I want you guys to meet one of my all time favorite writers, Evelyn Vaughn. Her Bombshells are amazing and I’ve been a fan since her early days with Harlequin. Check her out:
1. Tell us about your newest book Something Wicked,
and give us a short look into the world of the Grail
Keepers to catch everyone up.
SOMETHING WICKED tells the story of a Chicago nurse, Katie Trillo, who comes from a family tradition of Hekate worshippers, but who turned away from magic after a childhood trauma. When she comes home to the murder of her older sister, and the theft of their family’s Hekate Cup, Katie knows just enough to be dangerous, and from her grief and rage she curses the killer… but she makes a mistake. The killer has, throughout his life, been in the habit of blaming things on his twin brother, and gave her the wrong name. Now Katie must find a way to protect the good twin, Ben, while pursuing the evil twin, Victor, all the time struggling against the effects of a curse that binds all three of them together on a karmic level. She also comes to learn–in a cameo appearance from the heroine of the first two Grail Keeper books–that she is a GrailKeeper, a keeper of the secrets of a hidden Goddess Grail.
2. Where did the idea for the Grail Keepers come from?
Almost like magic! I’d heard about the new Bombshell line, and it felt like a perfect fit. I wanted to propose something just right, so I began to search my own beliefs to hit upon the right mixture to convey feminine empowerment. I’m a goddess worshipper. I’ve always loved studying the Holy Grail. So the ideas that built the Grail Keepers myth became threefold: a) humans used to worship numerous goddesses (true: just read about Isis), which resulted in more respect for feminine strengths (logical, and many scholars also believe true). b) the idea of the Holy Grail might well be an adaptation of myths about the magical abilities of goddess cups and goddess cauldrons (common theory: just read about Cerridwen’s Cauldron). And c) a lot of real history has been forgotten/relegated to “myth” (see: Troy). WHAT IF, I thought, when the world turned patriarchal, all the goddess worshippers hid their own Goddess’s sacred cup for safety and passed word about it down from mother to daughter, in the form of fairy tales and nursery rhymes? And what if the main legend about them is that, once the time is right and enough of these cups are collected, woman-power will increase significantly as well?
3. You have continuing character but all of the
stories are so diverse. Can you talk about how you
come up with the story for each book? A little bit of
your process?
I firmly believe that I don’t just create stories–to some extent I channel them out of the world of possibilities. But I’m not abdicating authority, either! Most of that world of possibilities are the ones in my own head, connected to my own loves and interests and fears. As said before, I needed a good Bombshell idea in a hurry (my hope had been to be one of the four launch authors, and I *almost* made it until my book, AKA GODDESS, was pushed back to the second month). I made Maggi a college instructor because I’m a college instructor–less research! I had her teaching Comparative Mythology because it made more sense for a woman who would be studying goddesses, and because I’ve loved the idea of Comparative Mythology as a field since I discovered Joseph Campbell. I set most of her first story in France because I know France better than most of Europe, and I based her family grail on the goddess Melusine because I did significant research on Melusine for my first romance novel, a piece of historical faction that never did sell. Maggi’s hero, Lex, appeared fully formed on the page, and since Maggi was a goddess worshipper, he had to be part of a secret society of men out to stop the grails from being gathered. Her other romantic interest for AKA GODDESS, Welshman Rhys Pritchard, was Welsh specifically because of those Cerridwen legends. I wanted each character to represent a possible background of the Holy Grail, so Maggi represented the Goddess Cups, Lex represented the Royal Blood, and Rhys had to represent the Christian, Cup-of-the-Last-Supper angle.
Amusingly, an add by Silhouette for the new Bombshell line added to some of Maggi’s qualities, because I was still writing the book when it came out. They’d asked about the heroines of the authors they’d already bought to launch the line, and I told them that Maggi taught college (figuring I’d make her a community college instructor like myself, with an MA) and joked that she doesn’t like guns and her only martial art was Tai Chi, picturing the low-key, moving-meditation (I wanted her to be firmly human, without going the Lara Croft or Alias, Super-Spy route). The ad came out reading “She’s smart–she has a PhD!–and although she doesn’t like guns, she’s a Tai Chi expert!” At that point, I had to figure out if Tai Chi (which Maggi herself calls “the Hello Kitty of martial arts”) could be a suitable combat style. Luckily, although it’s more rarely used that way, it can! It became a great metaphor for Maggi’s feminine belief systems, which just goes to show you, there are no accidents.
HER KIND OF TROUBLE, the sequel to AKA GODDESS, came in part out of me seeing a Discovery Channel special on the Lost Palace of Cleopatra (which divers are trying to reclaim, under the Harbor of Alexandria). I had meant to give Maggi even more books before she and Lex got even more serious, but it wasn’t to be. Thus by the end of HKOT, Maggi proved to be temporarily indisposed, and I needed a new heroine to take up the mantle. Since I used to be a practicing Wiccan, love the movement, and got my start writing about Wiccans in the Circle Series for Silhouette Shadows, Katie Trillo was born for SOMETHING WICKED.
As for diversifying… I do work to come up with ways to alternate the sequence of when and how the Grail (my McGuffin) is discovered, and what its powers are, and where my heroine is in her respective relationships. I don’t want these books to become cookie cutters. It helps to give the characters a lot of freedom.
4. You work full time, how do you find time to write?
I *make* the time, and with great difficulty. It seems as if I’m always behind deadline, which I hate. Part of that is that I’ve been very tired over the last few years, however, and my doctor and I think I have a lead on that, so fingers crossed for the fix! I tried just writing full-time, and it didn’t work, both for monetary reasons (I’m single, and a girl does need health insurance) and because I need a bit of that external structure, or I still don’t get enough done. Luckily, academia is the perfect marriage to writing, and the people at my school–Tarrant County College, SE Campus–couldn’t be more encouraging. Frankly, I have very little social life. Weekends and evenings go toward writing, especially when I’m on deadline. That’s one reason I love hanging with other authors–it’s a way to be social without feeling guilty that I’m not “working!” Also, writers and readers are just such cool people.
I firmly believe in what Julia Cameron wrote in THE ARTIST’S WAY, that enthusiasm is more important than discipline, and so try to get as excited about a project as I can. But I’m sure my editor and agent would like to see more discipline as well!
5. Many of your books have witches, do you like
writing about them?
I *love* writing about them! In the late 80’s, I discovered Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde books, and I was so disappointed to learn that there wouldn’t be more, I just had to write some Wiccan heroines myself. About five or six years ago, I backed off of the practice of Wicca per se, not because I have anything but respect for it, but because I didn’t think I was showing the dedication and consistency that would make me a good representative of the Craft. While I remain fascinated by magic and am not adverse to the occasional, well-thought-out spell (see what I mean about consistency?), I am far more heavily drawn to magical theory, and the merging of Goddess beliefs *with* our culture’s current patriarchal beliefs, rather than *instead of.* That’s why I moved on to writing a heroine (Maggi) whose beliefs have no particular label, but whose beliefs are definitely goddess-oriented… she’s my kind of eclectic! That said, I loved going back to my Wiccan writing-roots for Katie with SOMETHING WICKED. It made sense that *some* Grail Keepers would be witches!
6. Can you talk about what’s coming up next, and I
noticed some of your historicals on Amazon. Any plans
to do more of those?
My next two books — LOST CALLING, in July, and SEVENTH KEY, in January — are not Grail Keeper books, but are goddess-centered and do use GK heroines! LOST CALLING features Catrina Dauvergne (a villain in AKA-G who became a lot more interesting in HKOT) and Rhys Pritchard, and is the first in a 7-book, 6-author miniseries called The Madonna Key, about a group of women uncovering the Cult of the Black Madonna. SEVENTH KEY features Maggi Sanger-Stuart, and while it does have a Grail-keeping subplot, it’s main job is to tie up the Marians’ adventures. That’s the book I’m finishing right now. I just got the cover for Catrina’s book, too! Check it out on http://www.madonnakey.com
After finishing SEVENTH KEY that I hope to go back in time to tell a GrailKeeping story set at about the time Maggi & Lex marry (I do want to see their wedding so badly), and I hope to write another book about Katie and Ben. I’ll probably return to Catrina and Rhys as well–they turned out to make a surprisingly endearing couple. I’m also involved in a different miniseries idea with several of the Madonna Key authors, which we’ll be meeting to brainstorm about next weekend.
7. Anything you’d like readers to know?
The number one thing that keeps me writing–more than the money and certainly more than any fame–is the hope that people are going to read these books and care about these characters the way I do. Talking about the characters as if they’re real (“Will they have kids? What was their wedding like?”) isn’t just fun, the way talking about our favorite TV shows is fun–it feeds my soul! I also love discussing the writing process in general (that’s probably my teacher side coming out… I have to analyze everything from verb tense to pov). By all means, if you have questions or comments, write me at Yvaughn@aol.com! You’ll be helping to energize me for my next projects :-)
Candace Havens 