Happy Halloween! In honor of the holiday, today I’d like to welcome my lovely Sourcebooks sister Maria Vale–paranormal romance author extraordinaire–to the blog! And before we go any further, I want to congratulate Maria for her book A WOLF APART being selected as one of Publishers Weekly best romances of 2018! Congratulations, Maria! The honor is well deserved!!
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Praise for THE LAST WOLF:
“The Last Wolf pits devotion against duty and survival with complexity and emotion and delivers a story that is raw, wild, and intense–captivating to the final page.” — Amanda Bouchet
“…a dense, gooey chocolate cake in page form. A wonderfully descriptive paranormal romance that breathes some much-needed life into the subgenre.” — Kirkus Reviews
Praise for A WOLF APART:
“There’s an emptiness to Elijah…and it’s turning him into a caged animal. It’s sexy and it’s frightening, a heady combination…A feral and fearsome romance that works for its happy ending.”— Kirkus
A Wolf Apart “strikingly explores the core werewolf conflict between civilization and the wild, and offers food for thought about “the nature of strength,” all in the context of a tense, high-energy plot” – Publishers Weekly starred review
Sharon: Welcome, Maria. To start, can you describe what the books, and the series, are about?
[bctt tweet=”Maria Vale’s A Wolf Apart is one of Publishers Weekly’s top romances of 2018! https://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2018/romance#book/book-5 @MariaValeAuthor #Authors18″ username=”sharonbwray”]
Maria: The Legend of All Wolves—that’s the name of the series—IS about what we would call werewolves though they call themselves pack or wolves, because ‘were’—which means man–has very little to do with what they are. Their human form is nothing but a tool used to protect pack, land and their true wild selves.
THE LAST WOLF introduces Silver, a runt with a bum leg when she is wild. In a very hierarchical society, she has few expectations for the future, until Tiberius, a wounded stranger comes to the pack’s territory, bringing hope for Silver and possible devastation for the pack and the land she loves so much.
While THE LAST WOLF is almost entirely on the Homelands, A WOLF APART takes place largely Off land, in New York City where Elijah Sorensson has been serving the Pack as a lawyer for decades, protecting their land and their interests. The Alpha of his age group, he is also a master manipulator of the human hierarchy. But the once-firm lines between his human act and his wild self are blurring and something inside is dying.
Then he meets Thea Villalobos, a human who has learned the price of pretending. A woman who sees beyond the man of the world to the passionate, heartbroken wolf.
Sharon: I love werewolves and your stories are so unique to the genre. Can you share a teaser from one of your books?
Maria: Of course!
From THE LAST WOLF:
Ti opens the big red-and-gray-striped blanket wide. I curl naked into his lap, and he props his head on mine.
I lay my hand on his chest. “Why were you so angry about that man in the gas station? Not the man with the gun. The other one. The man with the dying lungs?”
“I wasn’t. You were getting upset. I was worried about you.”
I frown, my finger beating with the speeding rhythm of his heart. I know there’s something going on inside here. A man as much as threatened him with a gun. But Ti stayed stone faced and quiet voiced. That changed, though—I know it, I smelled it—when he saw the man with the yellow-stained fingers and breath like coal and rot.
“Ti?” I shift up, so I can whisper in his ear. “You know we’re not allowed to kill without eating. But if you need me to, I will eat him for you.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his thick arms pull tight around me. We listen for a while to the coyote shrieks in the distance.
“You know,” he finally says, “you’re the only person who has ever wanted to protect me.”
When the sun is gone and the clouds cover the waxing gibbous moon, he says, “I don’t think he would taste very good.”
“No. I didn’t think he would.”
Sharon: Thank you for sharing this excerpt. Where did you get the idea for this series?
Maria: I’d read—and thoroughly enjoyed—a number of books in which werewolves were either loners or part of a motorcycle gang pack. Testosterone laden bad boys. I felt that this played into our worst misperceptions about wolves and wondered if I couldn’t do something to change that.
Sharon: Well, you did a wonderful job with the changes. How did you choose the title?
Maria: Initially, I’d imagined the book as a standalone and called it Silver, but my editor wanted a trilogy—a thing that turned out to be easier to accommodate than I had thought. As soon as I heard THE LAST WOLF, I thought it was brilliant. Silver, the heroine, is a runt and has a bum leg when she is in wild and is the last wolf, in that she is at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
Sharon: Can you tell us about your favorite character?
Maria: I love Silver. The Great North’s truest form is always as wolves, but they have varying degrees of competence in negotiating the human world. Elijah Sorensson, the hero of A WOLF APART is very skilled. Silver is not. She is very smart, but cannot grasp certain basic human concepts and has failed Introduction to Human Behaviors four times.
[bctt tweet=”Who is your favorite character in A Wolf Apart? Silver. She’s very smart, but cannot grasp certain basic human concepts and has failed Introduction to Human Behaviors four times. ~ Maria Vale @MariaValeAuthor #Authors18″ username=”sharonbwray”]
Sharon: I loved those scenes with Silver! If you could spend a day with one of your characters, who would it be and what would you do?
Maria: A somewhat minor character is Leonora Jeansdottir, the Human Behaviors teacher. In my imagining of her, she has spent a great deal of time studying the way humans act so she can help wolves blend in but doesn’t always get it quite right. For example, there is a scene when she drinks her coffee from the mug with a straw.
I’d love to take her out to a movie and dinner and maybe help refine her understanding a little.
Sharon: Are your character based on real people, or do they come from your imaginations?
Maria: There are some characteristics that come from real people. John, the Alpha of the Great North Pack in THE LAST WOLF, was based physically on Joe Manganiello who played the shifter Alcide Herveaux in True Blood.
When Elijah Sorensson first appears in A WOLF APART, he has been corrupted by many years Offland working as a lawyer to protect the Pack’s interests. I imagine him as being hollowed out and increasingly obsessed with labels like food and clothing, the externals that serve as signals of place in the human hierarchy. This (and this alone), I based on Patrick Bateman, the loathsome protagonist of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
Sharon: How long did you take to write this book?
Maria: THE LAST WOLF took about six months to actually write. I’m a pretty slow writer, so that surprised me. What surprised me even more was how long the publishing process takes. I signed a contract with Sourcebook a couple of weeks after the 2016 election. There were some developmental edits including edits to turn it from a standalone to the first book in a trilogy.
Luckily, I was tied up in writing book two, or I’d have gnawed my nails to the quick waiting for publication in February 2018. About ten months later, I got a galley with a moon peeking over mountains and thought ‘OOO, how pretty.” Little did I know, that this was just for the galley and the real cover was so much better.
Sharon: Sourcebooks covers are some of the best in publishing. What kind of research did you do for this book?
Maria: I read a half dozen books on wolves and several books on the Adirondacks. My father lived at the southern edge of the park, so I’ve spent some time in the environs.
Sharon: What did you remove from this book during the editing process?
Maria: Since it had been initially a standalone, I changed who was killed at the end and added more about characters who could become useful later but not too much because things develop as I write.
Sharon: Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Maria: I have a general sense of where a book starts, where it is going, a few important scenes and who the characters are. The problem for me is that a plot has a narrative logic, but not necessarily an emotional logic. The emotional logic develops as I write, so the one time I really plotted the whole book out, I found that my characters were doing things that no longer seemed consonant with their hearts. I always discard a fair amount, but that one . . . I think I wrote twice the number of words I ended up with.
[bctt tweet=”What is your favorite part of your writing process? The rare moment of flow. It’s like building a sandcastle. First you fill the box with sand. Then you pile it up in a tall pile that looks like, well, like sand in a pile. Then you start carving. ~ Maria Vale @MariaValeAuthor #Authors18″ username=”sharonbwray”]
Sharon: I do the same exact things and always leave thousands of words behind. What is your favorite part of your writing process?
Maria: The rare moment of flow. When the scene is like a movie playing in my head and I’m just transcribing. The crucial word is “rare”. Usually it’s like building a sandcastle. First you fill the box with sand. Then you pile it up in a tall pile that looks like, well, like sand in a pile. Then you start carving.
Sharon: What is the most challenging part of your writing process?
Maria: Clever dialogue. I like reading it in other people, but when I’m writing, the back and forth of funny quips rarely rings true. Maybe I need a few friends who are better at banter.
Sharon: I think your dialog is awesome! Can you share your writing routine?
Maria: Usually in the morning. I try to set up 30 minute blocks when I’m not going to be interrupted. Being online, especially with social media is very disruptive, so I’ve recently set up a regimen whereby I only allow myself to look at social media when I’m walking up the stairs. As I live on the 12th floor, it keeps me exercising and off social media.
Sharon: Have you ever gotten writer’s block?
Maria: Yes. By the time I got around to the third volume I was editing volume 2, worrying about sales of Volume 1 and a contract for Volume 4. I was trying to figure out promotion and getting distracted by social media. I set myself a goal of 500 words per day. Now, that’s less than I usually do, but I found that setting it higher, increased my anxiety and my sense of failure if I couldn’t meet it.
Sharon: That’s the exact point (book 3) when I hit WB as well. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Maria: Start making connections with the writers of your genre early, early, early. Join Facebook groups or Twitter chats and even if you’re just skulking in the undergrowth, it will give you an idea of the downsides and upsides. Other writers are your best support system. Family and friends will make reassuring noises. Readers like what you do, or they don’t.
Oh, and avoid Goodreads. It is the Slough of Despond.
[bctt tweet=”If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be? Other writers are your best support system. Family and friends will make reassuring noises. Readers like what you do, or they don’t. ~ Maria Vale @MariaValeAuthor #Authors18″ username=”sharonbwray”]
Sharon: I love that description of GR. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Maria: Two and a half unpublished volumes of a YA trilogy. One contemporary YA standalone. A standalone romance between a waitress and the angel of death that’s about 2/3rds done.
Sharon: Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Maria: I have a husband and two children, one of whom is now in college. I’ve lived in New York City for the past 30 years—aside from a four year stint in Germany.
Sharon: How did you get into writing?
Maria: As a freelancer, I used to interview writers and remember a number of them saying they wrote because they couldn’t stand to be in an office. I think the only reason to write is because you have something you want to say. I went through a lot of my life perfectly happy to consume what other people wrote. Then I had something to say.
Sharon: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Maria: Unlike most writers, I have very few skills. I read obsessively and enjoy people watching. I like making up stories for random passersby. Right now there is a woman holding a folder in high heels in front of the building across the street. She’s been standing there a while. I’ve decided she is a real estate agent for high-end apartments. She’s just gotten a text saying her client is 30 minutes late or maybe won’t be coming at all. Her face goes tight, but she is a professional and 6% of five million is a lot of money. She smooths her brow with her hand and smiles at no one before texting back. That sort of thing.
Sharon: You’re a natural storyteller. Can you share something about yourself that most people don’t know?
Maria: I hate driving and haven’t had a driver’s license for decades.
Sharon: I can’t stop laughing because I drive thousands of miles every year! What are you working on right now?
Maria: Volume 4 of Legend of All Wolves. The working title is WOLF REBORN and centers on Evie Kitwanasdottir and a Shifter introduced in volume 3.
Sharon: What’s your favorite writing advice?
Maria: There are a number of them that boil down to just shovel words onto the screen. Once you’ve done the shoveling, I move on to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.”
[bctt tweet=”What’s your favorite writing advice? There are a number of them that boil down to just shovel words onto the screen. Once you’ve done the shoveling, I move on to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.” ~ Maria Vale @MariaValeAuthor #Authors18″ username=”sharonbwray”]
Sharon: So true. What book are you currently reading?
Maria: I just finished Rose Lerner’s complete Lively St. Lemeston series. It was fantastically addictive. Not much of a historical reader, but I loved this one. Queued up next is Holly Black’s Darkest Part of the Forest.
Sharon: I adore Holly Black and that’s one my favorites of all of her books. Thanks so much for being here today, Maria! I love this series so much and wish you all the luck with your wolves!
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A logophile and bibliovore and worrier about the world, Maria Vale lives in New York with her husband, two sons and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a pet.
You can find A WOLF APART here: Books2Read
You can find THE LAST WOLF here: Books2Read
You can find Maria here: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Goodreads
Sharon Wray is a librarian who once studied dress design in the couture houses of Paris and now writes about the men in her Deadly Force romantic suspense series where ex-Green Berets meet their match in smart, sexy heroines who teach these alpha males that Grace always defeats Reckoning.
Her acclaimed debut book EVERY DEEP DESIRE, a sexy, action-packed retelling of Romeo and Juliet, is about an ex-Green Beret determined to regain his honor, his freedom, and his wife.
EVERY DEEP DESIRE is available on: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | iBooks | | | Google
And adding it to your Goodreads TBR list is also always appreciated!
