Interview with Traci Slatton

Hey, Traci! I’m so excited to have this opportunity to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself that’s not on your site. 

I love sci-fi movies, sitcoms, horse-back riding, and yoga; Cape Cod and Rome are my two favorite places in the world, with Paris coming up close behind them; Chocolate is one of my reasons for incarnating in the physical body; my husband sculptor Sabin Howard makes the most best shrimp scampi; “For fun and profit” is my usual answer when my kids, those opinionated creatures, ask “Why?”; 3^rd Rock from the Sun is my favorite TV show and “Whom the Gods would Destroy” by Richard Powell is my favorite novel; Giotto, Cimabue, Raphael and Chagall are my favorite artists; I think the first TERMINATOR was a perfect movie; I love my dogs, my kids, my friends, sometimes my husband, sunshine, daisies, yellow roses, trees, time by the ocean, and teasing the people I’m close to.

So you’re from a Navy family. I am soooooo sorry! *helpless shrug* However, I must say that my Marine Corps father wasn’t too thrilled when I joined the Army. His only consolation was that I hadn’t joined the Navy. LOL!! How do you think your ingrained military background affects your writing,?

Your dad was a jarhead? Just joking! I have to defend my dad a little. J Being in a military family gave me an opportunity to experience two things: 1, the idea that service to our country is important, worthy, and honorable—which I think the current generation does not understand; and 2, moving around between cultures. The South is different from the Midwest which is distinct from the Northeast, here in the US. I got to understand at a gut level that there are different and equally valid ways of being in the world. I live now on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which has its own specific culture, and it astonishes me how so many folks here have an unconscious arrogance about their political beliefs and attitudes, as if theirs was the only intelligent way to live.

You were accepted into Yale in your junior year?! I’m feeling my brain cells shriveling already! LOL! I bet your prose just roll of the tongue in an almost musical sort of way. How did the other kids treat you when you were accepted?

I think about 10% of my class at Yale was young, having skipped at least one grade. It wasn’t uncommon. My high school classmates already thought I was weird and a brainiac. Sigh. I was just very passionate about becoming a writer, and thus getting the education I needed for that goal.

How did you get started as a healer? What drew you to this?

I was and am on a spiritual journey. I have never been able to get away from a profound sense of the Imminent. This is not at all related to religion, in my mind. To me, religion is a social/cultural construction that was formulated to ensure secular control by the priestly and aristocratic classes. At best, it’s a structure in which to live a family life and raise children with values about kindness, honesty, generosity, and integrity. At worst, it stifles free thinking, creativity, and the direct experience of the divine. Now, the Divine itself, whatever it is, fascinates me, and constantly taps me on the shoulder. I also have a deep sense of the suffering of others, and a wish to see them released from it.

Let’s talk about your book a bit, shall we? LOL! What is it called and what is it about?

I have two paranormal novels out very recently: FALLEN, which is the first in a romantic trilogy set during the end times, the AFTER Trilogy; and THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR, which is a playful romp through the art history byways of vampire lore. FALLEN is a dystopian love story, a tale of survivors in a ravaged world who are haunted by strange psychic gifts and devastating mists that have killed billions of people. TBA is about a frisky art forger trying to go straight while she searches for her missing father and a fabled lost painting. She’s pursued by lethal vampires and falls for a half-souled vampire who can’t consummate their passion.

What inspired this book?

FALLEN came to me as a situation: a man and a woman, each with secrets, who fall in love despite themselves, and can’t be together. I had a sense of the intensity of their longing for each other. I felt their despair and their tenderness in the face of cataclysm and death, and I always knew it would take 3 books to tell their story. TBA came to me as Laila’s voice, which I found intriguing. She’s strong, tempted, kind-hearted, quirky, a bit zany, goofy, idiosyncratic, hot-blooded. I could hear her in my head.

Tell us something about your characters that we wouldn’t be able to figure out by reading the book.

Emma the female protagonist of FALLEN will loose everything before she gains everything; Laila in TBA has a dark and vengeful side.

Is there a book 2 in the works? Can you tell us a bit about it?

The second book in the AFTER Trilogy is called COLD LIGHT, and I am working on it now. Emma is back in Canada and her oldest daughter Beth gets kidnapped by a rogue band, so she sets out to rescue Beth. Laila shows up in THE CODEX CAPER looking for a Mayan Codex that heralds the end of the world, while also pursuing vengeance for her father’s murder. Laila meets a dashing hedge fund manager named Chris Davenport who tries to seduce her away from John Bolingbroke.

Where can readers purchase your book?

FALLEN and THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR are everywhere on the internet! Barnesandnoble.com, Amazon, as ebooks on Amazon, iTunes, smashwords and barnesandnoble.com. Readers can also find the recently released and very gorgeous sculpture book, THE ART OF LIFE, which I wrote with my husband classical figurative sculptor Sabin Howard. THE ART OF LIFE has over 100 color photos, and it surveys figurative sculpture from the earliest times to now, showcases the work of Greek sculptors like Polykleitos and Kritios as well as Renaissance and Baroque masters Donatello, Michelangelo, and Bernini, the great Neo-Classicist Canova and the modernist Rodin, culminating in the work of modern day master Sabin Howard. THE ART OF LIFE touches on the philosophy of art and why beauty is important. There’s a lovely back section that shows Sabin’s figure drawings, from which he taught for 16 years. It’s like looking at Da Vinci’s or Raphael’s drawings!

Where can your readers connect with you on the web?

They can find me at http://www.tracilslatton.com, at www.tracilslatton.blogspot.com, and at www.parvatipress.com  They can find out more about my husband Sabin and his work at www.sabinhoward.com

THANK YOU FOR THIS WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY!!