The Making of the Bloodlines World

An interview with William B. Taylor

The Bloodlines Saga began with Cove Point Manor, but the fictional world surrounding Alex and Maggie has continued to grow well beyond the walls of that first mysterious estate. Characters develop in unexpected ways, real places and experiences find their way into the stories, and even the supernatural operates within a framework designed to feel plausible.

So how does William B. Taylor actually build that world?

We talked with him about characters, settings, imagination, reality, ghosts—and why sometimes the author discovers what a character is going to do at almost the same time as the reader does.

Partners, Not a Romance Novel

The relationship between Alex and Maggie is central to Bloodlines, but it doesn't follow the conventional romance formula. How did you approach their relationship?

I knew that these two would ultimately become partners, but I didn't want the story to turn into a conventional romance. Instead, I wanted two people with complementary but individual personalities, where one could carry a scene by themselves and not become a Hart to Hart reboot.

Alex and Maggie are partners, but they're also individuals. I wanted each of them to be capable of carrying a scene or moving the story forward without the other person necessarily being there.

Why Cove Point Manor Is Where It Is

Cove Point Manor is remarkably isolated. Was that simply a setting choice, or was the isolation important to the story?

I had a pretty clear picture of what Cove Point Manor looked like, and specific features that the mansion and the grounds contained. I could have easily made the mansion part of an exclusive enclave of similar homes, like in Beverly Hills, but the solitude of the estate, backing onto the ocean and in close proximity to a small rural town, works better in my view.

There is never a mention of any building, house or facility that is any closer than a ten-minute car ride away. This allows for all sorts of things to happen in and around Cove Point Manor and out of sight of other people.

Long Island—and a Little History

Why Long Island?

The Gold Coast on Long Island is famous for being home to many Gilded Age estates. A lot have been torn down, of course, and estates such as Cove Point Manor being in private hands and not turned into museums, part of a university or other institution is rare, but possible.

I always like to keep a significant portion of my stories grounded in plausibility, even if the probability of certain events is at or close to zero. That distinction is important to how I write. Something doesn't have to be probable to be plausible.

Everyone Has a Purpose

How do you approach creating characters?

I like to allow the characters to have an air of believability and they must serve a purpose in the story, even if they only pop into a scene momentarily, such as a taxi driver, flight attendant, etc. In everyday life we all encounter people that we will see once and then never again, so not all characters are recurring. But just because we see them once doesn't mean that they don't serve a purpose of one sort or another.

For a recurring character, I like to make sure that they have a trait—personality, physical appearance, mannerisms, etc.—that makes them both believable and memorable to the reader. After all, you never know when that character is going to show up again, and when they do, I want the reader to think, “Oh, that's the person from such-and-such a scene!”

Sometimes the Characters Tell Me Who They Are

Do you always know exactly what a character will become?

Sometimes I carefully craft something into my character. Other times the character reveals a trait later in the story, hopefully in a natural way.

One good example is the flashback to when Alex first sees Maybelline, and Mrs. Cooper tells Alex about the night she first saw the Cadillac and her infamous test drive of her soon-to-be car. The story that Mrs. Cooper tells reveals far more about her personality than would ever have come out naturally through her role as a kindly spirit that pops in every now and then to check in on her favourite car and on Alex as well.

When Missy Surprised Me

With the character Missy, who is introduced in Brenda's Revenge, she developed in a way that I hadn't planned initially. This all began to unfold during her battle with Connie in the garage, when she found herself face to face with the woman who had just beaten Alex severely and left him laying on the floor of the garage, unconscious.

There Are Rules to the Unknown

Bloodlines includes supernatural elements, but you've also talked about keeping the stories grounded in plausibility. How do those two things coexist?

There is a mix of both, depending on the living characters that are involved as well as what is going on in the scene itself. The plausibility of what can and cannot happen is something I consider carefully.

For example, children and pets live in the moment a lot more than adults or teens. Children are learning about everything for the first time, and pets are very much with us for a short time and seem to have a different short-term plan for life. Neither of these characters have had the chance to learn that “such things don't exist,” and their brains aren't trained NOT to see what shouldn't be there.

That means that children, pets and some people are potentially able to see, hear and interact with another dimension, while most older teens and adults may be blocking the possibility of different planes of existence from their minds because they have learned that they must block these thoughts or ideas.

What Exists Beyond Our World?

Do you have a definitive explanation for that other dimension?

I'm not setting out to try and get anyone to believe that I know exactly what exists beyond our current world. We already have enough “experts” telling everyone that they know the truth about different planes of existence. I don't want to do that. What I do want is to create whatever alternative reality I am creating to at least be plausible on some level.

To me, that's what good fiction is—taking something that we don't know for sure exists, but we also cannot be 100% sure that it doesn't exist. That creates the mystery, tension, excitement and fear.

To me, that makes a good story.

The Real World Is Part of the Bloodlines World

How important is reality to the stories?

Having things that are real and tangible helps the reader relate, and adds to the plausibility factor when something occurs that seems unlikely.

I am not trying to create a universe with completely new names for everything, or new things that no one has ever heard of before—I'll leave that to the experts like J.K. Rowling or Gene Roddenberry.

For me, mixing reality with the plausible but likely not possible is my current comfort zone for writing.

Leaving Cove Point Manor

The Bloodlines world also doesn't stay in one place.

I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively to many countries, interact with many people and cultures, and see incredible things. Being able to take my Bloodlines family out of their “safe” world of Cove Point Manor and move them around the world is fun. It gives them a chance to see and do things and meet different people in different places and situations.

It also gives me a chance to fold in some of my own interesting people and experiences into the storylines.

I realized that this was happening as soon as I wrote Of Noble Blood, when Alex and Maggie spent most of their time in England, not New England. :)

One of my books in progress does the same, and the characters come from and go to different countries, cities, etc. and experience their lives in a dynamic manner, not just sitting in front of the TV night after night waiting for adventures to come to them.

Real People, Fictional Characters

Do people you've met ever become characters?

I've never, and don't think I ever would, use an exact duplicate of someone that I've met and put them in one of my books, at least not without their permission.

However, there are so many different people with different personalities, quirks and interests that some of those individual traits become woven into certain characters or situations.

This, in my opinion, gives the characters the ability to not only make them believable to readers, but can help make the reader understand the character better as there's a good chance they already have known, or do know, someone similar in their own life.

The Manuscripts Are the Record

Everything I write is a record for me, and quite frequently I've had to go back through books or my manuscripts and review exactly what I had written before. I do this for continuity, but also to calculate dates (not that I put those in the story) in order to see what was really happening in the world at a specific moment in time. It wouldn't do for me to say that so-and-so witnessed the televised landing on the moon if they were born in 1973.

Don't ask me how, but if something like that happened, you can be certain that a group of readers would notice that mistake, confirm it, and then tell me—or worse, they would tell everyone—that I made a huge mistake in my story.

Give the Reader Room to Imagine

I try to give the reader just enough information, not too little and definitely not too much. The best part about reading is the part that your mind automatically fills in.

I discovered this when I let a friend read the manuscript of Cove Point Manor. He told me all about one scene and how much he loved it, but was worried that someone we both knew would one day read it and see that I had put that other person's name in as the character.

I had a mild panic attack when he said that, and I was pretty certain that no such thing had happened, but I wasn't 100% sure. As soon as I could, I went through the whole manuscript—twice—only to find that no such reference had been made. Phew!

What happened was that his mind filled in information that he thought was correct, and therefore the story was different for him than what the words actually said.

In the end, that's a good thing. It makes every reader's experience unique to that reader, and to the story.

Don't Narrate the Tennis Match

I try not to write a scene that sounds like I'm narrating a tennis match, hockey game or any other play-by-play broadcast.

If I go into intricate detail about what a person is wearing, then it must have a point in the scene or about the character, not because I'm describing the individual fashion styles of the 300 guests at a big party being held in the ballroom at Cove Point Manor.

The same goes with a lot of other details—you have to leave the reader some room to fill in the blanks, and get their own imagination working. If the reader creates images, thoughts and more while reading the story, it will become more personal to them.

I don't mean leave out whole sequences that explain what just happened or why, but you don't need to give the same amount of detail that a forensic detective would provide at a murder trial either.

Seeing the Story

So what does “cinematic storytelling” actually mean to you?

I have been told that the Bloodlines style leans more into the cinematic style of storytelling, and I take that as a compliment even if I don't fully understand it.

When I tell a story, I like a visual image to go along with the story as I tell it. I see it like a movie in my head, and I “hear” the dialogue within the movie—or sometimes like I am listening to one of those theatrical radio shows that were once, and I'm told are once again, very popular.

Building a World the Reader Can Enter

The Bloodlines world isn't built from scratch. It begins with things readers already recognize: real places, real history, real human personalities, real objects and real experiences.

Then I add the things that might be possible, the things that seem unlikely, and occasionally the things that may be impossible—but without insisting that I have the answers to mysteries that humanity itself hasn't solved.

Characters are allowed to develop. Minor characters can leave an impression. Recurring characters carry recognizable traits. Objects can reveal personality. Real experiences can become fictional adventures. And supernatural elements can remain mysterious rather than being explained away.

Most importantly, the reader is given room to participate.

Perhaps that's ultimately what makes the Bloodlines world work: it isn't completely built for the reader.

Some of it is built by William B. Taylor.

And some of it is built by the person holding the book.