Chatting with author Angela Addams

After reading your novella Ghost Bride , I couldn’t stop thinking of your interpretation of the after-life. We’re not talking about a little haunting, here, but a complex multi-dimension world where witches and Gods mix up with dead humans and soul mates. Where did it all come from?

Angela Addams: Anne, thanks for including me in this chat! Great question – the idea for Ghost Bride came to me while driving to work early one morning. The radio station I was listening to that day was giving an account of a string of murders that had happened in China that were believed to be the result of families paying big money to find the ghost bride for their dead young men. Gruesome, I know, but it got me thinking – what if I had a heroine who suddenly finds herself married in the afterlife to someone she doesn’t know? I could have made it very horrific I suppose, but I wanted to take my story in the romance direction so I opted for no murder – my heroine dies in a car crash. After coming up with the idea, I did a little research and learned everything I could about the tradition of Minghun – and then I started inventing my own world.

AM That’s cool; you inspired yourself from another culture and mold it into your own creation. I often find that little bits of information can spark an image that snowballs into a story – like what the Minghun did for your Ghost Bride. When I said I loved the world of it, you admitted your stories usually don’t have that much romance. Do you give yourself space to experiment different genre or do you prefer to stick to what you feel more comfortable with?

Angela Addams: Actually, when it comes to writing novellas or, as I call them, shorts, I tend to gravitate toward erotica but Ghost Bride started off with a different tone for me and I wanted to explore that – even if it meant more low key sensuality rather than explicit sexuality. I actually quite like writing romance, but I am flexible and try to explore other genres. The very first novel I wrote (which will forever stay trunked) was historical fiction and the manuscript I’m working on now is paranormal with a romantic subplot. I’ve had a few ideas that I know would manifest into horror. I don’t think I could ever leave the paranormal completely though – it’s too entrenched in my life to not colour my creative worlds in some way.

AM Your love for the paranormal does transpire through your work…what started it? Which book?

Angela Addams: What started it? Lol – I was born this way! I can’t remember a time that I didn’t love all things paranormal. My favourite book as a child was called The Good Little Witch and I made my parents read it to me so many times that it suddenly disappeared!

With my writing though, I didn’t start focusing exclusively on paranormal story lines until a friend of mine said to me, “Hey, you love supernatural themes so much, why don’t you write a novel with all that Halloween stuff going on?” It was like light bulb went off at that moment – duh, yeah, why don’t I? So, that’s what I did. I was on my first mat. leave and I sat down and plotted out a novel that featured an organization of witches. It was that manuscript that landed me my first agent – which eventually lead to my current agent and the manuscript I’m working on now with her.

Angela Addams is represented by Sarah Heller of the Helen Heller Agency, and her books Ghost Bride, Assassin and The Temptress are available in all e-formats at Cobblestone Press.