Welcome to the first of my new monthly feature to find out what’s making some of our favorite authors smile.

Our first guest author is Diana Rowland, author of the Kara Gillian: Demon Summoner Series. I love, love, love this series, and the third book, Secrets of the Demon was just released last week.

You can read my review of Diana’s first book in the series, Mark of the Demon, HERE.

You can read my review of Secrets of the Demon HERE.

Here’s what Diana had to say about what’s making her smile these days.

Things that make me happy: The fact that people really seem to like my books. Does that sound corny and sappy?  Sorry! But it really is the biggest thrill in the world to know that I might actually have a shot at pulling this gig off!

Okay, seriously, there are lots of other things that make me deliriously happy, even more than the fact that I seem to be doing all right as a writer! I’m pleased and relieved that my daughter only had a mild cold this week and that it didn’t turn out to be the flu. I love that my husband and I have had some terrific date nights recently (although usually they tend to be date afternoons, since that usually works better with our schedule.) And yes, I could probably write up a few paragraphs about all sorts of things that really lift my spirits… but I think I’ll just show y’all instead:

• Explanations:
• Pic 1) The Kid. Need I say more?
• Pic 2) The darling husband is a HUGE Yankees fan, and the last time we were in NYC a good friend of ours got us free tickets to a game!
• Pic 3) Kitty!  Need I say more? (This is my Angel kitty. Not pictured are Demon and Seraphim.)
• Pic 4) Yes, that’s me when I was about sixteen. I was a HUGE Doctor Who fan. (Still am!)  Total Geek. (Still am!!)
• Pic 5) My agent, Matt Bialer. He’s made of much win.
• Pic 6) The perfect red!!

Happy 2011, y’all!!!

After she sent all those fantastic pics… I just had to ask a couple of questions, about them, and the new book…

1) It’s not at all corny that people loving your books makes you happy. Who was the first person you let read one of your books? What was their first impression? Did you do much altering based on their comments?

The very first person I let read one of my books was a woman with whom I worked when I was a dealer at a casino in Mississippi. I was writing a sprawling epic fantasy and I would bring in chapters to work as I finished them and give them to her to read. Knowing that someone *wanted* to read the chapters as I finished them was a huge motivator to keep going and finish. Unfortunately the book suffered from First Novel Syndrome, i.e. it sucked..LOL  Okay, it didn’t TOTALLY suck, but it had enough issues that it wasn’t worth trying to rewrite it (once I finally accepted it wasn’t the work of genius that I’d originally thought and realized that it HAD issues.)  Doubly unfortunately the woman then went on to have an affair with my then-husband…  but hey, at least I’d finished a novel! (And I really needed to ditch his ass anyway. I suppose I should be grateful to her for finally opening my eyes…  Nah. Still can’t stand her!)

2) My sister is a HUGE Doctor Who fan, which Doctor (which Doctor? witch Doctor? haha) are you in that pic? Why do you love the show? Seems to me that the show is having a crazy boost of popularity right now, have you noticed?

I started watching Doctor Who when I was in high school–which was right at the very end of the Jon Pertwee era. I was a rabid fan all the way through the Tom Baker years and beyond through Peter Davidson and Colin Baker, but when I went off to college I couldn’t get any stations that were still playing it when Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor. Sad! However, when the new series started up on BBC America, I was utterly thrilled to see what they’d done with it. It retained all the wonder and geekiness of the original, but they’d peeled away a good measure of the cheese and given it a pathos that made it absolutely ROCK. *fangirl sigh*  Oh, and I’m doing an odd cross between Tom Baker, Romana, and Peter Davidson in that picture. Not intentionally…  it just sort of turned out that way! (I have NO idea why I never had a date in high school..hahaha.)

3) You say on your site that you would like Kara’s story to be an 8 or 9 book series. Is Ryan’s backstory part of the long arc of the series, or will we find out before then exactly what his secret is? Is there anything more you can share about him for those of us who were left with our mouths hanging open at the end of this book? (that would be me, you brilliant, evil woman, lol)

*evil laugh* You will definitely find out more about Ryan, Rhyzkahl, Kara, Msatl, Vahlla, Szerain, and the demon realm (and no, I haven’t introduced a couple of those characters yet!) as part of the long series arc. The next book will be titled SINS OF THE DEMON, and we’ll start to find out just why Ryan is called an oathbreaker.  I say “start” because it’s very complicated, and it will take some time for Kara to figure out the truth–and then decide what to do with that knowledge. She’s not going to have an easy time of it, that’s for sure. But yes, Ryan’s backstory–and Rhyzkahl’s, for that matter–are VERY critical to everything that has happened and will happen.

4) Rhyzkahl says he wants to take Kara to his plane. If Kara allows that to happen, do you anticipate writing in depth about that alternate world? I can imagine the kind of trouble she could get into there, and what it would take if, say, another with similar skills tried to go after her. *caughRyancaughZackcaughAuntTessacaugh* Have you thought about that in terms of complete worldbuilding, or as a secondary activity?

Yes, she’ll be heading back there, though perhaps not in a way that she would have wanted. And yes, that’s going to be very important as far as the overall plot. The demon realm and our world are linked–and Kara will need to learn what exactly that means for both worlds if she’s to have any hope of saving [spoiler redacted.]

AAAAAHHHHH… she IS evil, lol!! But I just love her! Thanks so much to Diana for answersing (kinda) my questions. Now it’s YOUR turn. Have you read the books, are they on your TBR list? What do YOU want to know about Kara, Ryan, Rhyzkahl and the rest of the crew? What do you want to know about Diana? She’ll be stopping in throughout the day to answer your questions. AAANNNDD she *may* have sent along an extra ARC of Secrets of the Demon for one lucky commenter to be given away by random drawing at midnight tonight.