Hey, David! First off, let me say thank you for doing this interview. I’ve been looking forward to it.
I was born and raised in Southern California. Since graduating from Corona Sr. High, I have lived on both coasts and now reside in Texas with my husband and two kids. I’ve traveled across the country too many times to count and I hope to visit Egypt in the near future. I’ve always had a fascination with it. I also love to read as much as I love to write.
How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?
I remember the very first ‘story’ I ever wrote. I was 11 years old. I’ve still got that dinosaur somewhere! I fiddled around with writing for years, starting and stopping several books that I’ve still got sitting on a hard drive somewhere. I got stuck in ‘edit’ mode and never could actually finish a book. National Novel Writing Month in 2009 changed all that. I’d wanted to enter for a long time and I decided I was going to give it a shot. I churned out 50 thousand words in thirty days without editing one thing and a book was born.
Tell me what inspired you to write this particular novel?
What inspired me to write Dréoteth was a deep desire to actually finish something I started. I’m a real stickler when I set a deadline or a goal for myself and I don’t like to fail. I decided to write this novel because I didn’t know anything about it other than the main character’s name, that he wrote in a journal, and he suffered a lot of emotional conflict over humans. I wanted a blank slate so my creativity could run wild, and that’s what I got.
I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this book and what’s dark about it?
I admit trying to classify Dréoteth has been a little rough. It’s definitely fantasy and very character driven. I wanted to explore the emotional aspects of the main character and what made him tick. What makes some aspects of this story dark, I think, are Dréoteth’s emotional struggles and his constant inner battle to rise above his rage. I tried to write compelling conflict, although I think the darkest scenes involve secondary characters. It’s certainly not the darkest story I’ve ever written, but the last chapter has inescapable black moments that left my beta readers a little surprised.
Where do you get the ideas for your stories?
I pull from a wide range of genres and mythology, and sometimes, the idea just blossoms off the end of my fingers when I least expect it. My favorite thing to do is re-write folklore and put my characters into the setting. Ironically, I’ve never considered fantasy one of my strongest genres but I’ve got a plethora of fantasy based stories sitting on the back burner. I dabble in everything from modern contemporary to horror to historical fiction.
Sometimes we have to be ruthless in writing/editing. We cut scenes, eliminate characters or even kill them off. Tell me what was the hardest of these in this book.
I’m a prolific risk taker and love taking the reader on a ride they maybe didn’t expect. For those reasons, I don’t find it hard to kill characters off or cut scenes, if they need to go. Sure, losing all those words stings, but story wise, it doesn’t bother me. What I found hard was sticking to my guns about not making this particular story a romance. I felt a little personal pressure to add it in, and there are a few romantic overtones, but I wanted it to stand alone without romance being the focal point.
This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.
From the deepest recesses of memories more ancient than his own, he pulled arcane words to the surface and wove them into a chant from a long dead language recalled in a most desperate hour. Although his whispers could not have been heard above the rain, Feline roared in fury. The sound rattled the already rattled night.What can we expect from you next?
I’m very excited about my next book! My co-author and I are almost finished with our first draft and have a tentative release date of September 1, 2010. The book is titled Bound by Blood. We wrote this story two years ago and decided to go full throttle with it this spring. It’s a paranormal romance with elements of time travel and more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. We cross from modern day to the Tudor court and back again with a lot of drama in between. It’s a very expansive, deep story with well developed characters and quite a bit of suspense.
Where can we find you on the internet?
You can find my website at: www.daniellebourdon.com. It doubles as my blog. My twitter address is: www.twitter.com/wildbloom.
Any final comments or thoughts?
Only that publishing my book has been a great thrill for me and I hope readers enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy creating them.
Danielle, thank you very much for dropping by and answering these questions! Best of luck with Dréoteth and I look forward to hearing more about Bound by Blood when it’s released!
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