Author Lauren M. Roy joins SciFiChick.com to talk about her urban fantasy debut Night Owls!
Can you tell us a bit about Night Owls in your own words?
Bookstore owner Val wants to forget the monster-hunting life she left behind on the west coast. It ended badly, and she’s quite done with monsters, thankyouverymuch. Until a girl named Elly makes her way to Edgewood with the monsters on her tail, forcing Val to dust off her combat boots and let down her fangs.
What is the relationship between the two main characters, Valerie and Elly?
I think Val and Elly play off of each other very well. They’re wary of one another to start, but each is aware of how capable the other is. Where Val wants to be done with hunting, Elly embraces it. Val’s trying to redefine herself without that part of her past; Elly can’t see any other future. I’m not sure they’ll ever be best friends, but they come to respect each other quickly. It’s a start!
One thing other reviewers have been pointing out is that there is little romance in this urban fantasy. Is that to focus more on the mystery? Will it be changing in the future?
I wouldn’t quite say I set out to write a book that didn’t have much in the way of romance, but whenever I checked in to see if one might fit into the plot, I got a big ol’ resounding nope from both my writerly instinct and the characters. They were too busy with the Creeps, or navigating the changes in their lives, to pursue anything. Buuuuut that doesn’t mean their minds never wander in that direction. I dropped some hints in Night Owls about where at least a couple of their hearts are at.
Will it be changing in the future? Let’s just say there’s a chapter in book two that I did not want to send to my dad after I finished writing it. (He’s one of my first readers. Everyone say awwww.)
This series has all manner of mystical creatures – vampires, shapeshifters (Creeps), demons, etc. How did you go about developing this world?
The Creeps were, for the longest time, these sort of menacing figures whose faces I could never quite see. Until one night I had a doozy of a nightmare about these shapeshifting creature terrorizing people at Park Street Station in Boston. I woke up spooked and knew I had to write down what I could remember. My handwriting reflects how freaked out I was – I normally have this teeny-tiny, very neat script. That page is full of this weird, broad scrawl. Still recognizable as my writing, and returning to normal the more I woke up, but by the time I was done, I finally had my Creeps.
I tend to do my worldbuilding in broad strokes. I know the most important things about the setting and the people in it, and I ponder big picture questions (a good chunk of which ends up in a file called Stuff the Author Knows. That info might never pop up in the books, but it’s there if I need it.) I also leave plenty of room for neat details to present themselves. Sometimes what seems like a throwaway line open up all kinds of possibilities.
How many books do you have planned for this series?