Backstory of "Human No Longer" by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Human No Longer Backstory

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Amazon Kindle

Human No Longer. It’s my 17^th published book – yeah! – and my fourth vampire novel. First, let me tell you where I got the idea for it. About five years ago, I was still trying to please the agent (who I no longer have) who’d sold four of my earlier paperback novels to Zebra in the 1990’s and, because she didn’t seem to like any of my new potential concepts, I asked her what she would like to see. Out of nowhere, she said, “You know your 1991 Zebra vampire novel, Vampire Blood? I liked that one a lot. The characters. Well, how about writing me a sort of sequel with basically the same cast, but with this premise: A woman, a mother, after being turned into a bloodthirsty vampire, must learn to adapt to the human world and still be a good mother. You know, how would she deal with everything when she had children she loved; didn’t want to hurt or leave them…but still had the need to feed on blood? Still had all the urges and desires of a vampire?

Yikes. I hated the idea but, to please her, I went ahead and begrudgingly wrote the book. I tentatively called it The Vampire’s Children or The Vampire Mother or something like that. I finished it. Not too happy with it. I had never liked writing what other people wanted me to write. Stubborn, I guess.

My agent, in the meantime, had begun her own online erotic (which I don’t much care to write) publishing company and when I’d gotten done with the novel she was too busy to even read the finished book. She handed it off to an apprentice intern. An intern? What? Who didn’t like it at all. Duh. So, disgusted, I tucked the file away on my computer and, fed up with the whole agent thing, returned to writing what I wanted to write. An end of days novel called A Time of Demons and a new vampire novel where the evil vampire wasn’t a mother. In 2010 I went with a new publisher, Kim Richards at Damnation Books/Eternal Press, and she contracted not only those two books but asked me if I’d like to rewrite, update and rerelease all 7 of my older out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks going back to 1984. Heck yes, I said! So for the next 2 years I was busy doing that. Some of those books were over twenty-five years old and very outdated. Their rewriting, editing and rereleasing took a lot of work and time.

Then, in late 2012, I decided to take a very old book of mine (Predator) which was contracted to Zebra Paperbacks in 1993 but, in the end, never actually released, and just for the heck of it, as my 16^th novel, self-publish it to Amazon Kindle Direct. Just in ebook form. A kind of grand experiment. The first time I’ve ever tried self-publishing. See how it’d sell. Dinosaur Lake. A story about a hungry mutant dinosaur loose in the waters of Crater Lake that goes on a rampage. Hey, I wrote Dinosaur Lake before Jurassic Park, the book, ever came out! Really. I had my cover artist, Dawne Dominique make a cover for it…and it was stunning with a dinosaur roaring on the front. And I did everything else myself. Editing. Proofing. Formatting. With forty years and endless publishers behind me I felt I was capable. And it’d been selling so well I decided to self-publish another one…and I remembered the mother/vampire book. Hmmm. So I revamped (ha, ha, inside joke), polished, and self-published it, as well. I retitled it Human No Longer. Got my fabulous cover artist, Dawne Dominique, to make me a lovely haunting cover with a troubled-looking woman standing outside a spooky house, with two children behind her in its shadows, on the front and voila! All in all, I don’t think the book turned out half bad. In fact, with the changes I made I think it’s not bad at all. Now I just hope my readers will like it.

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About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had seventeen (ten romantic horror, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance and two murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books/Eternal Press and Amazon Kindle Direct.

I’ve been married to Russell for almost thirty-five years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Books available at Amazon.com here.

Kathryn Meyer Griffith's Dinosaur Lake back story

Dinosaur Lake’s Backstory Essay

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Dinosaur Lake is available at Amazon Kindle

 Of all my 16 novels, Dinosaur Lake has the strangest story attached to its creation, death and rebirth…20 years later…of any of them.

Not so much because, as a few of my books, it took so long to write or publish, but because in 1993 it was contracted, edited and the final galleys had been proofed by me for a 5^th  paperback book release from Zebra (Kensington Publishing) after 3 earlier novels with Leisure Books. I even had a stack of the full-color, printed and embossed covers; it was only weeks before it was to go to the bookshelves (in those days the brick & mortar stores were still king, no Internet or ebooks). I strongly believed it’d be my breakout book. You know, the book that’d make my career and launch me into the stratosphere with Stephen King and Anne Rice? How wrong I’d be. But, hey, I thought who wouldn’t love a tale of a cunning but malevolent rampaging prehistoric dinosaur living in Crater Lake, Oregon, and the Park Ranger who, along with a ragtag gang of heroes who’d try to stop it? I mean, I’d always loved anything about dinosaurs…dinosaur books, playing with those little plastic figurines and watching old stop-action dinosaur movies of the 1950’s and 60’s…who hadn’t?

Apparently someone. My new editor at Zebra.

By 1994, after four novels with them, I’d lost my sweet editor there and a new one took her place...and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my book (Predator…which never came out but still lingers to this very day like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. When we were editing the book and deciding on the title and the cover, I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator (his choice as they hadn’t liked my American Loch Ness Monster title), bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and the movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book–my first ever–dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and my final edits were done! But nothing my agent or I could say or do would change their minds. They said they were cutting their horror lines and setting adrift a lot of their mid-list horror authors because horror (in 1994) was on the decline. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “And no one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” Yeah, sure.

And six months later Jurassic Park the book came out! We all know how that story ended, don’t we? People loved the book, the movies; they loved dinosaurs.

I’ll never know the real reason they cut the book but that male editor never bought another book from me…which was another weird thing because when I’d met him in New York (I went for a Horror Convention) in the summer of 1993 he’d taken my husband and I out to lunch and gushed over me and said how much he’d loved my last release WITCHES. Hmmm.

Anyway, I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. It never came out. I grieved.

I was so disgusted I stashed it in a drawer somewhere and tried to forget it.

Until now. After I’d finished revising and rereleasing all my new/old 15 books (and besides paperbacks they’re in ebooks for the first time ever) from Eternal Press/Damnation Books in June of 2012 I remembered about my American Loch Ness Monster novel, took it out and reread it.

Whoa, like a lot of my older novels now years later I could see what was wrong with it and how to fix it. Back then I hadn’t seen the head-hopping I did or the awkward phrasing, stiff or overly dramatic dialogue, repetitive words and other things I’ve learned since to recognize and stay away from. Of course, computers help make the editing so much easier. I think I’d done the original book on my electric typewriter.

Anyway, telling myself the dumping of that book had been a turning point in my writing life–sending me in the wrong direction for a long time apparently…I couldn’t sell a book for eight long years after that–I decided to rewrite and finally release it. In fact, I was going to do something that twenty years ago would have been unheard of and frowned on…self-publish the book myself. With Kindle Direct. For the first time in forty years I was walking away from the traditional publishers and going on my own. Thank you J.A. Konrath’s blog! I figured I could sell the Kindle ebook a lot cheaper and, thus, use it to introduce (as enticement) more readers to my writing and perhaps, if they liked it, they’d buy more of my other fifteen novels, novellas and various short stories.

It could work, right?

So here it is, retitled, rewritten, updated and with an amazing new cover I love by Dawne Dominique… Dinosaur Lake. I hope my readers will like it.

Written this thirtieth day of Aug, 2012 by the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith  

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About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

                                                                                                            

Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith.

All available on Amazon.com on my page: 

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, June 2012) 

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)

Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2012)  

Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out 2010)  You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZU77j_q4S8

Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out 2011) 

The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011) 

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)  You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cogCNYKzPqc 

Winter’s Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) You Tube Book Trailer address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYCs2DVhHg

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28HZqu-my1g

Don’t Look Back, Agnes novella & bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out; Eternal Press 2012)

You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3q9rZryFMo

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Damnation Books 2010) 

You Tube self-made Book trailer with original song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0-U9c2Lwfo  

The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010) 

You Tube Book Trailer Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcRBvDI5G4Y

The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction) 

My Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http:// www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith

http://romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

E-mail me at rdgriff@htc.net  I love to hear from my readers. ***

Guest blogger - Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Today is a special treat. Novelist Kathryn Meyer Griffith is sharing the story of how her novel Vampire Blood came to be. If you've ever been curious about a writer's process, here's a chance to take a peek behind the curtain. :)

The Story of Vampire Blood
Author’s Revised Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
A rerelease of my 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel out from Damnation Books on July 1, 2011.

In 1990 or so, I’d just got done releasing my first three paperback novels with Leisure Books, a romantic historical (The Heart of the Rose 1985) and two romantic horror books (Evil Stalks the Night, 1984 and Blood Forge, 1989), and because I wasn’t making much money on them, was looking, as most so-called restless young authors were doing, to move up in the publishing industry.

So I wrote snail mail letters to three established authors of the day – Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Peter Straub – asking for a little advice and a little help. What do I do next? I want to be one of the big dogs running in the big races. I want to make the big bucks. Be famous like you. (Ha, ha. I was so naïve in those days!)

Well, Stephen King and Peter Straub never answered my letters, but one rainy fall night I got a phone call from Gerda Koontz (Dean Koontz’s wife) and she said Dean had gotten my letter and wanted me to have a name of a brand new agent who I should call or write to and say I was recommended by him. If I thought it strange that Dean Koontz himself wasn’t actually talking to me I was told by Gerda that he was a shy man and had had a particularly hard couple of months because of family problems (I think it had something to do with his father in a nursing home or something, but can’t exactly recall now) and he’d asked her to call me. She often did that for him, as well as helping him with the business side of his writing career. He (through her…and I got the impression that he was actually nearby telling her what to say the whole time) said I had to have an agent (I didn’t have one) and then he gave me the name of an ambitious one, Lori Perkins, just starting out and his advice on what I should do to advance as a writer.

I do remember being incredibly touched that he, a famous busy novelist that I admired – I loved his Twilight Eyes – would take the time to talk to me, even through his wife. They were both so sweet and we talked for nearly an hour all about writing, books, and everything.

I took their advice and contacted that agent and she agreed immediately to represent me on my fourth book, Vampire Blood, no doubt, because I said Dean Koontz had recommended her to me. Name dropper! But Vampire Blood was the reason I’d contacted those famous authors in the first place. I thought it was the best book I’d done so far and wanted it to go to (what I thought at the time) would be a better publisher than Leisure Books, which contracted and hog-tied their writers with a horrible 'potboiler' one-size-fits-all ten year contract with low advances and 4% royalties. Yes, I got a whole whopping 14 cents a book in those days, but, I must confess, they did print thousands of paperbacks each run and had a huge distribution area. I thought I could do a lot better. Anyway, Lori Perkins wanted me to send her the book and she did like it and eventually sold it, and then three others zip-zip-zip right after, to Zebra Books (now known more as Kensington Publishing) at 6% royalties and double the advances I was used to getting. They slapped a sexy blonde vampire with a low dress on the cover and a hazy theater behind her. Lovely colors. I thought it was an eye-catching cover. I was so happy. I thought I’d made it! Again, so naïve.

Vampire Blood. A little story about a family of vicious killing vampires who settle in a small Florida town called Summer Haven and end up buying and fixing up an old theater palace to run and pluck their victims from, and a divorced, down-on-her-luck ex-novelist and her hard luck father, who along with friends, help thwart them.

Now to how and why I wrote it.

My husband and I lived in this small Illinois town, Cahokia, at the time and there was the neatest little hole-in-the-wall theater in a nearby shopping center we used to go to all the time…run by a family of a sweet man, Terry, and his wife, Ann, and sometimes their three children, two teenage boys and a girl named Irene. Such a friendly, but odd couple. The run-down theater was their whole world it seemed. The kids helped take in the tickets, pop the popcorn, and sell the candy snacks.

Now, the minute Terry and Ann found out, in one of our earliest conversations, that I was a published novelist they were my greatest fans. Terry went right out and bought all three of my books and they all read them. Terry always thought they’d make great movies. Next time my husband and I went to the little theater, Terry and Ann greeted us like old friends, so delighted to see us, and refused to take a dime from us for anything. We got in free whenever we went from then on. Now, in those days my husband, my son, James, and I were pretty broke. I worked as a graphic designer at a big brokerage firm in downtown St. Louis (across the Poplar Bridge from our Illinois town) but my husband was in between jobs. We lived on a shoestring. Hard times. So I always was so tickled that we could get into the local movies for free. We went a lot, too, as we loved movies, especially science fiction and horror films.

One night, I was watching Terry and Ann and their joy in running that little theater, with the kids bustling around doing their jobs, and I got the idea for Vampire Blood. Just like that! Use them and the theater as a backdrop for a vampire novel. Hey, wouldn’t it be neat, I off-handedly mentioned to Terry one night, if I wrote a book about a family of vampires that was trying to pass as a real human family, the man and woman wanting so badly to fit in and lead a normal life for a while, renovating and then running a theater together…but the kids are wild and, as kids always do, make trouble for them in the town…killing people? Terry loved the idea and I asked him if it’d be all right to use him and his family as a template for the vampires. He was thrilled to be part of anything to do with my books and said yes. So…I wrote this book about them (sort of), the theater (making it much grander than it was, of course), a small town terrorized by cruel, powerful vampires who can change into wolves at will...and a saddened lonely woman, her brother, and her ex-husband (who she still loves and ultimately ends up with again after he saves her life) who finds herself again, but loses a lot, as well, fighting these vampires. Vampires she doesn’t believe in at first.

I was very happy with the book when it was done and dedicated it to Terry and Ann when it came out in 1991. Terry and Ann were thrilled, too.

So Vampire Blood came out and did very well for me, second only to my Zebra 1993 Witches. As the years went by it went out of print and when, twenty years later, Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13th and 14th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks – and I said a resounding yes!

So…here it is…Vampire Blood…twenty years later, alive again and better, I believe, than the original because my writing then was done on an electric typewriter, with gobs of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. And in those days, editors told an author what to change and then the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. Who knew what those sneaky editors were slipping in inbetween and before the final book was in an author’s greedy little hands. Hey, and I was working full time, raising a son, living a life and caring for my big extended family in one way or another, too. Busy, exciting, loving, happy and sad times.

For this new version, Damnation Book’s cover artist Dawné Dominique made me an astonishingly intriguing cover of a lovely vampire (Irene the youngest vampire who turns out to be the most brutal and ancient in the end)…but, thank goodness, without the low sexy top. And my DB editor, April Duncan, helped me make it a better novel.

A lot has happened to me and my family in these twenty years, as well. Both my parents, and my beloved maternal grandmother, the storyteller of her generation, have since passed away. Many people we used to know have. Old boyfriends, old friends and relatives. I miss them all! I no longer have that agent; she went on to bigger advances and bigger writers. I lost my good job at the brokerage firm, bumped around in lesser jobs for years, always writing in my spare time, and now, at long last, write full time while my husband works way too hard in a machine shop to support us.

Rewriting the book brought back so many good memories…and tears over those no longer here. The theater closed sixteen years ago, the owner believing it’d served its purpose and used up its time. Terry and Ann, heartbroken, were never the same. They had other jobs, none they truly cared about. Ann is still with us, but Terry died a few years ago, I heard from someone. We lost contact once they stopped running the theater and we moved from Cahokia to a nicer town miles away.

But I’ll never forget those early days and the stories that came with them. Days of high hopes and far distance future dreams…some of which have come true and some which haven’t. I’ve never made the big bucks, never gotten truly famous, but now, at long last and to my great delight, all twelve of my older books, from Leisure, Zebra, and The Wild Rose Press are being rewritten and reissued from Damnation Books and Eternal Press between June 2010 and July 2012. Better than ever after I’d rewritten them. I have plans to write more books and short stories, too, when they’re done. Most importantly, I’m living a good life with a husband I adore and brothers and sisters I love. Writing the stories I was born to write and happy I am. I have my memories. All in all, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.

So, all you writers out there…never give up and never stop writing!

Thank you!

***

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books, see below, (and two new ones) are being brought out again between June 2010 and July 2012 from DAMNATION BOOKS www.damnationbooks.com and ETERNAL PRESS www.eternalpress.biz again in print – and all in e-books for the first time ever! Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486 .

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List of published novels and short stories:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure,1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure,1985)
Blood Forge (Leisure,1989; Damnation Books, February 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books, July 2011)
The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books, October 2010)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books, April 2011)
The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
Damnation Books, February 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books, October 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007 / out again from Eternal Press in August 2011)
Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008 / out again from Eternal Press in September 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008 / out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)
"Don't Look Back" (2008 / out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
"In This House" (2008 / out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (2010)
The Woman in Crimson (2010

Interview with dark fiction writer Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Dark fiction writer Kathryn Meyer Griffith is our guest today. So glad to have you, Kathryn, especially with two recent releases.

Let's hop right in with a bit of a bio for the readers.
Sure! I've been writing for over 40 years now...published for 27. I have 14 novels and 7 short stories to my name...and more coming. I write traditional supernatural horror, suspense, murder mysteries and paranormal romance. I've been writing about ghosts, haunted places, and evil vampires long before Stephanie Meyer (no relation to me even though my maiden name is Meyer) and the rest of the vampire author crowd, ha, ha. By the end of 2012, all seven of my older Zebra and Leisure paperbacks are going to be repackaged, reprinted and, rereleased and in e-books for the first time. Yippie! So look for them.

I'm a wife of 32 years, mother, and grandmother. I was a graphic designer in the corporate world for 23 years. I've published with Dorchester, Kensington, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books, and Eternal Press. I love cats and nature, classic rock and country music (my brother, JS Meyer www.jsmeyermusic.com, is a singer/songwriter and does the songs for all my self-made book trailers that are on my websites).

Please tell us about your current release.
The Nameless One is an erotic horror short story from Damnation Books out on February 1. In actuality, it’s a rerelease (rewritten, new cover, and in e-book for the first time ever) of a 1993 erotic horror short story that was in an anthology called Dark Seductions. It’s about husband and wife Egyptologists who search for and unearth an ancient forgotten and cursed tomb in Egypt…and what happens when the evil entity that has been imprisoned in it for many millennia is released. It’s basically a woman empowerment and revenge story fueled by love. I usually don’t write erotic stories. This is only my second one in my whole career as usually I write pretty much PG or PG13 stories. It’s an experiment. We’ll see how it does.

What inspired you to write this story?
I’ve always loved (been obsessed with really) ancient Egypt, its myths, its history, and its people since I was a child. Like most children, Mummies, tombs and the glitter of the ancient pharaohs’ lives intrigued me; all the horror movies that were set in that time. I even recall doing history reports on ancient Egypt in grade school.

When my Zebra editor asked me (in 1993) to do an erotic short story for their anthology Dark Seductions I said yes and knew immediately I’d write about an ancient evil Egyptian sorceress that seduces men to their death. I’d just finished writing my 1993 Zebra horror novel The Calling on a somewhat similar theme and had spent endless hours in the library (that was before the Internet, PCs, e-mail manuscript attachments and editing, etc.) doing the research and thought: Hey, I can use the same research and get some more miles out of it. So The Nameless One was born. But where The Calling is about an ancient Egyptian ghost seeking justice for a horrific crime done to her and her family, The Nameless One is about a present day woman seeking revenge on an evil ancient Egyptian entity. By the way, The Calling is also being rereleased from Damnation Books in October 2011…rewritten and also in e-book for the first time.

What exciting story are you working on next?
Right now and pretty much for the next year, I’ll be working on the seven rewrites of my older Zebra and Leisure Books paperbacks, and one short story that Eternal Press and Damnation Books are bringing out again in print and e-books between June 2010 and July 2012.

Since I originally wrote these books on a typewriter, as I worked full time and raised a family, and because of my inexperience as a writer in those early days, some of these novels really need a lot of rewriting. Good thing is that if I can now see the problems in the writing, in POV, plots, and character motivations, it tells me that I must have learned something in these last 27 years. In some ways, it’s been great to see my babies reborn again but in others I’ll be glad when I get them all done and can go on to new books. I struggle so as not to let my imagination begin a new story in my head. Not until I get these old books done and out, I tell myself. Ha, ha.

I’ve been thinking, though, when I’m finished with these old books about writing a book on my family; of growing up poor in a Walton-style family (I had six brothers and sisters) through the 1950s, 60s, and into the present. Sort of like my life story. Fiction, but based on all I’ve lived though and seen. Sheesh…see I can’t stop thinking of new stuff.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
It’s going to sound silly, but it hasn’t been until the last few years, with 14 novels and 7 short stories to my name that I’ve been able to actually call myself a writer without cringing or feeling like a fake. Something about 40 years writing, all the ups and downs of my career, the longevity of it all, never giving up when I’ve been knocked down again and again, has made me finally feel like a true writer. I’ve given up most of my life, my time, my love, into my novels and finally feel I’ve earned the title.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Now I write full time. I worked 23 years full time out of the house as a graphic artist in the corporate world and about 10 years ago (after having 10 books published) my husband got a good job and let me quit mine so I could write full time, saying it was now his turn to support me. I write Monday through Friday from about 10AM to 5PM usually. If I’m not doing promotions on the web. It’s been heaven, though I don’t make much money, I’m finally doing what I love best all day, every day.

What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?
I write on a laptop in my living room with the television on low all the time so I won’t get lonely. Have to have my special chocolate coffee and my feet up on my recliner.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An artist. I started drawing pictures at nine years old. I could reproduce anything perfectly. Then for a while in my teens and early twenties I wanted to sing out with my brother, Jim, and I did for a time. I’ve always thought of my writing as my butterfly stage …first the art, then the singing and then the writing. In my books, you see, I get to be anything I want. I control every character and thought.

In my 2010 Before the End: A Time of Demons my main character, Cassandra, does sing out with her singer/songwriter brother, Johnnie, for a living. In a lot of my books, the main character’s an artist. So I have the best of all worlds.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Other than the two new novels and the seven old rereleases I have coming out from Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the next eighteen months, I also have an erotic contemporary short story romance that came out from Whispers Publishing on January 7. It’s not horror, but a straight romance. Not too erotic, but a good love story called Always & Forever.

My Web sites:
http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer))
www.kathrynmeyergriffith.intuitwebsites.com
http:// www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG
http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith
http://www.facebook.com/kathrynmeyergriffith
http://www.jacketflap.com/K.Griffith
http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith
http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith
http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith
http://romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

Thank you, Lisa, for having me here! It’s been fun. Warmly, Kathryn Meyer Griffith rdgriff@htc.net

Live chat/interview with dark fiction author Kathryn Meyer Griffith 8/1/10

The Writer's Chatroom presents Kathryn Meyer Griffith.

WHEN?

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Eastern USA Time.....7-9 PM

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WHERE?

The Writers Chatroom at: http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm

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