Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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People in Chicago told Tiffany Trent they were sad about the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech and grateful that, just three days later, she appeared at Benito Juarez Community Academy School to support Teen Literature Day.

"I said, 'How could I not? This is such an opportunity to inspire and be inspired.' "

Trent, 34, is an instructor in Tech's English department. She also is the author of "In the Serpent's Coil," the first volume in the 10-book, "dark fantasy" Hallowmere series aimed at readers ages 12 to 18.

Mirrorstone Books of Seattle will publish it in September, but it already has received good reviews.

Trent, of Radford, is a graduate of Roanoke's Patrick Henry High School.

The Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association sponsored the high school appearance in Chicago.

Fifty students from ages 14 to 18 received advance copies of "Coil," read them and participated in a discussion with her.

"We did a Q and A," she said, "and I talked about why reading is important and about the book."

Many ideas

Trent asked for feedback to guide her through the rest of the series.

"The girls wanted more romance, and the boys wanted more kind of dastardly dealings," she said. "More vampires and the like."

Dark fantasy has vampires and elements of the supernatural, she said, "but it doesn't have the gore and stuff you associate with horror."

Fantasy is a fast-growing segment of teen readership, helped, no doubt, by the success of the Harry Potter books.

"Coil" is set in Virginia in 1865 and 1866. The father of the main character, Corinne Jameson, is believed to have been killed in the Civil War.

Corinne is sent to live as the ward of her Uncle William. When her behavior provokes his disapproval, she is dispatched to a boarding school in Culpeper.

There, she and her friends become involved with "the madness of the vampiric fairies."

Imagination rules

Vampiric fairies?

"They're my creation," Trent said with a laugh. "I was trying to think about fairy lore and how fairies could possibly be immortal, and I said, 'I think maybe they're vampires.' "

The book is part of Mirrorstone's effort to attract teen girls. The company sought proposals from Trent and many others, but hers won out.

She recently acquired a literary agent.

Trent also writes nonfiction, specializing in wildlife issues in Asia.

Her husband, Andrew, is a graduate teaching assistant at Tech and a wildlife researcher for the Smithsonian Institution. At the moment, he is studying Asiatic black bears in China.

Trent said that when she was a child, grown-ups discouraged her interest in fantasy writing, telling her she was too talented for it.

"It's a great genre because people want to read it," she said. "It inspires people. It does a lot of things that literary works don't do anymore." For example, she said, it offers hope, struggle and triumph.

The series' first three volumes will concentrate on Corinne. Subsequent volumes will play up other characters until the 10th, when they'll all come together again.

Trent tries to write 1,000 words per day. With teaching and researching, it's not always easy.

"I love research," she said. "I love surrounding myself with books and hanging out in a library for days."

She doesn't have a detailed plan when she starts. That's the fun part.

Virginia Tech's legacy

Trent didn't know Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed himself and 32 others at Tech, in addition to wounding many more.

Many of her English department colleagues had taught victims. They were distraught.

In Chicago, "everyone was just saddened and horrified and amazed at our resilience," she said.

Interviewed by numerous media outlets there, she told them she didn't want Tech to be known for the shootings.

"I want it to be known for all of the wonderful things we do -- building solar high-tech cars, saving wildlife and teaching brilliant creative writers," she said.