This past weekend, I spent two long days at the east coast’s biggest annual nerdfest: New York Comic Con. Thanks to our friends at Orbit, I had the lovely opportunity to meet and interview Kristen Painter, author of the House of Comarré gothic Urban Fantasy series.
When I walked up to the Orbit booth to get ready for the interview, I didn’t recognize Kristen from her headshot above, because she was decked out in the awesomest steampunk/gothic vampire costume – complete with killer boots, fangs, and creepy contact lenses. Seriously. Badass. Once I got over that initial shock, I was thrilled to jump into our chat session about her writing, influences, and books. Kristen’s current series, starting with Blood Rights, is set in a fantastical alternate world, following a strict hierarchy of vampire nobility and the humans bred to feed them, the Comarré. As she is also the author of Golden Heart-nominated paranormal romance novels, I asked her to talk a bit about the differences in writing her urban fantasy series versus romance novels, and to talk a bit about her current project. In Kristen’s words, the House of Comarré series is a mashup of the original Underworld film meets Memoirs of a Geisha. In this world, there is an intricate political hierarchy between the five houses of vampire nobility and those lesser “fringe” vampires, and essentially the Comarré are blood slaves – but with their own status and rules of etiquette that mark them as the prized feeders for the richest and most blue-blooded of vampire society. Kristen cites her Sicilian heritage and fascination with mob politics as part of the inspiration for her own cutthroat society.
As Orbit likes to do (and as a reader, I think this is an awesome strategy), Kristen’s Comarré books are being released over the course of three consecutive months; November will see the release of book 2, Flesh and Blood, followed by the December release of book 3, Bad Blood. While as an avid reader that hates to be kept waiting years between book releases, I am a huge proponent of this rapid release schedule, however, I do wonder how this takes a toll on the author of such a series. In Kristen’s case, Blood Rights was written when the series was sold, giving her two years in all to write the three books. That’s not the end for the Comarré books either, as there are actually two more books in the works (due in late 2012/early 2013), rounding out the series as a “pentology” (Fun fact: Kristen assures me that this is the correct term for a series of five books after I stumbled for a bit on nomenclature – I was going to go with “quintet” which just sounds like a way to classify a band or something).
Though she still reads and loves romance novels, Kristen did say that she feels her work now is a bit removed from the genre since she has started writing the Comarré books. Unlike the pairings in a traditional PNR novel, her Urban Fantasy series shows a much more drawn out romance. A large part of the appeal for romance for Kristen is knowing how things will end up, and then creating the angst and complications to get to that happy ever after end point, whereas in darker UF like the Comarré books, there is no guarantee. Characters may die, storylines may change violently, and even though the romance is there between these two main characters, it takes a while to get it going and it doesn’t happen in a single book.
In talking about her characters, Kristen admitted to liking her hero Malkolm a whole bunch because he is so dark and tortured and in a bad place, mentally. Compared to her heroine, Chrysabelle, Kristen finds Mal is a lot easier to write because he’s in a relatable – albeit dark – place. Everyone’s had a really rotten bad day before, and for Mal, says Kristen, that day is kind of never ending. Plus, we all are familiar with the nasty voices in our heads when we do things like eat an extra slice of cake for desert or buy halloween candy that we have no intention of passing out to trick-or-treaters – but for Mal, those voices are amplified and are very real. In contrast, Chrysabelle is so hard to write because she’s so removed from the author; a young woman that isn’t sure of her place in the world or what exactly she wants, Kristen has to dig to understand her heroine and identify with the character. Of all the other characters in this world, Kristen says that she has a thing for the baddies (really, who doesn’t?!) as they are more fun to write – naming Tatiana as a favorite character, though she does go through a character shift of sorts.
Since there are so many vampire novels, films, and television shows inundating us from all angles, I had to ask about Kristen’s take on vampires and favorites she has, if any, from the immense corpus of vampire fiction and film. Interestingly, she said that she loves vampire movies and books but tends to shy away from them (especially when writing, to try to keep her ideas separate from external influences). She did name two favorite vampire films that automatically won me over: Let the Right One In (the original Swedish film, not the American remake), which is a gorgeous, dark piece of filmmaking and character study; and Near Dark, a vastly underappreciated ’80s vampire/Western horror film from Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow and co-starring Bill freakin’ Paxton. (Naturally, we then proceeded to geek out a bit about the awesomeness that is Near Dark – the saloon scene! The beat-up wagon with the foil and spray paint to keep the sun out!) Kristen also admitted that she read and loved the Sookie Stackhouse books, but just can’t get into True Blood – again, endearing her to us Smugglers as we are in the same boat.
With shared geekdom on the mind and in the spirit of Comic Con, I asked Kristen if she herself was a comic book fan, to which she emphatically replied in the affirmative. In high school, Kristen read Spidey and Cloak and Dagger religiously (with the occasional Silver Surfer), and the latter has been a hugely influential series in her writing. Today, she’s branched out to some DC comics, including the recent reboot of characters in the universe – although it is too soon to tell if any of the storylines will be permanent winners, Kristen is excited by the initial comics and will be around for more. And, since it seems to be the trend with Urban Fantasy authors, I asked if there were any plans to turn her current series into a graphic novel or manga, to which Kristen replied that she’d love for it to happen and there is some talk about the Comarré books becoming translated to the manga medium (via Yen Press), but nothing is set yet. We’ll have to wait and see!
As to the question of what she’s reading now, Kristen told me that she’s still in writing mode, so hasn’t had the chance to read much, but did recently pick up an omnibus edition of the original Blade comics in black and white, which does have a high level of awesome unintentional cheese and comedy. She did say that she plans on taking a lot of time to read come the holidays once she’s finished up with her current project, and has dystopian novel Pure by Julianna Baggott high on her priority list.
Finally, what’s a smuggler chat without asking our infamous question about smuggling books? Though Kristen says she does spend a ridiculous amount of money on books (and they are threatening to take over her entire office space), she smuggles shoes, purses, and other items that she can’t really afford but just can’t resist.
Kristen Painter in glorious Vampire costume
A huge thank you to Kristen for taking the time out of her busy NYCC schedule to talk, and to Orbit for setting up the interview. For those interested in the books mentioned in this interview Blood Rights is on sale now. Flesh and Blood, book 2, will be available in November, followed by Bad Blood, book 3, in December.
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