Dear readers, tonight with me is a wayward valkyrie with a habit for causing trouble. She’s here to tell us about her relationship with a vampire, and the constant internal struggles between their clans and external dark threats.

Valkyrie News: Introducing the new High Queen of the Valkyrie, Runa. Tell us a little about yourself.

Runa. Seriously, this High Queen stuff is going to get irritating. I died because my idiot brother married a woman who had way more ambition than he did; I was raised from the dead by Freyja; I wandered around causing general trouble and mischief for a while; met this totally hot vampire name Kristoff and found out to keep him I had to do this battle thing with my sisters. Somehow, I accidentally ended up Queen after that.

Tell us about your world

I live in the Retribution Universe, and while I’m the coolest part of the second book, Contrition, Sovereign is really my story. I live in Atlanta, Georgia for the most part with a lot of vampires, a few Sirens, and these nasty guys called nosferatu. It’s not the greatest city, but it has an airport. Paris and New York aren’t that far away.

There are a lot of strong women in your world. Are you friends or frenemies?

Antonia’s okay. She’s pretty soft and not really much fun at all. She’s rather hang out at home watching The Hallmark Channel than go out and do something fun. Stephanie, now that’s someone you can hang out with. She likes to shoot, she does magic, she’s got great sense of style…too bad about that baby thing. But, hey, we’re all immortal. Sooner or later she’s have the Witch-in-Training and we can be back to the good times again.

Valkyrie are pretty solitary creatures, yet you live surrounded by very social vampires. How do you balance things?

You see, here’s the thing. Valkyrie are solitary because our last Queen, Torhild, was pretty much the worst Valkyrie you’ll ever meet. We stayed to ourselves because we didn’t want to deal with that crazy piece of work. When I accidentally knocked her off the throne, my sisters started to remember what a good time was like. The vampires wouldn’t know what to do without me now, they might be social, but they have NO idea how to have fun.

You keep saying you “accidentally” became Queen. Can you explain that for our readers?

Seriously, the last thing I want is to be responsible for the whole Valkyrie race. Being the head boss lady is pretty lame. I have to get out of bed at a reasonable time, I have to check email, take phone calls…bleh. Someone needed to defeat Torhild and since no one else would do it…

So, you pass the crown through battle?

Um….shoot. I don’t think I should have said that. No comment.

Tell us about your mate, Kristoff.

`He’s hot. And rich. And he rides a motorcycle and owns this totally posh hotel downtown. What else do you need to know? Oh! He gets this really cute look on his face when I do something irritating, which is like, all the time. 

I’ve heard you described as a free spirit. Why settle down with a mate?

Freedom is cool, but waking up next to a body like that every day? Hand over the handcuffs. Figuratively, of course. Not that I’d be opposed…oh, look at him now, he’s got that look I told you about. Sorry, back on topic. Champagne. He keeps champagne and orange juice in the breakfast nook.  The good champagne, not the cheap stuff.  But no handcuffs.  Yet. Who wouldn’t want that every day?

Now that you’re Queen of the Valkyrie, what are you planning on doing with your power?  Any plans on making the world a better place?  Ending hunger?  Finding homes for orphans?

 I don’t think you understand what I inherited when I became Queen.  Being Queen of Valkyrie is a lot like being the House Mom at the worst behaved sorority house on campus.  A successful day for me is going twenty-four hours without having to bail someone out of jail.  I’ll leave orphans and world hunger to Antonia, she’s much more levelheaded about those kinds of things.

Is there any message you’d like to send out to your people?

Um…please stay out of jail tonight?  Oh!  And does anyone want to be my assistant?  I need someone besides me to handle bail money.  And, if you do happen to go to jail tonight, can you save me a set of handcuffs?  Strictly for research purposes, of course.

Anne Schlea is an avid reader. She has a deep love of paranormal fiction, history, and mythology. As a child, Anne read the entire paranormal fiction section of her hometown library in Northwest Ohio. Today, her personal collection holds over 3,000 titles. Anne lives in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, a short drive from the Appalachian Mountains. She attends Dragon Con every year where she loves to meet new writers and attend writer’s panels. Her writing buddy is a Siamese cat mix named for the Toto song Rosanna.

You can find Runa on the pages of Sovereign, the third novel in the Retribution series.

Join us next week to meet the goddess of the moon. Please follow the site by email (bottom-right) to be notified when the next interview is posted.

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