Inteview with Lana Campbell

I’m Lana Campbell, author of the Forever and a Night vampire series. I preface telling you about myself by talking about my writing because I absolutely love to write and use all my spare time doing so. Still I have to make a living so I work part time in a local restaurant. I enjoy reading paranormal romance as well as writing it. I live in Rogers AR with my husband and cat named Felix.

I started writing romance in 1994 because I’ve been an avid fan of romance since my teens. I thought to myself, I can write a romance. Well, I sucked at it at first and never even tried to publish anything in my early years. Eventually, I got serious about writing shortly after my restaurant closed in 2014. A year later I published Forever and a Night the first book in my Forever and a Night series. From there I started looking at writing as a business and I’ve been busy ever since.

My favorite book is Forever and a Night Dark Experiments. It’s about a vampire OB/GYN, Dr. Christian La Mond who falls in love with a human, Tiffany Peebles who wants nothing to do with romance. Especially with a vampire. The external conflict is about an angel of death poisoning Christian’s pregnant vampire patients and he’s losing his mind trying to nail down the culprit. Throughout the chaos the couple fall in love, but Tiffany gets poisoned and nearly dies. Christian can only save her by turning her vampire. The reason I loved this story so much was Tiffany’s character. She’s funny, spunky, impulsive and unable to filter her tongue. There’s a lot of drama in this story, but humor too and I had a ball writing the story even though it took nearly a year.

Every romance must have a happily ever after, thus the word Forever. The night part came from my vampire fetish. They’re night creatures of course and when they find love they hang onto it tightly, forever and a night.

For my first book, Forever and a Night, the cover designer was Tate Publishing, my publisher for this book. They did an excellent job in my opinion. I love the cover and the male on the front looks just like I envisioned Nathan Davenport to look. My second book Forever and a Night Dark Experiments cover was designed by me. Right now it’s on Amazon Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited. However, I have sold the book to a publisher, Bella Tulip and once it comes out I’ll have a new cover design.

I’ve already described Forever and a Night Dark Experiments. In book one, Forever and a Night, the premise is billionaire Nathan Davenport is trying to hide from his evil sire vampire, Isabella and chooses New Orleans to lay low. There he meets a human, Mia Peebles, a sous chef and quickly falls for her because of course she’s beautiful, but she has such a pure spirit. Mia is a Christian and her spiritual beliefs are filtered throughout the story. It’s also the heart of the conflict she endures when she finds out Nathan is a vampire. At this point she is in love with him, but raging mad that he’s lied to her about what he is. She refuses to believe he’s a real vampire. She thinks he’s part of a sick cult.

Right now I’m writing book five in my series, which I haven’t named yet, but it will be a fun one. It’s about Nathan Davenport’s son Nate Davenport (Yes, he and Mia get together.) and a beautiful female vampire who is the daughter of an evil vampire drug lord. She steals drugs from rival drug lords for her father and in one of her stings meets Nate Davenport. They are a most unlikely pair and I’m having a lot of fun writing this one.

Since I’m writing a series, I already know the characters I’m going to write about in my next book. All of the subsequent stories of book one, Forever and a Night are about Mia’s children. In book one she has three grown girls from her first marriage, Tiffany, Chelsie and Dannie. With Nathan she has two more vampire children, Nate and Beth. Each story is about one of her kids. I have no formula for how I come up with the plot lines, I just know my characters so well, I already know what they’re going to do before I ever start writing about them. And I write by the seat of my pants. I’m not an organized writer.

Mia, the matriarch of the family, is my favorite heroine from a spiritual aspect. She is a devoted

Christian with a big heart and lots of love to give. She’s in each consecutive story as Momma with all the right advice to give her children as they’re going through their own internal and external conflicts.

Tiffany is my favorite gutsy girl character. She cusses a lot and has a sarcastic sense of humor.

Christian is by far my favorite male character. He has long blonde hair and honey gold eyes. He’s so dreamy and he possesses the patience of Job. He has to in order to love Tiffany.

Chelsie Peebles is in book three which isn’t published yet. I had fun writing her character because she is a human OB/GYN for vampires that moonlights as a country western singer. Chelsie is very intelligent and practical and a good match for her love interest Asa Bradley who has a bit of a temper.

Christine Feehan who writes vampire stories and Nora Roberts.

I’m currently working on book five in my series which I haven’t named yet. My heroine is Alabama Rain Holden a vampire who is a drug thief for her evil father drug lord. Her love interest is Nate Davenport who is a billionaire real estate mogul. Nate discovers her stinging a rival drug lord one night and begins to have her followed because he wants to get her in trouble for her drug dealings. But he soon finds out Rain is not a ruthless drug dealer, but a poor, abused girl who can’t get free of her father. He’s determined to help her, but Rain doesn’t want his help as much as she wants free of her father. But circumstances push them together and the sparks of passion begin to fly.

In my stories my vampires can enchant humans into doing their bidding. I wish I could enchant a big time editor to buy my entire series.

I love New Orleans which is where several of my stories are located. I wouldn’t mind living there.

A writer who can actually make a living doing what I love most in the world–writing.