I’m excited to introduce you to author D. L. Marriott. I recently
completed reading her novel Souljourner and thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend you get a copy.
Let me tell you a little bit about D. L. Marriott affectionately known as
Dody.


     Although she loved the art of storytelling since very young, D.L. Marriott, didn't start writing professionally until five years ago. In early 2010, she had her first publishing success when her essay, Borrowingwas published in the Sun  Magazine. A Bo Carter winner, her
stories, essays, and poetry have since appeared in several publications.
     In late 2010, she took part in a project with Chapter One in which 32 authors came together to write a novel in one month for charity. Since then she has published two e-books, Finding Hope and Finding Life, a novella, Christmas Carole, and a novel, Souljourner.
 
     Now please join me as I interview D. L. Marriott. Let’s get to know her a little better.
 
Michele:  Your first novel, Souljourner, is different from most mysteries and is different from your other works. You even told me you hadn’t thought of this novel as a mystery when you were nominated for the 2013 Lovey Award for Best First Novel. If not a mystery, how would you categorize it?
 
Dody:  That is the million-dollar question. I placed it in the category of thriller, since
there is a series of events and clues that eventually lead to a discovery, but it certainly has a taste of many different genres. There are bits of romance, chick lit, historical fiction, as well as supernatural components.
 
Michele: What was your inspiration for this novel? A person, place, an event? How did you
get started?
 
Dody:  It started on a warm autumn day. My husband and I drove past a cemetery, it's one we've driven past often and the one featured on the cover of the book. On this particular day, I had the car window open and I started scanning the names on the headstones as we passed by. 
     As I read each name, I wondered - Who are they? What are their stories? I remember thinking that since it was such a lovely day, when we got home, I'd take a walk. I wondered if anyone would think I was strange if I took my walk through a cemetery to read the headstones. From there my imagination took over. 
     I thought to myself, wouldn't it be neat if a person could touch a headstone, and get to know a little bit about the person buried there? It only took a moment before I realized that although I couldn't do that, I could create a character that had that ability. When we finally did get home, I abandoned the  walk and started writing. 
 
Michele:  How did you develop your characters and their motives in your story?
 
Dody: The easiest for me to write were the  historical characters. Even though I did a fair amount of research to make sure the details were accurate, their voices flowed easily. The first one I wrote was the Civil War soldier. I was getting ready for work one morning and my husband was watching a program on television about the Civil War. I only overheard a tiny bit about how there were piles of amputated limbs just lying around at the field hospitals. I thought how horrifying it must have been for a soldier being carried in to see that, knowing his arm or leg would be joining the pile. I immediately sat down and wrote the entire sequence of Reginald being taken to the field hospital and facing his own amputation. I wrote it in first person without thought, and later decided to keep the “souljourns” in first person,  even though the rest of the book is in third person. I felt like it pulled the reader into their lives just like it pulled in Kate. 
      As for the modern day characters, Elizabeth came easily and so did Kate's friends. In fact, I kept writing Elizabeth in, without knowing who she was, or why she was there. She was just the creepy old cat lady who lived downstairs. I was surprised when I finally figured out just who she was. 
       The same with John's role. At first, he was just the cute boyfriend for Kate and Angie to fight over, but he developed into a more important role.  
     The hardest for me was Kate herself. She was the only one I actually had to think about and plan out a bit, and I feel the least confident  about. Since the idea was really centered on the souljourns themselves, I needed to find a reason for her to discover them. At first everything was going a little too easy for Kate, so although I originally had her with supportive
parents, I decided I needed more conflict, and rewrote her mother to be
overbearing.  
     I generally don't plan my characters out too much. I will jot down some notes with my general impression of their personality, physical  description – but even that can change as I write the story. My characters tell me who they are as we go along.  
     In my latest book Christmas Carole it was my intention for Charles Dickens to make a cameo appearance. Just like the real person, my  Charles wasn’t content to play a minor role, and he stole the spotlight. Who am I to argue with such a prestigious author?
 
Michele:   If you could be any of the characters in your novel, who would you be and why?
 
Dody:  This is funny because while contemplating this question, I made a discovery. 
      My first thought was Kate's friend, Janice. She is comfortable with who she is. She has a strong personality, and a great sense of humor. She knows she's a bit different and wacky and fully embraces that. She's not worried about fitting in, or what others think of her. She's confident but kind. Even when she doubts Kate, she does it out of concern and friendship.  
      Then I thought about John's Aunt Jane. She is also a step out of sync with everyone else, but is also very self-confident. As it turns out, (I honestly didn't realize this until just now.) they are the same person, at different ages. Both quirky, both strong and confident in whom they are. Even physically, they're similar. Janet with brightly painted nails and a matching
color stripe in her hair, and Jane with her funky bright blue cats eye glasses. I even gave them similar names, Jane and Janice. That was completely unintentional.
 
Michele:  Are there any books or authors that have inspired you in your writing? 
  
Dody:  I think every book a writer reads inspires them in one way or another, even if
it's to inspire them not to make the same mistakes. The authors that top my list though are J.K. Rowling. Her books brought both adults and children together, and drew me in to the point where I never once questioned the reality that one could wave a magic wand, or that a child could save the world. Her own personal story is inspirational as well.  
     Stephen King is another writer who has inspired me with his emotion inducing stories, not just the horror, but stories like The Body a coming of age story. I also love his book On Writing, which I think is the best book out there on the craft of writing. 
      Another author who has inspired me enough to feature him as a character is Charles Dickens. His stories are always colorful, sometimes heartbreaking, and a vehicle to educate the public on a cause that was important to Dickens. His own story is also a story of determination. He came from adversity and set his mind to do whatever it took to follow his
passion. 
     My biggest influences though, are other local authors. They were the catalyst that pushed me from just writing for myself to putting my writing out there for others. They're people I take writing class with, people I chat with at the local coffee shop, people I meet at events. They are regular, everyday people, like me. If they can do it, so can I.
 
Michele: As I mentioned before, you have other published works that cross genres. Is it difficult for you to create these varying styles?
 
Dody:  When I  first started writing, I was stuck in one genre, which was very light romance,
none of which I have published – yet. I have always really enjoyed darker books, and admired how some writers could pull strong emotions from their readers. I had no idea how they were able to do that. I challenged myself to try and eventually wrote a short ghost story that was published in the Halloween edition of an online magazine. Once I broke through that barrier, crossing genres became easy and natural. So much so, that I have a hard time sticking to one. I find it so much more interesting to write all different types of stories. I also enjoy writing from the point of view of both male and female characters.
 
Michele:  Many of the authors I’ve spoken with don’t necessarily enjoy reading the same type of novel they write. What types of stories do you enjoy reading in your leisure time?
 
Dody:  I enjoy many different genres: horror, historical fiction, drama, romance, mystery, even young adult and fantasy/sci fi. Like my writing, it's not about the genre. I want a book that makes me think. A book that makes me laugh or cry out loud. One where I'm actually feeling physically nervous if I think something bad is going to happen. What hooks me is making me sympathetic to the main character. I like a book that pulls me in, and makes me believe. I also love an unexpected twist ending.  
  
Michele:  What type of novel are you looking forward to creating next?
 
Dody:  I'm  currently working on a more traditional thriller, as well as a non-fiction book. After that, I have pages of ideas including a historical romance, a children's book, and the third book in my Finding Hope series. Although I've done some short horror pieces, I'd love to see if I could write something novel length, but I'm not sure if I can hold that kind
of tension for that length of a story – yet. It's a challenge I'd love to try to meet though.
 
Michele: Writing is not an easy occupation. What is it about writing that makes you want to keep doing it? 

Dody: I'm going to borrow a quote from Charles Dickens, since we've been joined at the hip lately. “I write, because I can't not.” It has become something I need to do. When life gets busy with work, family, marketing, etc. and I haven't had the time to do much writing, I find myself getting anxious and uneasy, even a little depressed. There’s a high I experience after I've sat down and done some writing. It's become a real addiction for me.
     Since I don't outline my stories, there is also the discovery. Like the moment I had today when I realized Jane and Janice were, in essence, the same person. There are things even I haven't discovered yet in my stories.  
     There is something magical when you're just plodding along and suddenly one of your characters reveals him or herself and his or her motives to you. I think the reason the ending of Souljourner is a surprise to my readers is because it was a surprise to me as well. I was probably three quarters of the way through the book before it suddenly came to me. 
     I've often said, I'm just taking dictation for the voices in my head. That feels very true. There is some subconscious portion of my brain which does all the creative work. Luckily, it lets my conscious brain in on it  from time to time.
 
     I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview with D. L. Marriott. It’s always fun to get to know the authors who create the prose we love to read. If you want to learn more about Dody and how to purchase her works, please visit her website at http://dlmarriott.net  .

    I am excited and proud to introduce you to two friends who I met through True Grit Publishing an imprint of Weaving Dreams Publishing. This is their first adventure in writing as co-authors. Have Vampire, Will Travel will be released on April 28, 2013. Let me tell you a bit about my guest authors.

    Scot Savage was born in Chicago, IL and now resides in Schaumburg, IL where this story takes place. He graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with a B.S. in Computer Science. Scot is a web systems analyst and a licensed locksmith, yet still finds time to satisfy his passion for writing. 

    Eric Bieche was born in Santa Cruz, CA, but grew up in Kalispell, Montana. He started college at Montana State University, but finished his Bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University with a double major in Math and Computer Science. He currently lives in Elgin, Illinois. In his spare time, he enjoys being an amateur photographer, reading, playing video games, and watching Science Fiction/Fantasy movies.

    Now that I’ve introduced these fabulous individuals with a bit of background, let’s get to know them as authors.

Michele:  What makes your novel different from other vampire stories?

Scot:  We always stressed in our marketing this is “a vampire story with a different spin.” We’ve taken the liberty of re-writing the traditional rules/legends/lore about vampires. Some of them remain true: a vampire’s immortality and their special abilities such as mesmerism, bat transformation or turning into a mist. Others are false: vampires cannot be kept away by garlic and they can cast reflections in mirrors. Some are half-truth distortions of the facts: vampires being inheritably evil when, in fact, they actually can be virtuous, malevolent or somewhere in-between. Vampires still require blood to sustain them, but don’t need to feed as often as folklore describes, nor are they required to kill their victims to feed.

The young vampire, Roger Sparks, featured in the novel actually enjoys being a vampire, living in the moment (usually with reckless abandon) and kicking butt when needed. In our novel, our vampires do not lament and sulk about their curse. We also dispense with the over-used cliché of a vampire falling in love with a human—unable to decide whether to turn the other into a vampire or become human again themselves. Other authors have presented this admirably, but you won’t find it in our novel. As a matter of fact, you will find no romantic subplots in this novel, as we wanted to avoid the trap in which the villain kidnaps the hero’s girlfriend to give him a disadvantage (I do that in some of my other novels). Even as a kid, I grew tired of the cliché of the hero having to waste precious time rescuing his loved one before resolving the greater conflict. Our heroes may date, but they do so on their own time, not during the novel. Instead, we wanted to get to the heart of the adventure, investigate the crime, get to the action and stay on target until the exciting climax.

Besides featuring super-natural evils, our detective hero, Maxx Shadow, must confront dangers of the mortal world. For example, Maxx explores the very real perils of rail hopping. His is also in conflict with a rival gang of hobos who are the enemies of the hobo minions of the main antagonist, Ruby of the Rails. Although the rival gang of hobos lacks the supernatural abilities of Ruby’s hobos, they are just as vicious and deadly.

Michele:  How did the two of you meet and what made you decide to co-author a novel?

Eric:  I met Scot at Nielsen Media Research in May of 1999, shortly after I graduated from Northern Illinois University. He was a programmer in another group and I had the opportunity to work with him on several projects over the years.

We started to hangout outside of work and shortly after that, he let me read a short story that he wrote many years ago called The Little Boy and the Curse of the Chicago Cubs. That was my first opportunity to read one of his works. I really liked it and several years later, we started going through his other works such that we would edit them for content and obvious spelling and punctuation errors.

As I was soon to find out, Scot is a prolific writer, having written many works. My personal favorite is a book entitled World's Title Fight. Just prior to getting sick in 2009, he started telling me about an idea he had concerning detectives and vampires. Not everything, but just enough that I was hooked on the concept and couldn't wait to read and edit it after he had it written.

Scot: In September 2009, I was hospitalized with a heart infection, which led to an artificial aortic valve replacement. Along with my wife, Nicole, Eric faithfully came regularly to visit me. With a new concept for a novel, Eric sat at my bedside and helped put together an initial outline. With this project, Eric went above and beyond the duties of copyediting, coming up with ideas and resolutions of his own. As a result, I offered Eric co-authorship if he was willing to do a bit more additional work. He gladly accepted and the rest is history.

Michele: Did you choose the genre, or did the genre choose you?

Scot: In this case, the genre chose me. After twenty-six years, I wanted to get something published and scratch one of many things off my Bucket List. Since vampire genre is hot and still will be for more years to come, I decided to “jump on the bandwagon.” I had figured if any work I completed had a chance to be published this one would be it.

Michele: What was your inspiration for this novel—a person, a place, an event?

Scot:  In April of 2000, while channel surfing, I caught a show on the A&E Network Investigative Reports hosted by former CBS Chicago anchorman and highly respected journalist, Bill Curtis. This particular episode was entitled Blood on the Tracks which focused on the dangers of rail hopping especially to those who were weekend thrill-seekers rather than experienced hobos. A majority of the episode highlighted a serial-killing hobo, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack.” Silveria is now serving two consecutive life sentences in an Oregon State prison. Silveria had confessed to five murders, but it is believed he committed dozens more before being apprehended.

I found this sub-culture to be very fascinating. For the most part, hobos are just folks that have given up on regular society and want to live by their wits and be left alone. However, there are a few bad apples, which lump them all in a negative category. The world of rail hopping is a modern day Wild West, with the criminal hobos able to get away with their crimes because they are phantoms. They have no identity, and since they own very little, they can easily skip town at the drop of a hat, leaving everything behind to avoid arrest. Since trains pass through isolated areas, criminal hobos can easily dispose of victims in areas where no one will find them for years, if they are found at all. There were accounts of college students rail riding during a summer break never to be heard from again.

The segment on Silveria inspired me to write a novel about a serial killing hobo able to commit his atrocities and get away with them because he has no connections to his victims—just an unknown, faceless bum whom most ignore, never noticed and who is able to disappear like a breath in the wind on a moment’s notice.

Michele:  How did you develop your characters and their motives in your story?

Scot:  Roger Sparks was a character I created in the 1990s and played in a fantasy role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade. He was basically an all-muscle-live-in-the-moment vampire who enjoys a good brawl. He left the planning and strategy to his more intellectual, less combat savvy vampire companions.

Maxx Shadow was also based on a role-playing character from the Dr. Who Role-playing Game created by a friend of mine; however, I changed the name and the physical traits of the character. Wanting to avoid romantic subplots, I made Maxx somewhat physically unappealing with a slight facial disfigurement to reinforce his lack of female companions.

The Shadow/Sparks team-up is inspired by the Green Hornet TV series from the 1960s. Shadow is the Van Williams/Britt Reid/Green Hornet figure who makes the plans while Sparks is the Bruce Lee/Kato counterpart who mops the floor with their adversaries (not to take away from Shadow who is a decent scrapper in his own right for a mere mortal).

Several of the evil hobo characters such as Slouch and Hooligan are based on the traits and motivations of the real life railway serial killer, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack” as well as other nefarious hobos in my research.

Michele:  If you could be any of the characters in your novel, who would you be?

Eric:  I think that I'd be Maxx Shadow. Of all the characters, he goes through the most change and growth. It's interesting to see how he evolves throughout the novel.

Scot:  It might be interesting to be Dan Patch, Maxx and Roger’s spiritual advisor. He is a being, known as a Sage-Sentry, who is borderline between the natural and supernatural. He constantly reincarnates into a new body after he dies, sometimes a different gender or not even human at all (he claims to have been the world-renown harness race horse of the same name in the early 20th century), yet still retains the memories of his past lives, unlike us mere mortals who have no recollection once we reincarnate.

Michele:  I understand Have Vampire, Will Travel is the first novel in a series. Are you afraid the series will become dull or difficult to write after a while?

Scot:  Although each novel will have an overall arc and tie-ins to other upcoming novels, we plan to write each Have Vampire, Will Travel as its own stand-alone adventure without it being necessary to read any previous or subsequent novels (although we hope people will read them all). There is no pre-determined number of novels in the series. In the event the series becomes dull or difficult to write, we will just simply end it with the last novel. However, we will continue to write the series so long as there is an interest. We are not afraid if something becomes dull because we will just have to find something else fresh to write about.

Eric:  Scot answered this pretty well. I don't think that it will get boring since there have been several times where we actually come up with idea fragments for future books. In addition, it's cool that we have an overall arc that will be teased about in the background of each story.

Michele:  Are there any books or authors that have inspired you in your writing?

Scot:  I have been influenced by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series as well as Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné Saga. Other authors include Stephen King and Marc E. Roger’s Samurai Cat. Marvel/DC comic/books and graphic novels have had some influence on my writing as well.

Eric:  My favorite author is RA Salvatore and most of the series he's written. My favorite is his Forgotten Realms Drizzt series. I have all of those books and most of them are autographed. It's my "go to" series if I don't know what to read.

Michele:  Have either of you thought about writing individually?

Scot:  I have self-published individually. I’m sure Eric might want to try to write one solo and he’ll have my full support if he does.

Eric:  At this time, I'm very content at being Scot's sidekick. If he asks me to help write something else that would be great. Until then, I'm very happy getting to play in the world of Maxx Shadow.

Michele:  Many of the authors I speak with don’t necessary enjoy reading the same type of novel as those they write. What types of stories do you enjoy reading in your leisure time?

Eric:  I enjoy reading Fantasy, Science Fiction, and History.

Scot:  I enjoy mysteries, true crime, detective, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, humor, light horror and an occasional biography.

    This concludes our interview. I want to thank Eric and Scot for being my guests today. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and will be able to meet them in person one day soon.

    On Sunday, April 28, 2013, Eric and Scot will be holding a Book Release Reception from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm at the Elgin Public House Pub (Pub 217 located in the upper level) at 219 East Chicago Street, Elgin, IL 60120 (847-468-8810). This event is open to the public. A free parking garage is located just across the street for the convenience of the attendees. No RSVP or invitation is required to attend. All are welcome and please bring your friends.

    To pre-order Have Vampire, Will Travel, go to the True Grit Publishing website at http://www.truegritpublishing.com or email orders@weavingdreamspublishing.com. For information on how to pre-order an autographed copy directly from both authors (or to ask questions, check updates or post comments), visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Have-Vampire-Will-Travel/198595470182549 or email request/message to havevampirewilltravel@yahoo.com or scot_savage@sbcglobal.net.