Wattpad brings you a guest post from Michele Drier, whose vampire romance “SNAP: The World Unfolds” is currently featured on Wattpad:
People occasionally ask me where I get my story ideas. I’m not sure I always know.
When I was about eight years old, I read “The Secret in the Old Clock,” my first Nancy Drew mystery. I was hooked.
It was Nancy and Trixie Belden until Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham. Lately it’s been Martha Grimes, P.D. James, Elizabeth George, Ruth Rendell, Robert Crais, Daniel Silva and Elizabeth Peters.
I’m a mystery junkie who always wanted to write. Like so many journalists, I had bits and pieces of unfinished novels in my desk drawers while working as a reporter and editor for daily newspapers. Finally, I decided if I were going to write a book, I’d better get at it, so my first book was a traditional mystery, Edited for Death.
With the adage “Write what you know,” hammering in my head, it’s set at a newspaper. I wrote, rewrote, edited and revised it and it was picked up by a small press on the East Coast, Mainly Murder Press, and published October 1, 2011.
It’s the first of a series, the Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries, and I was plotting out the second book when lightning hit in the form of my daughter and son-in-law.
They both read. A lot. Usually two or three books a week of paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy and steam punk. And vampires. I knew if I had any chance of them reading one of MY books, I’d better write vampires.
Then a conversation with my daughter showed me the light—or maybe the dark—path. I was casting around, trying to find a hook for a different vampire book when she said, “Celebrities.”
“Celebrities?”
“Yep,” she said. “They all wear huge dark glasses, they usually come out at night for parties and appearances, they ride around in limos with tinted windows. They could be vampires and nobody would know the difference.”
And SNAP was launched. It’s the world’s biggest and best international media conglomerate covering celebrities and celeb gossip. They do cover some of the vampires who are in the film industry, but the owners of SNAP are also vampires—a five-hundred-year-old family of Hungarian vampires. They’re urbane, uber-wealthy, beautiful and sexy and when regular Maxie Gwenoch goes to work for them she’s thrilled—until she discovers they’re vampires.
The first book of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, SNAP: The World Unfolds, follows Maxie as she gradually gets acclimated to vampire reality, and as she falls in love with Jean-Louis. He’s the art director for SNAP. He’s sexy, beautiful, alluring and the second-in-command of the Kandesky family. He’s falling in love with her.
I’ve done a lot of research for the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, because so much of the series takes place in Europe. From Baron Kandesky’s headquarters at his castle in Hungary to Paris, Krakow and Kiev—places I want to travel to. And the series is absolute fiction, which means I get to make stuff up.
I’ve had so much fun with the Kandeskys, Maxie and Jean-Louis, that it’s hard to leave them, even for a few months.
One of the problems with writing in two different genres is that I have Amy Hobbes and her pals beating up my brain, wanting to come out.
They’re hot on the trail of another mystery: why are field workers in the vineyards turning up dead? Labeled for Death will be released in late spring of next year. Amy’s stories have stricter guidelines. Even though it’s fiction, police procedures, murder investigations and the role of the press all have to be real.
I’ve always had problems with the “realies”, and now it’s even worse. I can barely tear myself away from Jean-Louis and Maxie, or Amy and her cops reporter, Clarice. They inhabit worlds that are more fun. They don’t do dishes, vacuum, buy groceries, pay bills and when I’m with them, neither do I, which leads to a few small problem areas.
Living with these guys is so contagious that I’m going to keep doing it.
Book Five of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, SNAP: Love for Blood will be released in December 15.
And in 2013, Labeled for Death and two more Kandesky Chronicles are on tap.
All of my books are available on Amazon.com in ebook format. Edited for Death, SNAP: The World Unfolds and SNAP: New Talent are also available in paperback at Amazon.
Read “SNAP: The World Unfolds” on Wattpad!