INTERVIEW WITH VIRGINIA KANTRA

Please join me in welcoming USA Today best-selling author Virginia Kantra. Virginia is a six-time Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist and has won numerous writing awards, including the Golden Heart, Golden Leaf, Maggie, Holt Medallion, and two National Readers’ Choice Awards. After writing over a dozen books for Silhouette, she now writes romantic suspense and paranormal romance for Berkley. The March release of the anthology Shifter, with the prequel to her new series spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The series for Berkley begins this summer with back-to-back releases in July and August. She is married to her college sweetheart and is the mother of three children. Virginia lives in North Carolina.

As an aside, Virginia is a friend and was one of the first Silhouette Intimate Moments (now SRS) authors to welcome me to the line and make me comfortable at my first publisher party.

Welcome, Virginia!

 

1.      Sea Witch is the first in your new Children of the Sea series. Adding a strong paranormal element to romantic suspense is a departure for you. Would you tell us a little about this series?

 

At the same time I was writing my first two romantic suspense novels for Berkley, I also did a couple of novellas based on legends about the fair folk.  I had what I thought was the idea for another contemporary romantic suspense:  police chief on a remote island in Maine finds a naked woman who’s been attacked on the beach.  

And then I thought . . . What if she wasn’t human?

The “naked” bit set me off, I think.  There are folk tales up and down the British coast about the selkie, shape-shifters who take the form of seals in the ocean and cast off their pelts—get naked—to come ashore as beautiful men and women who have sex with humans.  Which is a fabulous fantasy if you are a lonely sailor and a pretty unarguable explanation if you are an unmarried village maiden who can’t possibly name the father of your baby. 

It was that juxtaposition, that tension between land and sea, between the contemporary, pragmatic, police procedural world of my hero and the timeless, sensual, magical world of my heroine, that totally hooked me into the first story and into the series.

 

2.      You introduced the series with a prequel, a novella in the best-selling anthology Shifter? Why did you decide to set up the series in that way and how did it come about?

 

I was actually already contracted for a novella when I wrote Sea Witch (the first book in the series).  The legends are so rich, and I wanted to tell a very traditional selkie tale for people who might not be familiar with the story.  So I was thrilled when my editor suggested I introduce the world of the series in Shifter.  “Sea Crossing” is my first historical—sort of Anne of Green Gables sails on the Titanic, but with hot sex—and I think one of the most lushly romantic stories I’ve ever written.

 

3.      Your heroine in Sea Witch must have presented some interesting problems, or issues, maybe, since she’s not entirely human. How did you deal with her duality?

 

Every character’s point of view springs from a combination of that character’s outer life and inner life. So I basically had to consider how Margred’s experience and emotions within her element–her environment, the sea–would affect her thoughts and decisions on land and among humans.  There’s a recurring line in the book that I used to capture the children of the sea:  “We flow as the sea flows.”  I adored writing Margred because she’s so amazingly sensual and sexually confident, but as a human being she has a long way to go.  

 

4.      What in your opinion is the hardest part of writing paranormal romantic suspense? What is the easiest?

 

You need to challenge your characters and make the story credible on every level. 

So working out the real life implications of some of the paranormal events is tricky.  You never want to do a “so then magic happens and everything’s better” resolution.  The attacks in Sea Witch had to be solved both as human crimes and as part of an ongoing mythic struggle.  Not only because the hero and heroine must each contribute to defeating the antagonist, but because I want the reader to believe Caleb and Margred can go on to make a life together after the story. 

It’s not easy.  But it’s fun.  I’ve never had so much fun.

 

5.      How do you keep track of your story–note cards, lists, outline, etc? Do you plot and plan? Or just jump in and let the muse take you?

 

There’s a great quote from E.L. Doctorow that I keep by my computer: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” 

Of course, I always feel that I should have a map.  I do write a synopsis, which I hardly ever adhere to.  I do use note cards which I shuffle around, add to, and discard with sometimes scary results.  I also keep this giant three-ring “series notebook” on my desk for all the maps and place descriptions, character names and pertinent details.  Only of course I forget to put things in there, so it’s pretty much useless except as a security blanket.

 

6.      Did writing shorter books for Silhouette give you an advantage or limit you in some way when you decided to write single title books that are about twice as long?

 

Definitely an advantage in terms of structuring the story and keeping focus.  The stories I wrote for Silhouette really helped define for me what I have to say about the strength of family, the importance of community, and the power of love. But after a dozen or so books, I became increasingly aware of the parts of the story I had to leave out–not because of any editorial restrictions but because of word count.  Writing the longer books really lets me do more in terms of setting the lovers in their larger world.

 

7.      What are the next books in the trilogy about and how are the three books connected?

 

I used the Orkney ballads about the selkie—which are haunting and beautiful, but nearly always tragic—as the basis for the series.  But I used another sea shanty from the 1700s to connect the stories:          

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light

            And he married a mermaid one fine night.

            Of that union there came three . . .

I’m including some of these songs and stories in my Countdown to Sea Witch on MySpace beginning Monday, June 16. I hope people will come read them. That’s at http://myspace.com/virginiakantra.

The lighthouse keeper in my series is a lobsterman in contemporary Maine.  And the “three” are the grown up Children of the Sea:

·        Caleb, the soldier, who returns from the desert to fall in love with a woman from the sea (Sea Witch, Berkley, July 2008);

·        Dylan, the loner, who must choose between the freedom of his mother’s kind and the bonds of mortal love (Sea Fever, Berkley, August 2008), and

·        Lucy, the dreamer, whose heart and fate are tangled with the sea king’s son (Sea Lord, Berkley, February 2009).

 

8.      What advice can you offer to writers who are working toward publication?

 

Not to accept too much advice.  There’s no “right” and “wrong” in writing fiction; there’s only “works” and “does not work,” and each writer has to discover what works for her.

 

9.      And lastly, if you could invite three people to dinner (real, fictional, living or dead), who would they be? What would you serve and why and what would you want to discuss over coffee? What questions would you want to ask them?

 

With all this talk about Maine, I’d serve lobster.  (Someone else has to put them in the pot, though.)

I’d invite Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, A Circle of Quiet) and Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion) to talk about creativity, writing, and family life.

And Hugh Jackman because . . . Well, hell-o.  Hugh Jackman.

 

Virginia, definitely Hugh Jackman. Add John Mayer and move over.

Thanks for a great interview. I thoroughly enjoyed “Sea Crossing” and can’t wait for Sea Witch.