Book - Bitter Moon (Fallow Moon Series Book 1)
Published - 10/24/2014
Author - Suzana Wylie
Published - 10/24/2014
Author - Suzana Wylie
For two decades, Leo Ruggeri’s needs are simple: forget his past. Then he meets a man with eternity worth remembering in his glacier-blue eyes. A man whose existence challenges everything Leo believes.
For five centuries, all Kesan Glendubh needed was blood and sex. Then he meets a man worth loving for eternity. A man whose ex is a vampire hunting priest.
Kesan’s latest novel will be published in graphic format, so he requires the services of a graphic artist. When he and Leo meet, the notion of services takes on new meaning and passion overtakes both men. Kesan realizes he cannot protect the young man, from himself and what he is, so he offers a choice.
As both men struggle to come to terms with their feelings, disturbances in the supernatural realm signal a return to a time of danger and persecution for those who walk the night. Kesan and Leo discover they have a Watcher—Father Guillaume Arsenault, come to reclaim Leo’s soul for God and his body for himself while fulfilling his calling to rid the world of vampires.
Crossbows aren’t modern weapons, but they are effective tools for vampire hunters.
Book - Stygian Moon (Fallow Moon Series Book 2)
Published -12/8/2014
Author - Author Suzana Wylie
Even vampires grieve, and newly-made vampire Leo Ruggeri has a lot to grieve over. His maker, Kesan Glendubh, should be providing help and guidance as he adjusts to his new life, but a vampire hunter’s crossbow has made that impossible. Kesan was more than Leo’s maker. He was Leo’s one-and-only, the man he would love for eternity. With him gone, his vampire family steps up to shepherd Leo until he knows enough not to alert the humans that those who walk the night are among them.
Jamie Tasso wants to do more than guide him through the pitfalls, though, and Leo finds solace in his bed. When Leo’s world is turned upside down again, what began as solace morphs into love.
Jamie and Leo are summoned to Kolozsvár, to the High Court, where an alliance between Vampyr and Varulv—werewolves—is being hammered out. Politics is never clean and simple when alliances and love affairs are shattered much more easily than they are forged under the Stygian Moon.
Questions and Answers with the Author
Name: Susan Wylie Wilson, pen name Suzana Wylie
Age: 64
Where are you from: I was born and raised in Tupelo, MS, but as an adult have lived in Jackson, MS, extreme northern Maine, Biloxi, MS, western New York, the Florida panhandle, southern middle Tennessee, Alabama, and now Colorado.
A little about yourself (i.e. your education – Family life etc.): I’m the oldest of two, born to a very dysfunctional family. There was never a time when my parents were happy as a couple, and when I was in my early teens, their marriage finally (hallelujah) ended. I’ve always had an interest in science and languages, and my teenage dream was to go to work for NASA as an exobiologist (though the term didn’t exist at the time). Instead, I graduated from high school with four years of Spanish, two of French and two of Latin, and majored in French, before discovering the delights of Sociology. Much later, I got a Master’s in Computer Information Systems.
Tell us your latest news?:
The third book in the Fallow Moon series is in edits at the moment, and will be released fairly soon, I hope. Another book, not in the same series, is being spit-polished for my publisher, and may actually be out sooner.
When and why did you begin writing?
I’ve been writing since I figured out which end of the pencil to lick, as I tell people. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t make up stories, when I didn’t write poems.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
That’s a tough one. Reading a poem for Eudora Welty when I was in college was a big deal, but again, I’ve never not written, so it’s hard to pinpoint. Selling my first piece (a non-fiction essay for a magazine) was perhaps the first time I considered myself a professional.
What inspired you to write your first book?
I’m going to confine this to my first completed book, since there are many that I began to write and didn’t finish for one reason or another (usually having to do with my inner editor). I wanted to create a world as rich and full of depth as Tolkien, though I had no illusions that I would be as good as he was. I wanted the symbolism, the deeper meaning that’s there if you look for it, the background of long history, and I wanted to do this in a world that didn’t include elves and hobbits and wizards. That first completed book then grew into a seven-volume epic fantasy saga, more than a million and a half words, written over eight months. It’s not available, since it needs a heavy rewrite, probably losing at least a quarter of its length. If you want to talk about the first book I finished that’s published, the inspiration is a bit different. I wanted to write a love story, but with the main characters two men rather than a man and a woman. There’s a dynamic in the relationship between two men that simply isn’t present with a man and a woman, and that dynamic fascinates me. Add to that the supernatural element-one of the main characters is a vampire-and it becomes even more interesting. It’s important for the world to see that two men (or two women) can fall in love and have the same desires for a life together that society is more used to seeing between a man and a woman. Men loving men, or women loving women, is perfectly normal and natural (though not the common and expected thing), and presenting those relationships in a positive light rather than the derisive mockery LGBTQ characters are often portrayed with helps to build understanding between the straight community and the LGBTQ community, and by giving LGBTQ young people positive role models, can actually and literally save lives.
Do You have a specific writing style:
Not really. Different books require different voices and styles, and poetry even more of a different style and voice. Unless I have a character who speaks that way, I tend to avoid flowery phrases, though I’ve been told my prose is often poetic.
How did you come up with the title?
Though I hate to admit it, Bittermoon was on a list of titles ‘for adoption’ in a National Novel Writing Month Forum. The sequel, Stygian Moon, is a very dark book, and ‘stygian’ refers to the river Styx which must be crossed by the newly dead in order to reach the underworld, and to darkness itself, so it seemed appropriate for a dark novel about a newly-turned vampire as he crosses into the life of a nightwalker. Fallow Moon (the third book and the series title) refers to a field which isn’t planted, but allowed to grow anything at all, to ‘rest’ the land. The relationships between the main characters haven’t been tended or cultivated, and many unwelcome things have grown up in the meantime.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Other than the universality of love, the fact that there is more to the relationships between two men than simple the rut of sex, not really. Not in those books. Raveneye, the one not in the series, does have an underlying spirituality, as do the Sentinel Chronicles (the seven-volume saga).
How much of the book is realistic?
The dynamics between the characters are realistic, and the settings are taken from actual places. Other than that, not much. After all, the characters are vampires.
Are experiences based on someone you know OR events in your own life?
Only very loosely. Once we’re past a certain age, all of us experience grief and betrayal, love and longing, and those experiences carry over into my writing, but more specific than that? Not in Fallow Moon. Raveneye, a bit more so, since there is the spiritual dimension, and a bit of Native American-type ritual practice.
What books have most influenced your life most?
There are many. Tolkien, obviously. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. Asimov, Heinlein, Niven – many science fiction books. The Disappearance, by Phillip Wylie. The “Watch” novels from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Everything written by Nya Rawlyns and Erin O’Quinn.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
It would be a tie between Nya Rawlyns and Erin O’Quinn. Both have helped me tremendously, encouraging me when I needed it, banging me over the head with a large club when I needed that, and demanding that what I send into the world be the very best I have to give at that point in time.
What book are you reading now?
There’s never just one. I’m on a Terry Pratchett kick at the moment, and have just finished “The Last Hero” (first read) and am re-reading “Night Watch.” I’m also re-reading Nya Rawlyns’ “The Wrong Side of Right.”
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
There are several ‘lit sisters’ at my publishing house whose work I’m watching carefully, including an emerging writer, Rebecca Poole, who is also my cover artist.
What are your current projects?
Revising and editing Fallow Moon, polishing Raveneye. Raveneye is the story of a Native American/Latino gay man who has a raven as his spiritual guide, an assassin with origins in the Eastern Block nations who believes he’s straight, and a transgender woman who helps these very different men to form a relationship. There are a few books on simmer, including “Price of Admission”, a novel about a prison warden who entraps vampires and uses them in arena-style executions, “One Soul Between Us” the starting point of which is a kind of reverse beauty and the beast tale, and a possible collaboration with Nya Rawlyns, “Split Infinities.”
Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members?
Again, that’s a tie, this time 3-way. Nya Rawlyns, Erin O’Quinn, and Rebecca Poole.
Do you see writing as a career?
Hmmmm. Possibly. The hesitation comes from the fact that careers are often 9-5 type things, left behind when leaving the office, and retired from after a number of years. I can’t see a time when I stop writing. It’s not exactly a career, though I am working at making a living from writing. It is simply who and what I am, and in that sense, no, it’s not a career.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Of course. Writing—and life—are learning experiences and nothing I did at any time in the past would be repeated exactly if redone today.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
I really don’t. Once I realized that those pressed sheets of dead tree that were corralled between pieces of buckram-covered binder’s board contained worlds, places to go, things to see, people to meet, people to be, I knew that part of me would always be involved in exploring and creating those worlds.
Social Links
Do you have a blog/website? If so what is it? I have two, actually. This one http://suzanawylie.com has mostly poems, with
a bit of non-fiction and short fiction. This one http://heartbreakroad.com I use to post
bits of my current WiPs, sometimes public, but sometimes not.
3 Comments
this looks amazing
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteVery interesting interview. And best of luck with the re-release.
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