When is the next Vampire Diaries book coming out?

March 2011.  (Right around the corner!)

It’s not on the Internet.  It, too, became so long and complex that I am hoping it will be published as a sequel to The Secret Circle.  Also: the plot is not really about Cassie and Nick falling in love.  It’s about Cassie going into the underworld to pull Nick out of a coma. However, Nick misunderstands her intentions and believes that she has parted with Adam to be with him.  Cassie ought to be able to simply explain to him—but Nick is now blind and says she is the only thing he cares about in life.  Meanwhile, Black John has been revived in a new crystal skull and wants revenge on the entire Crowhaven Street gang.

The sequels I have started right now are to The Secret Circle and The Forbidden Game.  You will see a teaser for The Forbidden Game sequel as I plan on having a Forbidden Game contest quite soon.

If you’ve read this far, you know that I have a good many irons in that fire.  But I do want to finish the story before long.  The paradox is that the more I write about Ash and ML on the Internet, the less I have to put in Strange Fate about them.

Lisa, L.J., or Ms. Smith are all fine.

I have no idea.  Maybe they’re writing the pilot; maybe they’ve given up.  To misquote from Stephen Sounheim’s play Into The Woods, “Never can tell what lies ahead/ For all that I know it’s probably dead.” You’ll get more info Googling it than from asking me.

No, I’m too busy trying to write a blog, interviews, emails, and all the books or stories mentioned above.

Vampire Diaries Volume 7: Midnight, the last book in the Vampire Diaries: The Return trilogy, or arc, will be out March, 2011.  After that will come a new arc, called—well, propably Vampire Diaries: The Hunters.  It will contain three books as well, called Phantom, Evensong, and Eternity.

First arc: The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury, Dark Reunion

Second arc: Vampire Diaries, The Return: Nightfall, Shadow Souls, Midnight (out March 2011)

Third arc: Vampire Diaries, The Hunters: Phantom, Evensong, Eternity (not out yet, but Phantom is written.)

Don’t ask me; I only write the words—I theoretically approve the covers, but I don’t know what would happen if I ever said ‘No, I don’t like that.’

I am only a writer; I don’t make TV shows or movies.  And I don’t have the contacts to get someone to make a movie out of my books.  That role is up to my agencies’ TV and flim rights specialist.

I pronounce as an American probably would: BRI-on-wee.  But I always have a native speaker check my foreign names and other text, and they may very well say "No, it's bree OTH vy" or something else strange and wonderful.  This happened when—years ago—I picked 'Myfanwy' and found that it was pronounced "muh VAN wee."  Still lovely, just different. 

And, yes, it is true that Brionwy’s Lullabye was originally part of Strange Fate, but the post apocalyptic future that Sarah Strange dreamed about Brionwy and her friends sort of took over the whole book.  So I had to extract them, and instead had Sarah dream about the soulmated couples you’ve already seen in Night World.  This turned out to be much better for Strange Fate anyway, as you get to see Poppy and James, and Phillip and every other pair of soulmates in the series, even if its just a cameo role.  I plan to write Brionwy’s Lullabye as a book of its own.  I do love the characters.

Anything is possible.  After I finish writing this arc of Vampire Diaries and also writing Strange Fate, I have many ideas for new standalone books and trilogies.  But I have always particularly wanted to write a single book edition of The Forbidden Game for adults (it would necessarily be a sequel), and have even written a few pages of it.  And each of those series is dear to me in one way or another.  I guess I have to admit that I’m not sure what I will be writing a couple of years from now—it also depends on what the publishers think, and what readers desire.

Because I want to create role models for teenage (and even younger) girls who read my books.  If you look at the books, just about every heroine has a future career or goal in mind (even fickle Elena Gilbert is determined to one day return to the Dark Dimension and help free the slaves).  Some of my characters, like Rashel Jordan of The Chosen, and Jez Redfern of Huntress are already immersed in their careers as vampire-hunters.  Poppy North has an ambition to travel the world, and Mary-Lynnette Carter wants to become an astronomer.  Hannah Storm wants to be a paleontologist (although these days she’s probably got her hands full helping to run Circle Daybreak.)

Some of my characters don’t start out as strong girls.  They start out as shy, introverted or gentle girls, like Cassie Blake of The Secret Circle, or Jenny Thornton of The Forbidden Game. Then the story is about how they become stronger, through their terrifying experiences and their concern for other people.  Strange Fate has this kind of a heroine, Sarah Strange.

I suspect it is because it was fantasy literature that had the most influence on me when I was a child and adolescent.  I’ve often said that as a child I was certain that magic must exist, and that I would find it.  But by the time I was twelve or thirteen I realized that if I wanted magic I was going to have to make it for myself.  I was already a writer by then—I’d started with poetry when I was four or five, and showed my work to teachers by age 6.  But I was a storyteller from a much younger age than that.  As far as I can remember, I always had several stories going on in my head and many of them partially written down.  My first two published books were only “urban fantasy” in the sense that C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are.  But my first bestsellers were the next books I wrote, The Vampire Diaries.  Once I got started with vampires and witches and so on, I got so many letters (yes, snail mail—this was the old, old days) asking me to write more that I did write more.

I am always doing one story or another in my head, so you could say that my problem is being too inspired—many of my stories never get written down because I can’t keep up with the thoughts in my mind.  There is one exception.  For ten years I suddenly had writer’s block, before the end of the Night World series.  My sister’s husband was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, and my mother with terminal cancer.  While I was immersed in this, I had no inspiration at all.  I couldn’t finish the book I was in the middle of writing.  There were no stories in my head.  That was the worst time of my life.

Terry Pratchett!  My favorite, whom the Washington Post called the modern Chaucer.  I think his books should be mandatory reading for all human beings.  I also enjoy a wide variety of literature, but actually prefer non-fiction to fiction books, unless they are very amusing (like Dan Brown’s bestsellers . . . sometimes unintentionally amusing).  I do quite a lot of research for my own books and some of the non-fiction is about that.  I also read a lot about my interests in science and psychology.

Sorry, but I don’t comment on Twilight at all, now, except to say that I haven’t read it or seen the movies.  Yes, I do appreciate readers who know my books—some of them who have known them since the Vampire Diaries came out back in 1990-91 and Night World somewhat later—and who make lists of the similarities between my books and the Twilight series.  I appreciate most the readers who’ve read all my series and thus can make complete lists.  But I’m not sure what, if anything, I am going to “do” about Twilight.

I think it is a brilliant story, brilliantly written, beautifully acted, with terrific direction, cinematography, and music.  I couldn’t improve it (except perhaps to image Nina blond).  Of course, I still wish that someone as talented as Kevin Williamson would come along and tell the story the way it is told in the books, but that doesn’t dull my appreciation of the version that is out.

I think there are two things I would advise for someone who wants to be a writer.  The first is to keep reading—not just vampire books, but any and all books that even slightly catch their interest.  Reading will open the world to you.

And, second, write a little something every day.  It can be as simple as a long text conversation (but remember that when you’re sending in your first book, grammar counts!) or writing in a diary, or blog, or scribbling down an idea for a story.  But the absolute best training is to try to write stories in a normal conversational style, to keep a blog that you update frequently, to write fanfic, or to write poetry (if you want to be a poet—or even if you don’t.)

I didn’t choose or decide.  I have been a storyteller since before I learned how to read or write.  I knew from my earliest childhood—the first things I remember—that I would only be happy as a storyteller.  When I learned how to read and write I immediately began writing stories and poetry.

I don’t really need to look for it.  It comes to me from everywhere.  An example would be an intricate wallpaper that gives me the idea for a story about a child with cerebral palsy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who has to lie on a couch and look at the same paper all the time.  He is as interested as I am in the theory of superstrings and multiple dimensions in physics.  In fact, by studying his wallpaper he finds a design that looks like one of the representations of space in eleven (or twelve or fifteen) demensions, and this allows him to disappear before his mother’s eyes into a different dimension.  The rest of the story follows his distraught mother as she attempts to find exactly what he saw so that she can go after her lost child.  This story would be meant for a science fiction magazine, but I’ll probably never write it.  It’s just a daydream.

I began The Night of the Solstice in high school and finished it in college.  My first agent was the woman who typed it into manuscript format for me (It was hand-written written on six or seven lined notebooks).  It was the first book that she had ever tried to sell, and she sold it to Macmillan.  It got great reviews but had an absolutely hideous cover, and since I thought I was writing it for teenagers—while it was marketed as a middle-grade (ages eight to eleven) book—it did very poorly in sales.  Later, when I’d written several older “vampire/witch” trilogies, it became a bestseller in paperback.  I was really overjoyed at that, since it was my first “child.”

I have a whole blog about this subject, but I’ll reproduce it here, since it’s one of the most frequent questions on writing in general that I get.

First of all, is your book really finished?  Or is it a rough draft or missing any chapters or needing reading through and editing?  The first thing is to have a finished book.  For new writers, that's imperative.

Second, you should be able to find books at any bookstore or on Amazon, such as the Writer's Market or Writer's Guide, that list agents who send books to publishers.  Or do it the easy way and google "agents for authors of (your specialty)."

Never EVER take an agent that asks you to pay them for sending your book to a publisher.  These people are running scams.  A real agent will ask to see some part of your book, such as the first ten pages or the first chapter.  They will probably also want you to give them a short synopsis or query that describes the entire book in one page or five pages.  Find out what the specific agent you pick requires.  Then do your best to describe your book in exciting terms, to interest the agent in representing you.

Different agents have different specialties.  Make absolutely sure you're not wasting your time sending your book to an agent that only works with adult books, if your book is YA, or an agent who specializes in romance books, if your book is urban fantasy/paranormal.  The agents have websites where often they will tell you outright what they are looking for and what they won’t accept.  Make sure that you send exactly what they ask for, and nothing more or less.

Third, cross your fingers.  If an agent takes you on, you don't have to do any more work (unless the agent critiques your book and asks you to).  The agent will send your book to different publishers and try to get them to buy it.

If a given agent or publisher refuses you, but gives you criticism, that's good!  Think about their remarks, change your manuscript if you feel that their criticism has merit.  (It probably does.  I know it hurts to be told your book needs to be changed, but agents and publishers know what will sell--and you want your book published.

Fourth, if you have tried 10 agents who specialize in your book's type, and they have refused you, you can try the slush pile.  This doesn't sound very good, but it just means the place where publishers put books that have been sent to them from the authors who don't have agents.  Some books get do published from the slush pile!  After I had written The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening for Harper, and before it was published, I got a very excited phone call from a young assistant at Harper.  Somehow she had gotten hold of the manuscript for The Awakening and she thought that it had come from the slush pile.  She wanted to publish it.  I had to explain that it was already coming out—from her own publisher.  We both ended up laughing.

Fifth, there is also the self-publishing or "vanity publishing" method.  Google these terms, since I don't know anything about the process.  I believe that you can sell self-published books on Amazon, but it's best to check that information with Amazon.

Terry Pratchett.  Read his books, starting with somewhere around Guards, Guards! and going at least as far as Monstrous Regiment.  You will be amused and may well shed some tears.

Topaz blue today.

Too many kinds to count.

Anything about magic—especially about ordinary kids finding a realistic kind of magic.  When I got a little older I added anything scientific to explain the magic of the real world around me. (No, not like books about the Ancient Astronauts. Real science books about real science.  Quantum physiscs, for example, is way weirder than what I write.) I can’t do math, but I love to read about the discoveries—or guesses—that physicists are making about how there may really be 11, 12 or 20 dimensions, most rolled up and far too small to see.

All of them and none of them.  I have to be a little bit like them in order to see the world through their eyes, but I’m not completely like any of them.  I see very well through Elena Gilbert’s eyes, but also though Cassie Blake’s, Kaitlyn Fairchild’s, Jenny Thornton’s or Quinn’s or Damon’s or Julian’s eyes as well.

In the place my first book (The Night of the Solstice) is set: Villa Park, a tiny town completely surrounded by the city of Orange, California.   Usually I say “about twenty minutes from Disneyland” and people say “Oh!”

September 4th, but you’ll never get the year out of me!  I am allegedly a Virgo, organized, critical and practical—but Virgos don’t believe in astrology and neither do I.

I have one sister, who, although a year and a half younger than me, was taller than me by high school and has always been a lot like a twin, although she was always dark-haired and I was always blond.

Not after teaching special ed kindergarten!  But I do adore them and I have always considered my sister’s kids as partly mine.

If you can read English, then the best place is Amazon.  All my books are or will be available from them new in the near future.  I recently guided an Australian fan in this direction and she wrote back to say that they deliver to Australia. (Also, they sell used books.)  I know that there is an amazon.co.uk (http://www.amazon.co.uk/) and that there is an amazon.ca (Canada) and I would imagine these would be your best bets.  After that comes simple googling, which may lead you to eBay or a used book store.  Also, you can go up to your local bookstore and simply ask if they can order the book for you.  You'd be surprised--quite often they can.

As I said in the Introduction, a famous artist, Jan Sovak, does the pictures for my site.  He's incredibly talented, and I'm amazingly lucky to have him render my characters.  If you haven't taken a look at the Gallery, please do, and you'll see what I mean.  I'll be adding more and more of his incredible pictures in the weeks and months to come.  Jan has illustrated over 200 books, and I'm really hoping that I can get him to do the covers for mine. He's also a great writer, and is working on a trilogy.

I think I was six.  I was in first grade and my teacher got this immortal poem out of me:

I see a bird upon its nest
It has no time to sit and rest
This little bird cannot have fun
Because its work is never done.

That was it.  But, seriously, I can't remember any time before I was writing stories in my head.  When I finally grew up enough to let them out onto paper, I found that people liked them.  But I would have been a writer anyway—even if people had hated them—because it's something involuntary in my brain.  It doesn't much like reality, and so it makes up stories to escape.

Aquamarine.  Really.  The color of the stones, though—clear blue, not blue-green.

A guy called Sam Vimes, from Terry Pratchett's Diskworld.  If you haven't read these books—and start with Night Watch or another of his recent ones—you're really missing something.  Or do you mean my favorite from my books?  Damon is the most fun to write, which is why I can't resist writing a fifth Vampire Diaries book about him.  Ash and Quinn are fun to write, in the same way.  Of the heroines, I have a fondness for both the really ditzy, like Bonnie, and Iliana, and the really strong, like Keller, Rashel, Elena, or Hannah.  Hardest to write, but most rewarding, are the ones who start out meek and scared and end up leaders, like Cassie in Secret Circle and Sarah in Strange Fate.

The forenamed Terry Pratchett ties with Frances Hodgson Burnett for her adult books.  Out of print, hard to get, Burnett's books like The Shuttle, The Head of the House of Coombe, and many others are always a delight and an escape.  FHB was a militant optimist, a quality I'm trying to hang on to.

Well, no.  Terry Pratchett gets quite as many as are good for him; I'm sure.  And Frances Hodgson Burnett lived at the turn of the previous century.  But I'd like her to know, wherever she is, that someone down here still appreciates her work.

Ah, me.  Yes, in a way I do.  We all craft our own destinies.  Obviously, if you're stuck out in the tundra, and your soulmate lives in Hawaii, you're going to have a harder time finding each other.  But enter the Internet.  These days it's a lot easier getting in touch with your soulmate—I know several couples who've met on the Web.  But on other days I curse the whole idea, because I don't want to give anyone—especially any young women—the idea that they are not complete without a man, or that they need a man in order to be fulfilled or whole.  You are you, complete, without half of you missing, all by yourself.  If you find a soulmate, then that's wonderful.  If you don't, that's still wonderful, if you can be happy, or even make other people happy.

Oh, yes indeed!  Can you look straight at a full harvest moon and think that humans have walked on it—and tell me that's not magic?  It's science, too, of course, but that's just a matter of terminology.  Can you look at this screen and know that I typed in these words at 7:30 A.M. on a cold, white-skied winter morning and that you're reading exactly the thoughts that were in my head back on that morning—and say it's not magic?  Can you believe that the last I heard they'd found a dinosaur mummy with skin and organs preserved, that there may be not four but eleven or more dimensions, or that I can make mushroom risotto in three minutes and think that there's no magic?

Of other kinds of magic the most that I can say is that I don't know.  I've had some magical moments in my life, and some uncanny things happen.  I've been waiting since I was nine, breathlessly sure that magic was going to happen at any moment, and at any moment I may be right.

For pure pleasure there's reading, which of course, is any writer's favorite activity, and movies, and being in the country.  There is a little cabin in Inverness, California, surrounded by state park, which I consider my retreat to nature.  There are dozens of beaches and routes to hike and a lighthouse, and once I saw a white buck there—on a trail, not a tame one—and followed it until it got dark.  I was hoping it was heading for Narnia, but we never quite got there.

Write. That's obviously the first step. Even if you don't have anything specific to write, keep a diary.  And keep a list of story ideas. I can't emphasize this enough.  Any idea for a story, book, poem, screenplay, whatever, even though you're that certain you'll remember it, write it down NOW.  You will forget it if you don't.  If you do make a note of it. . . ten years from now it may win you a Pulitzer.  Join local writing clubs—every town has them and they're a great place to make friends, learn the craft of writing, and get ideas.  When you have something written, a story or novel or screenplay, learn how to format it before you send it off.  Just google; you'll find tons of references.  Also buy the year's current Writer's Guide.

Never, ever pay anyone any money to “write your book/screenplay for you,” and only self-publish if you have money to burn.  Once you know how to format your work, be very precise and keep rigidly to the requirements.  Then go back to the Web or your Writer's Guide or your writing clubs and, unless you're a poet, get an agent.  You do not want your work to be in the slush pile (the pile of unsolicited manuscripts).  Get a reputable agent, and that means one that doesn't get paid until you sell your book or whatever.  Then take a rest until your agent tells you what to do next.

This year's Writer's Guide has lists of them.  Talk to other writers.  Gird your loins and contact presidents of national writing clubs and ask for recommendations.  Call agents and ask for their recommendations of large agencies.  Do your research well; you want the best agent you can get.  And, no, you can't have mine. :P

I don't know.  Not the way books on ‘How to Write' say to make up a character, I do know that.  I can't explain the way any of these characters became real people to me; there was a need for a character to do such-and-such and they all grew in the writing.  It's something that happens below the level of my consciousness.  I know that's not a very good answer but it's the best I can do.  If it helps, I've always tried to do anti-stereotypes, the Homecoming Queen who ends up with only a few true friends, the sheriff who's a woman.  I plan to do more multinational characters in the future.

Too many to list here.  Just about everything by Emily Dickinson, my favorite poet.  But here are two very diverse poems to show you how changeable I am.

Untitled

If I danced with my feet as I dance in my dreaming
As graceful and gleaming as Death in disguise
Oh, that would be sweet!  But then would I hunger
To be ten years younger, or wedded, or wise?
From The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beale

The Human Condition
By Harold Nimarov

In this motel where I was told to wait,
The television screen is stood before
The picture window.  Nothing could be more
Use to a man than knowing where he's at.
And I don't know, but pace the day in doubt
Between my looking in and looking out.

Through snow, along the snowy road, cars pass
Going both ways, and pass behind the screen
Where heads of heroes sometimes can be seen,
And sometimes cars, that speed across the glass.
Once I saw world and thought exactly meet,
But only in a picture by Magritte.

A picture of a picture, by Magritte,
Wherein a landscape on an easel stands
Before a window opening on a land-
scape, and the pair of them a perfect fit.
Silent and mad.  You know right off, the room
Before that scene was always an empty room.

And that is now the room in which I stand
Waiting, or walk, and sometimes try to sleep.
The day falls into darkness while I keep
The TV going; headlights blaze behind
Its legendary traffic, love and hate,
In this motel where I was told to wait.

Yes!  That's the point, really.  This is my playground.

This one is impossible.  There are too many.  I adore movies.  I can't even begin to give a list, because it would sound like word salad. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  The Negotiator. Anything done by Studio Ghibli. Lagaan.  The Fifth Element. Anything by Monty Python.  Most horror films.  Most films spoofed by Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  See?

No, but it is true that it isn't hooked up.  I get my news from newspapers and the Web—but since I hate most of the news I get that way, I rely on magazines.  Since I don't read many magazines, I get spared much of the news. I really like books better.

What did inspire me?  I don't know.  I guess it's because it was the closest thing to a story that I had written only in my head, about bad guys who were really demonic and good guys who were trying to hunt the bad guys down.  I kept this story going in my head for years and years and had all sorts of characters in it—but I was just a teenager.  I gave up any idea of writing it because the two opposing sides in it were from the Court at the End of the World (an other-dimensional world) and the Darkside (a different other dimensional world).  They were sort of like angels and demons—but it wasn't religious.  The good guys from Court recruited humans who discovered they had psychic powers—Blindsight, Deafears, Intuition—and asked them to fight the Darksiders.  But then George Lucas came out with Star Wars and the Dark Side, and I figured I should give the idea up.  Recently, though, I've been toying with it.  It's not all that different from the Night World—it's just that both sides are actual places, with lots of intrigue going on in each.
So, to finally answer the question, I may write more Night World—if it's wanted.  And I may write about the Darksiders—if it's possible.