Harrell: If you could rewrite any part of your books now, would you? If so, what would you change?

Huff: I've mentioned in a number of places that I think Peter Mohan -- the Blood Ties showrunner, creator, executive producer -- making Coreen Vicki's assistant was a brilliant idea so if I was writing the books now, I'd do the same thing but... I would never rewrite one of my earlier books because I'm not the person I was when I wrote them and I have to trust that person knew what she was doing. If you start second guessing your earlier work, you'll drive yourself crazy. All you can do is go on and keep producing new work that allows you to express where you are now.

Harrell: What made you decide to base your vampire on an actual person, and why did you choose Henry, Duke of Richmond?

Huff: I was reading a Tudor history and came upon a paragraph about Henry Fitzroy, how he went from a perfectly healthy, robust seventeen year old to pale and wan to dead in three short months and I thought, wow, that certainly sounds like he ran into a vampire. He wasn't a particularly well known historical figure even though he comes from one of the most analyzed periods in English history, and that gave me a lot to work with.

Harrell: Is there anyone specific who helped inspire the characters of Vicki and Mike?

Huff: Vicki is more like me than any of my other characters. We have the same sense of humour, we have the same tendency to swear too much, we have the same commitment issues and prickly emotional barriers -- so at core, she's a bit like me. But overall, she's herself. Mike was always himself, right from the start.

Harrell: Why did you decide to give Retinitis Pigmentosa to Vicki?

Huff: I needed to give Vicki a reason to have been forced off active duty as a police officer so it had to be a serious condition but it couldn't impede her too much as a PI. I saw a PBS program about RP and I thought her having lost her night vision and therefore not being able to function at night was a terrific parallel to Henry's not being able to function in the daytime.