Drain You Blog Tour: Interview with M. Beth Bloom + Giveaway

Today I'm very excited to welcome author M. Beth Bloom to the blog to answer a few questions as part of the promotional tour for her young adult paranormal novel, Drain You. This promises to be a really fun tour, so be sure and visit MundieMoms and Hobbitsies for a full list of participating blogs and tour dates, and check out the bottom of this post for all the details on the giveaway!

If you could live in the world of any one vampire novel or movie, what world might it be and what do you find most fascinating/terrifying about it?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the film.  What I love about the movie is its humor and wit – that vampires aren’t being taken too seriously, aren’t being portrayed as emo or goth or romantic in any way.  But they also aren’t too gory or disturbing.  Vampires in that film simply represent the worst of high school – just another hurdle for a teenager to jump over – you know, make the cheer quad, find a date for prom, slay vampires, save the world.  It’s refreshing, really, for the heroine to be so casual and playful about the supernatural.  Buffy’s more annoyed by it than anything because she’d rather just go back to shopping and hanging out with her friends.

Let’s say Quinn was aware her experiences in Drain You were something anyone could pick up off a shelf and read. What do you think she would say to a reader who was just about to immerse themselves in her life?

“C’mon, you guys, I don’t have to be likable to be lovable.”

What is it about vampires and their various mythologies that you personally find most interesting?

I love the metaphorical vampire – the person in your life who wants to drain you, essentially, suck you dry.  We all know vampires: people who are needy and obsessive and want all of you.  I also love the idea of the sexy monster.  Zombies and werewolves and ghosts – none of them come across as seductive.  But the vampire is overt sexiness (killing you with a kiss, then bite, then suck).  Alluring and mesmerizing.  I love that with a vampire there’s always that question of manipulation – like, do I really love him or is he hypnotizing me? 

Classic stories are now being rewritten to include paranormal elements, thus putting a new spin on beloved tales. What one piece of fiction would you love to read with a little supernatural spice added to it?

To Kill A Mockingbird already feels like it’s full of ghosts, so why not rewrite it with ghosts?  I always wished Miss Havisham in Great Expectations was a witch who fed somehow off of Estella’s youth and prettiness, turning her mean and arrogant in the process.  And Gatsby could’ve very easily been a vampire. 

If Quinn could ask you one question about the creation of her character, what do you think she would most want to know?

What’s my problem!?

Quinn has a boring job that pays barely minimum wage. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

Waitressing at the Hard Rock Café.  You feel like a character in an amusement park. You have to let the diners take pictures with you, you have to listen to the worst rock music for hours on end as it cycles through itself at least 3 times per shift, you smell like wet ketchup, you’re supposed to trick customers into paying for side items like avocado or mushrooms, the uniform is a white mini dress with white sneakers, and when it’s someone’s birthday you have to get on a chair and sing.  Bad, bad, bad.

If you had to come up with a new title for Drain You using only a song title or specific lyrics, what would you choose to best describe the story?

Well Drain You IS a song title, from Nirvana.  But if it couldn’t be that – then Evenflow by Pearl Jam.  I love those 90s grunge/vampire puns!

A huge thank you to M. Beth Bloom for taking the time to answer all my questions! You can find a little more information about her and her books below.

Bloom's first short story “Love And Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape” was featured in Story Quarterly and selected by Dave Eggers for inclusion in The Best American Nonrequired Reading: 2003 (Houghton-Mifflin), which he curates annually. Bloom is the founder of underground dance label 100% Silk (profiled here in LA Weekly) AND the producer/lead singer of the band LA Vampires (written up in The Guardian as well as Pitchfork and Fader). Her next book will be published through HarperTeen.

M. Beth lives on the east side of L.A. where she indulges in raw fooding, magazine subscribing, thrift shopping, Sunday matinee'ing, and ladies book clubbing.

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GIVEAWAY

This is an extraordinarily cool giveaway my friends. Not only are 5 signed copies of Drain You up for grabs, but you can also win a $50 credit to Wasteland (Quinn's favorite store), pages from Quinn's notebook (see a few here, here, and here at Hobbitsies), some handmade bookmarks and 10 90's mixtapes. AWESOME! To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

DRAIN YOU

Summer. The 90s. The rich, sun-bleached neighborhoods of the Los Angeles canyons. Enter Quinlan Lacey, a cool, bored, sarcastic, sexy 17-year old with a dull part-time video store job and a mild case of teen ennui. That is, until she meets the alluring, River Phoenix-esque James, and realizes the hills are alive with the undead. Inspired more by the early, dry L.A. short stories of Bret Easton Ellis than the current crop of serialized vampire fiction, the supernatural grunge romance, Drain You, narrates the headaches and heartbreaks Quinn undergoes in her quest to stay sane and cool and in love and alive.

Bloom debuts with a languid, stylish novel that reads like a love letter to cult vampire flicks like The Lost Boys, the work of Francesca Lia Block, and Southern California in the 1990s. - Publisher's Weekly

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