5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

Youngest I think is a toss-up between Kas from the Scarlett universe and Melody from AFTERLIFE. Kas is about fourteen when the Scarlett stuff kicks off, although he already has the mentality of a world-weary oldster, thanks to his Tragic Past and the general mentality needed to survive in a household consisting of one immature playboy werewolf, one slightly neurotic firestarter, a fallen angel, another psychic, and the occasional visiting alcoholic necromancer who wants to kill everyone except the firestarter... Not to mention various miscellaneous house guests.

Melody is twelve or thirteen? I should know this. But again, mentally she's a lot older, thanks to being dead and hellbent on bloody revenge in unusual circumstances.

In terms of creation, Scarlett is definitely the oldest, probably getting on for seventeen or eighteen years old, in fact. Youngest, I guess is the cast of Demonised, with the exception of Ethan, who's been around in various forms for about eight or nine years. But the rest of that novella are all brand new! Babies! Newbies! And all already scarred for life! Poor darlings *pets Anna and co*

( Full list of questions behind the cut )

3.  How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

I have a baby names book tucked away somewhere, but I've had it so long I've exhausted it. There are a couple of websites I use regularly - Seventh Sanctum, which is just a generally excellent website for writers, and I think you should all go check it out, and 2000 Names, which has lots of annoying pop-ups, but also loads of unusual and cool names. I usually have an idea of what kind of name I want for a character before I start looking - like if I want a particular meaning or sound. I love Irish and Celtic names, and try to avoid anything too exotic if it doesn't fit the character's heritage or origin. 

AFTERLIFE is set in a fictional city called Shoregrave. I've no idea where that came from... I knew I wanted something that created an impression of gloom and darkness, so "grave" was pretty apt. Back in the day when I wrote high fantasy, I took towns and cities I knew and rearranged the letters to get my fantasy towns and cities. Looking back, it was a very inelegant way of doing things, as I ended up with very clunky, ugly names. 

(Google Chrome is playing up and won't let me copy and paste the other questions in here. Ggrrr. More tomorrow!)

I'm feeling pretty meh today, so I stole this from alex_beecroft in order to stave off boredom for a few minutes... Come join me!

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

Without a doubt, this is the Scarlett books. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the answers to this questions end up being Scarlett-related). Although I love all my universes, this is the one has the oldest, biggest place in my heart. The character of Scarlett (a pyromancer descended from angels and demons) came to me when I was very young, and the rest of the world developed as I grew and read. I'd say it's easily the best-developed of my universes: the characters and their arcs are all very firmly ingrained in my head, and I could probably write dozens of books about them all. There's Ash, the borderline alcoholic necromancer; Christian, the playboy werewolf; Kas, the old-before-his-time teen psychic; there's fallen angels, lost gods, obsessive demons, shady government organisations, and plenty of good old fashioned shenanigans.

I actually have two books and countless short stories (although most of those are lost) written about this world already. The first book, Fire and Moonlight, got me my first agent. Since then, I've desperately wanted to rewrite it because it's just so ... meh ... to me now. But there's never time! And I'm struggling to concieve an ideal plot for the first book at the moment, something solid and exciting and fresh to introduce the world with the bang I feel it deserves. So this project is on hold for the time being. I've been lucky enough to have a couple of short Scarlett/Ash stories published in Ethereal Tales recently, which gives me hope that this is a universe worth writing about.

I'm generally not a writer of the "my characters are REAL TO ME!!!" school, but in this case... yeah, they are. Scarlett and Ash in particular are very real to me, and I know them inside out and back to front. I'm pretty confident you could give me any scenario you liked, and I'd know how they'd react. Deep down in my heart of hearts, this is the series I want to get published and want people to love, which in a way puts me off ever attempting it, lol.


( Full list of questions behind the cut )