Interview: Author N.R. Allen

About the Book
Something strange is happening in Returning City, something dangerous.

Gabriel has never questioned things before. He knows that because he is a revenant like everyone else, he has to fight the not-family and hurt them to keep his own family safe. He has never questioned that the sky is always dark or that hungry things watch him from the forest.

But in Returning City, everyone has secrets.

Gabriel grew up believing that he was the same as everyone else. But now, things are changing. He begins to see strange, monstrous creatures instead of the people he has always known. Struggling to protect his family, Gabriel must turn to a mysterious stranger, but is she only helping him for her own dark purposes?

In order to survive, Gabriel has to become more than he has ever been, and he will have to go against all he has ever known. Soon Gabriel will realize that something dangerous waits for him—his past—and that past holds a secret deadlier than anything he could ever imagine.

Interview with N.R. Allen
What about this genre intrigues you?  I love to mix genres.  I enjoy the freedom of fantasy where I can create something intricate and fresh, but I also love blending it with mild horror so I can snare a reader's emotions and put them in tense situations that keep them turning pages.
Who was the hardest character to write? Favorite?  I'd say that Ryvall was by far the hardest to write because she had such conflicting emotions.  She is driven by both love and hate and at times it's difficult to know which will win out with her.  My favorite was Graemercy.
Tell us something fun about you?  I'm a medieval re-enactor.  Yep, I may have said "Huzzah!" and "Vivat!" quite a few times in my life.
What books have most influenced your life most?  Definitely Stephen King's The Stand and 'Salem's Lot.  Also, I like the flow of language and style of Dean R. Koontz's Watchers.  That one is scary mostly because you care so much for the characters and see the extreme level of danger that they're in.  I was also influenced by the classics:  Lord of the Flies, Night of the Hunter, and Edgar Allan Poe's works.
Favorite quote from your book or one of you've read and loved? “The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.”--Clive Barker, The Thief of Always.
You wake up one morning and what you see in the mirror startles you. What paranormal creature are you?  I wouldn't see anything.  I'd be in the mirror.
If you could choose only one, would you choose invisibility or the ability to fly?  That's a hard choice.  Invisibility would allow that quiet part of me to drift along and watch and see everything around me without the slightest worry of being noticed.  But flying . . . As a child, I always dreamt that I could fly, just lift right off the ground, and take off.  I didn't have any worry of falling.  Flying was always an exhilarating feeling in dreams, but I'm terrified of airplanes. Always have been.  I think I'd have to choose flying.  If anything, it would make traffic a lot easier to deal with.
Any new projects coming up soon?  I'm working on a new collection of horror shorts and horror poetry.  I'm also working on YA novel that combines urban fantasy with Southern Horror.  
What is the question that you wish interviewers would ask, and the answer to that question?  Q) Strawberry or Vanilla Ice Cream?  A) Pomegranate Chocolate Chip