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In this episode of the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast, M.D. Massey interviews husband and wife author team Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele, co-authors of The Misfit Series and The Chaos Mages series. And, Alex reads a chapter from his book, Stolen Trinkets.
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M.D. Massey:
Hey everyone. This is M.D. Massey here with Urban Fantasy Author podcast, and today we are interviewing Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele, who are a husband and wife team who write together. They write urban fantasy novels together. And what’s interesting about their approach is they each are kind of in charge of a separate series under each pen name.
So Alex Steele is kind of in charge. His series is the Chaos Mages. And then Stephanie, she writes a series called The Misfit Series. So we’re going to get into talking to them about their process and how they work together. And we’re going to find out more about their series today. So Stephanie and Alex, welcome to the show.
Stephanie Foxe:
Hey, Michael.
Alex Steele:
Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having us over.
M.D. Massey:
Pretty good. Yeah, and I haven’t seen you guys since Boston Fantasy Fest. So I’m really excited to talk to you because I met these guys at Boston Fantasy Fest, and they were super, super nice and I think everybody had a good time at that event. Kind of looking forward to the next one.
Alex Steele:
It was fantastic.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, and man that was like the perfect time of year to go to Boston too, wasn’t it?
Alex Steele:
It was beautiful. Traveling around, seeing some of the sights was great. We had never been before.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah neither had we, and I think I told you before we started the interview that I don’t like big cities and I did like Boston so it was a surprise.
Alex Steele:
Yeah, it was a nice event.
M.D. Massey:
I don’t know, I think next year they’re probably going to have it in California. I’m not sure if I’ll go because I don’t like southern California, apologies to anybody who lives in southern California. If they have it northern California I’ll go. But anyway, okay, so just start off let’s jump in the interview. So first, why don’t you guys tell us a little bit about your books and your series.
Stephanie Foxe:
So I’ve written two series. One was a shorter series called The Witches Bite Series. The main character, she brews potions and stuff like that. The series I’m working on right now, that I’ve been having a ton of fun writing, is called The Misfit Series, and it’s about a group of people who get kind of sucked into being werewolves. They live in a magical society, there is no masquerade, magic isn’t hidden. There’s actually trolls and witches and elves and magical marketplaces and stuff like that, which is something I’ve always thought was really fun.
Stephanie Foxe:
So the just three humans they’re, they don’t fit together, but when they get attacked and bitten by a rogue werewolf they end up having to make it work. Yeah, that’s been a lot of fun to write. I really like writing people coming together and having a found family.
M.D. Massey:
Stephanie, how many books do you have in each of those series?
Stephanie Foxe:
The first series, The Witches Bite Series has four books out, and that series is complete. The Misfit Series has two books out so far and the third one is hopefully coming in mid-February.
M.D. Massey:
Okay, cool and I understand that hopefully thing because I always tell my readers, “Hopefully this time,” but that never happens so. Okay, Alex tell us about your series.
Alex Steele:
Okay, so I wrote the Chaos Mages, and essentially where my inspiration came from that was anime and like buddy cop stories like Lethal Weapon. I mean some of our readers and kind of what we like to say is it’s basically if Lethal Weapon and Marvel was to meet essentially and they had a baby or whatever because that’s what it is. There’s just lots of destruction happening but it’s focused around Logan Blackwell and Lexi Swift and together they’re … They’re kind of forced to work together in the beginning but they really start to come into their own by Book Three and really start to be a good cohesive team and it’s just about basically solving and fighting crime but also there’s a deeper, you know, perhaps subplot going on. I don’t want to give any spoilers but there’s a deeper subplot going on that they’re kind of, sort of forced into. But essentially they’re just detectives and they just like to fight crime, and they kind of blow stuff up a little too much occasionally. They [crosstalk 00:04:10] quite a lot.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah.
M.D. Massey:
I personally like destruction and mayhem in my urban fantasy so.
Alex Steele:
Yes.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to write, you know, [crosstalk 00:04:20] what they can blow up next.
Alex Steele:
And so, what’s interesting about my series is it’s my idea but Stephanie does all the writing for it. I mean, I’ll go through and I’ll make some suggestions and I’ll write little lines here and there but the bulk of the writing is all her.
M.D. Massey:
Okay, so, since you jumped into that, tell us a little bit more about your writing process. So Alex, when you’re working on your books, do you do the outlining or do you guys collaborate on outlining and then Stephanie does the bulk of the writing, then you come back in during the editing process? How does that work?
Alex Steele:
Well, it’s flexible. Originally, I did all of the outlining and ideally I would be doing all of the outlining. Book three kind of was a little bit of a chaotic mess [crosstalk 00:05:06] and we kind of outlined it together but in pieces because we weren’t 100% sure how to make the story go for a longer series. Like we had an idea for this longer series but we weren’t sure how we wanted this book to be and how we wanted it to work cohesive. So that book was a little bit more chaotic and this book won’t be coming out until January 15 which is when the pre-order is up and once it goes live there the whole series will be going into KU at that point. Currently this series is live but. Anyway, back to the outlining. So, I do that and then she kind of takes it over and then.
Stephanie Foxe:
Well, part of the problem is, so we’ll normally start out with an outline but I’m not very good at following outlines, so I’ll get about halfway through and I’ll start diverging from the outline and I’ll be like, oh hey Alex I did this thing that changes the plot completely, do you like it? So I do a lot of that but he tends to read it as I write it, like every chapter, every scene, I’m like sitting down with him and having him read it, getting his feedback on it. I do that actually to a certain extent with books that I write on my own as well just because he’s always been like my alpha-reader, you know, he’s the first person that sees it, he’s the person that makes sure I don’t have a ton of plot holes, so writing a book together sprung from that.
M.D. Massey:
You know, it’s interesting that you guys work together in this way. I know probably the most famous husband wife writer team in urban fantasy is [inaudible 00:06:40]. You know, I’ve always found it fascinating that, you know, two people could get together and write a book together and, you know, one person be more in charge of the writing, the other person be in charge of the ideas and so forth, but I guess it works?
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, it works. We definitely butt heads sometimes but I think that makes it better, because, you know, he’ll sit down and be like, you know, you’ve been having all these magical fights and then they’re just throwing fireballs back and forth, like make it more interesting. So he’ll push me to be more creative, and it gives me the confidence to publish the books because I know someone’s already nitpicked it.
Alex Steele:
Yes, and. Go ahead.
M.D. Massey:
No, go ahead Alex, go ahead.
Alex Steele:
Yeah, I was gonna say, the working together, like it does create its own stress and environment and I can tell you it’s a lot less stressful whenever I’m helping her on her own Misfit series for instance because I can give her some feedback and she doesn’t seem as angry all the time. But whenever we’re working on mine, there’s like this big anger and it’s not directed at me, she’s just like grr at the story sometimes and it’s really hilarious looking back on it once we’re done, but in the process it can definitely be a little hair-pulling.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah. Writing can be anger inducing, but it’s a lot of fun.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, you know, I guess when you’re writing something and then somebody comes in and says, hey, you know, change this, that would be kind of frustrating, but in a way, that’s really what traditionally published authors deal with all the time when they’re going through the editorial process.
Stephanie Foxe:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and I’ve actually gone and worked with a developmental editor before, and that was a fantastic learning process, and I think that’s made me a little bit more open to getting that kind of feedback because she had me completely rewrite the book a couple of times. [crosstalk 00:08:29]
M.D. Massey:
Wow.
Stephanie Foxe:
But, yeah. It was a great learning process. That book still isn’t published, it’s sitting on my computer. It might get published one day but yeah, it was a good learning process. And I think Alex learned a lot from that process as well, because as I was getting all this editing feedback, he was seeing it too. So he started learning kinda how to think like a developmental editor, so that’s been really helpful.
Alex Steele:
It really was.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, my main editor, because I have a couple of editors, but my main editor, she acts more as a developmental editor then a line editor, and at first, I was kinda like, oh gosh, you know, can you just, you know, find the grammatical errors and spelling and syntax and, you know, leave the story alone. But then after a while I realized, because she’s really sharp, she’s working on her PhD in medieval literature I think, really sharp. And she finds stuff [crosstalk 00:09:23], you know, and points out plot holes and stuff that I never realized were there. So yeah, having a developmental editor, or someone else who knows the craft and can look at your work, honestly man, it’s just invaluable.
Stephanie Foxe:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alex Steele:
Yeah, it really is. It’s something that just, I don’t know how people live without, in a weird way. I mean some people are just amazingly creative, but having that barrier is just so helpful.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, so, you know, speaking of which. What got you guys started writing? What got you involved in writing? And more specifically, what got you involved with writing urban fantasy novels?
Stephanie Foxe:
So I’ve always loved writing. I was a big reader as a kid. I grew up reading, I actually started out, like one of the big novels I remember reading first when I was like ten years old was The Hobbit, and that got me started into fantasy, which opened up this whole big fantastic world. So I used to write with my cousin, we actually racked up really expensive long-distance phone calls because we would sit on the phone, we would write a story together and they were terrible stories but it was so much fun.
And then I just kind of stopped writing for a while, but I read a ton. I didn’t realize at the time that I was reading indie authors but I would go on Amazon and I would buy those 99 cent e-books. I think one month I spent $150 on e-books and it was mostly 99 cent books. I was just reading like two or three books a day. And a lot of them ended up being urban fantasy. I read a little bit Anita Blake. I think one of the first urban fantasy ones I remember reading where it clicked that it was urban fantasy was the Jane Yellowrock series, Skinwalker.
M.D. Massey:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephanie Foxe:
And it was just so much fun. I loved the idea of magic mixing with the modern world. After I worked with the developmental editor, I’d had this idea in the back of my head and I just sat down and I wrote the book in two weeks and that was Borrowed Magic, and it was so much fun, and I realized that was kind of what had been missing from my writing, why I struggled with word counts so much for a while.
So, yeah. It was fun to just dive into like, yeah I think everybody has, well, not everybody, but maybe some Harry Potter nerds, is like you want to get that Hogwarts letter in the mail and stuff like that. So urban fantasy is like me getting to pretend I’m a witch or pretend I’m an elf or any of that other stuff kind of in the modern day.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, and you know, going back to the writing thing, I don’t know about you, but when I first started writing fiction, what I found was I could complete scenes, like I could write a complete scene, but I could never finish a novel. I probably have four or five unfinished novels on my hard drive.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, absolutely, I keep a Google Drive folder with a bunch of unfinished story ideas that I’d started years ago. The first thing I ever actually finished was [inaudible 00:12:39], it was actually a Harry Potter fan fiction. And it was almost 50,000 words. It was like 48,000 but it was the first time I’d written a story from beginning to end. And that kind of proved to me that I could do it, so then, you know, it’s when I started working with the editor and wrote a terrible book, but she helped me get past it.
Alex Steele:
It’s no longer terrible after the third time of rewriting it, I will say, but she’s so like, frustrated with it after rewriting it over three years over and over again.
M.D. Massey:
You get sick of seeing the same thing, right?
Stephanie Foxe:
Absolutely.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, yeah. My first book was a real clunker too, and I released it and then I actually pulled it off Amazon and it was only available in resale. And then, people started asking for it again, so I sent it to my editor and we heavily revised and edited it. And it was interesting going through that process, because I knew it wasn’t the best work I could produce at the time, but, well it was at that time that I wrote it, but revising it was interesting because I got to see all the mistakes that I had made, and I got to realize how far I’d come as a writer five or six novels later, so.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, and it’s interesting to see that even now, like the first series I published, I like it, I think it’s enjoyable, but I feel like I’ve gotten so much better as a writer, like with the new series, the Misfit series. And I think that’s reflected in the reader response to it.
Alex Steele:
Yeah, I mean, that book in the first month and a half got nearly 70 reviews, it’s over 100 now, and it just absolutely kind of blew up compared to the other books that we’ve written. It just, it really resonated with readers on the Misfit series.
M.D. Massey:
And that’s always so exciting as a writer, to see a series or a first book in a series that you have planned that you’re enjoying writing, and to see readers, you know, really, you know, kind of relate to it and to see it start rising through the rankings on Amazon is always a great thing.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, and it was also really nice, because I tried something new, I did multi-POV in the Misfit series and I’d never done that before. So it was really interesting getting to tell the story from four different perspectives and getting to really show each characters’ growth. It was really kind of freeing, actually, as a writer.
M.D. Massey:
Did you have a hard time tracking the story that way? I mean even with outlining, was it difficult sometimes to track the story as you were working between each characters’ point of view?
Stephanie Foxe:
I don’t think so, actually. It let me focus on the most interesting thing that was happening at any point. I think there was a few times I felt like one POV was a little neglected, but as far as tracking the story, I didn’t actually struggle with that all that much, partially because I did have such a good outline for that first book. And actually my developmental editor, she critiqued that outline for me and really helped me kind of bring it to its best form.
Alex Steele:
Some of the best piece of advise we actually got on multi-POV I believe was from Alida Winternheimer.
Alex Steele:
And her thing on POV was kind of like when you’re telling a story with multiple POVs, only tell the point of view that is interesting at that particular moment. And so the story flows from point to point to point, but it’s hopping heads to a different person that it actually matters to tell the story from that person’s perspective. And in many ways it actually makes it better than a single POV because sometimes, you know, or it can get really challenging to make a single POV book interesting throughout the entire thing because sometimes things need to happen but they’re not necessarily the most interesting.
Stephanie Foxe:
Or they’re not happening to the main character.
Alex Steele:
Yeah or it’s hard to make it interesting for the main character when you’re writing [inaudible 00:16:37]. So it was really fun.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, that is interesting, it’s good advise actually, and timely advise for me because I’m about to embark on my first co-writing project, so it should be interesting. I’m working with another writer, we’re developing a multi-POV, it’ll be two characters. I’m gonna write one character’s point of view and my co-author is gonna write the other one, so that’s something to consider, I’ll consider that as we go into this project.
Alex Steele:
Awesome.
M.D. Massey:
Well, tell me a little bit. Okay, let’s go back to your characters. Each of you tell me about your main characters. What do you think makes your main characters likable or relatable for the reader, or at least somebody that the reader wants to follow along on whatever adventure you have planned for them.
Alex Steele:
So my character, Logan Blackwell. So it’s kind of funny, a lot of the reviews say he’s a chauvinist or he doesn’t like women, or whatever. [crosstalk 00:17:39]
Stephanie Foxe:
I tried really hard not to make him a chauvinist.
Alex Steele:
So that’s the thing, he’s actually not. He just doesn’t like other people at all, like regardless. So he’ll be like, no, I’m driving, or I’m doing this, or everything’s my way, and it comes off as chauvinist I think because he has a female partner, but we really make it a point to say honestly it’s not because you’re a female, I would do the same even if you were a male. He’s not chauvinist, he just doesn’t like other people, and I think in a way that kind of helps relate to, I guess more introverts would relate than extroverts, to not liking other people. Like no, I just want to do it my way, it’s kind of a type A personality.
Alex Steele:
But he is forced to work with other people, and so he does grow as the books go on where he does become a better person. Though, he does still have his moments, because he’s still growing, and we want him to grow over a course of several books, but other than that.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, and one thing I think is fun about Blackwell is he’s very much a go getter. And it’s like the same thing, you like action movies and you like anime, it’s because you can watch the character doing awesome things.
M.D. Massey:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephanie Foxe:
And you root for them to succeed, and he has his internal struggles and stuff like that, but ultimately I think it’s like, you really feel like he’s gonna overcome them. And you can have fun watching the inner play between him and his partner.
Alex Steele:
And the funny thing too is like Lexi Swift often times will steal the show. So even though she is the woman, we made her the most, most awesome female, I don’t know, I don’t wanna swear or anything, but we made her… we gave her a huge hammer, this hammer weights several hundred pounds, alright, because they’re [inaudible 00:19:21], right, they have magical powers. She’s a berserker, and so she’ll just go in and smash people’s faces. I mean, she is in many ways stronger and just better, so we made her awesome so she can steal the show from Logan Blackwell occasionally, and balance it out that way as well.
M.D. Massey:
You know, it’s funny because I think that there’s always a struggle in writing characters, because, you know, you guys are right. Readers, they don’t wanna read about a character that isn’t doing awesome things, you know? They wanna read about a character that is, you know, doing the things that they wish they could do, whether it’s saying the things they wish they could say, or treating other people they way that they wish they could treat other people, generally that they don’t like, or etc. You know, just basically just kicking ass in life and you don’t wanna make your characters like Mary Sue or Marty Stu, but on the other hand, you gotta give them some kick ass stuff to do, so, [crosstalk 00:20:18] it’s interesting that you created a secondary character that can upstage the primary character. I like that.
Alex Steele:
Oh, she has her own problems too. She has some deep-seated family issues is what we’ll say.
M.D. Massey:
Don’t we all?
Alex Steele:
Very true.
Stephanie Foxe:
And then on the other side in the Misfits series, my main character is Amber. I think she’s relatable because she has some really, I guess common struggles. I realized I put a lot of family struggles into the book for all of my characters, actually. So she’s thrust into a situation and kind of given responsibilities she’s not ready for and doesn’t want, and she has a lot of guilt from the death of her twin brother.
Stephanie Foxe:
So, you know, she’s put in a position where she has to protect these people that she doesn’t really know, but I think one of the things that makes her the most relatable is she really wants to do the right thing. Even if it’s the hard way, she’s not gonna choose the easy way out. She’s gonna choose the right thing. So I think that makes people root for her. But on the other hand, she’s also a little bit of a worry wart and it kind of drives some of the other characters crazy. But it’s been really interesting to kind of write her, because she’s kind of brusque but she’s also worried about everyone. She’s kind of like a mother hen but she’s an alpha werewolf, so.
Alex Steele:
[crosstalk 00:21:45] That kind of brings me into a weird point too about both of our stories is that, in a way, both of our stories are more about the family you choose than the family you are born with, so to speak. Especially with the Misfits series, it’s really about bonding with these people that, they don’t know each other, they are all bitten at the same time, and they end up kind of in their own pack, and then they decided to be together because it ends up working for them.
Alex Steele:
And they all three of the pack members, there will be a fourth but that would be a spoiler as far as how that person gets into the pack, but all of the people in this pack that ever become a part of the pack essentially have family problems in some way or another. Not even necessarily bad family problems, like one person, her family is overly lovey.
Stephanie Foxe:
Well yeah. All of them, they have some reason that they don’t fit into society [crosstalk 00:22:41].
Alex Steele:
That too.
Stephanie Foxe:
Because it’s this magical society where power is kind of held up as the ideal. So, you know, you have a witch who doesn’t wanna hurt animals, and you have this girl, she has pink hair but she’s also a lawyer, but she has this intense fear of failure. And you have a homeless seventeen year old who got kicked out by a stepmom. So, they find that they can fit in together even when they can’t fit in with society, and they’re kind of forging their own path even though people are trying to stop them from doing that. So I think they are literally the underdogs. [crosstalk 00:23:20]
M.D. Massey:
So that’s kind of the one common thing that bonds them together, then.
Stephanie Foxe:
Right.
Alex Steele:
Yes.
M.D. Massey:
Besides lycanthropy, or therianthropy.
Alex Steele:
Yeah.
M.D. Massey:
Okay, so let’s switch away from writing for a bit. Tell me, what do you guys like to do when you’re not writing? Now, we did talk about, before the interview, which I thought was so fascinating when I met you guys, that for a while, you guys traveled in an RV. That was your home base, right?
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, we sold our house, we sold most of our belongings, and we bought an RV and we traveled for about a year. It was fun. It was a little bit more challenging than we expected, which we should have expected, but, yeah, we got to see some cool places, I had no idea Idaho was so pretty.
Alex Steele:
Yeah, so we, like she said, we basically traveled for a year and we did an extensive amount of research. I mean months and months of research, and I would say that, the trailer we got was fantastic, but the research that I guess we failed or didn’t really understand was we wanted to stay monthly in all of the locations, and in order to do that, apparently you have to basically book six months to a year out, otherwise they’re all taken.
Alex Steele:
Yeah. And so that was the struggle, aside from moving all the time, which became a struggle for the publishing side of the business and just getting the writing done. Traveling and having to have the stress of finding a new location all the time, it really just took so much time out of our lives. And so we kind of are moving away from that and will probably end up just having an apartment in different locations every year or so or until we find a place. I mean, I don’t know how long we’ll keep this up. We don’t have kids yet, but we’re gonna get as much traveling as we can before we decide to have kids.
Stephanie Foxe:
I know you kind of asked what we like to do for fun and like the honest answer is like we don’t do anything for fun because we don’t have time. We’re trying to fix that, we’re trying to give ourselves one day off a week or something like that, but we’ve just been trying so hard to like get the words down, make the publishing stuff work, and relaxing is still a few months off. But.
Alex Steele:
And fun would be, we actually really do just enjoy travel as some of our fun, so we sacrifice a lot in our daily lives to be able to afford to travel. We traveled a lot before we were authors too, I mean we’ve been to Japan, we’ve been to Sweden and Israel as well and we did that by not drinking alcohol or anything like that and not going out with friends and eating out. We like really penny pinched a lot [crosstalk 00:25:54] because we didn’t have hardly any money when we were younger, but we still made it work in other ways.
Alex Steele:
As far as other fun for me, though, I love hiking, actually. Hiking, I like biking, I’ll even go to the shooting range occasionally, though I haven’t been in a long, long time. And so basically adventure type stuff for me is definitely what I like to do for fun. Stephanie is probably more the shopper.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah.
M.D. Massey:
You know, I have to say that I have a little bit in common with both of you, because I like all that stuff that Alex mentioned, but I also like to shop so.
Stephanie Foxe:
It is fun. It’s more fun when you have, you know, like a bunch of money to spend on it, but, you know.
M.D. Massey:
This is true. Well, you know, it’s interesting though, because you guys, you know, honestly what you’re talking about is starting a publishing business. I remember when I was in my early to mid 20s when I was starting the business that I ran. That was my career before I started writing. I remember for like two, three years straight I just did not have a social life. It was just, you know, sleep, work, business, and all over again, until the business took off, but boy, it was worth it. Definitely, all that sacrifice was definitely worth it.
Alex Steele:
And definitely something that people don’t really talk about whenever they have or start a business, but the sacrifice that you have to make to get it to work, it’s very real, but it’s totally worth it. Like we, neither one of us have worked harder in our lives or more hours in a day in our lives for the money that we make, which isn’t as great as we were making, but it’s way more enjoyable.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, I worked ten years at a corporate job, and it was just really kind of like killing me and my soul towards the end there especially, but I would rather work 80 hours a week doing this than work 40 hours a week doing that, because it’s just so much more fulfilling.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, and I’ll tell you something, when you get to a point to where you can kind of enjoy your leisure time and things are going well for you, I think as writers in any publishing business, I think, I don’t know of a successful indie writer, indie author that doesn’t just bust their tail. But I will say, you’ll start to hear people, you know like when you’re at the movie theater in the middle of the day, people will be like, oh must be nice, and I’m like, you don’t really know what I went through to get here, so. You know. [crosstalk 00:28:15]
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah.
Alex Steele:
Yeah. It’s actually hilarious sometimes to tell people that we’re a publisher, we’re an author. It’s amazing how many people I realize, they’ll be like, well what do you write? I’m like, well we write urban fantasy, and it’s amazing how many people don’t really understand or know what urban fantasy is. Obviously most people aren’t readers, so like as a reader, I’m sure all the readers listening out there are like, how can you not know what urban fantasy is? But it’s just amazing that a lot of people, even though there’s a lot of people that read, probably a greater majority don’t or don’t really read enough to understand what the different genres are.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, it’s funny because I didn’t really understand it either, and I think the first book I read was Emma Bull, what is it, is it War for the Roses, I believe? Which is one of the early urban fantasy books, I think that’s the name of the book, it escapes me now. But then I jumped in, you know, with both feet, and I started reading all kinds of stuff, you know, like Simon Green, and a lot of that old school urban fantasy. Now, it’s amazing how much the genre has taken off and how many writers have jumped in, indie authors and traditionally published authors, you know, it’s just, there’s a ton of urban fantasy out there to read right now, which to me it’s outstanding, it gives me lots of stuff to read.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, it’s awesome.
Alex Steele:
Yeah, I never get to be bored anymore, which is funny, because I also had a funny little quirk side note about my life. I never read until about a year ago when she started writing and actually getting into the publishing, and I started reading her stuff, and then I started trying to understand the market more, so I started reading a bunch of other stuff, and so I’ve actually read like, I think I’ve read 30 or 40 books this year, which isn’t a lot by most readers’ standards, but it was a lot for me considering I hadn’t really read a book since a textbook in high school basically, which was ten, fifteen years ago, something like that. So yeah.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, he reads more than I do now, which sometimes makes me really jealous, but.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah, well, when you’re writing all the time, there are two effects that come out of that. The first thing is time, you know, you don’t have as much time to read, but the second thing is you get a lot more picky about what you read, I think.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, and also I’ve discovered, reading is kind of like my heroin or something, it’s like, if I start a book, I have to finish it like that day.
M.D. Massey:
Oh wow.
Stephanie Foxe:
So that, yeah, it normally means like if I’m reading, I won’t write that day. I can do one or the other.
Alex Steele:
She is an incredibly fast reader, I mean she read the Dune book in one day, she read the last Harry Potter book, which was 800 pages, she read it in eight hours flat, so she can do about 100 pages an hour, so yeah, when she says one day, she means it.
M.D. Massey:
Well, you know, it’s funny, because I used to binge books like that, and I can’t anymore, I have to take them in small bites, because it’s the same thing. If I get sucked into it, then it’s gonna get in the way of everything else, and I think the last series that I binged I think was Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.
Stephanie Foxe:
That is interesting, I’ve only seen the TV show, but it was a really interesting premise.
M.D. Massey:
Books are better, [crosstalk 00:31:12] the books are way better.
Stephanie Foxe:
I’d imagine.
Alex Steele:
I could totally see those being great books.
M.D. Massey:
Yeah. Well okay, we’re kind of coming up to our time limit, so why don’t you guys go ahead and tell us what you have planned for 2019. What do you have coming up?
Alex Steele:
Okay, well so for me, since that’s the first thing really coming out this year, is we just wrapped up The Hallow Beckons, which is Book 3 in my series, and the pre-order is up on all sites. So my books currently are wide. And the pre-order for like, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, those are actually available earlier, they’re available on January 1. And the reason why it’s later on Amazon, it’s available on January 15, is because I’m going to be pulling all of my books wide, so this will be the last chance you have to get the books is through the pre-order, if you’re wide, and then from here on forward I’m going to be putting all books into Kindle and then that’s it.
M.D. Massey:
Okay, so pulling those books off other platforms like iTunes, Kobo, Nook, etc.
Alex Steele:
Correct, so I’ll be putting [inaudible 00:32:18], and that means exclusivity, so that means you’ll be able to read them into the KU platform, which a lot of readers really have that subscription service, especially at urban fantasy, is where I think it’s almost every reader has that it seems, so it’s the way to go for us on that series. So we’re really happy about that, [inaudible 00:32:36] readers currently have it, they’re really liking it, and then for her.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, Misfit Fortune, the third book in the Misfit series, is hopefully coming out mid-February in 2019. And really the goal for 2019 is to get a book out every month or month and a half, so, you know, we’ll try to keep getting the books out as fast as I can write them well.
Alex Steele:
Yes.
M.D. Massey:
Nice, yeah. Excellent. Well, tell the listeners out there where they can find out more about you guys.
Stephanie Foxe:
So, for my books, you can go to stephaniefoxe.com or you can find me on Amazon.
Alex Steele:
And for my books, you can go to alexsteele.net and you can also find me on Amazon there. The best way to get ahold of either of us is Facebook, finding us on Facebook is, we live on Facebook. And quick with our names, so I don’t know since this is a podcast, people might not be reading anything, so Foxe on her last name is F O X E, and Steele on my last name is S T E E L E on that. So it’s a little weird on the last names, we’ve tossed an E in there, that’s just how it was. So people don’t realize, it’s not a phonetic spelling.
M.D. Massey:
I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was just about to jump in and say hey, don’t you spell your names with the, okay, so good. [crosstalk 00:34:04]
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, we spell it weird.
M.D. Massey:
Glad you covered that. Is there anything else you’d like listeners out there to know?
Alex Steele:
No, I mean, we really enjoy all of your all’s support, anytime you come in and make a comment or review a book or anything, we really love it. Joining us in Facebook groups and interacting is just like crack for us. It’s so encouraging to help us get that writing energy, I think.
Stephanie Foxe:
Yeah, if you ever have questions or anything, just reach out, we’re always happy to chat.
M.D. Massey:
Excellent. Very good. Well I wanna thank you, Alex and Stephanie, for coming on the show, and for all the listeners out there, go to amazon.com now, look up Alex Steele with an E and Stephanie Foxe with an E, check out their books.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast! This week M.D. Massey introduces the podcast with a brief “self-interview” and a reading from the prequel novel to his Colin McCool series,