A Quick Interview with Author Piper Maitland

Urban fantasy author Piper Maitland is back at the Nook today. Last year, she stopped by with a guest post about her writing rituals as part of her tour for her first book, "Acquainted with the Night". Now the sequel, "Hunting Daylight" is out and Piper took the time to answer a few questions for me.

Piper Maitland lives on a Tennessee farm with her family. She is the author of the paramormal romance, Acquainted With the Night (Berkley/November 2011). The sequel,  Hunting Daylight, was  published on 2/5/13 by Berkley/Penguin USA. Piper has also written novels under the name Michael Lee West.

Find Piper online:

Website
Twitter

Facebook 

Blog

*Spoilers for the first book in the questions*  

Bea, I’m excited to visit you today. Your questions are always fun and make me think. Without further ado, I’ll start with the first one.

 

Thanks Piper. It's great to have you back again. 

Bea: If you could be a character in a book, which one would it be, and what part would you play? (Romantic lead, sidekick, etc) 

Piper: I’d want to be Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Why? Darcy. And I adore Lizzie’s wit and spunk.

Bea: Do you have a guilty pleasure? If so, what is it?

Piper: I’m a dead-serious cook, but I also like to buy store-bought desserts and gild them with flowers or drizzled chocolate.

Bea: Do you think social media is important these days for an author?

Piper: It seems to be a part of everyday life. I love my blog, though I write about food, not books. I treasure the friendships I’ve made, so it’s truly a social thing for me. I enjoy Pinterest, too.

Bea: Why jump so far forward in time instead of picking up the story closer to the end of the first book?

Piper: A great editor once explained how to handle trilogies and series fiction: to forget that I’d written the first book and pretend it was backstory. She also told me to be fearless with the timeline. Jude and Caro’s daughter, Vivi, is at the center of an 8^th century prophecy, one that signals a showdown between humans and immortals. The first novel had ended with Caro’s pregnancy. If the action in Hunting Daylight had begun with Vivi in utero, or even as a baby, she wouldn’t have become a fully-realized character. Worse, she could end up as a plot device, Vivi MacGuffin.

Bea: If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? 

Piper: James Bond. He’s handsome, sophisticated, and has a license to kill. We’d begin our dinner at the Athenaeum Hotel in London. Between the martinis and dessert (a delicious trifle), I’d listen to his juicy stories.

Thank you Piper for taking the time to answer my questions. Best of luck with your tour!

Piper will be continuing her blog tour on Feb. 10^th at www.ismellsheep.com!

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Book Blurb (from goodreads) ~ *Spoilers for the first book* 

Out of the shadows...

For more than a decade, Caro Barrett has had doubts about the death of her husband, who disappeared while looking for a tribe of day-walking vampires in an African rainforest. Now, their daughter is struggling through her teenage years without a father. Waiting in the wings is an ancient vampire ready to possess Caro's heart--and to protect them both from harm. And, with her husband declared legally dead, Caro feels it is finally time to move on... 

A hemisphere away in a windowless compound, an Ottoman vampire lies dying from a rare blood disease, which has made him vulnerable to the faintest bit of light. Yet he is determined to vanquish its power over him--to feel the sun on his face one last time. And in Caro's darkest fears he will be lifted into the light of day...

Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Urban fantasy, Adventure
Format: paperback, ebook
Release Date: February 5, 2013
Buying Links:  Amazon    Barnes & Noble   Book Depository