Born and raised close to North York Moors, initial setting of American Werewolf in London, one might be excused for thinking K. L. Kerr's interests might lie with those furry beasts. But she has always preferred monsters of the fanged variety, having written the very first draft of her novel, The Genesis, aged sixteen.
When not writing, Kerr can be found playing the MMORPG, World of Warcraft, or listening to music from video game soundtracks. She still lives in the North of England, close to The Moors (keeping to the roads, naturally), with two cats who--like all cats--think they're people.
The vampires of Dayson city are preparing for war. Having lived in constant fear of the Archway Corporation for decades, desperation has forced them into action. Their solution is to bring the First vampire, Alistair, back from the dead, a warrior famed for eradicating entire armies in the name of his kind.
For fledgling vampire Catrina Malinka, the fabled return of some unknown deity falls low on her list of concerns. Between fending off strangers trying to kill her in her dreams and trying to rein in an uncontrollable power that no one else even understands let alone shares, Catrina is forced to fight her assumed role in the war against Archway, which threatens to send her down a path she doesn’t want to travel.
The first book in The Blood of Ages series, “The Genesis” is an urban fantasy about the inescapable nature of Fate and the corruption of power.
Q) What inspired you to write this story? All the vampire books and films I'd seen before writing my book were either from (a) a human's perspective, or (b) a vampire who regrets being a vampire's perspective. There didn't seem to be anything that covered vampires just "getting by", those who accepted what they were and whose conflicts came from the humans who hunted them. So I decided to do that.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
If we're getting technical, it took just over twelve years. I know...sheesh, right? I got the initial idea for this story when I was sixteen, which I then wrote and then essentially sat on for a decade. I pulled it out of the metaphorical well it had fallen into in 2011, when I rewrote the entire thing for NaNoWriMo 2011. I wrote it from scratch, based only on the characters and events in the earlier draft, and that took around ten months from first draft to the final version.
Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?
Praise/validation from others. To say that writing should only be important to yourself is all well and good, and to a degree it's true, but there's still no better feeling than knowing someone else has read your work and liked it. I recently got a review that totally nailed what I was going for when I wrote the book, and reading this reviewer go into detail about scenes I'd written and analyse the points I'd been trying to convey while writing...there's just nothing better.
Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?
That agonising feeling you get when a scene isn't working out, and you know you should just keep going, but you can feel it falling further and further from what you were aiming for with every word, and all you want to do is throw your computer out the window.
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
If I became that person for the duration of the day, then Stephen Fry, because I want to know what it's like being that intelligent. If I was still myself but in said famous person's body,
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
Well, I recently got a housemate, so I did a clearout and the fridge's contents are all relatively safe for consumption. That said, I think I still have a tin of peaches in the cupboard that I put there when I moved in...in 2006.
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
Well, I'm working to the goal of releasing the entire five books that comprise the Blood of Ages series by 2016, which sounds like a long way away, but it's going to be on us sooner than any of us are ready for, I imagine. I've just finished the first draft of the second book in the series, and after a brief break, I'll be working on that again with the hope of a release in September.
eBook giveaway of Genesis at each stop.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
If we're getting technical, it took just over twelve years. I know...sheesh, right? I got the initial idea for this story when I was sixteen, which I then wrote and then essentially sat on for a decade. I pulled it out of the metaphorical well it had fallen into in 2011, when I rewrote the entire thing for NaNoWriMo 2011. I wrote it from scratch, based only on the characters and events in the earlier draft, and that took around ten months from first draft to the final version.
Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?
Praise/validation from others. To say that writing should only be important to yourself is all well and good, and to a degree it's true, but there's still no better feeling than knowing someone else has read your work and liked it. I recently got a review that totally nailed what I was going for when I wrote the book, and reading this reviewer go into detail about scenes I'd written and analyse the points I'd been trying to convey while writing...there's just nothing better.
Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?
That agonising feeling you get when a scene isn't working out, and you know you should just keep going, but you can feel it falling further and further from what you were aiming for with every word, and all you want to do is throw your computer out the window.
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
If I became that person for the duration of the day, then Stephen Fry, because I want to know what it's like being that intelligent. If I was still myself but in said famous person's body,
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
Well, I recently got a housemate, so I did a clearout and the fridge's contents are all relatively safe for consumption. That said, I think I still have a tin of peaches in the cupboard that I put there when I moved in...in 2006.
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
Well, I'm working to the goal of releasing the entire five books that comprise the Blood of Ages series by 2016, which sounds like a long way away, but it's going to be on us sooner than any of us are ready for, I imagine. I've just finished the first draft of the second book in the series, and after a brief break, I'll be working on that again with the hope of a release in September.
eBook giveaway of Genesis at each stop.
