|
Vicki Pettersson On The Origins of 'The Zodiac Series' |
|
Monday, 14 May 2007 |
By Christina Radish
|
|
|
Vicki Pettersson at a book signing held at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Calif. on March 25, 2007. | Former Las Vegas showgirl-turned-author Vicki Pettersson is one of the fastest rising new stars of the urban fantasy genre. With her February debut, The Scent of Shadows: The First Sign of the Zodiac, instantly hitting the USA Today best seller list, and its March sequel, The Taste of Night: The Second Sign of the Zodiac, quickly following, Pettersson is definitely a writer to watch.
Having grown up in Sin City when it was just a small town with a big, bright bulge in the middle, Pettersson got a Bachelor of Arts degree in English because books and writing were all that ever really interested her. After spending five years writing her first novel, which was a historical set in the Middle Ages, she decided it was time to move on to something new.
“Every time I worked on that first novel, I went back to the beginning and was actually writing a new book, with the same characters and the same story,” Pettersson tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “It was taking me so damn long to do it that my skills had grown, so I would just go back and make it better. But, because I was working on that same book, there was too much weight on that story. So, I decided that novels, like people, have lives. If you don’t write a book in the time period you’re meant to, then it’s not going to speak to you any longer. That was the case, for me, with that first book. I’m not saying that every person should write a book in a year because it’s going to vary for every author. Everyone needs to find what their rhythm is and what that time period is for them, and then, do the work and get it done, so they can put that story behind them and move on. Now, I never show a book, no matter what length it is, to anybody, until it’s as finished and complete as I can make it. That way, I hear my voice first. It’s risky because it might be a better book, if I had some input, but at least I know it’s mine and at least I finish. I’m too influenced by what other people think, so if I let somebody else into the story, then it’s to my detriment.”
{quote_top}After shelving that historical, Pettersson decided to try something so different that she didn’t even realize what genre she was writing in, initially. Utilizing the sexy setting of Las Vegas, paranormal beings, attitude and a kick-ass heroine, the Zodiac series was born.
“When I started writing Scent, I turned off all the voices and all the lessons and all the how-to’s. I just started throwing in everything I loved from various genres, which I call my kitchen sink method. I don’t save anything because I think getting it out is the only way that there’s going to be room to allow new stuff in again. Most importantly, I didn’t show it to anybody until I was completely finished. That book was for me. I’d learned enough about the craft of writing, by that point, and the story was exciting enough, that I actually had a good book when I was finished. I remember thinking, ‘If I finish this book, I can’t see how it won’t be published.’ I enjoyed it that much. I just thought, ‘If somebody else reads this, they’re going to like it too,’ and I was right. Not that I didn’t get rejected, because I did, but not by everyone.”
 Following her own voice paid off, resulting in an agent, a publisher, a spot on the USA Today best-sellers list and, now, a six-book contract for her Zodiac series. “The original kernel for the idea came to me in a dream. I vividly recall waking up, laughing, which I’ve never done before, having just imagined this beautiful woman, fending off a leather-clad homicidal maniac, with an over-priced stiletto. That was enough to get me interested and asking questions. What was the situation? Who was she, and who was he? Why would this guy be attacking her? How was I going to make someone that ridiculously beautiful, sympathetic? Well, I changed out the heroine. She still gets to be beautiful, but she’s somebody else on the inside. The answers just revealed themselves as I wrote. Nothing was off limits. If I could think of it, it went on the page.”
“When I began Scent, I did not plan on the world being so dark. I wanted to do something light and paranormal that was a little romp because the humor scenes were the ones I saw first. But, then it veered off into what I thought was shocking violence. The first scene where that occurred, I sat back and said, ‘What just happened?’ I couldn’t believe it. But, I gave my imagination cart blanche, and people like the darkness in the novel. Taste upped that. I really like the juxtaposition between the light stuff and the darkness.”
Pettersson reveals that she didn’t plot Scent at all, instead writing the scenes that spoke to her first, and then allowing everything else to grow around it. After writing Taste much the same way, she realized that, in order to follow through on all of the threads she has now established, she needs to do a lot more pre-writing and plotting now than she had previously.
“I’ve created a timeline of events now, to keep everything straight. The best thing is when you’ve accumulated enough material that the characters just take over and blind-side you and do something you hadn’t planned on in the plot. When I’m in the middle of the writing, I come up with much better stuff then I could ever plot. There’s magic in the writing. When I finish my writing day, having written something I didn’t expect at the beginning of the day, that’s my drug of choice. All of my characters, even the bad ones, are parts of me. Even the nastiest character has something that makes him or her relatable. There has to be something intriguing or interesting that I can relate to, in that person, or else they don’t belong in my book.”
 The Zodiac series follows heroine Joanna Archer, as she discovers both the Light and the Shadow that make up her superhero identity. “I like Joanna. I like that she’s flawed, fallible and tough. I like that she’s not a victim. I like that she’s also feminine. I didn’t want some unidentifiable heroine who always makes the right choices. First of all, that’s boring. Second of all, that’s unrealistic. Something that I play around with in the books is that the line between good and evil isn’t necessarily drawn straight down the middle. I play with the idea of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and, alternatively, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Real people are flawed, but that doesn’t make them unlikable.”
No matter how much she likes Joanna, Pettersson admits that she was a pretty hard character to get inside, in the beginning. “Initially, I made her a lot harder than she came out in the books. It took a lot of revisions to fine tune her because she was just so closed off, with her background and everything. But, I like her and I get her and I can understand why she is the way she is, so that made me want to delve deeper and make her a little softer. In the first book, she’s very alone, closed off and self-sufficient. In the second book, she starts learning to work as a group, with her troupe. I didn’t want her to stagnate and be a bitter person. So, with a little help from her friends, she’s learning to trust a bit more and release some of her control and anger issues.”
Becoming a superhero can complicate a girl’s love life, as Joanna quickly learns in The Scent of Shadows. Torn between her true love and a member of her own troupe, saving the world suddenly seems easier than sorting out her own romantic entanglements. “I’m actually having fantasies about Joanna’s love interest in book 3. He’s so hot. I like romance in my books. Romance is a part of your life, so it should be a part of your books. It’s not necessarily my central theme, which is why I don’t write romances, but it’s a really strong subplot, and I am having fun with it.”
{quote_bottom}Currently writing book 3, Pettersson says that not only will she be exploring touch the next time around, but Joanna is also going to have to come to terms with the dark side of her biology. “It’s going to be driven home, through certain events, that she can’t just ignore her Shadow side. She’ll need to start drawing the line, when it comes to gray areas in her morals and life, even if that line runs straight through her core.”
|
|
Vicki Pettersson at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention Book Fair held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, Texas on April 28, 2007. | Now that Pettersson has spent so much time with the world and the characters that she’s created for her Zodiac series, she reveals that they have become more familiar for her. However, she’s not quite sure that that’s a good thing. “As soon as I tell myself that I know what to expect from any given character, they turn around and surprise me, including Joanna. Different facets of these characters pop up, depending on the situation and what point they’re at in their emotional lives. But, it’s feeling easier with the third book, and I don’t know if that should scare me or not. In the middle of the book, I’m always afraid that everything is wrong and this has been done or said before. But, the key is just to keep writing, and then rewrite, again and again. You can’t tell a new story. Everything’s been told. But, you can filter it through your own experiences and thus make it unique. As for where the story is going from here, it unfolds before me as I write it, so as I’m writing the third book, the fourth is making itself known. All I can see of it right now are vague scenes and plot points, like interstate signs on a map. As I get closer to that trip, the details of the journey will become clearer, though the specifics won’t make themselves known until I’m actually writing.”
Even though the next Zodiac installment will not be released until 2008, Pettersson does have a novella coming out in the Holidays are Hell anthology, in November of this year, that should tide fans over until then. “It involves related characters, but it’s more of a prequel. It sets up a lot of what happens in Scent. And, it was written in third person. I’d been doing first person for so long, I really wanted to change that up. It was just a fun story to write.”
Beyond that, although she does have some possible ideas developing, Pettersson just wants to take things one book at a time. “If you just focus on today and do the best you can with that, the rest is going to fall in line. I love writing and I love being a writer. Frankly, there’s not anything else that I’m cut out to do. I already have the first book of another series loosely mapped out in my head, but for now, that’s going to have to remain a place where my imagination can wander, invent and play. My work obligations to the Zodiac series come first, as do those to my family. There are only so many hours in the day, and I’m already using mine to the fullest.”
|
|
|
