1. I get that Dracula carved a challenge for Mircea into Dory’s back. But what actually happened to Dory before she went back to Mircea that night (ie how did she come across Vlad, what did he do, etc) and what did the message actually say?
It was a challenge, telling Mircea to come and get him, if he thought he could, instead of sending a child to do it. Not that Mircea had sent Dory against his brother. He had asked her to help find Vlad; he had never intended for her to confront him. Dory hadn’t intended that, either, not being stupid. It’s dangerous to take on any master vampire, but when the master is crazier than you are and genuinely doesn’t care if he lives or dies or not, it’s…not a fun time. But Vlad had other plans. He found Dory, who had traced him to the general area around the theatre, and was trying to narrow it down further. So Vlad decided to help her out, and carved his exact location into her flesh and sent her back to his brother.
Which of your characters, if any, would you say:
a) Is your favourite male and female)? I don’t know that I have favorites. Dory is one of the easiest female characters to write, simply because she’s very straightforward. Male characters…I enjoy writing Radu, Ray, Billy Joe and Marco, because it’s fun to take a side character and give them a real personality/backstory. I hate 2-D characters. So fleshing out a background character is very satisfying.
b) Is most like you? None. I actively go out of my way to avoid identifying too closely with any of my characters. I’ve always thought it was a bad idea to base a character on me or on a friend, because it might make me less likely to allow bad things to happen to them, even if the plot needs it.
c) And do you have a particular favourite quote/conversation in the Cassie/Dory series? Maybe the convo between Cassie and Jonas in HTM about the gods, because it was a challenge to write. I had to find a way to present a block of plot exposition in a way that wouldn’t work out to be deadly dull. Jonas (and his lousy artwork) to the rescue!
3. When Cassie is attacked by the Morrigan possessed mage, Marco resuscitates her and Pritkin keeps her awake until she can be checked over. When exactly in the whole chaos did Pritkin show up and how was he alerted to the latest near death?
I included this question, not because it has a significant or even an interesting answer, but because people keep asking me why there are “jumps” between some chapters. In other words, something happens that they don’t see and are simply informed about in the next chapter, or that isn’t mentioned at all and they are just expected to figure out. This would be a good example: Pritkin arrives in between the attack on Cassie and her drugged-up waiting period for the doc in the kitchen. But you didn’t see it: why?
Well, one of two things could have happened. Either Pritkin’s monitoring spell, which the reader knows he keeps on Cassie, informed him that something was wrong and he was on the way up there already, or else Marco called him (because the guy is a mage, and Marco was going to want his input on what the heck just happened.) Either way, Marco would have had to tell Pritkin about the attack, and that would have been deadly dull for the reader to have to sit through, since they just witnessed it. Any questions they might have had were hopefully brought out in the kitchen scene in a humorous way, as opposed to having a boring rehash conversation between two other characters. Which Cassie was in no way able to adequately report on anyway, because she was drugged off her ass!
I often do this sort of thing, because I don’t have room for much in the way of filler in my books. My plots tend to take up a lot of space, so if something is as obvious as “oh, Pritkin’s there, Marco must have called him,” then I let you make that assumption. That way, I don’t have to use up valuable words to tell you, and can instead use them for something fun!
4. How do you pronounce Æsubrand? Dulceata? And what does the last mean?
The Æ symbol is pronounced like a long “I”, so Ice-ubrand would be the pronunciation. The fact that ice is also kind of his symbol/go-to attack, makes it fun.
Dulceata is both a type of jam/preserves and also a colloquial pet name in Romanian. It means, roughly, “sweetheart” or “sweet one.” Doolchasa is the closest I can come pronunciation wise.
5. When Mircea broke Rafe’s blood bond to Tony in CTD, would Rafe then be able to tell Cassie about her parents if she asked (like in ETN)?
After he recovered, sure, he could tell her what he knew. But by then, she was already finding it out for herself in CTD and HTM. Especially the latter, since she talked directly to Mircea about her parents, who knew far more than Rafe. Rafe was Tony’s go-to errand runner, since he wasn’t much use as a fighter, and was away from home a lot (remember the stuff he used to bring Cassie back from his travels?) He therefore didn’t have a lot of interaction with her parents. Plus, in TTS you’ll discover that they weren’t exactly underfoot most of the time!