One Hot Mess

I figure I may as well do the last three in one go since I'm a day behind and don't plan on tagging anyone with this!

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

I can't think of any, which surprises me given how interested I am in mental illness and psychology. My next planned project, unimaginatively entitled "The Cassandra Novel" until I think of a real title will have a self-harming, depressed heroine with an eating disorder, because I'm a cheerful sort. But no, I think I've yet to write any physically or mentally disabled characters.

29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

OMG, ALL THE FREAKING TIME, MAYBE? I can assure you, if you're ever talking to me and I appear to be staring into space and ignoring you, I am actually plotting, running through dialogue or descriptions in my head, and inventing crazy new adventures for my characters. I keep notepads and pens on hand all the time just in case I come up with any news ideas worth noting, and writing is my favourite topic of conversation. 

As for finding things in real life that reminds me of my writing... yeah, a lot. It can be really simple things - lilies remind me of Scarlett (she hates them), and Muse remind me of Ayla (she loves them). chaostheory  and I spent a truly beautiful evening in Italy four years ago sitting by a fountain with boxes of pizza and discussing our characters. It emerged that one of hers is fascinated by Fabrege eggs, and ever since Fabrege eggs have reminded me of that character. Or it can be stuff in the news - I read an article recently about "real life" werewolves in America that will probably make its way into an Urban Wolf book in the future, for example.

30. Final question! Tag someone! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!

I'm not actually tagging anyone, but I've had lots of fun doing this, and reading other people's thoughts and responses, so I'd encourage any of my writer friends to do it too!

26. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!

This is a pretty simple one to answer. My artistic skillz are limited to stickmen and sheep. Luckily, I have some very artistic friends who have drawn pictures of my characters for me. chaostheory  drew me a gorgeous pencil picture of Scarlett and Ash many years ago, which I still keep framed in my bedroom. She's also drawn Christian and Isaac and Blade's theoretical son.

dwg  was kind enough to draw me an awesome picture of Ayla and Shannon for my birthday this year (as well as write me a cool little fanfic to go with it, and I'm sure she won't mind me posting said picture here, so:


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23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?

It varies wildly. My fastest draft was SILVER KISS, which took just over three months. Longest was Wild, which I started in 2007 and finished in 2009, then rewrote a couple of times in early 2010. It depends on a lot of stuff - how bad my arm is, what's going on in Real Life, and whether I have a deadline or not. I tend to be quite lazy if I don't have a deadline to meet, and if I overdo it, I usually have to take a couple of days off to rest my arm anyway, so there's no point trying to speed-write when I don't have to.

24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?

Very willing, if the plot demands it. I'm against killing characters off just to up the shock value - I'm against doing anything just for shock value; I think it's a cheap way of eliciting reader sympathy. But if it's a natural progression of the plot, then yeah, I'll happily kill people off.

As for interesting ways, I guess without being too spoilery, I like some of the deaths in AFTERLIFE, where men are dragged to hell by a ghostly girl! Huzzahs! 

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21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

No. I mean, yes, obviously, some of my characters do have children in that most of my characters have parents, and sometimes their parents feature in the stories. Ayla, for example, has parents who crop up in WOLF STRAP and SILVER KISS. But I think this question means "do any of your main characters have small children?" in which case the answer is no.

I think this is the one facet of my own personality that infects my characters to one degree or another. I have no interest in having kids and have no maternal instincts whatsoever. None of my characters do either. I imagine that some of them would make good parents - Vince and Joel, particularly, but I don't honestly see it happening to any of them.

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So, yes. Obviously I got behind. Luckily these are all pretty easy questions to answer.

17. Favorite protagonist and why!

It's so hard to choose just one when I love them all for different reasons, but I can narrow it down to Scarlett and Lizzie. Scarlett purely because she's my first creative endevour, she's been floating around my imagination for almost two decades, and I just love her utterly. Her backstory, her abilities, her flaws, her choices, her friends, her whole overly-complicated life. I love her world, love writing it, and can't wait to get back into it one of these days...

Lizzie because I've spent so much damn time with her she almost feels like a real person to me anyway. Wild is the book that has kicked my ass the most over the years, and it still isn't quite right, but Lizzie has remained consistent throughout. Flawed but fighting, scared but brave, angry but vulnerable and always trying so hard to sort herself out. Bless her.

18. Favorite antagonist and why!

Ash and Ash and Ash. There can be no other answer. Although I suppose he's technically an anti-hero, he certainly goes out of his way to antagonise as many people as possible. He's so much fun to write because he's properly messed up. Devious, power-hungry, self-serving, poetic, alcoholic, manipulative, and so hopelessly in love with Scarlett it kills him. He doesn't know what to do with her. Ash is my main man, crushing all others underfoot and leaving a trail of devastation and empty wine bottles in his wake.

19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Again, there is no answer but Ethan. He was originally a bit player in the Scarlett universe, before I decided he'd bounce of Yasmin in AFTERLIFE perfectly. He was only supposed to be a side character who disappeared at the end of the book and didn't feature again, but I fell in love with him whilst writing AFTERLIFE, and had to carry on with his story. Thus, Demonised, (which I hope will be the first of many adventures for him). Ethan just tugs at my heartstrings. He's always so out of his depth and trying so hard to act like he's not. He's gruff and makes terrible jokes and likes to imagine he's Sam Spade, but there's a heart of gold underneath it all. He's a close second behind Ash.

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14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

Wow, this is going to be a quick, boring answer. I don't map out locations and I don't have any maps to show you. I used to draw very crude maps on Paint when I was writing fantasy, but I haven't done it for years now.

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12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

It's a toss-up between SILVER KISS and AFTERLIFE. With SILVER KISS (and the other Urban Wolf stuff I've written so far) I've really tried to examine how werewolves living openly amongst humans would affect society. Everything from court cases (evidence acquired by scent is not admissible in court yet) to schools (Lupine Studies is taught alongside Maths and English) to hate groups (down with Alpha Humans! Boo!) to what happens when a werewolf needs to shapeshift in the middle of the street (there are special changing booths so people can strip off without being arrested for indecent exposure). There's loads more too, that might not necessarily make it into the books (God, I so want to write the story set in WWI when werewolves were forced into public awareness due to trench warfare!). I really hope it helped make the book more believable and compelling to readers, and since the reviews thus far have been good, I assume it did.

With AFTERLIFE, I built two completely fictional worlds - the city of Shoregrave which is just "somewhere on planet Earth," and the Pale World, which is the realm of ghosts, wraiths, vampires, and all the undead. Both drew inspiration from the works of HP Lovecraft. I wanted Shoregrave to be almost a character in its own right, with a deep, bloody history and a very real feel to it, like it was somewhere you might actually get to visit (if you'd want to). I spent a lot of time inventing streets, locations, histories, landmarks etc, most of which you can explore by clicking "The Small World Guide to Shoregrave" tag in my sidebar. To me, Shoregrave is utterly real. I can picture it perfectly as this drizzly, gothic city with lots of twisty turny side streets, crooked headstones in the graveyards, a few brave street cafes, and a bleak stretch of coastline. I'd live there.

The Pale World needed a lot of rules, as did the creatures that lived there, and I'm not 100% sure I got all those rules in order. Next book! But yeah, the laws of physics are different there. I'm pretty pleased with how I described it; hopefully readers got the image I wanted - a of foggy realm cast in bluish light where ghosts and wights flicker back and forth aimlessly, and ghouls lurk by every headstone waiting for their next meal. A lifeless place, a place that might make you think of purgatory. When I get round to writing Halflife, the sequel, I plan to explore a lot more of the Pale World and its denizens. Bring on the mad monks and necromancers!

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10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

Erm, I may once have written a story for chaostheory  in which Ash and Christian get into an argument at Ash's club that turns into a drinking contest that turns into some pretty kinky man-on-man action after one too many banana liqueur shots... That was non-canon.

Canon-wise, given the genre I write, there have been all kinds of crazy situations for my characters. Yasmin had to chop up a ghoul in her kitchen in AFTERLIFE. Ayla found herself drugged and forced to fight a werewolf youngster in SILVER KISS. Ethan, poor guy, found himself buying mass quantities of the nastiest porn available to try and keep his inner demon quiet. And then he had to go to a strip club and got knocked around by an incubus. Bad day.

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8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

Clearly the answer to both is urban fantasy. It's by a long shot the genre I read the most, and it's really all I write these days. I do read about - I love cosy mysteries, historicals, the odd thriller here and there, and the occasional high fantasy novel slips into my TBR pile too. High fantasy used to be my main choice for reading and writing, but I grew disenchanted somewhere along the line. Everything seemed to be very samey and repetitive. Of course, the same accusation is frequently leveled at UF, but I haven't reached burn-out yet.

I also read a fair bit paranormal romance, although I'm not really a fan of Black Dagger Brotherhood-style family saga PR series. I find most alpha male heroes to be complete assholes, and I die a little inside every time I read a line like "she smelt of woman." I know the possessive domineering alpha male is a pretty bog standard part of paranormal romance, but I do prefer them to keep their brains in their heads, not their trousers. Look, guys, the caveman thing is sexy in theory, but in practice it's actually pretty tedious.

But yes, for writing, it's currently urban fantasy all the way! I love mixing up the mundane and the magical, and if I can throw some shady governmental science types in there somewhere, all the better. Part of the reason my Scarlett universe is my favourite is because it has all the UF elements I love best in one melting pot - necromancy, gods, angels, werewolves, fire!, demons, shady govermental science types, psychics... Yeah, it's an unholy mess, but I don't care. I don't have tribes of all these things living in secrecy in the same city, after all. I spread my paranormal people around.

Christian is a cursed werewolf - it runs in his family, and he's never met another wereanimal outside of his family. He's okay with that, really. As long as he doesn't have to see his sister or his aunt, he's happy in life. His sister is a bitch (figuratively, not literally) and his aunt is always trying to fix him up with nice young ladies, oblivious to the fact that Christian is purely about the sexyfun times.

Ash is a necromancer, and unique in that he is actually a necromancer, as opposed to the rest of the Dark Council, who just want to be necromancers and keep making half-assed attempts to raise the dead by dripping blood and wax everywhere, and never notice that Ash is just laughing at them all behind their backs and probably drinking the ceremonial wine. Scarlett is a pyrokinetic but she doesn't know why and her parents are dead, so no help there. And whenever she probes Ash about it (because he blatantly knows something she doesn't) he just laughs and distracts her with witty banter and suggestive talk, even though she swears it'll never happen between them because he's a bastard and a liar and possibly a drunk, and then they end up in bed and she's all "I can't believe we did that again!" and he just lays there looking smug.

And then there's all the stuff with the demon lord who's trying to kill her, and who knows what the deal with that even is, and all she gets from Anacroth the lost god is cryptic rubbish and patronising pats on the head. Of course, he's too busy staying low and trying to avoid the attention of certain celestial beings to be much help to anyone, but he makes a mean pot of gumbo.

I've gone totally off the point here.

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