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~ Olivia Lorenz ~

 

This month we have a sit down with author Olivia Lorenza.


Olivia lives in the county of Yorkshire in the north of England. She was formerly a Classical archaeologist and has excavated sites in the UK and Greece. She's published a number of academic articles and books, and has been writing fiction for fun since she and her friends used to swap stories at the back of English class. An award-winning slash writer, her stories have been translated into several languages.

A former resident of Edinburgh, Scotland, her dubious claim to fame is that she used to go for coffee in Nicholson’s at the same time as J K Rowling was writing the first Harry Potter book on the other side of the room.

She speaks a number of dead languages with varying degrees of fluency, and travels extensively in search of inspiration for her stories. When not writing, she enjoys ogling Cantonese actors in Hong Kong films, playing with her animals, or visiting English Heritage properties. She loves baking and is attempting to become a domestic goddess a la Nigella Lawson.

 

Thank you for joining Sensual Reads for this interview, Olivia! Grecians, vampires, priests, and male on male erotica…your latest release “Revenant” seems to have the perfect formula! Tell us how you crafted this intriguing historical romance?

Thank you for inviting me here! It's nice to take a break from my traveling and sit down for half an hour to answer your questions :)

About 'Revenant', well, I did my PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and one of my friends was writing her thesis on the travelogues of a Greek Catholic named Leo Allatius. He included a lot of folklore, and recorded the tales of the vrykolakas – the most terrifying of the Greek vampires, or revenants, as they are more properly known. Greek people still believe in the vrykolakas even today, and so it was a subject I'd always wanted to write about.

Academically and professionally, I specialized in Aegean prehistory, which was how I ended up mixing the Thera explosion (reputedly behind the myth of Atlantis) into the story, and as I've excavated on Crete, I added in the most famous Cretan archaeological site of all – the palace of Knossos, excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, who has a small role in the novel.

The rather Faustian exchange behind the hero, archaeologist Jack Hunter, and the ancient vampire, Belas, is one that makes perfect sense to me. Whilst on excavation, bagging up yet another ovicaprid bone or trying to piece together a random piece of pottery, all of us hoped we'd find something terribly important and groundbreaking. We didn't, but the desire to be like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft is pretty strong, and that's why it formed one of the dominant themes of the story.


From where does your passion for writing hot male/male erotica stem? What gives you that drive to show the pleasures between characters of the same sex?

Probably 90% of published m/m writers cut their teeth on fanfiction, and I'm no exception. In 2001 I was watching a sporting event and two rivals were acting awfully chummy with one another even though they had no business to be like that. I thought "Hmm…", looked online, found slash fic and started to write my own. Not saying which fandoms, but they were all rather obscure at the time. I learned a lot about the mechanics of writing from fandom, and was fortunate enough to make some very good friends – some of whom went on to write their theses on fanfiction – who helped me to refine my style. Most of them were slashers, too. It's just something I gravitated towards. Not just because two men are hot together, but for a whole raft of other reasons. Also, making love with a person of your own gender can be a lot more enjoyable than with a member of the opposite sex!


As a female, do you find it easier or harder to write gay sex than straight, or is it true what they say about sexuality – sex is nothing, if not frequent and fantastic?

I find it much easier to write m/m sex, although I have written quite a lot of m/f, too. I have gay friends who occasionally read my stuff and make comments, but really, what appeals to a gay man in terms of sex scenes is different to what appeals to a woman. Men are so much more blatant LOL! I try to strike a balance, but at the end of the day I write what I'd like to read. Also, I've had relationships with men and women, and to be honest for me it's not about gender but personality. A lot of the time I don't consciously think 'today I'm going to write a gay love story' – it's more a question of 'today I'm going to write about these two people who both happen to be male and in love.'


Tell us about your world travels? Where was the best place you’ve ever visited?

I've been pretty lucky with traveling. Living in the UK meant that Europe was never far away, so I've been to several European countries. I won't list them, it'd be too long LOL but I dearly love Finland, Greece and Turkey. And like most British people, I have a love/hate thing with France. Paris is not the most romantic city on earth, honestly! I've also been to the US and Canada a few times, and also to China. Currently I'm traveling around New Zealand in search of my new home.

The best place I've been… that's a difficult one. As you get older, you appreciate different things. Greece had an enormous impact on me, and I'll always find it special, but the place that changed my life was China. I went there twice and it's an incredible country. It was one of those places where I'd never planned to visit, but the opportunity arose and now I can't imagine not going back there. There was a fantastically spiritual quality to the experience, and the vastness of China's history and the beauty of its language are just awesome.


Where would you like to go next?

Taiwan. A very dear friend lives there. I'd also like to visit Korea, and one day I plan on traveling the Silk Route and the Tran Mongolian railway. One day…


I’m curious to hear about the many dead languages you’re fluent in. Which might I recognize, and are you still learning languages? Are there others you’re itching to try?

LOL it's not that many dead languages! Only three of them are dead: Middle Egyptian (and really, no one knows what ancient Egyptian sounded like, so I can only fiddle with hieroglyphs), Ancient Greek, and Latin. Arguably, Latin is still very much alive – at least on Finnish radio and in the Harry Potter books! Latin is of course related to all the Romance languages, so it's incredibly useful. I can muddle through Italian and Spanish relying on Latin. I can also speak Finnish, German, Turkish and some Mandarin Chinese. Etymology fascinates me, which is why I love English as a language so much. We borrowed so much from other languages and I can be a total geek with word-love. Currently I'm attempting to learn Arabic, but it's difficult!


So, what’s new for Olivia Lorenz? Are there any new projects you’re currently working on?

I'm waiting for the release of two short stories/novellas from Midnight Showcase. One, 'Outfoxed', is a m/f paranormal romance set in the Spellfire series, about a ghost and a fox fairy, while the other, 'Naoi'de', is a m/f historical erotic romance of medieval Finland featuring a mysterious shaman, a nobleman's daughter and a spate of wolf attacks.

Current projects (all of them slash) include the second book in my Tang Dynasty trilogy; a novel set in the world of motor sports; a fantasy martial arts-style book; and somewhat strangely, I've just seen a movie that made me want to go back to writing fanfiction. I know practically nothing about the historical time and place in which the movie was set, so first I have to educate myself!


Is there anything that you haven’t written yet that you might like to try in the future? Anything different that would stretch outside of the norm for you?

I really should try writing a crime or mystery novel, but in reality I don't think I will. I love the genre dearly but I don't have the kind of mind that can plot out devious crimes and then present an equally devious detective to uncover the clues! For a while I've tried writing m/f erotic romances but it's not really my thing, so I think it's a case of 'stick with what you know'… or at least, what I know I write best!


Who are the major literary influences in your life? Are there any others that when you read their work, it just makes you want to work even harder?

Funny you should ask that. I just finished reading an incredible book, 'The Fox Woman' by Kij Johnson. It had such a haunting, lyrical style and had such clarity and depth… it was beautiful. I know I'll never be able to write like that LOL I also love the work of Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel Prize winner. He's an astonishing writer if you like labyrinthine plots and curlicues of style. Other literary influences are T.E. Lawrence, Robert Harris, Su Tong, and I'm a sucker for detective stories – Elizabeth Peters, Barbara Nadel, Susannah Gregory and Ellis Peters. I really will try anything once. My brother, a geologist, once loaned me a book while we were stuck on a Norwegian ferry for three days. It was a scientific non-fiction book, 'Trilobite!' by Richard Fortey. It was one of the best books I've ever read. This guy managed to make prehistoric bugs the most fascinating subject and I was totally gripped by it. I'm always impressed when a non-fiction book is as accessible as a novel without losing its academic cachet.


As we close our interview, what do you hope to see, Olivia, from the aspiring authors today, taking their first ventures into the publishing world? What expectations, if any, do you have for the future of writing?

For aspiring authors, I'd say good spelling and grammar, a strong plot and above all, solid characterization, are absolute musts. No matter how creative and original, a writer must have learned the basics of their craft – and be willing to improve upon it. As for the future of writing…well, mankind has been telling stories since the dawn of time, with the first recorded novel being written down sometime in the third millennium BC, so no matter what the future brings, whether we stop publishing on paper and move towards more electronic forms, I guess we'll always have stories to tell.


Olivia, it’s been a pleasure! Thanks again for taking the time to conduct this interview with Sensual Reads! The greatest wishes towards “Revenant” and we can’t wait to see what future reads you bring to the floor!

Thank *you*, J.L., for a great interview. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
 

Interview was conducted by JL Foster
July 2007
Sensual Reads & Reviews

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