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Richelle Mead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Vampire Academy Series, the Georgina Kincaid Series, the Dark Swan Series, and the upcoming Bloodlines series. Her books have been honored by the American Library Association, the Teen Read Awards and the Goodreads Choice Awards and have been translated into at least 30 languages.
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This episode originally aired on 05/28/2011 with the following authors:
- More of Your Favorite Authors
- Jim Butcher (#1 NYT bestselling author of the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera series)
- Richelle Mead (#1 New York Times bestselling author of the Vampire Academy, Georgina Kincaid, Dark Swan, and Bloodlines)
- Grant Alter (Script writer for Dean Koontz (Fear Nothing), Richelle Mead (Storm Born), Jim Butcher, etc.)
Note: The following interview has been transcribed from The Author Hour radio show. Please excuse any typos, spelling and gramatical errors.
Interview with Richelle Mead | | |
This interview is with Richelle Mead and Grant Alter.
Matthew Peterson:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Author Hour: Your Guide to Fantastic Fiction. I’m your host, Matthew Peterson, best-selling author of the Parallel Worlds series, which can be found at www.Paraworlds.com. I’ve got some great guests for you today, so let’s get right to the interviews.
I’m speaking today with Richelle Mead and Grant Alter. Richelle is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Vampire Academy Series, the Georgina Kincaid Series, the Dark Swan Series, and the upcoming Bloodlines series. Her books have been honored by the American Library Association, the Teen Read Awards and the Goodreads Choice Awards and have been translated in at least 30 languages. Now Grant is a scriptwriter who’s worked with bestselling authors like Dean Koontz and Jim Butcher. One of his latest projects was to adapt Storm Born into a graphic novel. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Richelle and Grant.
Richelle Mead:
Thank you.
Matthew Peterson:
Before we get into the Dark Swan graphic novels, I wanted to touch upon Richelle’s other two series, which I understand one of them actually is going to be a graphic novel as well. First off, Richelle, you’re most known in the YA market for your Vampire Academy series. I was at the local grocery store the other day and it was really interesting, a whole bookcase–not a bookshelf, mind you, a whole bookcase–was devoted to the Vampire Academy series... I was really impressed.
Richelle Mead:
That’s crazy. At a grocery store?
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah! At a grocery store. And then here’s what’s interesting: A day later your publicist sent me an email and asked if you could be on the show. I was like, “Alright, there’s something there . . .”
Richelle Mead:
[laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
For people that are not familiar with that series, tell us a little bit about that Vampire Academy series.
Richelle Mead:
It’s based on a Romanian myth that there are actually two races of vampires in the world: a good living kind and then the evil undead kind. And my protagonist is a 17 year old girl who’s half vampire, and she’s training to be a bodyguard for the good living vampires. And so you’ve got a lot of the usual, you know, coming of age and problems that come with that, but at the same time she’s also training to stake and decapitate vampires. So there’s kind of a big mix of things going on.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, you know, just the normal staking and decapitating there. [laughs]
Richelle Mead:
[laughs] Staking, it all goes together.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. And you finished that series not to long ago. Do you have any regrets with that series, like, “Oh, I wish I would have killed off this character or added this character?”
Richelle Mead:
No, no, it turned out the way I wanted. And it ended on the note I also wanted it to. When I sit down to write a series, I usually know what our end game is, and so things kind of wrapped up nicely. And Bloodlines is actually kind of a spin off from that series–same world, a lot of the same premises, just a new narrator. So for me I don’t even really think that it’s ended in my head, because I’m still kind of working in that same world.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. And there is going to be a graphic novel for the Vampire Academy?
Richelle Mead:
That’ll be out in the end of August.
Matthew Peterson:
End of August, okay. Your other series, the Georgina Kincaid series (a little bit more geared for an older audience) is about a succubus who, for obvious reasons, can’t really get close to people without, I guess, killing them or hurting them.
Richelle Mead:
Yeah, yeah, it takes dating problems to a whole new level.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah, I mean, when people have so many issues, trying to find the perfect person and you can’t even touch them, that’s a pain.
Richelle Mead:
[laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
What made you decide to write the Georgina Kincaid series?
Richelle Mead:
Oh, I had wanted to. . . . This was my first series actually, so it was my first venture into publishing. I wanted a sympathetic paranormal character, and a succubus just seemed like such a both wacky and intriguing choice. There’s so much potential for her to be such a bad unlikeable character. And, you know, she’s actually very sympathetic and it’s almost heartbreaking at times. You know, you’ll have all these kind of crazy shenanigans going on in the series and then you turn back to her love life and, you know, it’s just like she can’t win! It was such a great challenge for me. I love my books to have a little bit of everything, you know, humor, romance, action, despair and she kind of provided a great venue for that.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a protagonist succubus character. That’s kind of a first for me.
Richelle Mead:
[laughs] You don’t see too many.
Matthew Peterson:
Yep. And you and Grant have gotten together for the Dark Swan series. Grant has scripted the first one, Storm Born. What type of input did you have with that, with Grant? Did you have an iron whip there, “This is how it must be,” or did you just let him go crazy?
Richelle Mead:
Uh, you know, there wasn’t even any whip needed. [laughs] Grant has such a great eye, you know. We were saying before there’s a really big art to adaptation. You can’t include everything. It’d be wonderful if you can, but the reality is some things have to be cut. And going through it, I mean, I think my feedback was probably like grammatical, ‘cause I’m just kind of an OCD author.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs] Uh, huh.
Richelle Mead:
But there was nothing content-wise where I was like, “Oh, how could you do that? How could you cut that, or not . . .?” You know, so it’s actually a very easy process for me, at least. I don’t know if Grant has–
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, yeah, let’s find out from Grant now. Grant, do you have any war wounds here?
Grant Alter:
Oh, no. Not at all. Um, you gotta understand, the most important part of my job, in addition to making the fans happy, is to capture Richelle’s vision in a different format. So she has an iron whip if she wanted to use it. But she’s been really, really, really great to work with. It helps that the book is laid out in such a way that my job’s been fairly easy. There’s been a couple of places that I had to play with pacing and what not, just because it’s paced like a novel, instead of a comic book. For the most part, it’s not been difficult at all. She did quite a good job.
Matthew Peterson:
Grant, tell us a little bit of the process of what actually goes into adapting a book or story into a graphic novel.
Grant Alter:
Well, the first and most important part is, you gotta read the book. I read it twice. Read it once so that you can get the feel of it, and read it a second time and flag important events where characters show up, where there’s a description of them. A lot of times the artist doesn’t actually read the novel and so you want to know where the character is described in graphic terms. Although, in this particular case, that wasn’t an issue. Dave Hamann, the artist, he was actually a fan of the books before getting the job.
Matthew Peterson:
Hmm.
Grant Alter:
So then you look for beat. Basically we’re told by the book company how many issues we have, and I have eight issues to get from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. And there are certain things–a certain amount of action, certain amount of humor, certain amount of exposition–all those sorts of things have to be balanced in each issue, so people will want to come back and get the next issue. So a lot of it is outlining, getting all of that stuff laid out before you even start writing. That’s the most important part. It’s even more important outlining an adaptation than it is to outline and be writing a novel or something.
Matthew Peterson:
What was the hardest part of adapting Storm Born?
Grant Alter:
It actually hasn’t been that tough. Like I said, it’s a fairly action oriented book, which in the world of comics . . . action is very, very, very important. Far, far more so than you would ever have in novels and whatnot. You’ve gotta have something visually interesting happening. Even during the parts where there’s talking and whatnot; they’d be explaining something that happened, so you could even show that visually while there’s voice-overs going on. I know that there is a part in the middle where we’re going to have to get a little creative, but other than that it’s been far, far easier than most of the other projects that I’ve worked on.
Matthew Peterson:
So the material really lends to itself. I can understand, because the main character is like a shaman for hire. She’s paid to banish creatures . . . actually, kind of like in Vampire Academy–decapitate, you know, killing the bad guys! [laughs]
Richelle Mead:
[laughs]
Grant Alter:
That always translates well to comics, and she does cool looking things. So, yeah, it’s been great.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. And Richelle, this series is still going on. You just did the Iron Crowned. That book just came out. You have another one coming out next year, Shadow Heir. What can we expect with this series? What’s your vision for it?
Richelle Mead:
Well, Shadow Heir is scheduled to be the last book, so we should be wrapping up the Eugenie story. That is the plan. I say that and sometimes you start writing it and realize, “Oh, I need two books to finish this!” But at the moment that’s where we’re going. And so that’s really big because, you’re in the middle of a series, even if you’re following a plan like I try to, certain things pop up like, “Oh, here’s a cool twist we’re going to throw in” and “here’s a . . . why don’t we leave this on a cliffhanger to torture readers.”
When you’re moving towards your end point, everything’s gotta come together. And so it’s exciting to readers who certainly want a resolution to certain issues, but for me it’s a huge challenge as well to kind of start writing–and all these things I let loose. So I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be sad, but it’ll be fun at the same time.
Matthew Peterson:
You are a very fast writer, I can tell you that. Right now I was looking at how fast you pump these books out. You’ve got like four series now that you’re working on–or that I guess you’ve finished the Vampire Academy. What is your typical day? I mean, how do you write so fast?
Richelle Mead:
You know, I sound like I’m in high school here, but it’s time management really. It’s very doable to have this schedule. You know, you treat it like a full time job. And I think a lot of people have very romantic ideas of authors: that you just kind of lounge around, and maybe if you like it, you know, the muse comes by and you write a couple lines and that’s it. You know, it’s much more aggressive. You have to put in a normal workday. So I get up in the morning and I go in my office and I usually have a word count I’m trying to hit. If it’s a really good day, maybe I can do it in a couple hours. But very often, you know, I’ll be there all day and I’m finishing up just as my husband comes home from work.
Matthew Peterson:
Mm hmm.
Richelle Mead:
So it’s kind of . . . it’s just a matter of making sure you keep up with it. You know, it’s . . . again, going back to high school analogy: If you put it all off ‘till the night before, suddenly it’s not so doable.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. Well, let me ask you both one last question. And I’ll start with Grant. Grant you’ve done stuff with Dean Koontz and Jim Butcher, and some scripts–lots of different things. I was wondering, what are you working on right now?
Grant Alter:
I’m working on several creator-own projects: straight comics that I’m trying to get picked up at the moment. Always the trickiest part of that is locating artists that are talented and don’t want up-front money.
Matthew Peterson:
Mmm.
Grant Alter:
So I’m in the process of trying to do that. But I actually have quite a long way to go on Storm Born. The first issue is out and I have seven more after that. I’m working on issue four right now. So I still have the whole second half of the books to go before I locate something else. There are a couple of other possibilities–other jobs that may or may not materialize–but right now I’m 100% Storm Born.
Matthew Peterson:
Storm Born, okay. Well, I can imagine that can keep you busy. There’s a lot of content there. And Richellle, you’ve been working on these books. You finished the Vampire Academy and you talked a little bit about the Bloodlines series, which is coming out. Is there anything you can tell us about Bloodlines series? I guess to whet our whistle?
Richelle Mead:
The first book of Bloodlines, which has the same name, comes out at the end of August. That’s kind of a hot time for new releases. And yeah, for people who know the series, the narrator is a human character we met back in Vampire Academy, and so we . . . whereas before we’ve always had this kind of internal view of this vampire society; we’re now looking at it from the outside. Okay, how do the humans view these people? So that’s kind of a fun perspective to write from and I think it’s going to give readers a new sort of lens to view all of this through. So that’ll be out August 23rd, which is the same day as the Vampire Academy graphic novel.
Matthew Peterson:
Mmm.
Richelle Mead:
And that is pretty much finished, you know, we always work so far ahead in publishing. My summer project is going to be the second book in the Bloodlines series, which is kind of crazy to be working on, you know. The first one’s not even out.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Richelle Mead:
But, that’s kind of the way it goes.
Matthew Peterson:
And we’re going to get a taste of some of the same characters from the Vampire Academy?
Richelle Mead:
Yeah, some cameos from our favorites.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh good. Well, thank you so much for your time, Richelle and Grant. I’ve been speaking with International bestselling author, Richelle Mead, and scriptwriter, Grant Alter. Take a look at Storm Born, the graphic novel. Thanks again for being on the show today, Richelle and Grant.
Grant Alter:
Thank you.
Richelle Mead:
Thanks, it’s good talking to both of you.
Matthew Peterson:
Well that’s it for today. Please go to www.TheAuthorHour.com to catch the bonus questions that didn’t air on the show. If you’d like to listen to more great interviews from your favorite authors, just visit TheAuthorHour.com. Have a great day everyone and I’ll see you next time.
Read or Listen to the extra questions that didn't make it onto the live show.
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