Vampires, serial killers and blood-lust - a chat with Tara Moss

For a writer, few things are more exciting than experimenting with a new style. It challenges us, teaches us, makes us feel young and inexperienced again. It allows us to imitate - and sometimes surpass - the novels we admire.

But there are always risks involved. What if the audience rejects the change? What if writing a Mills & Boon romance is harder than it looks? What if some authors just aren’t cut out for poetry?

This is demonstratably true.

But if anyone can pull off a drastic genre-switch, Tara Moss can. Having written five award-winning, bestselling, blood-freezing crime novels (one of which I reviewed here), she’s now turned her skills to gothic supernatural fiction. Her new book, The Blood Countess, comes out tomorrow. I won’t tell you about the plot - I’ll leave that to the terrific videos down below - but I will share her answers to some questions about the writing process.

JH: The Blood Countess marks your first foray into paranormal fiction - what attracted you to this genre?

TM: I have loved all things gothic and mysterious since I was a child. I was raised on Edward Gorey, and at age six I fell in love with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula through the jumping static of our TV. By age ten I was writing horror novelettes for my school classmates in Canada. In many ways, it is surprising that I haven’t ventured this way before…

JH: Why did you choose to set the book in New York City?

TM: I intentionally separated Pandora English and my crime heroine Makedde Vanderwall in every way I could. I wanted the challenge of change, and I also wanted to liberate myself from what I had written before. My crime novels revolve around Sydney, with stops in exotic locations like Hong Kong, Paris and Vancouver, and those novels are written in third person. The Blood Countess is written in first person from Pandora’s perspective, in a very personal voice.

TM: In addition to the different style and feel, I wanted a different central location for these new novels. I lived in New York for a spell in my teens, and I wanted to write that city into fiction, and alter it.  I wanted a gothic ‘fantasy’ New York, so I created Spektor, a fictional suburb of a very real Manhattan.  The suburb itself, and the building Pandora lives in both became characters, in a sense.    

JH: You’ve been known to do outrageous things - get set on fire, strangled unconcious, et cetera - for the sake of authentic research. But ghosts and vampires don’t exist, and therefore can’t be researched authentically. What were some of the advantages and pitfalls of writing mostly from imagination rather than experience?

TM: The Blood Countess was a wonderful opportunity to take a break from bone crunching stunts and intensive forensic research in favour of historical and mythological research and gothic flights of imagination.  I drew on my earliest influences and inspirations for this new series.  It seemed as if the entire novel was locked away in some delightful and dark corner of my imagination.  At times - and I never thought I would find myself saying this - the novel seemed actually to write itself.  There seemed to be no pitfalls to the process at all.  This novel was a lot of fun.

JH: Villains are defined by their desires. How different was it, writing about immortal bloodsuckers rather than disturbed serial killers?

TM: Serial killers, are in some ways our modern Nosferatu. They are the modern nightmare. There are creatures of all kinds in The Blood Countess, however. Some have fangs, and some don’t even have physical bodies. The most dangerous villain in the book doesn’t have pointy teeth, but the blood-sucking characters were fun to write. Vampires are driven by very different motives than the serial killers of my crime novels. Part of what I enjoy about the vampire mythology is the question of natural necessity vs. blood lust. Do they have to drink blood? Do they have a choice? My vampires aren’t soulless demons, necessarily. They aren’t necessarily part of some ancient war between god and the devil. They are something else. Something more animal and misunderstood.

JH: So what’s next? More Pandora English, more Makedde Vanderwall, or something else altogether?

TM: I have a second Pandora English novel waiting in the wings, and next, I will be writing a thrilling sixth novel with Mak. I intend to write both series, and use each for a creative break from the other. As a writer, I am excited about the opportunity to branch out into new areas. I hope you enjoy The Blood Countess. Happy nightmares…

I would have liked to ask more questions, but at this point Tara turned into a bat and fluttered out the window. So instead, I offer you this dramatic video trailer for The Blood Countess:

The Blood Countess by Tara Moss from Pan Macmillan Australia on Vimeo.

The Blood Countess is available as a paperback or EPUB .

MITIFOTIT:
Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today

I’m always suspicious of video interviews with authors. We tend to be shy, and shy people tend to produce boring interviews.

Not this one, though. This one has snakes.

Download: FLVMP43GP