, I knew that I wanted to write about gladiators, so I decided to use Roman and other mythologies for some of the place and character names. For example, Bellona, my gladiator kingdom, is named after a Roman war goddess. I thought the Roman mythology…