Interviews

LaDameBlanche - "The Dark Prince"

Name of Author: Emma V Leech AKA. La Dame Blanche

Title of Book: The Dark Prince. (Les Fées: The French Fae Legend Book 1) - 6.8 million reads on Wattpad.

Favorite Authors: Neil Gaiman, Georgette Heyer, C. S. Pacat, Jane Austin.

Bio:

Paranormal Romance Author Emma V Leech was born in England and moved to France in 1998. She spends most of her time hiding in the Fae Lands with occasional forays to the real world for chocolate and tea bags. She likes Tarot cards and anything creepy (except spiders), is addicted to music, terrified by The Wizard of Oz and still believes in faeries. She's married with three daughters and a wild imagination.

Can you explain what your book is all about?

The Dark Prince is a Paranormal Romance and the story of Dark Fae Prince Laen and his best friend the Elven, Prince Corin.

The man of your dreams is coming... or is it your nightmares he visits?

Laen is Prince of the Dark fae. Sent back through the forbidden gates between realms to retrieve an ancient artifact, he returns home with a writer whose story can no longer be confined to the pages of a book. It seems that her hero is far from the troubled, romantic figure she had painted him, but something far more sinister.

Who is your target audience - and why?

My target audience tend to be women (85% of my readership) and aged between 18 and 45. I began writing in a YA model but quickly felt constrained by the desire to give my writing a much darker and sexier feel than was possible for that audience. I feel I have the tone right now and happily my readers seem to agree judging from the reviews!

What is 'paranormal' about your story?

I actually have two series Les Fées: The French Fae Legend and Les Corbeaux: The French Vampire Legend. In fact both series are based in the real world in France, in the Dordogne where I live but with a layer of paranormal life hidden in plain sight of the human world. There are gateways between the human world and the Fae and in my work you will find, Dark and Light Fae, Elves, Vampires, Witches, Ghouls, Ghosts, Demons, Sirens and some creatures of my own invention too.

You are a multi-award winning author. Please tell us about those awards. How did winning them change your experience on Wattpad and as a writer?

I was very honoured to win the Watty's "People's Choice Award" two years running 2014 and 2015. The first time with book four of The Dark or Les Fées Series - The Darkest Night, and the second time with a companion Novella to the Series with - A Dark Imperfection. I was completely overwhelmed by the response from readers with their passion to vote for their chosen story and felt very honoured to have won the title. I have also won a few "Most Read" and "Most Followed" Awards in the past. All of these awards give you confidence in what you are doing and make you want to continue. They are also simply a lovely way of being thanked by the readers and by Wattpad for all the hard work that goes into producing these stories. On a practical level these awards also mean more visibility on the site and that means I get to bring my work to a whole new audience which is what it's all about.

Tell us about your writing process - how do you get from story idea to a Wattpad published story?

I seem to have an endless supply of ideas and new projects come to me at the most unlikely of times and often in the middle of the night. I'm often to be found peering at my phone in the early hours because I can't sleep until I written the basic idea down before I forget. The world I have created supplies me with a huge amount of potential for new adventures and characters and I actually have book five and six of the Dark Series plotted out and ready to write, along with a list of ideas for subsequent books. I will often do a character profile of the main characters along with a list of plot ideas, quotes and snippets of information that may be relevant when I start writing.

I also keep a scrapbook which is full of ideas for a multitude of stories including work for historical and romantic fiction.

I'm currently writing the third in the Les Corbeaux series and as this is intricately linked with The Dark Series and many characters and stories overlap, the time-line has become increasingly complex. I now have a huge time line on my office wall, complete with multi coloured sticky notes to try and keep everything straight.

Did you encounter any challenges when writing, if so - how did you overcome them?

Yes!

Lots and lots! Mainly learning how to do it. I've spent a lot of time reading guides on good writing and reading a lot, often outside of my chosen genre, to see how other successful writers do what they do. I find that writing, like many things, is something that you never stop learning about and it is exciting finding new ways to present your ideas to your audience. As for the actual business of writing there are always plot holes to fill and situations to get your characters through. How exactly do you rescue a master Vampire from the depths of Tartarus with an vengeful god after your blood? A lot of head scratching, occasional crying, much cursing and a fair amount of research lies behind those really exciting chapters.

You often hear that 'writing well' is the baseline for success. What does that mean for you?

For me it means treating your reader with respect and believing that they are intelligent people. I spend a lot of time making sure everything is word perfect and that my published work is well put together with the help of my fabulous editor. Even the draft copies of my work on Wattpad have a lot of time spent on them to ensure that they aren't full of typos, spelling errors and shocking punctuation. If you don't care enough to spend time on getting this stuff right, why should a reader care to spend time reading it? I try very hard to ensure that each book I write is even better than the one before and hopefully that keeps my readership hungry for more of my work.

One final question, this being the Paranormal genre: Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

Yes. For around six years we ran a Boutique Hotel in the Dordogne. The building was an old Château that had previously been converted into a hotel. One of the oldest residents was very unhappy about a change in location of one of the bedroom doors. In the middle of the night guests would be woken up by pounding on the door, only to discover when they raced to open it that there was no one was there. At breakfast they would often demand which of the other guests had been up in the middle of the night playing "silly buggers". At this point we would have to confess that it hadn't been a guest but our resident ghost! I always felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle if I was alone there at night but I never felt it was a malevolent spirit, just a bit frustrated by the changes to the building.

I am forever inspired by the beautiful landscape around me here in the Dordogne but have quite enough proof that there really are things that go bump in the night.