Article from The Satellite: American bestseller targets Aussie fans

Australia is a very big market for the Vampire Academy books, which I assume is one of the reasons that Australians were lucky enough to have Richelle visit them for the release of Blood Promise. (Holding out hope that she'll come to a place close to me someday...)
Spirit Bound is currently #1 on the Australian bestseller list for the second week in a row. Good job, Aussies! :-)

Kylie Triggell talks a little bit about that in an article in the Australian magazine The Satellite. She also had the opportunity to do an interview with Richelle:

“I didn't really know what I was getting myself into,” Ms Mead said about how popular her teenage series had become.

“I had two series' for adults and decided to write something for teens.

“I had to think ‘what paranormal creatures are left'.”

Those creatures were vampires, and so Vampire Academy was born. But don't think for a second Ms Mead was jumping onto the teen vampire bandwagon.

“I think Twilight had just come out, but I'd never heard about it,” she said about when the first book in her series was released.

Instead she credits a love of mythology and folklore to the creation of the series.

“I'm interested in mythology of all levels - Greek, Roman,” she said.

“I expanded on this in college and took a class on Slavic and Eastern European Mythology.”

It was this mythology she drew on while creating the world for Vampire Academy, which is inhabited by mortal vampires called Moroi, their guardians - dhampir's and immortal vampires called Strigoi.

But the Vampire Academy series nearly never came into being.

“I started writing it, but then stopped a few weeks into it,” Ms Mead said.

“I found I was over-thinking the teenage mindset and also I was writing in the third person. It was a mess.

“About six months alter I picked it up again, streamlined it and stopped over-thinking the mindset.

“(After that) it took six weeks to knock out. That was the first draft but it came very quickly.”

With the final book in the Vampire Academy series set to be released in December, Ms Mead said she believed her fans would be happy with the finale.

And she had one message for her Australian fans.

“I love my Australian fans, I hope they know that already,” she said.

“I never expected the hit it would be in Australia.

“I'm just amazed, I hope they know I'm paying attention to them.”

You can read the entire article here.

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