Bestselling author Lynsay Sands talks to us about her favorite Argeneaus, the logic behind creating believable vampires and her latest release, The Renegade Hunter...
Nicholas is the black sheep of the Argeneau family. What sparked the idea of a rogue in a family of rogue hunters?
This may be awful to admit, but it just happened. Nicholas popped up in my head while working on The Rogue Hunter. He's actually the one who bites the truck driver Tanya in the prologue, not Grant, though few readers seemed to have picked up on the fact that the biter was silver-eyed and dark-haired, not a redhead like Grant. Then in The Immortal Hunter he sort of leapt onto the page with a "ta da!" And once he'd revealed himself that much, I had to know the rest of his story so I wrote his story, The Renegade Hunter.
Nick knows, the moment he meets her, that Jo is his life mate, but that's only one of the reasons they fall for each other. What makes them the perfect couple?
Nicholas is solemn and very cautious and methodical, always thinking before acting. He's had to be to stay one step ahead of the hunters all these years. Jo, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: impulsive, exuberant, ready for anything. Oh, she's a hard worker, willing to put her nose to the grindstone, but she's also full of life and eager to live. The two are opposites and opposites are often attracted to each other. In some instances that's a nightmare, but in others each individual can learn from the other and I think that's the case here. Nicholas can learn to live a little from Jo, and Jo can learn to be a little more cautious, a little less open and trusting. Together they balance each other beautifully.
Your books are always laced with humor and The Renegade Hunter is no exception. Yet this story is also full of emotional conflict and growth. How do you balance those two elements?
Gees, did I balance them? LOL. I just write the stories the characters tell me. When it's going well it's rather like an amusing movie playing in my head that I type up for others to read. Each story has its own feel, its own conflicts or struggles. Sometimes they are light with little in the way of conflict, sometimes there is more of a struggle, sometimes the characters have something to learn to succeed together or in life, and sometimes they don't. But I don't set out to make them that way; it's just how it happens for me.
You have one of the most creative-and quite logical!-explanations of how your Immortals came to be. What inspired your take on the vampire myth?
Ahhhh, logical, you hit the nail on the head. The fact is that I never planned to write vamps, but then a friend suggested she, myself and another friend should do a vamp anthology for Halloween. At the time, I had not done anything but historicals, so I laughed at the very idea and said if I did, my vamp would have to faint at the sight of blood or something. I threw out several more ideas that night, and though we didn't do the anthology, those ideas all stuck with me. They were funny and I found myself wanting to write a story incorporating them . . . Problem is, while I try to hide it, I really do have a terribly logical mind, and I just couldn't reconcile myself with the traditional dead, cursed and soulless vamp. Neither could I see how you could make such a being a romantic hero. Can you love without a soul? Being dead, would he smell? Or would he be unpleasantly cold and rubbery to the touch? And hey, how romantic is it to say, "My coffin or yours?" Nope, just couldn't do it. So my vamps had to have a more realistic origin. I went searching the annals of science and nanos seemed the most likely answer. In fact, it was perfect except for the fact that it was so new that the vamps would be normal aged and I couldn't have that. I wanted them to be an old and well grounded society, so I went problem solving again and Atlantis was the best answer. It was all perfectly logical (grin).
To your readers, the Argeneaus have become like a large, eccentric extended family. Do you have a favorite character among them?
That would have to be Lucian . . . or Marguerite. Well both of them, they're really very similar and I'd say Marguerite is just a softer, female version of Lucian. Both love their family dearly, have no compunction about interfering whenever they think it's necessary, and are romantics at heart (Despite Lucian's cold gruff image and Marguerite's pragmatic one, she does her matchmaking and he lets her, both hoping to see those they love settled, safe and happy). Both also have a core of steel and will roll up their sleeves and do what needs doing--no matter how unpleasant--for the well-being of their family and ultimately their people.
What's your favorite part about writing an interconnected series like this one?
I suppose that would be getting to revisit old characters. So often the end of a book is the last we get to see of a couple or character, but with this interconnected series I can revisit them sometimes, or at least hear what's happening with some of them, although my editor would protest if the revisiting didn't have something to do with the story at hand, which can be a bit of a pain when I want to tell what's going on with something that has nothing to do with the story.
In addition to paranormal romance, you also write historicals; do you find one genre more challenging than another? Are there similarities between them?
I would say that at the start, the vamps weren't really that different to me than the historicals. Other than a difference in time period and the little fact that they were vamps, writing them was much the same as writing a historical. People are people no matter the time period or background and ultimately my stories are about people. The time period was rather like a fashion accessory to me, just background decoration that put some limits on what the characters could and couldn't do (i.e. can't have a medieval heroine running to the drug store for shampoo). But as the vampire series carries on it actually becomes more challenging to do. I'm constantly running into problems on continuity. Some I catch, and some I don't. For instance, in Vampire, Interrupted, Marguerite takes a long bath, something I claimed she loves to do. However, several books earlier I had mentioned in passing that she preferred showers and avoided baths since they were too time consuming. It's a small silly thing but readers did catch it and I caught heck for it.
Who are the authors that have most influenced you?
All of them. Just as every experience in life is knitted together to make up the person we each become, every author I've ever read has influenced me in one way or another. If not by showing me how it's done properly then by showing me what maybe doesn't work so well. Each has exercised my imagination, taking it to new flights of fancy so that the writing muscle is strong and eager to write.
What are you working on next?
I just handed in the story that follows The Renegade Hunter - it's Armand and Eshe's story. Now I'm starting to work on another Argeneau book. This one is lighter than the last and about Alex Willan (the sister of Sam Willan, Mortimer's life mate in The Rogue Hunter) and an Argeneau who has only been mentioned before this but readers have never met. So far it's quite fun.
