AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ava Lore

Five Questions with Ava Lore

Q1. What are your favorite real life bands and how would you say they compare to the fictional Lonely Kings of Lifeless Things?

A. Thanks so much for the questions and having me here on your blog! I love all sorts of music, so The Lonely Kings in my head are influenced by a number of bands. My favorites are early Muse through their Black Holes album, Radiohead (in the early days of my writing, at least 50% of the titles of my stories were derived in some way from Radiohead song names or lyrics), the Barenaked Ladies, Nightwish, Deadboy and the Elephantmen (sadly defunct), The Romanovs (also sadly defunct), Fallout Boy (I don't care how uncool it is to love Fallout Boy, hata's gonna hate), Bastille, Ramona Falls, Johnny Hollow, Digital Daggers, and Placebo... and about a million other groups in other genres. I genre hop like a madwoman, so how I feel about any particular band is dependent on what mood I'm in. I drew inspiration from some of the more spectacular exploits of bands I like, but in general I'd say that The Lonely Kings are more my own invention than modeled on any particular band. Their dynamic was specifically modeled on a dysfunctional family, one that needed Rebecca (in the first book of the series) to start to function properly. Their song lyrics are my own invention, but I basically listen to some of my favorite songs first, and come up with lyrics that fit the music. The song for the music video in the first book was modeled after the Digital Daggers song "The Devil Within" which I was in love with at the time. A more well-known song was "Pompeii" by Bastille, which I turned into "Atlantis" for the music video shoot in Hawaii in book three, HardRock Improv. And making this list just made me realize that there MUST be a Placebo song in book four. There simply MUST.

Q2. Rebecca and all the members of the band, even the supporting characters, are all very unique and some rather colorful characters.  What was your inspiration for them? Are they based on any real people (famous or non-famous)?

A. In that they are all probably projections of my personality, I suppose they are all based on me, haha. But seriously, I generally don't base characters on real people because they tend to become more flat and one-dimensional when I do. I learned that the hard way. Rebecca's OCD tendencies were a natural offshoot of the question I like to pose to myself before writing a romance, which is what sort of character thrown into a weird situation (such as the maelstrom that is the rock life) would have the most interesting reactions. Rebecca's need to impose order came naturally from that question. So yeah, she's the 'mom' of the group. Carter, in book two, Hard Rock Remix, becomes even more of a white knight than he is in the first book, and I think that was inspired by a story a friend of mine told me about meeting Brian Molko (the lead singer of Placebo and most beautiful man in the world, yes I said it) on the London underground once. He didn't so much 'meet' Brian Molko as watch while Brian rescued a woman from a drunk guy trying to sexually harass her, which made me love Brian Molko even more than usual. Carter definitely came from that same drug-filled, idealistic, optimistic, crushed-hope, brave place I imagine some of my favorite rock stars come from, but the rest are all my own devising.

Q3. I loved the scene where they film the music video in Hard Rock Arrangement. It’s so well described that I could literally picture the video playing out on my TV—very cool.  And how it ended with the kiss between Rebecca and Kent—a great love and rock moment.  Tell us a little about the inspiration for this scene as well as the song that accompanies it.

A. So here's something a little embarrassing: I have always loved storyboarding music videos for my favorite songs. My favorite vids are always the ones that tell a story, so I just imagined what I'd like to see in a video of the song that inspired it, "The Devil Within" by Digital Daggers. That song came up on a smart dj playlist based on the soundtrack for the movie Sucker Punch, so the noir/gothic feel of the video seemed perfect for a creepy song about revenge. The lyrics I wrote fit with the first verse of "The Devil Within" and the video flowed from there. As for the kiss, well, let's just say that Kent was being obstinate and was enjoying martyring himself a little too much, so it seemed perfectly natural for Carter to have choreographed the moment between them, since one of Carter's great joys in life is getting one over on his older brother.

Q4. So I saw that there is a new Kent and Rebecca story coming out? (*claps hands and smiles*) What anthology will it be in and when will it be released?

A. Unfortunately I missed the deadline for that anthology due to health problems (now mostly gone, thank goodness), but there is most likely another full-length book featuring the two after book four.

Q5. Book #2 is Carter’s story, book #3 is Manny’s. Is there a #4 for Sonya in the works? And if so, can you spill any details on the story/plot or teasers?

A. There is indeed! Sonya's book, Hard Rock Reprise, is coming up in the next month or two, god willing, and I'm quite excited about it since Sonya's one of my favorite characters. Her background is complex, and her relationship with her love interest in this book is fraught with past drama between the two, but I feel like it's the book in the series that is the most fun, after the first one, of course. Book 2 was much more serious, and book 3 was written during a very cold and bitter winter so it was a lot of tropical island fantasy wish-fulfillment, but Sonya's story will be a madcap, cross-country dash full of sexual tension, lover's spats, the rest of the band, and a murderous stalker. Yeah, that's right, Sonya's on the run for her life, which I imagine is going to be enormous fun since Sonya's personality is not one to run and hide. :) I hope it's worth the wait! Thank you for having me!

Thanks Ava for talking with us! Can't wait for Hard Rock Reprise!

Ava Lore is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling. She was raised by koalas and lives to corrupt the innocent. When not writing romance, she spends her time thinking about writing romance and drinking enough iced coffee to kill a musk ox. To stay up to date with her books, visit her blog at AuthorAvaLore.com or sign up for her newsletter.


Check out the blog's review of Hard Rock Arrangement and get acquainted with the series.