afternoon. I just function better at
night. Well, one Saturday afternoon
shortly after the publication of my book
Vampires Most Wanted: The Top Ten
Book of Bloodthirsty Biters, Stakewielding Slayers and Other Undead
Oddities, I was awakened by someone
pounding on my apartment door. It was
my friend who had driven in
from Palatine, which is about 45
minutes away, to tell me that the
producer of a local radio show was
trying to get a hold of me to be a fill in
guest and talk about VMW that night
on the show. It was an exceptional
opportunity that I almost missed.
Apparently, I had turned off the phone
ringer and forgot so I didn’t even know
he called. He then called the library
where I work and a girl told him I
wasn’t scheduled to work that day
but she
tracked
down the phone
number of my friend, who I had listed
as one of my emergency contact
numbers, and she called my friend
hoping she’d know where I was. Hence
the reason my friend was knocking on
my door. Now that’s true friendship.
But I seem to have curious issues when
I appear on radio stations to promote
my books. When my book Chicago’s
Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of
Murderous Mobsters, Midway Monsters
and Windy City Oddities came out I
was asked to be on a radio show and
drove downtown to Chicago to the
NBC Towers from where the show was
broadcast. It was early in the morning,
the traffic was excellent, the interview
was great, I went to the parking garage
to get my car and I couldn’t get out of
the garage. I couldn’t find where the
machine was to pay for the parking. I
wound up walking all over an adjoining
hotel, not realizing at first that it was an
adjoining hotel, then eventually
discovered where to pay the piper. By
the time the garage gates open, what
should have been a few minutes turned
into 45 and downtown Chicago was
now teeming with pedestrians and cars,
none of whom seemed interested in
letting me easily pass. The folks at the
radio show that tracked me down after
the publication of VMW were nice
enough to let me on to promote To
Touch the Sun. And I had the chance
to do a live in-studio appearance. When
you have the chance to do a live instudio appearance on WGN in the
Tribune Tower, you take it. The only
problem was that the show was at 2
a.m. Not too terrible I suppose, even
though I would be up since 7 a.m. the
day before. I decided to take a taxi just
for convenience (even though that early
in the morning would be the best time
to drive downtown). What I didn’t
expect was the end of winter
snowstorm that chose that night to
occur. By the time we got down there,
Michigan Ave. was a sea of white. By
the time I took the taxi back
home…well it was an interesting
experience driving on an expressway at
3 a.m. in a blinding snowstorm with a
taxi driver you’re not sure knows the
way to where you’re hoping to go. But I
give him credit. We made it.
It ended up being a great experience. A
fun adventure.
MAER: Sounds it! Do you use beta
readers and, if so, what qualities do you
look for in a beta?
LAURA: Not really. With To Touch
the Sun, because it was a new genre that
I was trying, I did ask a lot of people to
read the novel to let me know what
they
thought.
Friends,
family,
coworkers and patrons at the library. Of
those I let read it, I tried to get some
people who weren’t into the genre at all
so I could tell if the story worked for
people outside the genre, which was
important to me. And it did. I think my
sister was the best person for that. She’s
not a fan of reading fiction at all,
especially horror, science fiction,
fantasy, etc. I know she did it as a favor
to me, but she would have been honest
if she didn’t like it. She really loved it
and was happy to read the next three
novels in the series that I had written
while hunting for a publisher for the
first novel. That really said a lot to me.
Another woman who read it was a page
at the library and she got really involved
in the story and the characters. She
went on to the second book in the
series, and when she saw me would
often ask how the hunt for a publisher
was coming along. Sadly, she died a year
or so ago. It would have been great to
have been able to tell her that I found a
publisher for the novel. But who
knows, maybe wherever she is she
knows.
MAER: What is a one line synopsis for
your book?
Page 28
LAURA: A vampire tries to retain
some sense of normalcy in the face of
increasing chaos.
MAER: Is this a stand-alone or part of
a series?
Laura: It’s the first in a series I call the
Sentient/Feral Vampire Series. This is
the funny thing: I wrote the novel to try
my hand at the genre. While I liked to
read vampire novels, I never really had
an interest in writing one. I was hoping
to interest and agent who I’d been in
cordial contact with. He wasn’t
interested in the proposals for novels
that I’d been sending him but he
apparently liked me enough to want to
keep in contact. I even met him once at
a convention. That is very unusual
when it comes to agents. So I checked
out what the agency represented and I
noticed they had a vampire series in
their stable. I decided that now might
be a good time to give that a try. I really
had no idea, outside of a two word
description: “Vampire Chef” of what I
wanted to do. Normally with novels I
have a clear idea on story and characters
from the start. This I flew in blind and
it changed as I went along. Long story
short o