Interview: Rosemary Clement-Moore

What inspired you to write the Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil series? In the paranormal genre in general?

The Maggie Quinn series was inspired by the character. I wanted to do a series of books with a plucky girl detective type of character who investigated supernatural events. Sort of like that 70’s TV series, Kolchek: The Nightstalker, which inspired the X-Files. Kolchek was this crusty newspaper reporter who kept finding these bizarre mysteries--ghosts, vampires, werewolves, dopplegangers--and he’d drive the police and his editor crazy as he tried to solve them. So Maggie is sort of part Brenda Starr, part Kolchek, part Nancy Drew. With some modern sass thrown in.

I’m attracted to paranormal stories because I love fantasy novels anyway, but even more when the fantastic elements are side by side with real life. There’s a lot of fun in thinking, here’s the real world, but if I just look at it a little differently, there are all kinds of magical explanations for mundane occurrences.

Are there any specific authors or books that influenced your writing?

Well, I mentioned the Nancy Drew thing. I read those books voraciously when I was young, and they formed my idea of what a proper heroine should be: resourceful, self-reliant, ready to step up to a challenge. Anne of Green Gables, Jo March in Little Women, Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice were also strong characters who charted their own course, in a non-mystery setting. Likewise the heroines of Anne McCaffery, Robin McKinley and others. Even when they were paired with a romantic interest who was a strong personality as well, these were heroines who stood on their own feet.

The books of Susan Cooper and Madeleine L’Engle made me want to write about supernatural Good and Evil, as Maggie has to deal with in her series. Cooper and L’Engle come at the G vs. E thing from completely different points of view, neither of which is entrenched in religious rhetoric. Plus I love how Cooper wraps her elemental struggle in mythology and folklore, and L’Engle wraps hers in science. You’ll see threads of both those things in my books.


Do you have any future book releases you'd like to mention, paranormal or otherwise?

In September, I have a new, non-series book coming out: The Splendor Falls. It is a gothic mystery romance, very much in the tradition of Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels. The protagonist is a young ballerina who breaks her leg and can no longer dance. She goes to stay with distant relatives in an antebellum mansion where the past seems particularly alive. Either that or Sylvie’s going crazy. There are ghosts and magic and romance and lots of atmosphere.

What do you like most about the paranormal genre?

As I mentioned above, it’s that game of “What if?” that you can play with yourself. What if my chemistry teacher practices alchemy on the side? What if the palm reader downtown really does have psychic powers? It’s playing with the boring details of life and making them fantastic.

What paranormal book are you currently reading or have recently read?

I always have several books going at the same time. I’m reading Sea Change by Aimee Friedman and The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King. I started Seraphs by Faith Hunter, then discovered it was the second in the series, and so I have to get the first one first.

The one I most recently finished was Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Cruisie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich. It featured heroines with independent romantic plots, plus one overreaching supernatural threat that they have to team up to defeat. A little silly, but I’m a sucker for books with dogs in them, and this was a fun read.

If you could visit any author's paranormal world or characters, whose would it be?

This is my cheat: I’d be in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. In it, people have the ability to go into books and visit or live there. That way, I wouldn’t have to choose.

But if I had to pick… Hmmm. Maybe the “Regency with Magic” world that Patricia Wrede and Carolyn Stevermer created in Sorcery and Cecelia. It would be a world of manners and balls like Jane Austen, but with magic. I could enjoy that. (Though I would miss running water.)

[If you want to find out what I’m reading, what’s on my TBR pile, or what I’ve gotten around to rating, you can visit and/or friend me on Goodreads. (http://www.goodreads.com/rosemaryclementmoore)]

Everyone knows about the cliché battle between vampires and werewolves -- which side are you on?

For who would win in a battle? I’m not sure. Too many variables. For which one I would just like to hang with or… um… whatever? Werewolves. Furry trumps DEAD any day in my book. :-D