Lisa Diane Kastner is the author of the new novel Family Pack. It's a sequel to her novel Cure. She is the founder of Running Wild Press and RIZE Press, and she lives in Los Angeles.
Q: Family Pack is your second novel featuring your character Luna--do you think she’s changed from one book to the next?
A: I think Luna's matured a lot in this book. A NetGalley reviewer recently nailed it, saying, "Luna’s struggle is not only against the TRG’s aggressive agenda but also a personal battle to reconcile her newfound identity with her beliefs and values."
TRG is a lycanthropic society that believes shapeshifters (aka werewolves) exist to dominate humans. In Family Pack, Luna fights against TRG as she believes that shapeshifters/werewolves are meant to live peacefully alongside humans. All the while she's still trying to come to terms with her own personal battles and search for self and harmony.
Q: How did you initially create Luna, and did you know from the start that you’d be writing a sequel?
A: I honestly created Luna and her world on a dare. I'm old friends with New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry and one day we were tossing around different ideas for new novels.
I had mentioned that I wanted to see a few things in novels. I wanted strong female leads who live in a multicultural world and are embraced by those around them. I wanted fight scenes to be real so that if a woman needed to, she could use the book's fights as a template for self-defense.
And I wanted the stories to be complex and more reflective of our society - both demonstrating our everyday cultural complexities and how I believe we should treat one another.
Jonathan said to me, "If you want to see it, write it." He gave me six months to knock it out and so I did it.
I didn't know that there would be a sequel. When I was done writing Cure, Jonathan read it and when he finished, he said, "This is worthy of a sequel." Luckily, while I was writing it, I had already started brainstorming out what a sequel might look like.
Before I started researching and fleshing out the concept for Family Pack, he gave me some advice that he had been given by Stephen King at the beginning of Jonathan's fiction writing career. That advice was to continue writing within the world that he had created, instead of coming up with new worlds over and over again.
I took that advice to heart and I must admit, it truly makes sense. If you've already done a ton of research and created a complex world with complex characters, why not elaborate on it? Plus you (and your readers) will have a fantastic time revisiting that world.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had left a bunch of breadcrumbs for potential follow up stories within Cure, so I gave myself and readers plenty to play with. Based on some of those hints, I developed an outline for Family Pack which I treated as a starting point.
Typically, as I write, I really flesh out the narrative and discover new things about the characters - their behaviors, their backgrounds, their motivations - that oftentimes change the narrative arc.
At the end of each writing day, I'll go back to the outline and make adjustments based on what I'd written and assess the impending chapters. Oftentimes, the characters' behaviors are more complex than I had initially outlined, which causes the changes to the storyline.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: At the end of the day, this is really a story about self-acceptance, empathy, and self-discovery. I hope readers have a blast reading Family Pack, are thoroughly entertained, and even in a small way, find themselves in the story.
Q: What are you working on now? Will you continue Luna's story?
A: I just finished drafting a short story in the world of Cure and Family Pack for an anthology that benefits Children of the Night, which is a leading nonprofit to rescue children from sex trafficking and exploitation. I believe it should come out sometime in 2025.
We have another short story anthology, Incurable: Stories from the World of Cure, where authors wrote short stories based on the characters and world developed in Cure, which comes out October 13, 2025.
Next, I'll work on the follow up novel to Family Pack. I'm having a blast doing research and going over old notes. This should truly be awesome.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm very open to new ideas. Readers are welcome to reach out to me with ideas and thoughts on current and future books.
We actually have two authors who wrote short stories for the Incurable anthology who are working on their own novels based in the world of Cure and Family Pack.
I just read the initial chapters for one of them as well as its outline. I'm really excited about it. The other author has been tossing bits and pieces of his concept to me and I cannot wait to read the initial chapters and outline. Fans are going to LOVE these!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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