KMM Fever Chat!

(I just wanted another excuse to post this pic)

The wonderful Karen Marie Moning did a chat today on her website today. There were lots of questions from readers and I did my best to try to take as many notes as I could. Keep in mind the chat was a hot mess. There were answers on the screen and KMM was just picking random ones and answering them. I also took these notes as my family was all around me making things even more confusing. So I hope it all makes sense! The notes are in order of the chat.

*WARNING*

This post contains spoilers. If you have not read anything about this series, or if you haven't read Shadowfever, I suggest you not read what is written below. Also, if you are not a fan of profanity, there are some words you might not like.

• Is there a connection between JZB and the Triton Group or the Draghars?
  No connection between JZB and the Triton Group

• She finds it easier to write about flawed characters than perfect ones.

• She changed 2 things from the original draft of the book. Adam Blacks cameo and not killing Drustan. To avoid killing Drustan she had to change the Keltar movement entirely and it changed how SF felt overall to her.

• Wait until you see what happens with Cruce/V'Lane. I'm not nearly done with him. but I warn you..it's not going to be comfortable.

• Graphic Novel is Mac's POV mainly.

• The beast eating the bloody runes was only to show what everyone else feared and what Barrons relished.

• The book showed Mac an illusion of her biological parents. (they cleared the screen couldn't get the rest of it, but she said that there would be more info on her dad later)

• Barrons and his 8 men are the same thing.

• Will the elixir that Mac was given eventually snuff out her soul?
  Cruce/V'Lane said that it was different from the King/Queens. Will come up in the future.

• The next series will be about Dani, Ryodan, Christian, Dancer and the rest of the newer characters that are making appearances in the Fever series.

• She says that Dreamfever began with 1 book uncorked and Shadowfever ends with 2 books being very loosely corked.

• There is a question about the job that Ryodan wants Dani to do and Christian is waiting in the shadows. KMM says: Dani's in a pretty bad position if RyO has a job for her and Christian thinks she is the road to his salvation (and they closed the screen again) something about that being a hard position for a 14 yr old to be in between these 2 men. Shaping her to what they want her to be and she says that Dani doesn't take kindly to shaping.

• A few more notes on what was going on in the back of my mind throughout the whole series. I'm kind of obsessed with Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

• Someone on the MB mentioned mirroring. There's a lot of it. I structured the series as a Janus head on multiple levels, highlighting contrasts and creating a play of tension between opposites compressed in a volatile reality to illustrate the point that Jean Paul Sartre makes in Being and Nothingness when he explores the concept of anguish at the point of absolute freedom: The only thing that matters are the possibilities, what you choose, what you commit to. All potentials exist in every character, at every moment. It is their actions that define and separate them.

• Think about the grilling scene as the closest Mac will ever get to hearing him say something tender. He won.

• Barrons shows everything through his actions. Not domestication. Conscious, deliberate choice to show her something.

• Question: Karen, you once said in an interview that you would ask the UK if he was sorry. To what did you refer to?
  Answer: Haven. For the whole mess 750,000 years ago....for starters

• I sometimes think there might be a novella about Alina and Darroc..a prequel.

• She's thinking about picking up where SF left off! Since there are 2 books out there! (Squee!!)

• Question: I have a question about Cruce/V'lane. I would really like to know how much of his actions were motivated by feelings for Mac. Obviously he did some bad and possibly unforgivable things, but did he truly care about her or was she a means to an end?

• V’lane had a lousy publicist. He’s the center-stage male character I gave a label: Seelie, shining death-by-sex Fae, erotic, brilliant, ballsy and no more sociopathic than Barrons. With V’lane, I can’t help but play the “what if” game: What if the night Mac rushed through the dark zone seeking sanctuary, Mac had found V’lane instead of Barrons Books & Baubles? What if he’d taken her off to Faery and told her the truth, the full truth that very night? Would she have been swayed by his desire to save his trapped brothers? How different is he really from Barrons and his nine? V’lane may have rebelled against the Unseelie king’s wishes but he was only trying to set the rest of the Unseelie free. He was beautiful, powerful, he could have left the icy prison and abandoned them, pursued his own pleasure. But he wanted all the Unseelie to have a chance in the sunshine and beauty of the world. He was a freedom fighter, a renegade, a determined, cunning, patient, valiant crusader. Doesn’t the world need War? Isn’t he the only reason tyrannies topple, empires fall and humans change? War is the catalyst, the means by which wrongs are righted, scales are balanced, and the world transformed. Isn’t V’lane the real hero?

• V'Lane called her Princess all those times because he would have made her his princess.

• There are times when I have to tell a story because it stalks me. There are other times when I listen to the fans and examine the merits of what they're asking for. It's possible I will do more with Barrons POV but I promise it won't be an easy read.

• Wanted to know what Barrons was thinking when he was painting Mac's nails. She responded with, you don't want to know...but you probably do in great detail. Then she wrote this:
  Here's some insight into Barrons:
  
  Barrons is hard, cold, brutally efficient killing machine, brilliant, cunning and utterly focused on what he wants at all times. He rarely smiles and if he does, it’s a brief softening, a faint uplifting of the corners of his mouth—never a full smile. Since he met Mac, it’s happened on several occasions. Once, in Faefever, he laughed out loud. JZB is not a man for expressions of happiness. At best he radiates self-satisfied calm, a big cat at rest. Harsh, forbidding, controlled, a man of intense discipline, he emotes anger, mockery, challenge, irony, raw sexuality, animalistic fury, but no tenderness. He’s a hard man. There are no cracks in his walls but the one Mac can slip through—and he hates that but he accepts it because it is the truth and to pretend otherwise would be an exercise in futility. Whether he likes it or not, she gets under his skin and makes his dick harder than any other woman ever has. He wastes no time examining the whys of it or resisting her effect on him. He focuses the energy like a laser, slicing and dicing, rearranging reality to suit what he wants the best way he can get it. Since the moment he met Mac and accepted that he wanted her, he has been ruthlessly altering her, making her ultimately suitable for him. The only question in his mind is: will she survive what he’s doing to her?

• I have a ton of character notes that at some point I'll post at my website.

• Question: What's the deal with BB&B having four floors and then five floors?
  Answer: BB&B is part of the new series, you'll have to wait to find out:)

• Yes I know what Mac will owe the GW. (Grey Woman)

• Can you hear Barrons saying Ooooh baby I wanna make sweet love to you?
  Barrons. Fucks.
  He does not make love.
  He said he made love to irritate Mac.
  
  Leiha is posting some more notes about Barrons...why I wrote him the way I did:
  
  When every other novel I was picking up in the bookstore announced: Vampire/Werewolf/Demon hero on the cover, and was marketing it on the basis of that paranormal creature’s mythic resonance, I wanted to write a story with a male center-stage character that defied labels, and wouldn’t permit one. I wanted to make the reader choose to take him or leave him without the convenience of a pre-packaged tortured-hero caricature to slap over his outline, and no easy answers about whether he was good or bad. I wanted to write a paranormal creature and never tell the reader what he was, because I believed they would ultimately see him more clearly in his everyday behavior, than through the distorted lens of someone else’s legend. Barrons says, “Judge me by my actions” and makes the reader do the same. At the end of the series, I wanted the reader to answer the question: Who/what is Barrons? the same way Mac does: Who cares? He’s Barrons. In the vein of showing, not telling, I wanted my characters to love each other—but never tell each other that. I chose instead to show it in their actions, in the choices they made. Words are easy; lies as simple as parting your lips and breathing.

• I believe we all possess capacity for great good or evil and that every day is a choice.

• She then mentions that she is considering picking up where Shadowfever ends because there are 2 books out there!

And there you have it! Mostly insight into her thinking, with a few clues about the future...but not really. LOL!

My Powduh Partner Marq is also doing a post on her blog about the chat later this evening.
Click on her pic below to be taken to her blog:

Stop by the blog on 1/26/11 for my Shadowfever review and giveaway of the book!