Guest Post: Author Kelly Link

Contest Ended. Winner Chosen.


Parajunkee's View would like to introduce Kelly Link, author of PRETTY MONSTERS: STORIES. Ms. Link is here to tell us a little something about herself, her paranormal fascinations, and the characters of her books.

I was never the girl the vampire fell in love with. Or the girl who discovered her destiny was to kick vampire ass. For that matter, for a long time I was sure that I would never find love. I was fairly sure I would end up an old maid, living in a house full of cats. Except even cats were never as smitten with me as I with them. I would have been the old maid living in a house full of iguanas. I’ve had a pet iguana: it doesn’t break your heart that your iguana doesn’t love you. You don’t expect love from an iguana. But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that many of my characters are faint of heart, like me. They aren’t especially heroic. If they get involved in dramatic situations, let’s say, with werewolves, it tends to be a terrible mistake: maybe they did something stupid. Or maybe someone else dragged them in. Me, I’ve always been concerned about the fact that I can’t drive stick shift. Come the zombie apocalypse, or the werewolf attack, I’ll be the one sitting in the driver’s seat of the getaway car, crying hysterically while I flood the clutch.
   
Like me, my characters are often bookish, or fans of other kinds of media. I grew up reading fantasy, science fiction, ghost stories, mysteries, and everything else, including Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. But I didn’t read romance novels until I was in high school and my advisor, Mrs. Wyndham, said to me, “There’s a series I really think you should read. It’s out of print, so you’ll have to go looking in used bookstores. And whatever you do, make sure to read them in order.” The writer was Dorothy Dunnett, and the series was The Chronicles of Lymond. Eventually I found all six books, and was smitten. Even better, while I was hanging out in the romance section of these used bookstores, I found other writers I loved. By the time I got to college, I’d worked my way backwards to Georgette Heyer. I love romance novels. I’d like to write one, one day. But even when I’m utterly lost in one, I can’t help thinking about how restrictive a genre it can be, how militantly unlike life. People have to fall in love with the right person eventually. There has to be a happy ending. The sex has to be spectacular. Nobody ever farts on the second date, or discovers that their happy-ever-after soulmate likes to dress up in Nazi gear at parties. The vampire never backslides, after a while, and eats your annoying college friend.
   
So when I sat down to write the title story “Pretty Monsters,” I wanted to write a paranormal romance that was as much an exploration of the things that nag at me, when I read romances, as it was a celebration of the genre. In some ways, it’s a companion piece to two of my other favorite stories in the collection, “The Wrong Grave,” and “Magic For Beginners.” “The Wrong Grave” is about a boy who digs up his ex-girlfriend’s grave, in order to recover the poetry he put in her coffin. Writing “Magic for Beginners” was, in part, me wanting to recapture the feeling of being part of a group of friends, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of them are stories about being in love and about the experience of reading, or watching, or falling into something magical.






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WIN A COPY OF Pretty Monsters: Stories

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• Contest begins June 8th, 2010 and ends June 18th 2010
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