Georgia Evans: Bloody Good
Book Club Discussion

September 25, 2009. Georgia Evans frightens readers in her novel,
Bloody Good, which she chats about here with Queenie D.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

There are quite a few vampire stories out there these days. What made you want to write one? Further, you've taken the traditional route of the vampire as evil and added a few of your own "good" guys in the form of pixies and a dragon. Where does your inspiration come from for this dynamic?

I'd already written a vamp series under my own name. Kate Duffy, my editor asked me to write a WW2 set book. We batted around a couple of ideas, then Kate suggested making the vamps the villains. Spies seemed the obvious answer to that. Since I grew up in Surrey and was well aware of the significance of that region in the invasion plans, that seemed to be the ideal place and time. Since our side needed people strong enough to combat vampires, the village Others came into being.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

A big theme, or debate, in the novel was the difference between what is "real" and what is "imagined." Do you think the area and the era added to the believability factor for some of the villagers when it came to Others?

The vast majority of the villagers are never aware of the vamps or the Others. For each of the Others, admitting their nature was a leap of faith., each had a lot to lose if word of their hidden nature ever got out. For readers, once one accepts the existence of vampire spies, I don't think it’s too vast a leap to accept Witches, Pixies or Dragons etc. After all it is Fantasy.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

Can you explain the powers of a Pixie in more detail? Will Alice have only partial powers as she is only half-Pixie?

Pixies summon magic from the earth as and when they need it. Strength and power depend on faith and belief in their ability. Alice has always scoffed, seeing magic as totally unscientific, but when Peter is threatened, she draws on the untapped power deep inside to repel the vampire. In the first instance she is utterly astounded. The next time she is better ready (the ancient knife and stakes help too). Later, in Bloody Awful when Bloch attacks her, she's distracted and taken by surprise, doesn't have time to summon her magic and has none of the weapons she and Peter used earlier. She does recover, a human might well have been badly brain damaged from the attack.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

The next two books center around the village of Brytewood but have different characters narrating the events. How much will we get to see Alice and Peter over the rest of the trilogy?

Alice and Peter still are significant characters and very active in the war against the vamps. They get married in Bloody Awful and continue to be a very active part village society.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

I'm positive that Bela will become more and more important as the story continues. Do the vampires keep her locked up because they fear her, want to use her, or both?

Actually it's the Nazi masters in Adlerroost who have her confined. To the vamps she's a lower life form to be used as fodder and later an annoying pest as she links with their minds. The Nazis are using her to keep tabs on the vamps. What, in their ignorance of Fairies, no one realizes (Bela didn't even know it herself) is as each vamp perishes, she absorbs their power through the mind link and ultimately is able to break out of their iron bound prison.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

I was not expecting this book to have a heavy erotic undertone but it absolutely did! As a matter of fact, there are some explicit sex scenes that appeared without warning. While I can see how they made the story more compelling, I was totally surprised. From the cover/back of the book, I never would have guessed. Did you want the "shock value," so to speak? Why did you include these?

This is so interesting as I've never thought anything 'shocking' about two healthy twenty or thirty somethings, who are attracted to, and have feelings for each other having sex. Put it into the social climate of the time with the awareness that they could all be dead or maimed by tomorrow and seizing what happiness and pleasure they can today seems natural.

But on the other hand I did get two reader e-mails and one letter saying they didn't like the love scenes (I got the impression they skipped them) but all three said they didn't spoil the book for them. I included these love scenes as I saw them as an integral part of each developing relationship.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Georgia Evans

Can you tell us anything about your current writing projects?

I'm working on two projects right now. Both on spec. One is set in Vichy France in the spring and early summer of 1941 and involves vamps on our side (including Jude Clarendon) doing their best to impede both the Germans and Petain's government at every turn. The other is a contemporary set in the mountains of Virginia a with a clan of bear shifters and a community of Devon Pixies who left home and settled there to avoid persecution and burning during Oliver Cromwell's time.

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