Blog Tour: 12 Days of Morganville Madness

Welcome fellow Morganville fans!  Don't worry!  You are not being sought out by Ada the computer for leaving the lovely town of Morganville.   You are however invited to join in the fun for the blog tour featuring Rachel Caine and the wonderful town history.  Each stop is featuring one of the books in the series with a review and a contest that will lead up to the main attraction of Black Dawn.  We ask that you keep all pulse points inside the tour bus or Oliver will think you are volunteering to donate blood for his own nourishment.

So let's get this show on the road!

My part of the tour features Carpe Corpus , Book #6

SUMMARY:

In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace-until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He's kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants-the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power?

Since I am a loyal follower of the town, I have read and reviewed this story in the past.  You can find my review HERE

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Now I would like to introduce you to Ms. Rachel Caine as she explains more about the book!

1. What kicked off the concept for this book?

In my original story arc for Morganville, this was the BIG BOOK. The one where everything came together, where the war with Bishop got real and visceral, where everyone and everything we loved was thrown into chaos and danger. And also, I felt that I needed to really move Claire and Shane's simmering relationship forward.

2. Which character do I think stood out in this book, and why?

Sam. Michael's grandfather's character arc still echoes through the rest of the books, so I think I have to say he was the most important even if he didn't have the most screen time.

3. Five things I loved about writing this book

    A. Shane stuck in a cage is fun to write, but Shane stuck in a cage and having to make nice with his father for months? That's a high wire act for both him *and* me.

    B. Michael's struggle to resist Bishop's control of him.

    C. Claire's tattoo, magically applied. (It also ties into a short story I did called DEAD MAN STALKING, in which Shane's father is the first one to make use of those magical tats.)

    D. I quite liked the pact between Amelie, Oliver, Myrnin and Sam to take Bishop down; we don't see it from Claire's POV, but it's a pretty important step for them to take to each have an equal risk of death in order to save the town.

    E. Okay, I loved writing the fragile, tentative scene of Claire and Shane's first time together. I was really, really concerned about doing it justice.

4. Five things I didn't love about writing this book

    A. The last one above is also one of the things I *didn't* love about this book; writing that first really intimate encounter between my characters felt right and organic for the story and how far they'd come together, but it was also highly nerve-wracking. I had to get it right, and I had to make it feel real and imperfect. I also was taking a pretty big risk of losing readership by going there, and I knew it.

    B. Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. That was hard.

    C. By the time I was done with this book, I *really* hated Bishop. And normally I don't feel that way about a character, but was really despicable. And he really would have killed everybody, all the time, forever, if I'd let him.

    D. This was also a tough book to write for personal reasons, because of things that were happening in my personal work life. Lots of stress. I can see it in the story when I read it again, even though I don't think anyone else could decipher the code.

    E. I wanted to do more with Claire's parents, but I never could find a way to work it in. 

5. If I could do this book over, what would I do differently, and why?

I keep thinking I'd save Sam. But I don't know. If the great Joss Whedon taught me anything, it's that to make danger real, you sometimes have to be willing to let go of a character to prove the point. So I'd probably keep it in, and still regret it at the same time.

6. Favorite quoted passage from the book

"What was the use of being a main evil minion if you couldn't even enjoy it -- or save your own friends?" That pretty much sums up Claire's existence in this book.

7. What I learned from this book

Incredibly, when I showed the Claire/Shane intimate scene to 10 self-selected conservative parents to determine what they thought, I got 8 out of ten absolute ok votes, 1 that felt a bit uncomfortable but was willing to discuss it with their teen, and 1 who flat-out vetoed it. I thought that considering the charged nature of the material, that was a pretty decent up vote -- and it's also really critical to me as a writer to validate some of these things with outside sources so I know what kind of hot water I'm jumping into.

8. Fun research moment

Ada. I'd known all along that I was going to create a vampire-computer who ran many of the less normal functions of Morganville, and I knew that it was run essentially by a brain in a jar, but in deciding to flesh out her character, I got to research the amazing Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and widely acknowledged as one of the key figures in early computing. I loved working her into the story. Even though she was a little bit dangerous. (Okay, more than a little bit.)

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Now for your lovely parting gifts if you were lucky to have survived the tour with your blood still.

Thanks to the lovely people of  NAL, I have one copy of Carpe Corpus and a signed bookmark for Black Dawn for one lucky entrant!

Follow the rules or Myrnin might decide to use you for his next experiment!

Contest will end on Sunday, April 29th, 2012.
One entry per person!
Contest is for the USA only
Must be 13 years of age or older
Leave a comment with an email address for your entry!