Let me just say that this is a woman that I would have had in my home. When I contacted her, she replied by explaining that normally, all interviews went through her publicist. But, she happened to like my tone and could imagine herself having coffee with me in her kitchen. Hence, she agreed to do the interview.
Before I could turn the phone interview into text, my hard drive crashed. Since then I've been trying to catch up on things. It seems that I will have to put those things aside and get that interview down now so that her fans that didn't know her can have a chance to see what kind of a person she was.
In the interview, we discuss her vampire books. And, maybe you wouldn't think that someone who wrote about vampires was very spiritual, but authors like Leslie Banks and Anne Rice would tend to disagree with you.
L.A. Banks wrote about vampires because she saw them all around her. I don't mean that she saw people with fangs who were afraid of sunlight. What I mean is that in her interview she expressed how there were "vampires" all around, sucking off of the lives of people with their manipulations and offerings of drugs. If you've read her books you can see that she didn't judge those people so much as see how they could better put their skills to use for a higher purpose.
Leslie Banks wasn't just a great writer of fiction. She was a writer who was shocked by her success. She was a woman who stopped in the middle of an interview to say hello to my young son when she heard him come in from school. She laughed at life and herself.
My condolences to the friends and family of Leslie Ann Banks. She will be missed.
Photo credit: Taken from L.A. Banks' Facebook page
