In Innocent Blood, the riveting
follow-up to The Blood Gospel, the first book in the thrilling and
atmospheric Order of the Sanguines series, New York Times bestselling
authors James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell deliver a riveting tale of
international adventure, intrigue, suspense, and supernatural mystery
involving a modern scientist, a highly secret eternal spiritual order,
and a terrifying power who must join forces to bring down a ruthless and
cunning enemy and prevent the Apocalypse. Innocent Blood, published by William Morrow & Company, will hit the shelves of all book retailers on December 10th. Today, I am incredibly honored to welcome the authors on the blog for an interview: Jim and Rebecca answered a few questions about their latest release, their writing partnership, and their love of all things mystery.
Q. Welcome to Mina's Bookshelf, Jim and Rebecca. You now have co-authored two books
in the Order Of The Sanguines series, how did you decide to join forces? How do
two prolific minds work together during the writing process?
Jim:
The seed for this series came during a trip to a museum in Los Angeles,
where I found myself staring at Rembrandt’s painting
of “The Raising of Lazarus.” It’s a macabre
and dark imagining of this miracle of Christ, and it struck me strange how
scared everyone looked in the painting.
This moment started me down a road of reflection about early
Catholicism, vampirism, and a story began to unfold, a story that examines the
line between faith and science. I knew this could be a huge and groundbreaking
new mythology, a story so epic in scope that I knew I didn’t want to tackle
this alone.
Rebecca: I met Jim at the Maui Writer’s
Conference just before my first novel, A Trace of Smoke, was published. He was my instructor in a thriller-writing
course and we kept in touch after that. I’d just put the finishing touches on
my fourth novel when he called me out of the blue about this series with
vampires who live on transubstantiated blood.
We spent a long time on that call talking about the world of the Sanguinists
and the strigoi. We had very similar visions of that world, and could see what
we each would bring to it. The writing process involves a lot of talking on
Skype, rewriting, and driving each other generally crazy.
Q. INNOCENT BLOOD is a terrific blend
of supernatural, mystery, and thriller. Which one of these aspects did you
develop first in the genesis of the book?
Rebecca: All of them at once, I think.
We had already created the supernatural world and the characters that inhabited
it, so for the second book we wanted venture further afield in that world and
more deeply into the psyches of the characters.
Jim:
It certainly had to be all worked out as a whole, almost like a jigsaw
puzzle, every piece had to be examined and turned until if fit just right. We thought this was important so that the
paranormal elements of the story didn’t overwhelm our characters. Though this series deals with immortal beings
and creatures both light and dark, we didn’t want to lose that exploration of
the human condition. To touch a reader
emotionally, the story and characters must be accessible and relatable. To achieve that required all the elements of
the story to work in harmony and as a whole tapestry.
Q. Did you face any challenges with
writing the second book, INNOCENT BLOOD, that you didn’t face with the debut in
the series, THE BLOOD GOSPEL?
Jim:
During the creation of the first book, it was all about world building,
creating this landscape where vampires existed and found themselves folded
within the cloak of the Catholic Church.
It was also about discovering our main characters, how they were going
to engage and react. With that all
established, we were free to build and expand upon that world and more deeply
explore our characters. We initially
thought it would be easy, since the groundwork and mythology was already in
place, but we quickly learned of a new challenge.
Rebecca: The new challenge was figuring out how the
characters had grown and changed as a result of the events in the first book.
They all had strong personalities, but they went through a lot in their search
for THE BLOOD GOSPEL, and they haven’t had time to process it all.
Q. What was the biggest challenge in
further developing the characters that appeared in THE BLOOD GOSPEL, for the
second book in the Sanguines series, INNOCENT BLOOD?
Rebecca: I answered this one early,
didn’t I? Sorry about that. The characters had some intense experiences in the
first book, especially Erin, and that leaves a mark. She realized that
everything she thought she knew was incomplete—monsters existed in the world
and had been leaving their mark on history for thousands of years. This shook
up her intellectual worldview, and I think she’s still grappling with it. Plus,
of course, the nature of her relationships with Jordan and Rhun changed a lot
in the first book, and that makes all of their interactions more complex and emotionally
charged.
Jim:
Exactly. I always dislike books
where characters escape great peril with barely a scratch and have no lasting
effect. They get shot in the shoulder on
page 4 and are perfectly fine by page 6.
And it’s not just the physical aftermath, but the emotional aftermath of such trauma.
That’s something we explored deeply in this second novel. Everyone was drastically changed by events in
the first book, surviving a trial by fire.
Now they have to put their lives back together, while facing a new and
even greater threat.
Q. Christian is such an interesting and
dynamic character, is that why you chose to write a prequel, BLOOD BROTHERS,
about this character? How did this character come to life for you both?
Jim:
Christian is first mentioned in passing in THE BLOOD GOSPEL. Even in that brief reference in the first
book, readers were offered a hint that something was different about him. We knew we always wanted to introduce a “younger”
vampire into the Sanguinist fold.
Rebecca: We introduced the older, more
experienced Sanguinists in THE BLOOD GOSPEL. Rhun is hundreds of years old, and
his mentor, Cardinal Bernard, has been around at least since the Crusades. Even
as they live forward in time, their thought patterns and beliefs are based on a
very different world. We thought it would be interesting to show what a modern,
irreverent Sanguinist might add to the mix. Christian was turned in the late
1960s, so he’s part of the same century as Erin and Jordan. This drives Rhun a
bit nuts, which is always fun to watch.
Q. In the INNOCENT BLOOD and its
prequel, THE BLOOD GOSPEL, you introduced elements of a ‘mystical and
otherworldly’ nature: religion, Scriptures, apocrypha, angelology. Has anything
in your research completely shocked you and changed the way you thought about
religion or spirituality?
Rebecca: I was surprised by how easy it
was to create the Sanguinist/strigoi mythology by using references to existing
religious documents. I don’t think there is a vampiric sect in the Catholic
Church, for example, but it does dovetail well with many of their traditions:
turning wine into the blood of Christ, wearing hoods during the day, rules on
chastity. It’s endlessly fascinating.
Jim:
The basic premise started with a simple supposition: If vampires existed, how might have Christ
dealt with such a scourge? How might the
early Church have been changed? How
might it look today? Rebecca and I
attempted to answer those questions, which was a great deal of fun, and in the
end, like Rebecca mentioned, it was illuminating how much of the trappings of
the Church could be folded into the mythology of vampirism.
Q. In an article published by The
Telegraph (UK) few days ago, a fellow suspense writer, Patricia Cornwell,
claims she has uncovered one of history’s best-kept secrets: the true identity
of Jack The Ripper. Is there an unresolved mystery that you would like to
investigate together?
Jim:
I always love dabbling into historical mysteries, those pieces of the
past that end in a question mark. In INNOCENT
BLOOD, we attempted to explain the “lost years” of Christ’s childhood, that gap
in His chronology between the Slaughter of the Innocents by King Herod and
Christ’s appearance as a young teenager.
Where was He before that? Why that gap in Christ’s history? During our research into this topic, we
uncovered many suppositions and tantalizing hints. That’s what I love best about digging into
the past (something I think our main character Erin shares): that continuing quest for the truth.
Rebecca: Jim’s right. I tend to be fascinated by ancient
mysteries—the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Voynich Manuscript—and
how people have been affected by their quests for knowledge about these
objects.
Q. What’s in store for readers in the
next book in the Order of the Sanguines series?
Rebecca: I don’t want to give too much
away, but the forces unleashed at the end of INNOCENT BLOOD must be battled,
and the power contained in both good and evil blood will not be easily
contained.
Jim:
Yes, there are some huge surprises in store both for the characters and
for our readers. Some of them even
shocked us. Then again, when you’re
dealing with the apocalypse, no one should be safe.
GIVEAWAY
The publicist would like to offer a copy of THE BLOOD GOSPEL (book #1 Order Of The Sanguines) to a follower of this blog. Please comment below with your email address for a chance to win. Good luck!
James Rollins is the New York Times bestselling author of thrillers that have been translated in forty languages. His Sigma series has been lauded as one of "the top crowd pleasers" (New York Times) and one of the "hottest summer reads" (People magazine). Acclaimed for his originality, Rollins unveils unseen worlds, scientific breakthroughs, and historical secrets at breakneck speed.
Rebecca Cantrell is the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Hannah Vogel mystery series and the critically acclaimed YA novel, iDrakula, which was nominated for the APPY award and listed on Booklist's Top 10 Horror Fiction For Youth. She, her husband, and son just left Hawaii's sunny shores for adventures in Berlin.
About the book
While exploring a tomb
hidden for centuries in the depths of Masada, Israel, brilliant
archaeologist Erin Granger began an incredible journey to recover a
miraculous ancient artifact tied to Christ himself. The quest introduced
her to a diabolical enemy determined to discover the book and use its
powers for his own dark ends. It also led her to an ancient and highly
secret Vatican order-known simply as the Sanguines. Though she survived,
the danger has only just begun . . .
An attack outside Stanford
University thrusts Erin back into the fold of the Sanguines. As the
threat of Armageddon looms, she must unite with an ancient evil to halt
the plans of a man determined to see the world end, a man known only as
Iscariot.
With The Blood Gospel, the first novel in the Order of
the Sanguines series, James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell breathtakingly
combined science and religion and introduced a world where miracles hold
new meaning and the fight for good over evil is far more complicated
than we ever dreamed. In Innocent Blood, they again take us to the edge
of destruction . . . and into the deepest reaches of imagination.
and all major book retailers to pre-order your copy. 
