Otherworlds Author Kelley Armstrong Interview

Urban fantasy writer Kelley Armstrong talks about the challenges of writing female science fiction characters.

Craig Conoley: Depictions of werewolves have always tended to be ferocious and villainous. Hi, I’m Craig Conoley with watchmojo.com, and today with sit down to talk with author Kelley Armstrong about her latest work and representations of werewolves in popular culture. How would you best describe the genre in which you are? Kelley Armstrong: It’s been described a lot of ways. When I first started, it was supernatural thrillers, then it was paranormal suspense and now, they're called urban fantasy. Craig Conoley: Was there something that specifically inspired the Bitten series? Kelley Armstrong: I was watching the first season of the X-Files and they had their one and only werewolf episode and it was what you'd think of as your Hollywood wolf man - - big guy, looks more like an ape, goes around slaughtering everybody and I thought that’s not how I’d do your werewolf. So I wrote a short story about a female werewolf and then thought, I really like that and then made a novel for her. Craig Conoley: Why is it that we see men over-saturate genres like horror and sci-if? Kelley Armstrong: It’s just always worked better with the male protagonist. I mean, we often say in your fiction writing that you can get women to read novels about men. It’s harder to get men to read novels about women, so you sort of gravitate towards the male protagonist. Craig Conoley: Are you a fan of the True Blood series? Kelley Armstrong: I am. I was a fan of the books first. Charlaine Harris’s southern vampire series are wonderful. They take a slightly different tone to them with the TV show, but I’m also a fan of that. Craig Conoley: Are there similarities in the representation of characters say in the True Blood series and your novels? Kelley Armstrong: The overall tone, the -- making them very normal. Her characters are wonderful and they're not your cardboard vampires, so that is what I think everyone in this genre is trying to do. (Movie Clip.) Craig Conoley: So do you think we’re all just animals in ourselves at some level? Kelley Armstrong: I love that in the werewolf novels because you really are getting into that idea. When you look at the early mythology for werewolf, a lot of it was used to explain things in human nature that people didn’t want to say was human. If somebody was killing people, they would say, clearly that’s not normal human behavior so he must be part animal. Craig Conoley: How do you keep yourself inspired? Kelley Armstrong: Because I've been writing all my life, from the earliest times, I am inspired so easily. It’s wonderful. I mean, people ask, “How do you get your ideas?” And I say, “My problem is how do I have time to write all of my ideas.” I meet someone and I’d think, “That would make a great character.” Now, I don't make them into character, but I take aspects of their personality and I spin off on that until I have something fresh and new. Craig Conoley: Thank you very much. Kelley Armstrong: Thank you.