Today I had the opportunity to interview Rose Titus, author of Night Home. But before delving into the interview, let me introduce you to Rose Titus.
Rose Titus works two jobs to support her writing habit. She exists somewhere in cold, dreary New England, with two manipulative cats and a very out of date Macintosh with which she creates horror and fantasy fiction. She also has a restored classic car to ride around while in search of adventure.
For travel she has stayed for the night in an allegedly haunted castle, has taken a boat ride on Loch Ness, and has visited the fabled Bermuda Triangle, without getting lost.
Her work has previously appeared in Lost Worlds, Lynx Eye, Bog Gob, Mausoleum, Midnight Times, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Bugle, Weird Terrain, Descend, Wicked Wheels, Carnival of Aces, The Dead River Review, Fortean Times, and other literary magazines.
When she’s not writing or working or messing around with her old Buick, she waits by her mailbox for the next issue of Fortean Times to arrive.Facebook | Amazon
Now that you know a bit more about Rose, let's head on to the interview.
The Vampire Next Door series is so very different from the usual Vampire books. What inspired you to write it? Was it just the wish to write a different Vampire story or are there more reasons?
Many years ago, I watched a TV news program in which a scientist shared his theory that legends of vampires may have been based on people who were born with a condition that caused them to need to consume blood to survive. This was just one theory, but it set me to wondering... what if vampires were just people with an inherited condition? What if they were just people who lived in fear of ignorance and prejudice? Just people who needed to stay out of the sun and needed to protect their secret or suffer being hunted for what they were? What if vampires were just people who were hunted down all through the centuries because of people's superstition? It was the start of the Vampire Next Door trilogy.
From your bio, I gleaned that you're an adventurous soul! Would you like to share one of your adventures with us?
In Bermuda, you can go horseback riding on the beach. You get a bus to the riding stables, and get off the bus in this location that looks to be in the middle of nowhere - nowhere in the middle of Bermuda, and go down this dirt pathway and come to the riding stable. You get on this trail ride that goes through a forest, then comes out to a meadow, and then ride down to the beach. Sometimes the horses go into the ocean. You can literally ride a horse in the turquoise blue ocean that surrounds Bermuda. You get your feet wet, but the horses love to play in the water. It's worth getting your feet wet.
Did you ever encounter any weird situations during one of your adventures? Like stumbling upon a vampire or a ghost?
Once when I was in Scotland, I stayed the night in a castle which the tour guide claimed was haunted. Supposedly it was haunted by the ghost of a young lady who threw herself out of a window from the top floor after her beloved took off with a servant girl... that night, all night long, I could not sleep because someone on the floor above was loudly pacing, walking back and forth, all night long, until dawn, a restless soul... I wondered if it could be the ghost. But I had to get up early so I could get back on the bus to get to Loch Ness and go on a boat ride...
Another time I sat in on a paranormal investigation that was conducted in a very old house that was also supposedly haunted. They set up all sorts of high tech equipment to record activity. I was there with them late into the night. And yes, stuff went on. Things moved around on their own. I cannot describe the events in one paragraph. You had to be there. It actually quite fascinating.
Okay, favorite ice-cream flavor?
Pistachio.
Pistachio.
I read that you live with your cats. Being a cat mama, I know what that entails. Do they cuddle you out of a writer's block or do they give you a 'go ahead and just get it over with' stare?
My cats don't influence my writing, but I like to sit and read my Fortean Times with my cat and a glass of Dubonnet. (Fortean Times is a British magazine that reports on unusual phenomena, such as bigfoot, or UFO's, ghosts, and sometimes vampires. It's both entertaining and good for research.)
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I just turn on my very old Macintosh and start typing; the stories seem to sort of write themselves. It just comes, I don't know how, but that's how it is. Sometimes when I'm writing, I feel as if the story already exists, somewhere, out there, in the ether and I'm sort of channeling it...
Other than writing, you also work at two other jobs, am I right? So what are they?
In my full time job, I'm a paralegal. In my part time job, I am also a church secretary. Being a paralegal, I often see into other people's lives. I never knew so much about human nature until I became a paralegal. Sometimes, real life is not pretty.
Favorite writing-time music? Or do you prefer silence?
I like classic rock, Springsteen, Rush, the Moody Blues, Blue Oyster Cult, that is what I consider real music. There is actually a scene in my third book in the Vampire Next Door trilogy, All the Way to the Moon, where a vampire character discusses classic rock and declares it to be real music.
Would you rather be a Vampire or a Wizard, if you had the chance to choose?
Well, vampires don't age, but wizards do... so... !
Your top five favorite authors are?
That's a tough one! Let's see... I love Michael Harner, who is recently deceased unfortunately, I like Linda Godfrey, Nick Redfern, Al Vermette for his secret agent books, and Kelly Novak, a great new author.
Are you a Night Owl or an Early Bird?
I tend to be a little bit of a night owl. I do some of my best writing late at night when the rest of the world is asleep.
Your favorite movie(s)?
I admit to being a Star Wars junkie, but I love the older Star Wars movies better than the newer ones. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Jedi!
Do you prefer classic literature or modern?
I like all types of literature, both old and new. I also like a lot of non-fiction as well, which is why I love books by Michael Harner, Nick Redfern, and Linda Godfrey.
The one place you'd like to visit and write a book about?
Perhaps one day I would like to visit Tasmania. They say it might be one of the last beautiful places on Earth. Maybe if I wandered far off enough into the wilderness, I would see the rare Tasmanian tiger.
Lastly, a quote from one of your books that you really love?
In After Dark, the second book in the Vampire Next Door trilogy, one of the vampires feels sorry for some homeless street kids and takes them in...
"Our parents threw us out, for various reasons, got no money, so people use us, then they throw us away when they're done. Sometimes people beat us up and stuff. We eat when people pay us, we live in a truck, under a bridge. The only guy who cares is a bloodsucker."
And the vampire replies, "I would appreciate it if you boys would not use such bigoted and crude language to describe my people; we prefer to be considered ultra violet radiation challenged."
Interested in the book? Here's some information about it:
Genre: Fantasy, Vampire.
Blurb:
When Muriel Aubrey inherits an old house in a small town, she imagines that moving into the rural community will be deathly dull. But the old house once belonged to her eccentric granduncle, a professor who was said to be researching something very mysterious and unusual before his untimely death. While exploring the slightly rundown Victorian age home, she finds the research notes that had been hidden away, and discovers that the professor was researching vampires.
It isn’t long before Muriel meets residents of the small town who knew the professor almost a century ago, and that everything he wrote in the notes he kept is true… And she suddenly finds herself stalked by a vampire hunter.
That's it for today! Hope you had fun!
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