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As part of the Midnight Crossroad blog tour, Sci-Fi Bulletin is delighted to present a mini-interview with the series creator, Charlaine Harris.

Born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area, Charlaine Harris is best known for her Sookie Stackhouse stories, which form the basis for the HBO series True Blood. However, she has written many other tales, including the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses, and a series about a young woman named Harper Connelly who can determine the cause of death of any body. Characters from the latter series appear in her new work, Midnight Crossroad, published on May 8 in the UK, and she took time to answer a few questions from Paul Simpson:

What aspect of the creative process do you find most challenging? How has that changed over the years?

There is a lot that is challenging. Somehow, writing never becomes easy, at least to me. I just become more proficient at dodging some problems. I always have trouble with the middle of the book, keeping it up and crisp and moving. And that’s where I stall, most of the time.

Are there themes you don’t yet feel you can tackle for whatever reason?

I feel I’ve introduced some very challenging issues in my books, and I really can’t think of anything I’m scared to talk about. I’ll have to think about that one.

Bearing in mind that you’ve said that characters from other books will appear in Midnight, are there any who you’ve consciously decided will not be part of the series?

I have no plans to write about Sookie again, so she’s out. I don’t think I’ll ever include any of the major characters from the Sookie books. Their stories are told. Other than that… there are characters I’d love to see again from all my books.

After collaborating with Chris Golden on the Cemetery Girl graphic novel (reviewed here), was it odd returning to working on your own?

Not odd, but comfortable. And Chris is a great collaborator, so easy to work with. I don’t know what he’d say about the experience (we’re working on book three of CG now), but I have learned a lot from Chris about writing the graphic novel. [Chris’ comments about working on the graphic novels can be read here.]

What’s the most surprising thing a reader or reviewer has said about your work?

Surprising is maybe not the term, but I guess when a reviewer said I’d “obviously phoned it in.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m a hard worker. I’m sure sometimes books fall short of what I wanted to achieve, but I never give a book less than my full attention.

To read the first four chapters of Midnight Crossroad click here.

And to read our review, click here

Click here to order Midnight Crossroad from Amazon.co.uk

Thanks to Sophie Calder for her help in arranging this interview