‘Vampire Academy’ author Richelle Mead dishes on new film
Page Views: What was it like watching “Vampire Academy” go from a story in your head to a movie?
Richelle Mead: As an author you take a risk when you sell the rights to your movie. So often it becomes unrecognizable from source material. But it’s been really great. The people working on it are fans of the books. It hasn’t been as stressful as it might have been.
But of course, there are differences. Some things in the book won’t translate. From what I read and saw of filming, all the key plot points are there. They really kept the tone that I put into the book, and that’s a huge relief.
Page Views: Your fans seemed to have a lot of strong feelings about the casting decisions when it came to the movie. How do you respond to them?
Richelle Mead: A book is driven by your imagination. Everybody has their own images of what it should be. If you could download the image straight from my brain I would have pages of Internet comments saying I sucked.
There will never be a movie that matches every single fan’s casting decisions. It’s hard. I’ve had that same reaction they have. I’m like, “What, no! You got it wrong.” But what’s great is that they’ve really nailed the personalities of these characters.
Page Views: You were a teacher for many years. How did that play into writing about a vampire school?
Richelle Mead: The story is set in high school, but I wrote like I would to my adult audience. It’s just toned down from ratings point of view. It’s funny, when I sat down to write Young Adult, I had already written for adults. I thought I had to go through some other process to write for teens. But when I was teaching, it was in this really diverse area that had all sort of students in it—kids from Bosnia and Rwanda who had histories and had seen and done things I couldn’t comprehend. And it’s a disservice to assume that you can’t pull out tough issues in a book like this or that you have to sugarcoat things.
– Read more after the break –
Page Views: Where did the vampire idea come from?
Richelle Mead: When I wrote “Vampire Academy,” the genre hadn’t exploded. I started and finished just before Twilight. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to write about it otherwise I had taken a class on Romanian and Russian folklore, lots of vampire stuff, and I came upon one story about two races of vampires. It sparked the idea to build a whole society and social system around them.
Page Views: You have one young son and another baby on the way. When you envision them reading your books?
Richelle Mead: [Laughs] Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure they will. I don’t know how they’ll feel. It’s probably not the vampire books that will be hard, so much as the adult stuff. “Mom wrote about sex!” But they’ll be all right.
Guardian Oath 