Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I started writing Fantasy on my tenth birthday, and I never looked back. None of those first works will ever see the light of day. Ever. But I went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing Fiction at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which was the first step in making things feel a little more real for my future as an author.
Daughter of the Drackan, Book 1 in the Dark Fantasy duology ‘Gyenona’s Children’, was my first finished book and the first I published. I did attempt the traditional publishing route at first, but after receiving no less than 116 rejection letters from agents, I decided to take the dive into indie publishing. What I really wanted was for this book to be available to anyone who enjoys the same kind of dark, feral, no-apologies, and oftentimes brutally frustrating heroines of which I’m so very fond. A year later, after feeling a little more like I could pretend I knew what I was doing, that same book rejected by 116 agents hit Amazon’s Bestseller list in Dark Fantasy. Then I published the second book in the duology and kept moving.
My daughter was born at the end of 2016, so the first half of 2017 was spent acclimating to motherhood, loving on her, and also moving across the country from Colorado to Vermont with my husband and our two rather large dogs. I had to force myself to write (and snatch every spare minute I could between chasing a walking 10-month-old and falling into my own exhausted sleep when she napped). But I managed to write Sanctuary of Dehlyn, the first book in my NA Dark Fantasy trilogy ‘The Unclaimed’, and published it in May of this year. With an existing reader base, that release did okay. On January 1st, I committed myself to a daily writing goal and publishing deadline, which I’m sure was what drove me to write and release the second and third books in that trilogy on time (the threat of being banned from Amazon’s pre-order options for a year if I had to push back a scheduled release date is an effective deterrent from procrastination).
Those two released in July and October, and at the time of this interview, my LGBT Speculative Thriller, Sleepwater Beat: Book 1 of the Blue Helix series, is currently available for pre-order before the release on November 27th. Already (to my complete surprise and tentative delight), Sleepwater Beat has hit the #2 Bestseller listing in LGBT Thrillers. When I found it sitting there right next to a James Patterson book, I kind of freaked out.
So that’s six books out now since 2015, four this year, and I’m working on more books in the Blue Helix series plus a tasty little Dark Fantasy serial that’s been on the back burner for a while. I do write fiction full-time, and while I’m building my author platform and steadily tweaking my methods to increase my own sales, I pay the bills and then some by ghostwriting fiction for a number of clients. That part’s fun; I get to write my little heart out, get paid for it, and not have to bother with editing, formatting, cover design, uploading, marketing, etc. My goal is to eventually not have to do that for any of my own publications, either. Can we say PA?
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Well, the latest book soon to be released is Sleepwater Beat, the first book in the Blue Helix series. Think “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” meets X-Men, with just as much action, the same noir feel, and a totally un-troped heroine.
The entire thing started so many years ago I can’t even remember, when I thought it would be cool to write a short story as a collection of brief scenes without any of the connecting narrative. And as an added challenge, they were all chronologically out of order (kind of like the movie “Memento”). The short story turned out to be 30,000 words, and when I shared it with my writers group in Charleston at the time, they overwhelming response was that this was just begging to be fleshed out into a novel.
I couldn’t disagree with that calling, no matter how hard I tried. Thus began the agonizing process of performing open-heart surgery on this story that already epitomized the Frankenstein-esque quality of being so disruptively sewn together. But I did it (after the required nine-month hiatus of pregnancy – I literally did nothing but stare at walls and trees for the last six months of it, unable to even think in any recognizable pattern). So many things about this novel never existed in the long short story, and I created a world, characters, and adventure that expands far beyond Sleepwater Beat as itself. Every book is and will be a standalone, so they can be read in any order without missing much. Which is also a first for me.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I enable the usual author vice of tons of coffee. I also get up at 3:30 every morning to write, which, combined with work time provided by our part-time nanny, gives me a solidly delicious 40-hour work week from Monday to Thursday and a three-day weekend.
Other than that, my habits of writing aren’t particularly that unusual. But my husband has commented from time to time that it continues to surprise and slightly unsettle him when he walks into my home office in the morning to find my blasting away at the keyboard wearing absolutely nothing. I mean nothing. My response? If I can work from home in the nude, why wouldn’t I?
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Stephen King is probably the top influencing author in my own career. Not in terms of content or genre (though he can drift into the Fantasy realm quite nicely. The Dark Tower, anyone?) but as far as writing style and sentence structure. I didn’t plan to emulate his writing in that way, and it only happens with certain works. But I’ve found the closest similarities with him.
I read pretty much every genre, if the book grabs my attention, so I’m sure many other authors have influenced my writing or offered some inspiration for my other works. Beyond my favorite authors and series to read, no one else stands out very much in terms of having a direct effect on my writing.
What are you working on now?
Well, as a ghostwriter, I can’t tell you that 😉
But as I’ve said, I have at least three more books planned for the LGBT Speculative Thriller ‘Blue Helix’ series. That Dark Fantasy serial is also taking shape, which is so much fun to watch because it takes place in the same world as ‘The Unclaimed’ trilogy and picks up right where that final book left off. Just with completely different characters and the world entirely… changed (I can’t give spoilers).
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Admittedly, I’m not a marketing guru. My top promotion method is finding someone else to do it all for me, like a temporary PA for 3-4 weeks around a new release. That’s worked rather well this year, and I’m just now getting into dissecting the finer, messier points of running ads on social media and larger book-selling sites. We’ll see what happens.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1. Keep writing, no matter what. Editors exist for a reason, but they can’t get the darn book down on paper for you.
2. Writing every day is like working out every day or eating healthy every day (without taking it to the obsession level, of course). If you want to tone and pump up your author muscles, you need a consistent routine. I’ve been writing every day without fail for the last three months, and where I thought my 25,000-words-a-month production was pretty phenomenal, in those three months, it’s grown to 165,000 words. No joke. It can be done.
3. Nobody becomes an author because it guarantees fame and financial success. It doesn’t. We write because we have the story, and it needs to be heard. Because we love it. Because a world without us writing in it feels empty, even if we have everything else. If your love of story, character, and crafting those brilliant worlds where anything and everything is possible brought you to start writing in the first place, don’t let anybody tell you you can’t. Or you shouldn’t. Or that it’s a waste of your time. Do it because that’s what you do. And don’t stop.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
This is a constant process. An author career doesn’t (with rare exceptions) build and succeed on a single book. Keep writing. Keep working on the next project. Produce and publish a professional work both complete and consistent with what your readers want, then do it all over again. Building a backlog of previous works does wonders for sales of other books (the more you have out there, the more likely it is for people to pick up your work).
What are you reading now?
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown. Awesome book about cutthroat pirates and a prisoner who survives by cooking exquisite meals. Like a gender-reversal of ‘Arabian Nights’ on the open sea. I love it.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Everything. Just keep going. Hopefully I can make a little bigger splash with Sleepwater Beat’s release and the Blue Helix series. Plus all the new projects underway never lose their excitement.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
My first choice would be Stephen King’s entire Dark Tower series, but that’s seven books, and I can do basic math (contrary to how often I can’t do basic math). I couldn’t bear to only bring the first 3-4 books, because even though I’ve read the series 8 times now, I would die without being able to finish it. So…
The Lord of the Rings collection by J.R.R. Tolkien (all four books, The Hobbit included, wrapped up in one giant book, because that does exist); The World According to Garp by John Irving, because it’s hilarious and so real and brilliant; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, because it’s the most beautifully written thing I’ve ever read and has a special place in my heart.
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