QUESTION 1: Was Niall possessed or an actual Spartoi? If he was a Spartoi, how long did he work as the Circle’s PR guy?
Niall was an actual Spartoi, yes. He needed to get close to the Circle in order to help undermine it, but joining the Corps wasn’t possible. Someone can go bad after joining up, but to get in with malice aforethought is not very likely (see my short, “Vegas Odds,” for an explanation of why.) So he did the next best thing and joined the PR department because it got all the dirt first (since it had to find a way to put a positive spin on it).
You know, I’m glad someone asked this question, because I’m not sure that a lot of people realized that Niall’s visit to the suite was one of the earlier attempts on Cassie’s life in HTM. He’d gone through a lot of trouble to make sure that he was the one invited, hoping that Jonas would be careless enough to leave her alone with him for a moment. But Jonas stuck like glue, and when Niall decided to go ahead and attack her anyway, he found her wearing Pritkin’s sachet. He managed to dispose of the hideous thing, being careful not to touch it. But before he could do anything else, the damn girl sent him to the middle of the Mojave!
It was enough to really piss a guy off.
QUESTION 2: Since Pritkin is part human, how long would he live? Or rather, how fast would he age, since he obviously is not truly immortal?
Actually, no one knows what Pritkin is or isn’t, including him. He received some characteristics from each parent, and might also have abilities that neither had but that resulted from the merger of two different species. But since he is the only incubus-human hybrid who ever survived he can’t really be sure.
A good example is his assumption that his unusually long life comes from his mother’s small amount of Fey blood, rather than having anything to do with his despised father. He could be right about that, of course, but he could also be wrong. Does he look older than Rosier because he actually is aging faster, or is it more that he does absolutely nothing to enhance his looks (which in his unusual circumstances would be counterproductive)? Either could be true. So Pritkin’s age/life expectancy/mortality is an open question, like a lot of other things about him.
QUESTION 3: What kind of environment do you work in when you write? If you have music on, what genre? Also do you do anything to get “in the zone” before you start writing?
I have a normal office in my home, in which I spend at least the usual number of work hours a day, and often more when a deadline looms. And while I’d love to be able to write to music, it interferes with my concentration too much. So I have to leave itunes off. As for getting in the zone, I find that the hope of being paid usually provides all the impetus I need!
QUESTION 4: In Cassie’s first vision in Touch the Dark with Tomas, is that like the big battle? Also the other people in tunics are they fey?
No, Cassie was seeing a vision of Tomas’s past at that point, not the future. And the people with him were others who had been enslaved by Alejandro, not Fey.
QUESTION 5: Does Mircea have a middle name? If so, what is it?
Mircea is based on a real person, Mircea II of Wallachia, the eldest son of Voivode Vlad Dracul and brother to the infamous Dracula. And as far as I know, he had no middle name. Mircea’s family seems to have preferred nicknames instead, like “the Bold,” or “the Handsome,” or “the Impaler”; you know, normal stuff like that. Which when you think about it, really makes more sense, doesn’t it? It tells you something significant about a person, something they’ve done or that they’re known for, which a regular old middle name usually doesn’t. Maybe we should bring that back. I could be Karen the…Frequently Snarky? Perpetually Lazy? Exceptionally Beautiful? Okay, maybe not that last one.
What would you like your title/nickname to be?