Interview: Amy Lane

I am excited to welcome author Amy Lane, who is getting ready to re-release her Little Goddess books. The first novel, Vulnerable, is now available!

Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.

And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.

Make sure you stick around to the end. We’ll be giving away an ecopy of Vulnerable.
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Interview

Literary Escapism: Can you introduce us to a few of the side characters that we’ll be meeting or who will play an important role to/for any of the characters in the Little Goddess series?

Amy Lane: Actually, two of my favorite side characters either started or went on to have stories of their own. My absolute favorites are Jack and Teague, who got their start in the Green’s Hill Werewolf stories. I just wanted an excuse to write werewolves, really, but by the time I was done with the six novellas, Teague Sullivan had become a permanent part of the hill, and he had a significant part in Rampant, which is the fourth book of the Little Goddess.

LE: Was there any character that didn’t make as big of an impact on the story that you thought they would?

Amy Lane: Grace, the mama vampire. She was a stay at home mother and a content wife, and when she found she was dying of cancer, her desire for more life called Adrian from three-hundred miles away to convert her. I mean, how often do we have a maternal vampire. In the second book, she takes off for a fight wearing a pantsuit. She’s usually found in jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and her favorite swearword is “c***sucker”– I sort of thought she would have made a bigger impression, at least as a side character. But I’m not sure people wanted to see a real mother take off and rip the bad guy’s heads off. People sort of pretended not to see her.

LE: Was there a character who stayed on the page longer than you thought they would?

Amy Lane: Lambent– he was introduced in the Green’s Hill Werewolf novellas, and I sort of thought he’d be cannon-fodder, but he’s interesting. He’s still not buying the party line of Green’s Hill but he likes Cory because she lets him set things on fire.

LE: Is there any particular legend or mythology that you came across that was the root of inspiration for you that was used more than others or was there a wide source?

Amy Lane: Yeah– remember that picture book that came out about thirty years ago, called Fairies? I started out to write a vampire story, but as soon as the elves were introduced, I was all about Fairies. And the W.B. Yeats books. I had read the first few of the Laurell K. Hamilton books when I first wrote Vulnerable, but Twilight hadn’t even come out yet, and I was halfway through it when I read the first Sookie Stackhouse. I think vampires and communities of the supernatural were just in the air at the time (remember, this story was started in 2001!)

LE: Since creating your world in Vulnerable, has there been anything you’ve regretting starting or wish you had started sooner?

Amy Lane: I really wish I’d written Quickening immediately afterward. But the m/m world lured me in– writing contemporary and fantasy m/m romances turned out to be something I loved, and I was really good at, and I got a lot of feedback from. And, well, circumstances sort of demanded I make a living writing, and m/m was a sure thing, when urban fantasy was still not quite ready for the world I’d created in Vulnerable.

LE: Was there something that worked out great in Vulnerable, but now you wish you had done differently?

Amy Lane: If you’re asking me about the ending? No. I wouldn’t change the way I ended Vulnerable for the world. Yeah, I still get a lot of hate mail about it– but that significant event at the end of Vulnerable set the tone of fearlessness that has followed me through my writing. There were times when a character needed to make a difficult choice or say or do a painful thing, and I don’t know if I would have had the courage to write that difficult choice or painful thing if I hadn’t ended Vulnerable as I had. The Locker Room, Keeping Promise Rock, Chase in Shadow, and Beneath the Stain would all have been weaker, lesser books if I hadn’t been able to do the difficult thing. What I did in Vulnerable proved to me that I was capable of doing that, and I could write a book that could gut a reader, and then put them back together just a little bit different, a little more thoughtful, than they had been before.

LE: What is your favorite scene in any of the Little Goddess books? What makes it so special – characters, setting, dialogue, action?

Amy Lane: Mm… I have a lot of them, and if I choose one, I’ll probably regret it and choose another tomorrow. I mean, there’s nearly a million words written in this series. I’ll choose my top five:

• The scene where Cory and Bracken create a hotel with sex and magic in Wounded — the scene is such an odd blend of painful decisions, hot sex, and absurd, unexpected magic, and to me, that’s the exact mix of things that make the fans of the Little Goddess so very loyal. That, “Oh, hey, I understand these emotions and wtf just happened?”
• Most of the action scenes in the Green’s Hill Werewolf books. I wrote those stories while I was writing the Bitter Moon saga, and I took so much joy in writing urban contemporary fantasy– I just had fun with them.
• The “bweeding wike a mucking thtuck foose” scene in Bound is always a favorite, for humor and Green’s adapting to Cory being in danger, as is the scene where she’s so stressed she sits and knits for an entire day in order to escape pain.
• The sex scene on the boat is a favorite, as far as heat rating goes. And the fact that it’s on a boat, and I don’t usually do unusual location sex scenes, because, well, nothing is as sexy as being comfortable in a nice bed.
• This is from one of the novellas, Litha’s Constant Whim, but the end, when Whim is wielding his magic for Charlie to play with (as a 150 lb. house cat) and Charlie’s old lover sees that Charlie is alive and happy, and that maybe he can live his life? Guts me. I’m not sure why. But Whim and Charlie show up in Quickening, and I was surprised how the entire story just slowed to a halt for them to moon at each other, because those two characters just generated such a lovely “awww…” factor.

LE: When you’re not writing, what are you reading? Have you found an author that’s new to you and/or one that the rest of the world really needs to find? Is there a certain niche genre that you prefer to escape to? If so, why?

Amy Lane: I read a combination of M/M and fantasy. I feel horrible, because I got so behind in all my urban fantasy reading that I need to go back and figure out where I left off in all my series. It’s like I’ve been neglecting old friends. I’m a huge fan of Guy Gavriel Kay- and he’s like a treat for me. So is Robin McKinley, even though she’s officially young adult. K.J. Charles and Jordan Hawk are some amazing fantasy m/m writers, and it fills me with joy to know they just keep writing. And, of course, Mary Calmes, who just set the bar for m/m urban fantasy and never lets it drop.

LE: What was it about the paranormal/fantasy genre that drew you to write in it? Was there a certain book that captured your imagination and lead you to thinking up your own fantastical stories or did it come to you naturally?

Amy Lane: Well, when I started writing Vulnerable, Laurell K. had just started to get big– I was on the ninth book of the Anita Blake series when I wrote the short story that became Vulnerable. I finished that short story with sort of an ambiguous ending– was Adrian really a vampire, or was he just sort of an emotional vampire. Was he going to love her, or was he going to kill her? Once I realized I wanted him to be a good guy, and for him to have had a lover for the past 150 years, I realized that the world I’d created– the world where there was just all this magical shit that had gone on in the world and nobody noticed because they had their eyes too turned to their own small lives– I believed in that.

I’m the person who will drive down the road and say, “Did you see that? There was a man with locs, dressed in drag, wearing bright red and white stripes and mardi gras beads getting pulled over by the police. I wonder what his story is?” And my husband will say, “Really? That was real?” Yes– It was. I can recount every detail, including his purple framed sunglasses and the way his gold-capped teeth glinted in the sun as he held his hands up for the cops. (Honestly, in my neighborhood, he was probably being hideously harassed, because we do have the type of neighborhood where a little bit of fabulous like that would have to be damned strong to survive.) But the thing is, if I can see him, and nobody else in the car was paying attention, why can’t he be an elf? Or a troll? Why can’t he be a sidhe warrior on the wrong side of the hill? Who’s going to notice that– the cops rousting him, apparently for walking while fabulous? No. The world is blind to magic. The people who can see it are going to write the best stories.

LE: Which authors do you read and/or think “Damn! I wish I had thought of that”?

Amy Lane: Rob Thurman– I LOVE her version of “elves” or “Auph”– because they’re MILES away from mine, and her world view is so much darker, but her approach to life– that there is magic hidden from the world and sometimes random shit just happens? That so resonates. Oh! And Jim Butcher. Three words. Harry. Freakin’. Dresden. That world, all those books, that character– that is a tremendous accomplishment in the world of urban fantasy. Oh! And Mary Janice Davison– because Queen Betsy is badass.
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Meet Amy Lane!

Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance–and if you accidentally make eye contact, she’ll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She’ll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.

Contact Info: Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads | Amazon

Want to purchase Amy’s novels?
Little Goddess

1. Vulnerable
2. Wounded
3. Bound
4. Rampant

The Locker Room
Keeping Promise Rock
Chase in Shadow
Beneath the Stain
Lights, Camera, Cupid!: A Bluewater Bay Valentine’s Day Anthology
The Bells of Times Square
Candy Man
Behind the Curtain
Country Mouse: The Complete Collection
Under the Rushes
Litha’s Constant Whim
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Contest Time!

Thank you Amy for taking the time to stop by Literary Escapism!

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