Interview: Kristen Painter + The House of Comarré Series

Today I'm extremely excited to welcome author Kristen Painter to the blog to answer a few questions for me about her wonderful House of Comarré urban fantasy series! I thoroughly enjoyed the first three books (reviews for books one and two can be found here and here, with my review for Bad Blood going up on January 20th), and love the dark nature of the world as well as its inhabitants. I'm partial to a tortured and damaged hero, so Malkolm pushed all the right buttons for me and I can't wait for the next book in the series!

How did the idea for Chrysabelle’s gold filigree tattoos come about?

I had an idea – kind of a fleeting vision if you will - of her when I was in college. This woman in a white dress that dipped low enough in the back to reveal a small gold tattoo. And I knew that there was significance to that tattoo. It meant she was both desired and somehow dangerous. But I never knew what to do with that idea of her until Blood Rights was born.

If Chrysabelle could ask Malkolm one question about his past with the guarantee he would answer truthfully, what would she most like to know?

I’m not sure she’d ask him about his past. I think she’d like to know if he’s truly capable of loving her, but I also think the reason she doubts that is because she doubts her own ability. Those two…so many issues!

What aspect of the world you’ve created fascinates you most or gives you the most difficulty when writing?

I’d have to say the general mythology of the comarré. I love that there is so much of it as yet unmined, but at the same time, I want to be careful in how much and what I reveal so that I don’t tangle a storyline into something that can’t be undone or solved.

Mal and Chrysabelle have a very complicated and often tense relationship comprised of mutual need and desire–a combination that makes these books all the more addicting. Is there another literary couple that really stands out in your mind as a pairing you’ll always remember?

There are two:

Othello and Desdemona – I’m a huge Shakespeare fan and these two are about as tragic a love story as there is. Talk about your big misunderstanding! I’d pick them over Romeo and Juliet any day.

Cloak and Dagger – Also a huge comic book geek and this series is one of my all time favorites. In fact, Mal and Chrysabelle are in part an homage to these two who so greatly entertained me when I was a teenager. Google them. You’ll see what I mean. Cloak is everything dark, Dagger is everything light and there is a great deal of push/pull between them. Awesome stuff.

What might Malkolm say has been the biggest change in his life since Chrysabelle found her way into it?

Feeling human again. In more ways than one.

When looking at the three already released installments, is there anything about the characters or events that surprised you? Something that changed in the transition from your mind to the page?

Lots of stuff! But that’s the fun of the process. I love those discoveries and surprises. There’s a big secret about Maris in the first book that I didn’t know until the scene started to take place, but once I figured it out I was like, of course!

Does the fact that the word “blood” is in each of the book titles make it easier or harder to come up with them?

Probably harder. I like the titles to actually mean something for each story, so finding titles that fit and incorporate the word blood hasn’t always been easy. Not terribly difficult, but getting just the right one takes a little doing sometimes.

The first three books released a month apart (which works out brilliantly for us as readers); can you share with us any of the reasoning behind this marketing method and why it was chosen as opposed to the more typical 6 month or one year apart release dates?

I didn’t have anything to do with that – that was strictly up to my fabulous editor at Orbit Books. I do understand that it helps build an author and considering I was basically a debut author coming out in a tough genre (how many times have you heard people say they’re over the vampire thing?), I think it was such a smart way to get people into the series.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Kristen! More information on her and the House of Comarré books can be found here:

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BLOOD RIGHTS: House of Comarre Book One (from Goodreads):

Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

Review: Flesh and Blood

FLESH AND BLOOD
(House of Comarre #2)
Kristen Painter
Adult Urban Fantasy
416 pages
Orbit/Hachette Book Group
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Those born into the comarré life produced blood in rich, pure, powerful abundance...

With the Ring of Sorrows still missing, and the covenant between othernaturals and mortals broken, Chrysabelle and Malkolm’s problems are just beginning. Chrysabelle still owes Malkolm for his help, but fulfilling that debt means returning to Corvinestri, the hidden vampire city where neither is welcome.

MY THOUGHTS
This second installment in the House of Comarre series builds beautifully on the events of the first book, returning us to a blindingly gorgeous pair of opposites who, for all their differences, are both struggling to escape the confines of a life not of their choosing. Ms. Painter is extraordinarily aptly named–an artist exquisitely capable of crafting characters who are carefully rendered studies in contrasts–wielding black type on a white page as opposed to brushstrokes on a canvas but creating a work of art just the same. In this tale we begin to see some interesting shading take place, where Chrysabelle and Malkolm were pretty clearly delineated light and dark in book one we now begin to see them blend, highlights and lowlights combining to create a picture with more depth and detail than we saw previously, and we stand back appreciatively to search each new shade of gray for meaning we know is there waiting.

For all that Chrysabelle is glittering gold filigree to Malkolm’s tortured blackness, we get the pleasure of watching them tentatively step away from their opposite ends of the spectrum and hesitantly move toward middle ground and perhaps the comfort and sanctuary for which they’ve both long been searching. They are such stunning contradictions: the purity of the comarre versus the perceived stain of a cursed vampiric soul, with Chrysabelle's air of royalty and desired rank versus Malkom's displaced nobility making their pairing all the more fascinating to read as they slowly try to shed the roles that have defined them previously and find a new beginning. Watching as Chrysabelle flounders a bit trying to figure out who she is if not wholly and completely comarre and as Malkolm dares to put his faith in someone else when all the hands that received his love and loyalty previously have spread their fingers wide to let those gifts sift through is both exhilarating and painful, but their difficult journey ensures our unwavering interest through to the very end.

The introduction of a new possible romantic interest is initially a bit of a detraction to the overall story, our love for Malkolm based the time spent with him already as well as our knowledge of the brutal betrayals that make up his past forcing our hackles up as though he and Chrysabelle are ours to protect from any unwanted influence. Vampire slayer Creek is nearly impossible to dislike however, and Ms. Painter does an admirable job of not turning this story into a competition for Chrysabelle’s affections, but rather she works him into events in a way where his importance extends far beyond that of mere romantic foil character for the main couple. We know some things about him but certainly not all, and there is enough about him left in the unknown category to keep us on our guard and suspicious of his motives despite his status as an ally to both Malkolm and Chrysabelle.

As with Blood Rights, Flesh and Blood is teeming with interesting twists and turns, alliances made and dissolved quickly and easily to keep our minds churning as to exactly who we can trust, who could be playing us and those we care about, and who is the biggest bad of them all. Ms. Painter has a gift for writing characters who epitomize both good and evil but who also prove there are varying degrees to such categorization, making each classification far broader in scale than we might think before reading. We are left with not a cliffhanger per se, but definitely with events left unresolved and some very large questions looming so that our need to pick up the next book and start it is one that will not be ignored.

Rating: 4/5