How did you come up with the title of your first novel?
The title of my first novel is Lady of the Dead it’s the first book in my Night World Series which are paranormal romances. I came up with the title because I knew I wanted a title that either showed off the main male character or the main female character. Gwen, the female lead in the book her title in the supernatural world is lady of the dead so I just decided to make that the title. Wasn’t a lot of thought behind it I’m not really good at coming up with titles, minus the Jas Bond series titles those have been a lot of fun to create.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
You know, I don’t think I would. I am really happy with the way the Jas Bond series is going. With some of my older series there are things that I would definitely change but with Jas’ books I have loved them so much I can’t see changing anything about them. That might be different a year or two from now when I go back and look at them but as of right now, I am very happy with them they’re really fun and snarky it’s been a blast to write.
If you could spend time with a character from your book whom would it be? And what would you do during that day?
I would want to spend the day with either Bailey the Rottweiler or Sven the dwarf that fixes things up in the back of the shop. I have my own Rottweiler so spending the day with Bailey probably wouldn’t be that different than my days normally are. But I think Sven is a real character and has a lot of back story and a lot more to him, only some of which I know, and I know for a fact that he would hate spending the day with me. He is very much a loner but just listening to him talk and maybe making food would be all I would want. Nothing extravagant, we wouldn’t be going to a theme park or anything like that but I would definitely want to find the treasure trove of hidden secrets he has in that brain of his.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
I’m pretty 50-50 on this in general. I have books where one or two characters will be based on certain aspects of people’s personalities so that I have something real world rooted in those characters. In my Anthony Holllownton series I give cameos to a lot of the people I know. Cameos that only they or people close to them are going to recognize as their reading it. It’ll be like they have a teaching degree and the character based on them is working at a daycare. The personalities of those cameos are not like the individual people. It’s usually just the features look like the individual character and their something similar about them they’re not straight versions of those people. Jas Bond was originally based on my husband, my husband works in retail and brings our dog with him to the shop. Our dog gets into shenanigans sometimes at work. That was all based on reality but as I was writing Jas as a character he became less and less like my husband over time. I also have books like the Night World Series or Berman’s Wolves where the characters are not based on anyone.
Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reigns of the story?
Yes! I have select characters that will hijack the story if they’re in it. Most of the time I have full control and I’ll get complaints from characters about what’s happening in the story or they’ll pout and the story won’t move forward the way it needs. But I do have a handful of characters, most of them are in my Night World paranormal romance series, that will hijack a story if they don’t like where it’s going and then I feel like I’m just writing an incident report instead of creating a story.
Have you written any other books that are not published?
Dozens, I have many stories on my laptop that are not published. Most of which are nowhere near completion or even halfway done. Before my laptop was stolen in 2013 I had about 30 or 40 on my laptop. I wasn’t able to find most of those stories in my files once I got a new computer. But since then I have created more and they are just sitting in my stories file while the ideas and plots percolate and I work on current projects. Some of them might never see the light of day and others might be published 10 years from now.
Fun Facts/Behind the Scenes/Did You Know?'-type tidbits about the author, the book or the writing process of the book.
I dictate my books. I am a relatively slow typer, so when I type my books I get about 1200 to 1500 words per hour. After 2 ½ years of dictating I was able to get to 3500 words an hour. I’m now slowly heading towards the 4000 words an hour mark which is very exciting. Dictation definitely has a very large learning curve and you have to get into a different mindset to be able to do it. But now that I do I can’t imagine going back to typing the entire book. What’s interesting is that the way I write in the language I use is very different when I’m dictating versus when I’m typing. My typing languages much more flowery and less matter of fact. There’s a lot more fluff in the books when I’m typing versus dictating. What’s fun about this is that when I’m dictating I am flailing my arms all over the place which I’m told looks very comical when my husband walks by. I also can pace back and forth, lay on the floor, or twirl in my chair.
Thank you for having me.
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