This month is getting off to a great start so far, and I just wanted to pop into your worlds a bit and let you know what’s happening in mine.
My September 4th book launch of Cursed by Furies went about as well as expected — which is to say that as a new author on my first book, it wasn’t a blockbuster by any stretch. But I had realistic goals in place which were met and I’ve been honored to get a chance to talk to people who have read and enjoyed my book.
The launch was exhausting, and now that it is over I feel a huge sense of relief. I’d also like to share a few things from the launch interviews that were fun to talk about, as well as go into some of the things going on this month and next.
Excepts from Interviews
These are some of the questions I was asked in my book interviews that I thought you might enjoy reading about.
From Diane’s Book Blog Interview
Q: If you were stranded on a desert island which of your characters do you want by your side?
A: Jarl, for sure. He’s a Viking, a man of the sea. Not only great, sexy company, but highly practical as a choice.
Q: What inspired you to write your first book?
A: I’ve been obsessed with mythology my entire life, but I randomly got into a conversation with my daughter about how I would explain Vampires, mythologically. I said it would have to be a curse, and that means they had to start off as a different being. So then it became a question of, what kind of being and who would have the power to pull off a curse like that. I immediately thought of the Furies, because I’m a mythos junkie, and they enact punishments in mythology. The concept basically was built backward from there, and easily tied into the mythos that I know so well, and it was important to me that it would actually fit in reasonably and historically.
From The Book Junkie Reads Interview
Q: Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
A: Definitely something that flows naturally. I am a full ‘pantser-type’ writer, so I don’t outline or plot or plan anything. I go where the characters want me to go, and I trust them to guide me in the right direction.
Q: Can you share you next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?
A: Absolutely. I briefly mentioned books 1.5, 2, and 3 earlier, but let me tell you a bit more about those.
I don’t want to give away the name of 1.5 because it could be a bit of a spoiler for book 1 as it is right now, the name may need to change. But basically it takes place in the two-year gap between book 1 and 2. Largely it deals with the way so many of their lives have changed after the events of book 1, and how they’re all dealing with the major adjustments. Some are coping with things better than others.
Book 2 is called ‘Well Deserved Wrath,’ and is centered on the arrival of an old nemesis who shows up and begins creating havoc. Two years after Priscilla first started learning she had more powers, this book shows her as she’s been learning to embrace them and obtain new abilities. Wrath introduces another God into the story, and it’s a pretty dark and violent book.
Book 3 is called ‘Memory of Betrayal,’ and that book in the series picks up not too long after book 2. In book 3, Priscilla finds herself locked up with a new God, and works to convince him to keep her identity a secret. Meanwhile attacks are launched against her family and friends, and they have to figure out who is behind it all, but are discovering that it’s possible it could be someone on the inside.
I do already have some ideas about where I want to go with book 4, even though I haven’t begun writing it yet. I definitely want to get into some Egyptian mythos soon, but I don’t know if that will be in book 4 or 5. As a writer who doesn’t plan these things out, I’ll just see where it takes me.
From the Supernatural Central Interview
Q: Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
A: The main character in my story is Priscilla Forester, and she’s a 500’ish-year-old Elf who resides in modern Houston, Texas. I’m not giving a specific age because, as you find out in the story, there is some secretiveness around events that happened very early in her life.
In my world, all the Elves were cursed to live on this Earth plane of existence, the gates to the other realms shut to them as punishment. The curse is pretty intricate, but the short version is that they’re essentially what Humans would call Vampires, even though they find that word insulting. But Priscilla is more than just a regular cursed Elf, she’s called ‘twice cursed’ because she has some other abilities that I think people will enjoy reading about. Even beyond that, there’s far more to her, but that gets into things she isn’t even aware of yet.
The first book in the series is largely an introduction to the circumstances the Elves find themselves in, getting to know Priscilla and some of the other important characters, and also it is a lot about seeing her grow into the beginning of some acceptance about things she doesn’t like about herself.
Q: Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
A: I absolutely believe in the paranormal, and I’ve had many, many experiences with it. The earliest that I can recall is from an incident when I was about four years old. I awoke in the middle of the night screaming that my aunt was hurt and needed help. It turned out that at the same time, my aunt had just been in a car accident so bad they had to cut away the vehicle wall to get her out. Thankfully, she survived it with only minor injuries, but it was only the beginning of those kinds of experiences for me. I even spent some time working as a professional tarot reader in my early 20s.
From the JB’s Bookworms Interview
Q: Who is your favorite character from your own stories, and why?
A: That’s a hard one. It’s a toss-up between Jonah and Raymond, possibly because I personally identify most with those two characters. Priscilla may be my main character, and I do like her, but she’s most definitely not some shadow extension of myself.
Q: What was your most difficult scene to write?
A: After the prologue, the very first scene in the diner was difficult to get to a place where I was truly happy with it. There’s so much emphasis on getting the beginning perfect, that I tweaked words here and there over, and over again. In fact, the scene actually started off with her telling him he was a half-Elf in the diner, but I decided to ease that in later.
Have Interview Questions of Your Own?
Hopefully you enjoyed reading those interview questions and answers. If you want to read all of them just head over to the linked blogs.
If you have your own blog — I’m always available to do interviews via email, just contact me via this website or my social media and tell me about your idea. I can also do call-in interviews if you have a podcast, but they’re trickier for me to schedule because I have to actually go to a location that is relatively quiet in order to do them. Nevertheless, given enough time and scheduling flexibility, I can do those as well.
The House Sigils are UP!
So my Early Release Newsletter people have known about the sigils for a while, but they are now up for public view on the website. These sigils are worn by the different Elf House families in my book series.
You can see them all on The Cursed Elves Series main page, as well as links to my growing list of characters from the books.
These sigils, as you can probably guess, are going to be going on some fun swag! I know that, just for myself, I want a coffee mug wrapped in the sigils 🙂
Things on the Way
This month there are a few things that are in the works, but the thing I’m probably happiest about is that the large-print paperback version will be made available.
You have no way of knowing this, but in my tech world business I have a big stake in visual accessibility and did a lot of things related to making technology better and easier for people with disabilities.
What I’m Writing Now
Currently I’m writing book 1.5 in the series. At some point I’m just going to start calling it book 2, and bump all the rest of the books forward a number… but for now I haven’t been able to stop calling it 1.5. At least I’m no longer calling it “***** the ********” which I belatedly realized was a massive spoiler for book 1. I’m running a bit behind on it, which means I’ve gotten distracted and need to do more writing. If I can get the time and energy to focus on writing, I could probably wrap it up in a couple of weeks… in fact, that’s my goal.
1.5 has gotten kind of interesting. There are some significant writing style differences, but I think they’re going to be fine. In my last little bit I was just working on, someone nearly got decapitated, a half dozen other people DID get decapitated, and they accidentally encountered an extremely dangerous being masquerading as a Forester Elf. Fun stuff!
All For Now!
That’s enough to throw at you all at once, and I definitely hope to see some of you guys around the social media space in the interim. Hopefully you know where to find me. If not, check out the list on my contact page. You can also look at the main menu and see the listings under ‘contact’ or down in the footer are a bunch of links too. Feel free to reach out in whichever way you prefer.
Until next time, lots of love!
