Taste of Cyn

I sat down (virtually) with Margaret L. Carter for a short interview. Margaret L. Carter’s latest release is Sealing the Dark Portal, an intriguing Paranormal Romance.

Cynthia Sax: What makes Cam so freakin’ sexy?

Margaret L. Carter: Cam is a cat shapeshifter. He has three forms: Human; a tawny, longhaired domestic cat; and a large feline the size and roughly the appearance of a mountain lion. To me, shapeshifters have a numinous allure, and there’s no animal more graceful and sensuous than a cat.

Cynthia Sax: Where did you get the idea for Sealing the Dark Portal?

Margaret L. Carter: The original spark came from the conclusion of Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga. Near the end of the final book (spoiler), a pair of lovers who’ve been through hellish ordeals together with the hero, Roland, find themselves together in New York. The man doesn’t remember his former life in Roland’s world, and it’s implied the woman will quickly forget, too. They will have a happy life together, free of the horrible memories of the past. Suppose, I wondered, something happened to disrupt that new life? So I created a heroine in that situation; the hero, however, has a complete memory of their past together in the world they came from. Of course, the trope of magically imposed false memories has been used by many fantasy authors, but it’s that scene from THE DARK TOWER that inspired me in this particular case. I gave the terrors that haunt my characters Lovecraftian elements because I’ve had a lifelong fondness for Lovecraft-style horror (although I don’t at all share his bleak philosophy of a mindless, uncaring universe).

Cynthia Sax: Does a character in Sealing the Dark Portal have a secret?

Margaret L. Carter: Definitely! The heroine, Rina, even has a secret from herself. She was sent from her home world to ours with her authentic memories wiped and overwritten by the constructed memory of living an ordinary life in Maryland. The hero, Cam, secretly watches over her from the shadows until he’s forced to reveal himself as her bodyguard and try to awaken her true self.

Cynthia Sax: What do you love about writing paranormal romance?

Margaret L. Carter: Although I started as an aspiring horror writer (at age 13), I soon realized that what really interested me was getting inside the mind of the “monster.” The first time I read DRACULA, I wondered how the Count felt about those events in which he was portrayed as the villain. (Fred Saberhagen answers that question in THE DRACULA TAPE, the story I always wanted to write.) One of my first attempts at fiction was a love story between a living man and a ghost. I wrote lots of vampire viewpoint fiction, with vampires as sympathetic characters. Relationships between the human and the nonhuman fascinated me. When paranormal romance became a recognized subgenre, I knew it was the niche I’d been waiting for.

Thank you, Margaret L. Carter, for joining us today!

You had me at catshifter and then again at Stephen King. (grins)

Margaret L. Carter’s Website: http://www.margaretlcarter.com

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Almost nothing Rina remembers about her life is true. Rather than an ordinary librarian, she is a sorceress who fled from another world to ours when creatures from an alien dimension devastated her home and killed her family. Now they have pursued her to our world, summoned by a sorcerer who plans to open a portal and invite monstrous entities from the void between dimensions to overrun this planet. Rina’s former bodyguard, a cat shapeshifter who was once her lover and still yearns for her, helps her true memories to awaken. She must come to terms with the truth about her past so that together they can save their new home from the fate of their old one.

Buy Now: http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/1990-Sealing-The-Dark-Portal.aspx