12 Days of Morganville Madness tour [Part 1]

Rachel Caine Q&A

Rachel Caine's stopping by today with a Q&A she prepared about Midnight Alley, the third installment in the Morganville Vampires series!

(You can find the rest of the tour schedule - where there will be more Q&As, giveaways and reviews in my post here.) Please help me welcome her - and enjoy!!

Black Dawn - Book 12, Out May 1

1. What kicked off the concept for this book?

An intriguing little thing that I'd worked into the previous book -- the sinister alley next to Gramma Day's house, with the vampire she refers to as the "trap door spider." I knew I wanted to explore that character. To my surprise, he came out completely different than I expected.

2. Which character do I think stood out in this book, and why?

Definitely Myrnin, who burst onto the scene really vividly, and pretty much out of nowhere. I have no idea what kind of crazy tree he fell off of, but it's a colorful one.

3. Five things I loved about writing this book

A. Working for the vampires. Claire's challenges keep getting bigger, and certainly being suddenly tossed in as the (sacrificial) apprentice to a largely-insane vampire scientist is a pretty large hurdle.
B. Trying to imagine Myrnin's train of thought. It always took strange twists, and led some very weird places.
C. The growing heat between Shane and Claire. It felt really fun to write, and very natural.
D. The tension between Michael and Shane over Michael's choice to become fully vampire
E. Sam. I really enjoyed building the relationship -- forbidden as it was --between Sam and Amelie.

4. Five things I didn't love about writing this book

A. In order to protect his friends, especially Michael, Shane did some questionable things. And he really didn't have to answer for that.
B. While it was great fun to trash Monica's house, I probably went to the out-of-control party well once too often in two books.
C. Figuring out how far to take Jason was difficult. It was hard to get a read on Eve's brother.
D. Amelie could have been much more forceful in her response to many things that happened, and I was sometimes frustrated that I couldn't let her off the chain.
E. For the second time, those wild ferrets got cut. And this time, they had chainsaws.

Okay, that last one was totally imaginary.

Midnight Alley ~ Book 3

5. If I could do this book over, what would I do differently, and why?

Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. I wish I hadn't done it. Sorry.

6. Favorite quoted passage from the book

Myrnin: "Home is where the heart is. Why don't you leave yours here? I'll take very good care of it."

7. What I learned from this book

I really never thought much about alchemy, but it's a pretty fantastic subject, and really a precursor to modern scientific methods.

8. Fun research moment

Trying to find alchemical texts to read that weren't (a) in Latin, or (b) in code. Good luck with that!

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Review and Giveaway in next post!!