Interview: Samantha Young

Today I'm excited to welcome paranormal young adult author Samantha Young to the blog to talk about her Tale of Lunamorte trilogy. All three books are available now, so be sure and check the bottom of the post for links on where you can find them!

You got some of your inspiration for Moon Spell by studying Greek mythology; was there one myth in particular that most influenced the creation myth in the book itself?

I wasn’t really influenced by one particular myth; it was more that I was inspired by the personalities of the Greek gods and their individual connections to nature. As my ideas developed certain myths (such as Hades stealing the goddess Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, and making her Queen of the Underworld) just fit. I could use these myths to exact consequences that shaped the evolution of vampyres and lykans etc.

If you could be the descendant of a Greek god, who would you most like to be related to and why?

I think I would be a descendant of Athena. She was intelligent, powerful and wise, and although she was the goddess of war she preferred to sort out disputes through wisdom and practical thinking rather than violence, like her brother Ares. Plus, she was the patron goddess of heroes, which I think is pretty cool; she helped shape the destiny of heroes and I’d like to think I’m creating modern heroes with my books :-)

Out of the three books in the Tale of Lunarmorte series, which would you say was the most difficult to write or had the largest number of significant changes?

Blood Solstice (Part three) was probably the most difficult to write as there is more history in it – I took real events from ancient Greece, Rome, medieval France, and 18th Century Russia to shape around the events in the world I’d created, and this took me a while to research. Moreover, Blood Solstice is the darkest of the three novels and I had to make some pretty tough decisions about the fate of certain characters, which wasn’t easy because as a writer you become pretty attached to them :-(

If you were to interview one of your characters, who would it be and what’s the first thing you would ask them?

If I could interview any one of my characters it would be Saffron. Saffron is an old faerie (shapeshifter). She’s beautiful, confident, smart-mouthed, and pretty much awesome at what she does so everyone thinks she’s not got a care in the world. However she gets kind of vulnerable (and by vulnerable I mean lashes out irrationally) around this one guy. I’m not going to mention who because it would be a spoiler, but if I could ask her anything, I’d ask how she really felt about this certain person… because she never really lets us know :-)

What’s one paranormal book you would most like to see made into a movie?

Vampire Academy without a doubt. The others I would like to see are already on their way to becoming movies, but Vampire Academy isn’t. I wouldn’t want it to be a tv program because sometimes I feel the books lose their edge when their chopped down into episodes. But I’d love to see Rose and Dimitri on the big screen. I also think Nina Dobrev from The Vampire Diaries would make a fantastic Rose. Not sure about Dimitri… maybe a hot unknown.

If Caia could switch fictional worlds and jump into a different young adult book, which world might she choose?

I think Caia might like to help out the gang in The Mortal Instruments series. There’s always so much going on, and it’s such a fun and creative world that she’d never be bored. And since she’s always on the go in The Tale of Lunarmorte, she’d need the same never-ending problems to fix.

What would you say is the best part about being self-published? The most difficult?

The best part about being self-published is the amount of control you have over the entire process. I write when I want, I write what I want and I distribute where I want and at what price I want to retail the books at. Also I get to choose cover art and release the books on a much faster schedule than traditionally published novels. The most difficult part, however, is the fact that I’m doing it all alone. For the most part the editing comes down to me, the formatting of the ebooks and paperbacks (including formatting cover art) comes down to me, marketing and promotion and accounting etc. It’s a lot of work and if you’re serious about self-publishing you have to be prepared to give up a lot of your free time to get it done.

You have a spinoff series releasing in 2012; what element of the world you’ve created are you most looking forward to continuing and expanding in the new books?

At the end of The Tale of Lunarmorte, Caia and the gang were facing a whole new world with a whole new set of problems. I’ve got a lot of fun ideas planned for the new establishment and I’m looking forward to setting it all up. Plus, even though Caia is no longer the protagonist of the new series, she’s going to be popping in and out of the books and I’m looking forward to sharing how things have turned out for her with my readers.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions Samantha! For more information on Samantha and her books, you can find here here:

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Moon Spell (Book 1)
River Cast (Book 2)
Blood Solstice (Book 3)

MOON SPELL (from Goodreads)

Existing in the shadows of our world are supernatural races; children blessed by the ancient Greek gods with unimaginable gifts, and at present they are fighting a two thousand year old war with one another. Into this war Caia Ribeiro is born...

Caia has lived a life shrouded in mystery, isolated from her lykan pack and the supernatural world she belongs to. At seventeen years old it comes as a shock to be uprooted from her dull life playing human and plunged back into pack life. Returning to her world is not an easy one. It comes with the threat of the global underworld war, pack politics, and an impossible attraction to her Alpha, Lucien. It is also an extraordinary and addictive world, a place she feels she may actually belong. If only Caia could get past the feeling that Lucien and the pack were keeping secrets from her. Dangerous secrets about her heritage and the war. In the end… unforgivable secrets.

Forgiven or not, when an old enemy resumes his deadly pursuit of Pack Errante, they will need Caia to come to terms with the truth in order to help save them from their powerful adversary.