Guest Post with author Tarah Scott

I just finished reviewing the wonderful book by Tarah Scott entitled Labyrinth and am pleased to announce that I have the author here with me today!! I was curious as to the inspiration of Labyrinth, because it is such an unusual story.  So I asked her to come on and tell us all about it!  Take it away Tarah:

I’m thrilled to be here at Close Encounters with the Night Kind. Thank you, Nikki, for your review of Labyrinth. I’m so glad you enjoyed the book! It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it took me some time to write this book. Labyrinth was on the drawing for a couple of years before I finally started writing it. That’s how the more complicated books are for me. I’m always dying to write them—but they terrify me! ROFL. Not only do I know how hard they’ll be, but I figure one of these days I really will write myself into a corner. Of course, that thought is a challenge that I just can’t resist—after all, I’ve always told my friends that I can’t be written into a corner.

Several elements inspired Labyrinth. The Legend of Bluebeard and The Picture of Dorian Gray for starters. You all may recall in the Legend of Bluebeard that Bluebeard married then, when he went away, told his new bride that she had the run of the castle, except for one room. Of course, she enters the room to find the bodies of Bluebeard’s previous wives. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, we have an enchanted portrait that serves as a reminder of Dorian’s debauched acts, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement or aging. When I put these two ideas together I came up a cop who knows her best friend killed her husband and will kill again leaving body after body in her wake (there is a strange twist to this element in the book, but I won’t give away that surprise), and a portrait with a sort of animation that hints at its magic.   

I was also inspired by a movie some folks might recall In the Heat of the Night starring Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier. Sidney played the part of a black cop who investigates a murder in the deep south. The movie went on to be a popular series with Carroll O’Connor as the cop, and I was captivated by both Rod Steiger and Carroll O’Connor’s characters as that southern cop. Since I grew up in the south (and southwest), I felt I had enough of a handle on southern life to attempt writing a southern cop, so Deputy Sheriff Margot Saulnier was born in my imagination.

The other major element that inspired Labyrinth was the old fashioned fairy tale where the prince always saved the princess with a kiss. Well, for those who have read Labyrinth, it’s the princess who saves the prince (though the prince does his fair share of saving in the end.) And, of course, it takes a bit more than a kiss for this princess to save her man!

So all this, in a nutshell, is what inspired Labyrinth.

I did know Dorian Grey's story, but was unfamiliar with The Legend of Bluebeard.  That was a very interesting combo that sparked such a great book.  Thanks for sharing!!  Tarah is offering a copy of this book for one lucky commenter on this post :  http://closeencounterswiththenightkind.blogspot.com/2012/04/giveaway-and-review-with-tarah-scotts.html.

You can have a look at my review as well!  Thanks for stopping by and a big thanks to Tarah!!