One Hot Mess

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:


( Questions under the cut )

20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?

I don't know if this means my favourite characters to write interacting with each other, or my favourite type of interaction to write, so I'll answer both.

My favourite characters to write interacting with each other are undoubtedly Scarlett and Ash. They have such a complicated relationship that they can never be in the same room together without some spectacular drama going down. Like the time he took her to see The Taming of the Shrew at a fancy theatre, got drunk in the interval and chased her down the street misquoting lines from the play...

I also love Glory from the Urban Wolf books interacting with anyone, because he's just a fun, flamboyant drag queen werewolf, and when is that not going to be fun to write about?

In terms of my favourite type of interaction, there isn't a single favourite. I like fight scenes the least, because I'm never sure I've written them clearly enough for the reader to A) be convinced a real fight has gone down and B) understand what happened anyway. I love writing any kind of magical scene - occult rituals, demon summoning, spell work, shapeshifting, etc, and I love good old fashioned witty repartee. I'm particularly fond of some of Yasmin and Ethan's exchanges in AFTERLIFE. If I do say so myself, I think I do good dialogue, and I loved writing their scenes in Suicide Notes where they drank cocktails and traded barbed insults.

( Questions under the cut )

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.

( Questions under the cut )

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

The lazy answer is, I really don't know. I have so many ideas dancing around my head, half-finished on my laptop, languishing all over the place, in fact, that the best answer I can give is "probably too many."

I don't have any gender preferences. The majority of my stories feature female protagonists, but there's no real bias in terms of how many of each I have, as far as I can tell. That said, if you asked me to pick my favourite characters from different stories, I think the men would win out... Ash from the Scarlett university, and Nicomedes and Ethan from AFTERLIFE definitely win there. But in the Urban Wolf novels, the ladies win the day - Ayla and Shannon are my favourites from that series. Hmm, this probably proves nothing...

( Full list of questions behind the cut )

They often go awry, apparently? I don't remember the rest of the quote, I just remember being forced to read the book and hating it (except for Slim, who was six kinds of awesome). Anyway, the point is, my "let's Superman this weekend and write like Cthulhu is watching" plan has taken a backstep. My parents made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Food, a comfortable mattress, new clothes, and a hot bath,

So I'm at my parents, having enjoyed all of the above and having done no writing yesterday. I am planning to do some today, but Holly is currently trying to climb onto my head, which hampers the process somewhat. I'm a bit torn on what to work on though... The Scarlett novel is moving along nicely, although I can already tell the opening the chapters will need some serious revision somewhere down the line. But Wonderland is also calling, and so is that random futuristic-ish werewolf novel with the illiterate assassin as the main character idea too (Lone Wolf). I had a dream the other night that really got me thinking more about that idea. I don't want to start yet because there's a lot of world-building to be done first.

For example, my original idea was that my main character, Aisling, would one of the last werewolves in her world thanks to a war between humans and wolves. The wolves would have been wiped out with some kind of engineered disease, or something. A bit vague on that still. Then I thought I'd prefer a nuclear winter scenario, but I don't know how that could work so that werewolves were worse affected than humans. Then I did some research in Agent Orange because I liked the idea of a ruined world with very few green spaces left, but had the same issue as the nuclear winter scenario. Then I just gave up for a while because I started Wonderland, and one novel set in the aftermath of a war between humanity and a supernatural race of your choice is probably enough.

But now? I really want to start on Lone Wolf. Aisling is starting to come alive in my head, as are the secondary characters. If I can just get the world set up right, I'll be there. So what's better? Nuclear winter, Agent Orange, or a laboratory-created disease of an unknown nature?