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ABOUT
CASSANDRA
Cassandra
Pierce has been a fan of
Gothic literature for most of her life,
even studying the origins of the genre
in college and graduate school. Before
long, she got the urge to create
paranormal romances of her own and is
now hard at work on the second Darkisle
novel. When she is not writing, she
teaches English at a small New England
college and is active in a charity that
rescues and rehomes abandoned pets.
INTERVIEW
Q: How did you get into romance novels?
A:
Romance novels have been a part of my
life for as long as I can remember. My
mother used to buy bags of them at tag
sales, and our shelves were always
overflowing with the thick historical
ones that were popular in the ‘70s. I
used to skim them for the naughty
parts—which was good training for
writing modern erotic romance, I would
say.
Q: When did you start writing them?
A: I
tried my hand at writing romance novels
as a teenager, but of course I lacked
the experience and perseverance to get
through a full manuscript. Then came
college, then graduate school, and
finally a teaching career, with a lot of
half-finished projects along the way.
Finally, two summers ago, I bought a
laptop and vowed to use it to organize
my notes and finish at least one novel.
I accomplished that, and more. I’m now
writing every day and meeting my
word-count goals, I’m happy to say.
Q: What do you find most rewarding and
most difficult about writing?
A: By
far the most rewarding part of the
process is feeling the characters come
to life during the first months of
drafting, then turning the plot over to
them and letting them resolve the
conflicts I’ve set up for them.
Rewriting is like spending time with old
friends. It can be exhilarating, though
exhausting.
The
most difficult part is getting the
project underway. Like many of my own
students, I find a blank page or screen
absolutely terrifying. Yet every day, I
force myself to put down a few random
words, a doodle, anything to get
started. Eventually something coherent
starts flowing. My mind is always
teeming with plot ideas, half-formed
characters, and snatches of dialogue, so
the well is never dry. It’s just a
matter of tapping into what’s there.
Q: Where do those ideas come from?
A:
Sometimes entire scenes just occur to me
out of the blue, complete with dialogue
and characters’ names. This often
happens in the middle of the night,
which isn’t terribly convenient. At
other times, I try to find interesting
names and create characters, then think
up things for them to do and people for
them to fall in love with. At other
times, I dream up a setting first and
then populate it with conflicted
personalities. I’m lucky to live in New
England, an area rich with creepy
Victorian houses and gloomy cemeteries
dating back to the 1700s. Some of the
early settlers actually believed in
vampires, which isn’t too surprising
when you imagine the long winters in
isolated farmhouses with the wind
howling and the moon casting odd shadows
through the trees. It can make anyone’s
imagination run wild, though in my case
that’s a good thing.
Q: Why do vampires make good romantic
heroes?
A: For
me, it’s because they represent fantasy
without boundaries. They’re the ultimate
bad boys—phenomenally strong,
hypnotically attractive, and their
passions rage larger than life. They
will be young and handsome forever. All
that can pose quite a challenge for a
heroine. She needs to be feisty and
smart to hold her own with a guy like
that. As far as the writing part goes,
it never gets boring because there are
so many directions to go in. Vampires
may be cold to the touch, but I would
say plenty of women find them scorching
hot!
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![Heirs to Darkisle [Darkisle Book 1] by Cassandra Pierce](cp-htd1.jpg)
