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The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast

Episode 4 With Joe Nassise

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urban fantasy author Joseph NassiseIn this episode of The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast, bestselling urban fantasy author Joe Nassise joins M.D. Massey for an interview and a first-chapter sample reading from his novel, The Heretic.

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https://josephnassise.com

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Click here to purchase Joe’s novel, The Heretic

Transcript of This Week’s Author Interview:

M.D. Massey:

The Heretic an urban fantasy novel by Joseph NassiseHello everyone. This is M.D. Massey and I’m back again with this week’s interview for the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast. Now this week with me I have Joe Nassise. Joe is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than 40 books, including the internationally best-selling Templar Chronicles Series, The Jeremiah Hunt Trilogy and The Great Undead War Series. He also writes epic fantasy under the pen name Matthew Caine and a new take on the Arthurian mythos under the pen name Rowan Casey.

Joe’s work has been nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award and has been translated into half a dozen languages to date. He has written for both the comic and role-playing game industries and also served two terms as the president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror and dark fantasy writers.

Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Nassise:

Thanks. Pleasure to be here.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, man. It’s funny. I had read Joe’s Templar Series, the first couple of books, a few years back and of course new of him in the urban fantasy world of authors. He showed up in my reader’s group a while back. I was like, “Okay well maybe he just showed up here just to check it out or something. I don’t know.” I send him a private message and I was like, “Hey man, if you want to join the group that’s fine but it’s mostly a reader’s group.” He was like, “Oh well I am a reader.”

I took that as a huge, huge compliment. I really appreciate, Joe, that you took the time to check out my books.

Joe Nassise:

Hey, I enjoy them man. When I find good reading I want to hang out and find some more. It was great to be there and I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re releasing next.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, well I’m working hard on book eight but we should be talking about your books instead of mine. Why don’t we start off, let’s get into some questions. Tell us a little bit about your background, both before you became a writer and also how you got into writing.

Joe Nassise:

Okay. I have a degree in, of all things, Soviet politics.

M.D. Massey:

Whoa.

Joe Nassise:

There wasn’t a huge future in that. I went to work in the IT industry for a while. I wrote my first book in college on a dare to win a case of beer. Yeah, one of those-

M.D. Massey:

That’s awesome.

Joe Nassise:

Cool origin stories, right? I had read a thriller that I really couldn’t stand. Apparently I couldn’t shut up about it because my roommate finally said, “Look, I’ll bet you a case of Bass Ale that you can’t finish writing a novel, nevermind write a decent one.” Well that’s throwing down the gauntlet. I worked security nights on campus in this little booth from midnight to 8:00 AM with pretty much nothing to do.

I wrote a novel longhand, proved to him that I could do it, got my case of beer. The whole thing went into a shoebox for about 11 or 12 years until my wife found it when we moved into our first house. She asked to read it and suggested I submit it. I did. Simon & Schuster picked it up and away we went.

M.D. Massey:

Whoa, that’s crazy. Which book was that?

Joe Nassise:

That was a horror novel called River Watch. That was my debut title back in 2001 or 2002.

M.D. Massey:

That’s crazy. It’s also funny because my wife did the same thing to me. She bought me a Kindle way back in the day when they first came out and I started downloading different books. About every fifth book I would complain to her and go, “Aw, this book’s horrible. It’s garbage.” Blah, blah, blah. Then finally I was like, “I could write a better book than this.” Then she turned to me one time and said, “Well why don’t you?” Yeah. It’s funny how a dare can turn into a career.

Joe Nassise:

That is.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, well tell us a little bit about your work and especially what I would say is your flagship series, which is the Templar Chronicles.

Joe Nassise:

Yes. I love urban fantasy, first of all. I’ve been reading it since Jim Butcher started the genre way back when. It’s what I love to read. Obviously it’s what I love to write as well. It’s funny how those go hand-in-hand a lot of times. The Templar Chronicles actually started with a novel, The Heretic, back in 2005. It was the sophomore novel of my career. The series is about modern Templar knights who defend mankind from supernatural threats and enemies. I’ve been writing the series for more than 10 years now.

Book seven just came out, Darkness Reigns. That came out last week. But there’s seven novels, five novellas, a handful of short stories that make up the world. It also caused a spinoff series. The Jeremiah Hunt Trilogy is set in the same world and feature some of the same characters that jump from book to book.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. Tell us first about Cade, who is the protagonist in the Templar Chronicles, and then tell us about Jeremiah Hunt.

Joe Nassise:

Sure. Cade Williams, you’re right, is the main hero of the Templar Chronicles. He leads what they call the Echo Team. It’s the Templar’s special combat or SWAT teams. He’s in charge of investigating various artifacts, supernatural creatures, and things that show up. What’s interesting is he became who he is because he had an encounter with a fallen angel that we call the Adversary in the series. The Adversary slewed Cade’s wife, Gabrielle.

At the start of the series, he is really on a vengeance trip. He’s trying to hunt down the adversary to repay him for what he did to his wife. But as the series goes on, we discover certain things about Gabrielle’s demise and certain things about the Adversary and Cade himself. The story gets much more intricate as the books go along. They can be read as individual volumes but they’re better read if you read them one at a time and in order. But he’s almost an anti-hero more than a hero. The Templars live by a particular code.

Historically they did and I try to mirror that as much as I could in the urban fantasy series. But Cade’s one of those folks who will break the code whenever he needs to in order to reach the end that he’s trying to get to. He’s a darker figure, a bit of a grim figure, but people empathize with him because of the loss he has suffered and what he is trying to do to make that loss right. He’s a bit of a contrast to Jeremiah Hunt. The Jeremiah Hunt series is about a guy who gives up his sight in order to try to find his missing daughter.

He makes this Faustian bargain with this supernatural entity known as the preacher. When he gives up his regular sight, he gains the ability to see the supernatural world around him.

M.D. Massey:

Wow.

Joe Nassise:

His story’s more of a redemption story. He feels guilty for the disappearance of his daughter. He’s trying to deal with his guilt. He’s trying to deal with what his life has become in terms of he’s given everything up for this search, and obviously the ability to see the supernatural certainly takes his life and gives it a hard left turn really quickly. Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

That is an interesting premise.

Joe Nassise:

Thanks, thanks. He’s got two ghostly companions named Whisper and Scream. The three of them, in the first book, they’re searching the city of Boston for his missing daughter Elizabeth.

M.D. Massey:

Now going back to Cade would you say he’s full-on anti-hero or somewhere in between?

Joe Nassise:

I’d say he’s somewhere in between. He’s been given a couple different abilities with the encounter with the Adversary. He comes out of that encounter with the ability of psychometry. He can lay his hands on an object and see the last events that occurred around that object. If you had a watch and you were holding the watch he could come and hold the watch, and he would see that you were holding the watch.

That gives him a little bit of a darker side, particularly with Templar knights or Christian-oriented very do-gooders. They’re the type who warn their enemies before they attack which takes away the element of surprise. That’s one of the rules Cade likes to break a lot. Yeah, he’s not quite a total anti-hero. He’s not like Lucifer from the TV show. He’s much more, I’d say, a guy who’s fallen on a hard place. In that way he is very much like Jeremiah. They both have this event that they’re dealing with and trying to find redemption from.

M.D. Massey:

Just as in Dragons, nothing like a Paladin to screw up a surprise attack, right?

Joe Nassise:

Exactly, right. In his case he’s the wolf among all the Paladins, right?

M.D. Massey:

Nice. I got to ask you because I’m always fascinated with historical mysterious stuff in history, unexplained, whatever. Conspiracy theories and whatnot. I just think it’s fun stuff.

Joe Nassise:

Yep.

M.D. Massey:

I’m always looking at things like that just to get inspiration I guess for stories. But tell me how much of the actual history of the Templars played into creating the Templar Chronicles.

Joe Nassise:

Well I tried to keep much of the organizational structure and the things they believed in intact. In the series, the basic premise is that they went into hiding after they were ex-communicated and their Commanderies burned and rounded up by the French king and Pope Pius XI. But in the wake of World War 2, in our world, Hitler starts using occult powers to try to help him win World War 2. The Templars come back out of hiding and that’s when they establish themselves as a global entity.

They’re a nation-state that exists all across the globe but they exist in secret. The other major nation-states don’t realize they exist. I tried to mirror what they had been and tried to say, “All right, fast-forward several hundred years. What would they be like now in modern times?” They have a rule that they go by, The Templar Code. There are certain things that they will or will not do that govern the way act when they encounter these entities.

They’ve got some historical figures that they have been dealing with longterm. The Adversary is one of them. He’s popped up at various times during history. The Templars have always been there to try to quell his ambitions. By the time we get to the series itself, the present time, he’s getting uppity once again and he’s started to impact things. They are there to stand in the way.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. I’m curious because there’s always different types of antagonists in urban fantasy novels. What’s it Lori Drake said in an interview the other day? She called it the monster of the week.

Joe Nassise:

Yep, yep.

M.D. Massey:

I do that. In the Templar Chronicles is there a main antagonist? The Adversary, is he the common theme throughout all the books or is there more variety?

Joe Nassise:

He is the man behind the scenes.

M.D. Massey:

Okay.

Joe Nassise:

In each one, I guess monster of the week is a good way of looking at it actually, because in book one, The Heretic, the Echo Team faces off against a group of Necromancers. In book two, A Scream of Angels, they face off against an angel that has been brought back via DNA technology.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, really?

Joe Nassise:

In book three, A Tear in the Sky, it’s an army of Chinese vampires. But each of those entities are all driven behind the scenes by the Adversary who is manipulating them and trying to get them to do certain things. As the series progresses, the Adversary comes out more and more into the open and more into the center of events. By the time you get to the final trilogy which will be probably book seven, eight, and nine, you get the final confrontation between Cade and the Adversary himself. You come full circle from the first book in which the Adversary is the one who ended up making Cade who he is. Now we’ll see what happens at the end.

M.D. Massey:

Nice. Yeah. I always love a good, satisfying, major showdown between-

Joe Nassise:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

…the hero and the big bad.

Joe Nassise:

After building for nine books, I better pull it off well.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Yeah, well I’m sure you will.

Joe Nassise:

Right.

M.D. Massey:

I’m sure all the readers out there will be looking forward to reading that. Now, tell me a little bit about your writing process. This is something I’ve been asking all the authors that come on this show that I interview. Tell me about your writing process. What’s your processing for turning your ideas into novels?

Joe Nassise:

Sure. I’m a big structure guy. I believe that books are designed to take our readers on an emotional journey. If they aren’t put together in a certain way, we ultimately fail to do that. If you’ve ever read a book where you get a third of the way through and you have no interest in it, or the middle really starts to sag and the storyline falls apart, that’s usually not a story problem. It’s usually a structure problem.

The emotional highs and lows haven’t been ordered in a proper way in order to tell the story in its best form, I guess would be the way to say that. One of the things I do is I actually run an online course called “Story Engines” which takes a look at story structure and teaches writers how to ply in those emotional beats and build the story from the ground up. I use that process myself.

My typical process is I come up with a basic idea. I want to write a story about, I don’t know, a baseball player. Then I’ll try to build that more into a working concept. Well it’s a baseball player who’s got an arm injury who has to find a way to stay on the team. Now we’ve got a hero, we’ve got stakes, we’ve got a problem that they’re trying to solve. Once I have that general concept, what we might call a premise, then I sit down.

I call it the “vomit on the page process” where every idea I have about this book just gets written down on an index card. Normally when I start thinking about a story, you start envisioning these various scenes. Often that penultimate showdown scenes is one of the first things that you think about. I want to get all that information out of my head before I forget it.

I let that just percolate for a couple days, couple weeks. It depends on the project itself but usually by the time that is done I’ve got 40 to 60 scenes or so that could potentially be in the book.

M.D. Massey:

Interesting.

Joe Nassise:

Then I’ll take those scenes and I’ll build them into my emotional structure. I’ll figure out the actual chronological play of how these events come out. Some of the scenes get left out because they don’t work with the others. Some of them I need to come up with to build bridges between scenes. But by the time I’m said and done, I’ve got the complete story planned out in individual scenes.

The reason for that is really important because I don’t write books in order. It’s one of those really weird processes. My brain just doesn’t work that way. When I sit down to write, I have to write whatever is really enthusing me on that particular day.

M.D. Massey:

Ah.

Joe Nassise:

I’ll write chapter three and then I’ll write chapter 40. Then I’ll write 27, and then I’ll write chapter 39. Whatever is driving me that day. I have to know exactly what’s going to happen before I sit down and write. That lets me chew through. The writing schedule is everyday. Pretty much six days a week. I’ll sit down and say, “Okay. This is what I’m going to write today.”

I’ll churn it out until I’m done with that and that’s that day. Next day I’ll get up and say, “Okay what scene am I enthused to write today?” I’ll write that scene. At the end, once I have a rough draft, pretty much my second draft is going in and just making sure all the bridges and transitions work, and smoothing out and polishing the prose itself. But that’s typical for me. Two drafts and I’m done.

M.D. Massey:

That is a really interesting process for writing a novel. It reminds me of when I did sales copy writing when it was taught that when you’re coming up with headlines, and the headline is supposedly 80 percent of the sales letter, when you come up with headlines for a sales letter you just write every headline that comes to mind on index cards. You throw them all out on a table.

Joe Nassise:

Yep.

M.D. Massey:

Then figure out which ones you want to keep and narrow it down from there. It’s so interesting that you do that with scenes. Then you go and you look at your story structure, and you insert scenes if I’m understanding this correctly in the places where you think they belong. Then wherever you need bridge scenes you develop those after the fact.

Joe Nassise:

Correct. Yeah, I’m a believer in the idea that there are really three game-changing moments in any story. Once you have those … Obviously you got the things that lead up to those scenes and the things that lead down from those scenes. Sometimes you find that you’ve got your cards all laid out and maybe you’ve got an event. I always talk about Fonzie jumping the pool of sharks from Happy Days way back when.

If you’ve got that scene, he’s going to jump the pool of sharks, well maybe you forgot the scene where he gets the motorcycle so he can do that. You need to add that in. On the backend he’s got to come down from that jump. What happens after that? You’re filling in to make sure that the chronological flow of the story is correct and that you’re hitting those real important, emotional beats.

Once you have that, you can pretty much tell if the story’s going to work or not. It’s one of the ways I avoid getting three quarters of the way through a story and hitting a dead wall, or having to rewrite half the book because I’ve screwed up the plot structure. I know before I write word one if the plot structure is going the work. That saves me a lot of time. Previously when I wrote in order, I would do about one book a year. Now I do about five.

Once I found the process that worked for me, that made me far more productive and far more efficient as well.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Five books a year to me it’s a really good, solid, quick writing pace.

Joe Nassise:

It’s a comfortable one for me.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah.

Joe Nassise:

I know guys who do 10 or 12 a month and I just shake my head. I can’t write that fast at all.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, that’s not going to happen for me. Usually I’m doing about four or five books a year right now. I agree, that’s a comfortable pace.

Joe Nassise:

Yep. You get enough done, it’s enough work to support you in the marketplace but you’re not killing yourselves and sticking your elbows in ice buckets everyday.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, well it’s not just that but if I try to push it faster than that I get really burned out and I just don’t want to write.

Joe Nassise:

Yep. Yeah, you want to avoid it. When you find yourself folding laundry instead of writing, you know you’re reaching that burnout phase, right?

M.D. Massey:

That’s the truth. Yeah, or when I find myself wanting to do day job work instead of writing.

Joe Nassise:

Right, right. Yep.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you this and I think you probably already said this but what would you say is your greatest strength as a writer?

Joe Nassise:

Hmm, good question. Structure is definitely one of them. I put stories together well and they’re stories that tend to pull in the reader with emotional hooks. That’s good. I also like action scenes. I’m an archer, I’m a gun enthusiast, and I hold three different black belts in three different martial arts. Action scenes, I love to write those. I think I do those well as well.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, it’s funny. I keep running into urban fantasy authors that are black belts. I think I might have told you this, I don’t know, but I taught martial arts professionally for 20 years.

Joe Nassise:

Yep, yep.

M.D. Massey:

I’m very heavily involved in the martial arts industry. It’s funny because I keep running into all these fantasy authors that are martial artists and I just think it’s great.

Joe Nassise:

Well how can you write a fight scene if you haven’t actually been there yourself?

M.D. Massey:

Yeah.

Joe Nassise:

I started out as an amateur boxer, a featherweight boxer.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, that’s cool.

Joe Nassise:

Then from there I got into Tae Kwon Do in college and competed nationally in that. I’ve done Tang Soo Do and Kyusho Jitsu. All of those things end up in my writing somewhere. I find you can tell someone who has never paid attention to the way a fight evolves in their writing. I try to be as authentic as possible without obviously cataloging every single little twitch and move.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. It’s funny because I think in a lot of ways … It was probably back in the ’80s when the Ninja craze was such a big deal, but I read those Nicholas Linnear ninja novels.

Joe Nassise:

Yes, yeah. White Ninja and all the rest of them, yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Eric Van Lustbader, he was just so good at immersing you in what felt like a very authentic but yet technically sound fight scene.

Joe Nassise:

Right.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. I loved those books. They were just great.

Joe Nassise:

Yeah, he picked up the Bourne Identity series after Robert Ludlum died.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, okay.

Joe Nassise:

He writes those now. Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

That’s winning the writer lottery in a way.

Joe Nassise:

Exactly, right?

M.D. Massey:

That’s the author lottery for sure. Yeah. Let me ask you this. You’ve obviously been at the craft for quite some time. Ten years seems like an eternity in today’s world of hybrid indie publishing and digital publishing.

Joe Nassise:

Yep.

M.D. Massey:

Tell me this, if you were to start all over again today is there anything you would do different?

Joe Nassise:

Interesting question. I began my career in traditional publishing. I was doing one or two books a year. I wrote for Simon & Schuster first, then I went over to Harper Collins. I worked on a series for Harlequin called the Rogue Angel Series, which was an Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider story. I began in that career but then in 2010 I started doing some Indie publishing when the Kindle came out and all that stuff. That obviously revolutionized our lives.

M.D. Massey:

Your were right there at the head of the pack, so to speak. Right there-

Joe Nassise:

Yeah. Early on I don’t think I jumped in with both feet. I had one foot in each world. I was trying to do traditional projects but experimenting a little with self-publishing. Mainly books that had come back to me. The rights had reverted from New York and I had them in my control again. I put them out self-published. Now probably 90 percent of my career is self-publishing and I still do a few occasional projects with New York.

I think if I would do it all over again I would have made that switch more wholeheartedly early on. 2010 through 2014 or so I could have put a lot more effort into my self-publishing and released quicker and more frequently. But I was still searching for that traditionally published deals. If I had to change I think I would have said, “Hey I’m making more money the other way. Everything’s under my control. I’m having a heck of a lot more fun. Why am I bothering?”

But you grow up in a certain sphere of influence and you think that’s the best way to do things. It took me a while to see the light, so to speak.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. I have a friend here that I’ve made locally. He’s a traditionally published thriller author. We’ve met a couple of times over coffee and I’ve discussed indie publishing with him. He’s starting to dip his toes in indie publishing waters. What’s interesting to me is just he’s been traditionally published for decades and decades. The indie publishing world is just baffling to him.

Joe Nassise:

Yeah. I see that a lot in the people I know as well. It’s a total switch of the mindset. You really got to turn off everything that you were taught to believe earlier and look at everything from a whole new light. Those people who have, have done pretty well. I think anytime we can control our characters, we can control our own intellectual property, we can control what we want to do with our series, I think that benefits writers in general.

I have another series, The Great Undead War, which is a World War 1 steampunk series with zombies. The German army pretty much. Zombie-shot troops.

M.D. Massey:

Nice.

Joe Nassise:

Manfred Von Richtofen is actually the imperial German leader. The rights are still controlled by Harper Collins. Here we are five or six years after the second book came out. I would love to continue that series but it’s hard to do that when somebody else controls the rights to the first two books that aren’t really all that available all that well anymore.

Things like that where you want to kick yourself like, “Ugh, if I had just put that out myself I’d be on book seven or eight at this point in that series.” All of that profit would have come to me. I look at writing both as a pleasure and as a business. That’s what puts food on my family’s table. Being able to control the works that you’ve generated is a big thing in my mindset these days.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, I see that topic coming up a lot in the author groups that I frequent on Facebook. Reversion of rights, rights reversion, and getting them from the traditional publisher.

Joe Nassise:

Yep.

M.D. Massey:

There seems to be a huge issue with people who have gone the traditional route first.

Joe Nassise:

Yeah because we sign contracts where that was the only option back then. Then as these new technologies and these new ways of doing things have come out then we’re stuck with contract language that gets a little ambiguous. When that contract language gets a little ambiguous of course the publisher’s going to view it from there side, and the writer is going to view it from there side. Trying to solve that you end up in court and spending a fortune.

It’s easier to just wait and let the rights run out. Whereas contracts I’ve signed in Europe, European contracts tend to be very time-specific, five to seven years. Then the rights automatically revert. American contracts tend to be, “The rights revert after a certain amount of time when x number of books have been sold for x number of consecutive periods of time.” It’s a lot more convoluted.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, the stars all have to line up for you to get your get your rights, basically.

Joe Nassise:

Right, right. The stars and the planets with the comets going in the right direction. Then maybe you get your rights back. That said, I did just get the rights back to the Jeremiah Hunt Trilogy. Was originally published art cover by Tor. They were great. The time came around, the rights came back. Last month I put all three books back out under new covers. I’m excited to see that series gaining new readers again.

M.D. Massey:

Congratulations for getting those back, by the way.

Joe Nassise:

Thank you.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. It’s a big deal. It’s almost like not seeing your children for years and then all of a sudden they come back home.

Joe Nassise:

Right, they show up and they need to be fed again. Right?

M.D. Massey:

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. It’s interesting for those listeners out there, it’s an interesting facet of being an indie author. You constantly have to tend to your back list in order to keep it selling.

Joe Nassise:

Right.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Okay let me ask you this, and I think you might have already answered this as well, but what do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Joe Nassise:

I like archery. I mentioned that. I like going down to the gun range and shooting a few rounds. I love to play board games. My wife and I are big on board games. We’re big on going to the movies. I probably see one movie a week, at least. We binge-watch Netflix a lot.

M.D. Massey:

Oh yeah.

Joe Nassise:

We’re your average American couple.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, nothing wrong with that. By the way did you binge Travelers?

Joe Nassise:

I have not. I just watched the first episode probably earlier this week. We’re just getting into it.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, I got sucked into that series. When season three came out I watched the whole thing in, I don’t know, a couple days.

Joe Nassise:

We’ve been big on British crime dramas lately. Broadchurch, Shetland, Hinterland, The Fall. That’s been consuming us while we wait for Game of Thrones, right?

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Geez. Oh my gosh. The thing is, it’s the final… I can’t even say it. I can’t even say final season.

Joe Nassise:

Yep. Yep, nope.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, it’s painful. Painful. All right well let me ask you this. As far as reading goes, I know that a lot of authors will say, and I’m the same way, they’re like “When I’m writing, I don’t read fiction.” Or, “When I’m writing I don’t read my own drama.” Which is typically what I do. But what is your favorite series or your favorite author to read? What are things that you like to read when you have downtime?

Joe Nassise:

Sure. I’ll say first I’m the opposite of you. I tend to read more when I’m working on a project than less.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, wow.

Joe Nassise:

Yeah. I like to immerse myself in other writers in the genre because that tends to prime the pump for me.

M.D. Massey:

Oh.

Joe Nassise:

It generates more creative energy. But my favorite series out there is a series of books by John Connolly called the Charlie Parker thrillers. They are a series of books set in Maine about a private investigator but they’re more supernatural thrillers.

M.D. Massey:

Interesting.

Joe Nassise:

There’s events that go on that very slowly as the series progresses more and more of this supernatural background to what’s going on gets revealed. They’re fascinating. Connolly is a phenomenal writer. Part of the reason I love them is they’re set in a part of Maine where … I grew up in Boston and my family would vacation to that part of Maine every summer. The places he’s writing about I’m intimately familiar with.

He does such a great job of bringing those places to life, despite that fact I don’t think he had ever visited Maine before book eleven. He’s an Irish writer that has been writing these things for years without ever setting foot in the town that he’s writing about. I found that fascinating as a writer, that he could bring it to life so well without having been there in the early part of the series. He’s my all-time favorite.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, that’s nuts. I have to write in settings that I’m familiar with. I can’t imagine writing … Oh, wow.

Joe Nassise:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Nine books in and then he finally visits?

Joe Nassise:

That’s what I understood, yeah. Just before book 10 he went over. Yeah. I hope he keeps going. He’s on, I don’t know, 13 or 14 at this point. If he keeps putting them out, I’ll keep reading them.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, I’m going to check it out because I’ve been looking for a series to sink my teeth into. I like that supernatural thriller thing.

Joe Nassise:

Yep.

M.D. Massey:

Jonathan Maberry has the Joe Ledger novels which I love. Every time a new one comes out, I just devour it.

Joe Nassise:

Yep. It’s funny. One of my influences early on was Clive Barker. I had a chance to meet him at an art showing in the early ’90s. We chatted a little bit about writing back then. One of my favorite novels is, well it’s actually a novella, his book Cabal which became the movie Nightbreed.

M.D. Massey:

Ah.

Joe Nassise:

The story of a city of monsters. The story looked at who is the real monster? The monster themselves or the humans that are hunting the monsters? I loved that story for years. Just recently I was able to partner with Clive to produce a book called Midian Unmade which was an anthology of short stories that took place after the end of Cabal. At the end of Cabal the city gets destroyed and the monsters disperse into the world.

Midian Unmade talks about where those monsters went and what happened to them. It was fascinating to be able to work not just with someone that I had looked up to as fellow writer for years, but being able to play in the world he had created as well, produce those stories, and pick and choose the selection for the anthology. It was just a dream come true.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. That’s funny because I see authors that are out there that are doing anthologies in series and worlds that I like to read. I’m like, “Gosh that would be so much fun.”

Joe Nassise:

One of the ones we did, Harper Collins hired me to edit a project called Urban Allies, which we took urban fantasy series and partnered up two of those writers to write a collaboration.

M.D. Massey:

Ah, yes.

Joe Nassise:

People like Kelly Armstrong and Seanan McGuire, or Carrie Vaughn. Joe Maberry and Larry Correia did a combination story from the Joe Ledger Series on Maberry’s side and Correia’s Monster Hunters International Series. They were paired up to do a collaboration. It was 10 collaborative stories.

M.D. Massey:

I need to hunt them down.

Joe Nassise:

Oh, it’s a great book. I loved it. I had so much fun working with other writers who are so ingrained into the world of urban fantasy. The fans like it too, which was always a bonus.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. I like Larry Correia’s work. His pacing is great but then also he gets all his gun stuff right to the point where I learn something new when I read every book.

Joe Nassise:

He’s such a huge gun enthusiast, too, that I couldn’t imagine him screwing something like that up.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. That’s funny too because the first serious I wrote was post-apocalyptic. A lot of people who read post-apocalyptic novels, they’re gun guys, gun gals. Some of that readership came over to my urban fantasy series. I used a term improperly. Colin always carries a Glock because I love Glocks. He said, “Locked and loaded.” This guy took me to task and I thought he was never going to leave it alone. You got to get your stuff right I guess.

Joe Nassise:

Well in the Templar Chronicles I say that the church forgave the Templars when they came back after World War 2. I had someone write to me and say, “They were ex-communicated. There’s no way this would ever happen.” About two weeks later, they found a document in the Vatican archives that show that the ex-communication had been forgiven by a subsequent Pope and that they actually had been unbranded as heretics.

I couldn’t resist. I had to send the article to that gentleman.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, like, “In your face.”

Joe Nassise:

I didn’t mean it that way but I could see it might have been taken that way. But I was just so astounded that just after that conversation took place they found this actual historical document that said what I had envisioned had actually happened. That was neat.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. I don’t know. Sometimes you just got to let things go, but yeah. That’s always satisfying to people in real life.

Joe Nassise:

Well and we all have these screw-ups, right? In Riverwatch, my very first novel, it had been read by myself. My wife had gone through it. My editor, the senior editor for Pocket Books, had gone through it twice. The copy editor. All these people look at this text multiple times before it goes to print. In the first print run the characters go up to the third story of a building and they come down from the second story. They somehow magically teleported from the third floor to the second floor without anybody knowing about it, because all of us missed it in seven different proofreads.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, yeah.

Joe Nassise:

Sometimes you have those little errors that, “Hey, oh well. It’s just life.”

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Early on I was guilty of characters suddenly changing last names.

Joe Nassise:

Right, exactly.

M.D. Massey:

It’s like, “Oh. Sorry about that. I’ll fix it.” That’s the good thing about digital publishing though is that you can fix things so quickly.

Joe Nassise:

That’s right. If you have an error you can change it tomorrow and not worry about it. Yep.

M.D. Massey:

All right, Joe. Well we’re coming up on time. Let me ask you this first. I know you just had a book release. Let’s hear about that and then also tell us what you have planned in 2019.

Joe Nassise:

Sure. Latest book just came out last week, Darkness Reigns. It is book seven in the Templar Chronicles Series. Coming up in 2019 will be the final two volumes in that series; Nephilim Rising and Angel’s Regret. Probably spring and fall if all plans go right. In the meantime I’m writing a horror series with my friend and fellow writer Tom Levine. We’re doing a take on the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

M.D. Massey:

Ooh, nice.

Joe Nassise:

The first volume of that drops in January. We’ll probably drop one a month thereafter or somewhere along those lines. That’s what’s in the immediate future.

M.D. Massey:

Nice, okay. Finally, before we cut off, why don’t you tell everybody out there where they could find out more about you, where they could find your books and so forth?

Joe Nassise:

Cool. Website is josephnassise.com. The last name is spelled N-A-S-S-I-S-E. I’m also at the same place on facebook.com/joenassise. Twitter is twitter.com/jnassise. Basically plug in my last name and you’ll find me.

M.D. Massey:

Excellent, excellent. Joe I want to thank you for coming on the show. This is a budding project, as you know, for me. I appreciate you coming on, taking time out of your writing schedule to do this. Now you’ve got me interested in that four horsemen in the apocalypse project. You got to let me know when that book drops. It sounds exciting.

Joe Nassise:

I will. Thanks for having me today. It’s been great fun.

M.D. Massey:

Excellent, excellent. All right, everybody. Stick around because in just a minute you are going to be treated to a sample reading of one of Joe’s books by the author himself.

Tagged With: Joe Nassise, Joseph Nassise, podcast, Urban Fantasy, Urban Fantasy Authors, Urban Fantasy Books, urban fantasy novels

Episode 3 with Lori Drake

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Early Grave an urban fantasy novel by Lori DrakeIn this episode of The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast, Lori Drake joins M.D. Massey for an interview and sample chapter reading. Lori is a professional book editor and the author of The Grant Wolves series, which currently consists of four full-length novels.

Click here to check out the first book in her series, Early Grave.

Featured Author’s Links:

https://loridrakeauthor.com

Lori’s page on Facebook

Check out Early Grave on Amazon

Author Interview:

M.D. Massey:

Hey everybody, this is M.D. Massey and I am back with this week’s author interview for The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast. And this week I have with me Lori Drake, who is the author of the Grant Wolves series. Now, I’m gonna read directly from her bio, because I thought it was really amusing.

So it says, “Disenchanted with her mundane human existence, Lori loves spinning tales of magic and creatures of myth and legend existing in the modern world. When not indulging in these flights of fancy, she enjoys cooking, crafting, gaming, and of course, reading. She is also a bit of a weather geek and would like to go storm chasing one day. Lori lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two adorable kittens that don’t understand why mommy doesn’t like them climbing onto her laptop and batting at the screen. The kittens, that is. It would be really strange if her husband did that.”

M.D. Massey:

So, Lori, welcome to the podcast.

Lori Drake:

Thank you. I guess I need to update that bio. I’m up to three crazy cats. So …

M.D. Massey:

Three crazy cats and also four books, which is outstanding. Yeah, so you are the author of the Grant Wolves series. So let’s start off with that. Why don’t you give us a little bit of background about the series and the characters?

Lori Drake:

Sure. Well, the Grant Wolves series is about wolves, as one might expect. And my werewolves happen to be a family of werewolves that are also a pack. So the series starts out with one of the pack members dying and it’s a great big mystery as to who killed him. And why he’s still sticking around as a ghost. So, yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. So do you have one main character in the series? Or is there two main characters?

Lori Drake:

It’s two, it’s a dual or POV series.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. All right. Cool. So for those you that are listening, just to let you know, Lori actually, I met her at a local chapter meeting which I was speaking at for the indie author society here in Austin. And she approached me about doing editing work. So she’s done some editing work for me and we’re looking at doing a collaboration in 2019, doing a spinoff series for my main series, Junkyard Druid.

M.D. Massey:

So hopefully we’ll be able to do a dual POV series together in the next couple of months.

Lori Drake:

I’m super excited.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it for sure. So let me ask you this, okay? So tell me about the shifters in your books. Are they like classic shifters? Are they full wolf shifters? What’s their deal?

Lori Drake:

Well, I tried to go sort of a different direction from the standard werewolf tales. So they are werewolves but they aren’t cursed by the moon or anything. They can shift at any time that they want to and they have a relationship with the moon such that when the moon is full they’re strong and at their peak. And that tends to come out in them in different ways. Like one of my main characters gets super OCD detail-oriented during the full moon because it’s just her thing. And you know, another character gets super energized.

Lori Drake:

But they also don’t have any half wolf, half human forms, just they’re human. And then their shifting is more of a magic thing than a physical thing. So when they shift forms, they just become a wolf.

M.D. Massey:

Oh, okay. And I’ve always found that interesting because to me, you know, I kind of grew up on those classic, those kind of Bela Lugosi movies, you know? And so I always see a werewolf in my mind as being a human hybrid, a human wolf hybrid. And so shifting into a full wolf form, I think that’s also kind of cool too.

Lori Drake:

Yeah, I actually have a friend who is really, I hate to say werewolf-phobic, but she just hates that half human, half wolf transformation. And when they show it in movies, they always show it in profile so you get to watch the face transforming and elongating. And it just gives her the creeps. And she’s one of my best friends and I really wanted her to read my books, so I kind of wrote these on purpose to not have an in between form, just so it wouldn’t freak her out.

M.D. Massey:

Well, that’s kind of funny and that’s a really good friend, when you modify your whole story and series just so your friend will read it.

Lori Drake:

Well, this friend actually got me writing to start with. I mean, I’ve always been a writer, but she really sort of inspired me to try writing a novel. And this was not my first novel, it was probably my third or fourth novel. But if she hadn’t inspired me to write, I may never have written that first book that really got me started.

M.D. Massey:

And so you have you four books in the series. I’m on your website, I’m looking at them. The covers look great. I love the covers. They are awesome.

Lori Drake:

Thank you.

M.D. Massey:

So the books that you write, I know there’s kind of a disparity in the urban fantasy genre. Some people write books that are about 50,000 words. Some people write books that are closer to a 100,000 words. You know, I’m kind of somewhere in the middle. So where are these books at word count-wise?

Lori Drake:

The first book is pretty close to 100K. The other three are a little shorter. They average between 78 to 90.

M.D. Massey:

Nice.

Lori Drake:

On the long end, but kind of in between.

M.D. Massey:

I’ll tell you, you know, it’s funny. The last novel that I released in the Colin McCool series was, it came in right at 85,000 words. And one of the first reviews I got was, “This was way too short.” And I’m like, ah, you’re killing me.

Lori Drake:

You’re like, “It’s really long.”

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. It took so long to write. So yeah, but that’s cool. It’s funny too because I was talking to another author, Alex Steele, that I interviewed in the second episode of the podcast. And he was talking about Shayne Silvers. Now, Shayne likes to write books that are close to 100,000 words. And so I think it’s interesting because you’ll see people, you know, that are kind of like, they’re on both ends of the spectrum that are having success in urban fantasy. So I think that people are writing shorter books. I just think they’re cranking them out faster.

Lori Drake:

Yeah, I think so too. And I’ve heard it said that Kindle Unlimited authors tend to lean towards the shorter side. But I don’t know. I like to give my readers a good bang for their buck. So I try to make them, extend the length.

M.D. Massey:

And there’s also that thing where it’s like, you know, they always say and it’s kind of clichĂ© but you know, how long’s a book supposed to be? Well, as long as it takes to tell the story. But, you know, it’s really true.

Lori Drake:

Yeah, for sure. And that’s how I ended up with one that was really long. And the others that are not quite as long.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, because you got a good story to tell, you know? Okay, so let’s switch gears a little bit. So you filled us in on your books and series. Why don’t you, if you would, give us a little bit about your background. Tell me, you know, you said your friend got you into writing. Tell me, how did you develop an interest in writing?

Lori Drake:

Well, I think I’ve always enjoyed writing, even in school. English was always one of my favorite and best subjects, between reading and writing. So I just fell away from it for a long time once I got out of school. And I got into doing online role playing games. They were text-based, and so basically everyone was playing a character. And you’re basically writing a story but you’re writing it in little paragraphs.

Lori Drake:

So I got really into like what I call collaborative storytelling in that way and I think that that sort of pulled me out of writing for a long time and I had a hard time telling a whole story by myself, if that makes sense, because I was so used to other people contributing to the story. So then I started doing National Novel Writing Month, which is what my friend got me into. She did it for years. And she was like, you have to do National Novel Writing Month if you want to write a book. And I’m like, I’ve never written a book. I don’t even know what I’d write about.

Lori Drake:

So I sat down in, I think 2007 was my first NaNo and I had a vague idea for a book and I just pantsed the whole thing and did the whole thing in one month. And that was an adventure and it kind of hooked me. And then from that point on I was like, you know, I want to keep writing these books. It’s a lot of fun. And at that time, I had no designs on publishing. I was just doing it because I really enjoyed it.

Lori Drake:

And then it wasn’t until much later that I started meeting other authors locally and they’re like, well, if you’re writing these books, why don’t you publish them? And I’m like, well, you know, it might be nice to publish because I don’t have any kids, so I’m not really leaving a legacy behind. So you know, maybe I could publish them just for my friends and family. And then my friends came back and were like, why? Why would you just do that? Why don’t you actually sell them to people? People will read them? And I was like, okay. That sounds great. So that’s how I got into it.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. It’s funny because I have friends that every November they write a novel for NaNoWriMo, which I’ve never done but I think it’s really cool. But then they never publish and I’m like, I keep telling them, I’m like, you’ve got to publish these books, you know? Pick one that you really like that you think is really strong. Get an editor and get it out there. I don’t know. I guess some people, you know, they’re just like, I’m just writing for my own … But do you think a lot of that is fear, though?

Lori Drake:

Some of it, I think. And I don’t know, I mean just people have different aspirations. I mean, I have a friend who’s a really good writer. And she actually has a PhD in like English Lit or something like that. She writes amazing stories. She’s actually mentored me on plot and structure. And I keep telling her, you write wonderful stories. You really should publish them. She’s like, eh, I just don’t want to. And I’m like, okay, but you’re writing, like, you try to write every day. You really love writing. She’s like, I know. I just don’t want to do it.

M.D. Massey:

That’s really interesting. But, you know, I can kind of relate to that because when I first got into martial arts training, I had no aspirations of owning a studio, running a dojo, teaching classes, you know? I just wanted to train and I just wanted to practice for my own satisfaction. So I guess it’s kind of the same thing, you know? And I didn’t want to go into competition either. I just liked to just train. I just loved to train and loved to do it on my own all the time. So I guess it’s kind of the same thing, you know, it’s just a personal expression and it brings you satisfaction and joy, so why not?

Lori Drake:

For sure, yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Let me ask you this, okay? Since you started writing in 2007 and you started publishing in what, 2017?

Lori Drake:

2017, yeah.

M.D. Massey:

2017. So that’s ten years, okay? So let me ask you this. If you were starting all over again as a writer, is there anything that you would do differently?

Lori Drake:

Yeah, I would have started publishing sooner.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah?

Lori Drake:

I mean, I would have stuck with it. I mean, I didn’t write a novel every year in between. I think I wrote three novels before the one that I ended up publishing. And I took some time off from writing. I went back to school. I went back to school and got an English degree along the way and that cut into my reading and writing time. But I think, yeah, if I could go back and do anything again, I probably would have started with that first manuscript and would have been like, let’s clean this up and get it out there because the sooner you start, the better off that you are. But that was a whole other ball game in 2007. So who knows?

M.D. Massey:

Well, you know, 2010 was the big watershed moment for authors, wasn’t it?

Lori Drake:

Yeah, I missed the boat on that one.

M.D. Massey:

So did I.

Lori Drake:

But I got on as soon as I could.

M.D. Massey:

Well, you know, it’s funny because I started publishing nonfiction books first. And it didn’t even occur to me to start publishing fiction until my wife kind of suggested it to me. And I, the same thing, I wish I would have started earlier. I really do.

Lori Drake:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

So let’s talk about this, okay? I want to ask you, as far as because you have a degree in English and you’ve been writing for a long time, which genres and authors do you enjoy reading most and who are your greatest influences as a writer?

Lori Drake:

Oh, that’s a tough one. Well, I do love reading urban fantasy, obviously, I would say. I also really enjoy post-Apoc fiction and I intend to write some someday. But I haven’t quite gotten to that. Writing influences, I mean, I’d probably say Stephen King is a big one because I read a lot of Stephen King when I was growing up. My mom had almost all of his books, especially the stuff from the 80s and the late 70s and the 80s.

Lori Drake:

As far as urban fantasy writers, I have to say my influences are pretty standard. I mean, there’s of course, Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison. But I think my favorite urban fantasy series of all time is Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series. I really dug that. I mean, as a weather geek, I mean, I was all about it. I’m like, oh my gosh, this chick can control the weather and the weather is [inaudible 00:12:51] and it’s angry. It was just, it really lit a fire in my brain. I love Rachel Caine’s pacing. That’s always something that I struggle with, is pacing in my own writing. And she just, when you start that first book, it’s like racing down a highway the whole way. It’s like you finish and you’re like, whew.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, you know, and see, I love that. And I can tell you and I won’t mention anyone in particular, but there are authors that I read that I love their books and it’s not because they have the strongest prose or because they are the best at description or plot and structure. But they have phenomenal pacing in their books. I just want to dive into a book and get sucked in and basically not come up for air until I finish the book.

Lori Drake:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

So as far as that pacing thing goes, how did that inform your writing and your writing process?

Lori Drake:

Well, I mean, for me, my first book isn’t greatly paced, so that’s a tough one but I did better in the second book where just sort of keeping things moving, keeping things happening, keeping the characters on their toes and like kind of pulling the rug out from under them so they don’t really know which way is up. And it’s just kind of making every scene, every choice matter for the purposes of both the current story and the coming story.

Lori Drake:

So yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Okay, so does that come out like making every scene count? Does that come out in your planning process when you’re plotting? Or do you focus on that more when you’re actually writing each scene?

Lori Drake:

A little bit of both. But definitely while I’m writing, pacing is on my mind a lot. I’m notorious for kind of going off of my outline and like, okay, I think I’m going to do this here. And I was just writing something the other day and I had these two characters meet for the first time, and then while I was writing I decided that one of them was going to be like a type of being that this person had never even heard of before. Why not?

M.D. Massey:

Nice. But that’s one of the funny things about writing fantasy, is you can pretty much do anything, right?

Lori Drake:

Yeah, yeah.

M.D. Massey:

So I don’t know about you, but one of the things I like to do when I’m writing a new novel is I like to try to find creatures from mythology and folklore that I haven’t written about before. Do you do that as well?

Lori Drake:

Not a lot because I don’t really focus on a creature of the week kind of deal with my stories, at least in the series. I mean, the series is a lot more about family and connection than it is about a supernatural threat that’s come in. I mean, they are threatened. They are people trying to harm them, but it’s not necessarily like, oh, there’s this new supernatural threat that we have to go and defeat. It’s just not quite that kind of story.

M.D. Massey:

So do you like Supernatural or not?

Lori Drake:

I do. Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. Because you’re like “creature of the week.” I’m like, oh, she must be supernatural, then.

Lori Drake:

I don’t mean to disparage the creature of the week. I just meant that’s not what’s in my story. I mean, in your story, Colin is like a druid champion and he goes out and fights for people. And these people, the stories are more about what’s happening in their world. They’re not championing for the little guy. They’re just trying to do their thing and life keeps getting in the way. You know what they say about the best made plans, you know?

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I’d tell anybody I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a million times. I like to write kind of pulpy stories, you know? Yeah, and I guess that’s because when you’re kind of weaned on Robert Howard and stuff, that’s what happens.

So let me ask you this. As far as turning your ideas into novels because this is a question that always comes up. I get this asked so many times. People always say well, how do you come up with ideas? I’m like ideas are easy. It’s turning them into stories that’s tough. So what does your process look like when you have an idea for a novel and you’re ready to turn it into a story? You know, what process do you go through?

Lori Drake:

Oh, wow. Yeah, see I’m currently going through that process right now and it’s hard because especially the deeper you get into a series. I tend to have a lot of ideas for side plots and then I have to figure out what the main plot is. Like what’s the driving plot in the story versus all the little side things that are going to kind of get in the way or just complicate matters, you know? So it can be really tough and I think sort of what it comes down to is I start thinking about the characters and where do I want them to start? Where do I want them to end? How are they going to change over the course of the story? And that kind of tells me what they need to encounter in order to get there? So what kind of challenge do I need to throw at them?

So I think I really start and end with the characters and I don’t always immediately have an idea for the overall plot when I first start. My first book started out with well, I’m going to write about wouldn’t it be cool if werewolves were ballroom dancers? That’s how my first book started. I was like, you know, because why not? They’re fast, they’re agile, they live a long time. They don’t age as quickly so they could outpace these 25, 30 year old dancers even though they’re older. So it’s like, yeah, that’s what I started with. I started with werewolf ballroom dancers and I’m like, so now what? Okay. One of them’s going to die, so I killed one of them at the very beginning. And that’s how that started.

But yeah, I’m a little bit of a pantser. I don’t always have a fully structured outline when I sit down to write my books, although I try really hard to do as much as I can ahead of time because it’s lot less stressful if you know where you’re going to go. Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Well, I will definitely, when I’m planning a novel, I will write a very detailed outline. And then somewhere in act two, I’ll take a sharp left turn. And then I got to bring myself back on track to bring it back to the ending that I had planned originally, you know?

So if you are a pantser, how detailed is your plot outline? Or do you even work with a plot outline at all?

Lori Drake:

I always start with something, even if it’s just like a general statement of what the book is. You know, like this book is about so and so who goes to do this and encounters this. That’s at least where I start with just a bare minimum. I’m trying really hard to do more detailed outlines. I’ve been learning a lot about the system called Story Grid and how you can have these, you know, certain touchstones in your story that will help make your story stronger.

So I’ve been trying to determine what’s the global story and what are these different touch points that are going to exist to make the story stronger? So that’s what I’m trying to do now and with varying degrees of success, but you know, it’s good to keep it in mind too as I write, because I don’t always have that long outline. That I know that every scene, I want to have some sort of a turn in it so that it doesn’t end on the same note that it starts on and that’s kind of floating around in the back of my mind. And I know, okay, I’m coming up on 20%. This is where I need to start to get into act two. So we’re going to start here.

So it’s kind of keeping all that structure stuff in my brain, even though I don’t always have an outline.

M.D. Massey:

So you’re kind of like a pure pantser that’s kind of moving toward being a tweener but not quite.

Lori Drake:

I’m more a tweener.

M.D. Massey:

Yep.

Lori Drake:

Honestly. I mean, I always have stuff written down and some semblance of an outline. It’s just not usually very fleshed out. I’m trying to move towards more fleshed-out outlines. I know that it’ll help me write faster and that’s what I want. I want to spend less time worrying about what’s going to happen next and just writing it.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it’s funny because with today’s readers, I mean, output speed is huge, you know? I’ve heard from a couple of authors who’ve told me, you know, yeah, I published my first book or my first couple of books and then it took too long between the last book I published and the subsequent novels and it’s almost like readers forgot about the series.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, so that’s something you really, you don’t want to happen. So yeah, I get the whole writing speed thing. So let me ask you this. Besides, you know, our planned collaboration which is in the works right now, what else do you have planned for 2019? What do you have coming up?

Lori Drake:

Well, I’m going to be appearing in three anthologies in 2019, so that’s exciting. I’m going to be finishing off the Grant Wolves series with books five and six. And I’m going to be starting a new series, too. I haven’t quite decided what that one’s going to be yet. It’s either going to be something in the Grant Wolves universe, or it’s going to be something completely different.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. So no working title yet, nothing like that? It’s just-

Lori Drake:

No working titles yet, no.

M.D. Massey:

You know you’re going to do it, though.

Lori Drake:

Yeah, for sure.

M.D. Massey:

All right, cool. So we’re coming up on time for the interview today. So what I want to ask you is, you know, can you tell our listeners, number one, where they can find out more about you online? Where they can find your books and so forth? And if you want to also and I’ll leave this up to you, but feel free to put in a plug for your editing services as well.

Lori Drake:

Okay. Well, you can find my books at Loridrakeauthor.com. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter at loridrakeauthor. If you’re interested in line edits or proofreading, you can find me on Facebook at Lori Edits, and that’s pretty much me.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. Cool. Excellent. Well, Lori, it was great having you on the podcast today. And like I said, hopefully sometime in 2019, Lori and I will be collaborating on a spinoff series in The World Beneath, you know, the world of Colin McCool. So you guys can look forward to that. Go to Amazon. Look up Lori Drake, look up her books. Check out Early Grave, which is her first series on Amazon, the first in the Grant Wolves series. And stick around because shortly, you’re going to hear from Lori. She’s going to narrate a first chapter sample from one of her books.

Tagged With: Lori Drake, podcast, shifters, Urban Fantasy, Urban Fantasy Authors, Urban Fantasy Books, urban fantasy novels, werewolves

Episode 2 with Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele

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Misfit Pack urban fantasy novelIn 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.

Featured Author Links:

Alex Steele’s Website

Alex’s Facebook Page

Stephanie Foxe’s Website

Stephanie’s Facebook Page

Buy Misfit Pack on Amazon

Buy Stolen Trinkets on Amazon

Author Interview:

Stolen Trinkets urban fantasy novelM.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.

Tagged With: podcast, Urban Fantasy, Urban Fantasy Authors, urban fantasy novels

Podcast Episode 1 With M.D. Massey

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Blood Scent urban fantasy audiobook coverWelcome 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, Blood Scent.

M.D. Massey’s Weblinks:

https://mdmassey.com

https://www.facebook.com/mdmasseyauthor

https://twitter.com/mdmasseyauthor

https://www.instagram.com/authormdmassey/

Purchase Blood Scent on Amazon

Author Interview:

Hey folks, M.D. Massey here and I want to welcome you to the inaugural edition of the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast. Let me tell you a little bit about this podcast, why I started it, and what we hope to accomplish with it. Well, the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast is an idea I’ve had brewing in the back of my mind for some time and I’ve been sitting on it for about a year and finally decided I would get off my duff and get it rolling. The reason why I started it was really just to get the word out about urban fantasy authors to the urban fantasy reader community. I frequent several urban fantasy groups online and I noticed people are constantly asking for tips and recommendations on urban fantasy authors that maybe they haven’t read, new books to read, etc.

I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be a good way to help people discover new urban fantasy authors, new urban fantasy books through a podcast?” Let people hear interviews with the urban fantasy authors themselves and also let them hear the authors read excerpts from their books. I think it’s a good way for people to be able to sample a new author, to hear what they’re about, hear about their stories, hear about their background, hear about their characters, their world, and also to sample their books themselves. Doing it in audio and hearing the author read their own books, I just thought it’d be a cool idea. That’s why I started it. Of course, I’m an urban fantasy author myself. I have been for about five or six years. I got into writing urban fantasy after being a private consultant, a business consultant. That was my day job. It still is. I still maintain that day job.

I had been writing nonfiction books as a part of my consulting gig for quite some time. Well, in my spare time I read a lot of fantasy and urban fantasy, some sci-fi, but mostly fantasy, and I had been writing urban fantasy books on my own, or at least trying to. I struggled for several years trying to finish a novel, as most new writers do. Wrote everything I could on writing fiction, took some classes, and so forth. Finally, I stumbled across James Scott Bell’s book, Plot and Structure, and that kind of cemented a lot of things for me and helped me finish my first novel. Now, I will say my first novel in retrospect, it was not that great. That’s pretty much the case with most urban fantasy authors and most authors period, is that the first thing that you finish, the first book you write, or whatever, publish it, it’s going to be kind of a clunker. That was okay.

We went back years later, because that book had quite a bit of background story and history for my main series and the main series character, Colin McCool. My editor and I went back and we edited the book heavily, and revised it, and republished. Some of my readers really enjoy that book, some people don’t. It has, I think, about a four out of five stars on Amazon rating, which is fine. It was my first book, so I still like it. I’m rather fond of it. But I will say as an urban fantasy author, that it’s kind of hard sometimes to be able to get out there and reach readers where they’re at. Many times we as authors, we don’t want to invade reader’s spaces. For example, recently I was in one of the urban fantasy groups that I frequent and I noticed there was a post there that was just trashing my series, which is fine. I understand some people are going to hate my work, that’s fine, perfectly fine.

But, I kind of felt like I had to kind of mention something, maybe just stand up for my series a little bit without being rude, being perfectly polite. I noticed after I interjected my two cents, which was very polite, very courteous, and very respectful of the person that created the original post, one of the other commenters on the post, one of the group members had said, “Gosh, now that the author has chimed in, I feel really bad about saying that I don’t like his books.” For those reasons and other reasons, authors, we tend to try to stay out of reader’s spaces on Facebook, and reader groups, and especially on places like Goodreads. I thought, once again, that this … Starting this podcast would help authors get out there, kind of get the word out about their books and so forth. Both indie authors and trad-pub authors, traditionally published authors.

I’m not partial to either one. No matter what route somebody’s taking, whether they’re indie published, or traditionally published, or hybrid, that’s great. All I care about is, are you writing books to please your fans? Those are the types of authors I’m going to try to interview on this podcast and I hope you’ll join me for that. Now, this podcast, this initial episode is designed to be a pilot episode, and so I wanted to give people kind of a taste for the way that we’re going to run this podcast. What I’m going to do today is I’m going to kind of do a little mini interview, which is really just me reading off some of the interview questions and answers that I’ve given in the past for author interviews on a couple of different sites. Then I’m going to read you guys an excerpt from the prequel to my main series, which is Blood Scent, and Blood Scent is the prequel.

The main series is the Colin McCool series, which is about a young druid apprentice that has kind of stumbled into the supernatural world, not really by accident, it’s more by fate. But he doesn’t want to be there and he’s tried to get out and he keeps getting sucked back in. That’s the gist of that series. I’m going to read you an excerpt from the prequel for that series. But first, let’s get into some questions. One of the questions that I was asked in one of these interviews was, what drew me to the job, or what drew me to urban fantasy? My answer is, everybody always says write what you know and that’s kind of what I did. Like I said before, I read a lot of urban fantasy, or I used to until I started writing full-time. Now I don’t have as much time to write anymore. But lately my writing schedule and keeping up with my day job gig, which is now my side hustle, I don’t really have time to read as much.

But in the past, I read quite a bit of urban fantasy. Some of the authors that I enjoy in urban fantasy, I read Jim Butcher’s first two books. Didn’t read the whole series, I’ll admit that. But I really enjoyed his stuff. I would say, oh gosh, now I’m blanking out. John Conroe is one. Really enjoyed John Conroe as an indie author. Also, Patricia Briggs, really love her Mercy Thompson series. I think those are the types of books that drew me to the genre and inspired me to start writing as well. Now, as far as being inspired to write, one of the questions I was asked, again, is what inspired you to write urban fantasy featuring fae, or as some people would call them fairies? Honestly, I’ve been fascinated with fairies since I was a kid and it’s a preoccupation that started when I first read the story of the Cottingley Fairies. When I was a kid, I was into weird stuff. Kind of weird news and unexplained things.

My uncle had these, I think they were Time Life books that you could order out of a magazine or something and it had all these different articles about the weird and the unexplained. I was reading through them and I came across this story about the Cottingley Fairies and I think that’s where I heard about it first and I became fascinated with it. Of course, even as a kid you could tell the photos had been faked, but the idea that the so-called fair folk could be lurking in my backyard, or in the woods where I enjoyed playing, that was enough to spark my imagination. When I decided to write my first novel, I was absolutely certain that I wanted the fae to feature prominently, because I thought that it’s just such a fascinating part of folklore and legend.

One of my early abandoned manuscripts was about a fae hunter, not a fae hunter, but a human who hunts fae. It was pretty bad, but later that idea evolved into Colin McCool and the Vampire Dwarf, which was that first book I wrote that I told you was rather horrible when I first wrote it. Later, of course, that idea morphed into the Junkyard Druid novels. Here’s another question, tell us more about Colin McCool. Why is he such a relatable character? How has he grown as a person through the series? I will tell you, Colin, deeply flawed, deeply flawed person. A guy who basically is good at heart. He’s just kind of trying to do the best he can. But, he has issues. He’s angry. He’s brash, prone to violence, and he’s a shifter. Not a typical shifter either. The thing that he shifts into, it brings out a very sociopathic side and he really can’t control it, at least during what went on in the books.

He’s expressed quite a bit of pain in his life and he compensates for that by trying to right wrongs and protect other people. Besides that, he’s your typical smart ass, which is pretty common in urban fantasy novels. But I like smart ass heroes and I like anti-heroes even more. To me, it’s hard to dislike a character like that. Now as for what inspired me to become an author, like I said before, I love to read. If I had a vice, it would probably be buying way too many books, besides my whiskey tasting habit. My mother, she was a teacher, English teacher actually and during my preschool years she would let me pick out a Little Golden book whenever we went to the store. I started reading at a very early age. I was kind of a precocious kid, like a lot of veracious readers are. I was reading books like Homer’s Odyssey and the Silmarillion before I was tall enough to see over the counter at the public library.

These days, if I walk into a bookstore, it’s very difficult for me to leave without an armful of books, especially at Half Price Books here in Austin, because you can get some great deals on books there. I love going to that place. As most people know, avid readers tend to become aspiring writers. Me, being no exception. When I was in my 20s, a journalist friend encouraged me to write and publish a nonfiction book, so I did. I think I talked about that earlier. Then by my late 30s I had writ and published a few moderately successful nonfiction books and I thought, “Gosh, how hard can it be to write a fiction novel?” I found out, it’s pretty damn hard. It’s not easy. Unless you’ve attempted to write a novel or written a novel, you don’t know how hard it is just to finish a novel. Then to write something that people actually want to read, that’s damn difficult. I took writing courses, like I said. Read a lot of books on fiction, stumbled through a few unfinished manuscripts.

Then once again, as I said before, when I read James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure, that kind of … Things kind of snapped for me. I completed and published my first novel in December that year and I haven’t looked back since. I think that was 2013, 2014. Okay. Next question, if you were a teacher, what book would you assign to your class? I’d say that depends on what I was teaching. If I were teaching creative writing, I would start with the book by James Scott Bell I mentioned previously. But if I were teaching literature, I would tell my students to read whatever interested them. A good example of this, my son recently fell in love with Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man books and before those books came along, we couldn’t get him to read much at all on his own, but he loves to read every day now. What I would do, is I would assign my students the task of finding a book they would enjoy reading and then I would tell them to read that book for the shear enjoyment of it.

Typical day in a writer’s life. This is the next question. I wake up about … Between 6:00 and 7:00. Lately, it’s earlier than that because I got to get my kid off to the bus stop. I drink some coffee, check email first thing, and then I get on the treadmill for a little while. During that time, I kind of take care of some of the day job stuff, some of my admin stuff for my day job. After that, I listen to Writing and Publishing podcast while I shower and get dressed. Then after I’ve made myself presentable, I get more caffeine in my body before I hit my writing desk at 9AM. Then I write until I get my word count for the day. Typically, I set a word count goal of about 3,000 words. Some days it’s more, like if I have a deadline that I’ve set for myself to get a book out. I’ve written up to 10,000 words a day, although I don’t like to do that. As I’m writing, I take five minute breaks every hour.

When I’m done writing for the day I grab some lunch, do more day job stuff, and then I train martial arts, or I read, or I catch up on a show on Netflix. By then, it’s time to get my kid from school, so I spend my time with him until his mom gets home. Then after that, I do whatever additional work that I need to do that day, or I relax by reading again, or watching more TV before I go to bed no later than 10PM. The thing is, I used to like to stay up late, but I find these days if I stay up past 10:00 I’ll wreck the next day and I can’t write. My writing output really suffers. I’m kind of an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy. Finally, last question. Bam, you’re a superhero. What’s your superpower? Well, I’ve always wanted to fly. I actually wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid, but my vision was too poor. I wore really thick glasses, used to get made fun of for it actually.

I would definitely want to be able to fly, preferably at super speeds, because necessarily when you can fly at super speeds, that superpower comes with other superpowers. You have to have some sort of limited vulnerability or thick skin because of the stresses of high speed flight and you have to have high stamina, of course. I think it’s a pretty cool power. Pretty versatile, actually, and I think people could probably tell that I’ve really thought that through quite a bit. Finally, last question. Where can readers discover more of my work or interact with me? Well, you can visit me at my website at mdmassey.com. That is M-A-S-S-E-Y. Or you can reach me on Facebook at my page, which is Facebook.com/MDMasseyAuthor, or on Instagram at Instagram.com/AuthorMDMassey. That’s it for this author interview. In the future, when I record future podcasts, obviously the future episodes will feature other authors. Once again, this was kind of a pilot podcast episode.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about me and hopefully you’ll enjoy the book excerpt that’s coming up. If not, well, that’s okay too. I can guarantee you that you’ll hear from many other authors, urban fantasy authors on this podcast in coming weeks. I actually have about a half dozen episodes lined up. I have about a half dozen interviews lined up with author friends and so forth. Some of them very well known, some of them not. I’m going to try to do a mix to where I’ll feature authors that are pretty well known out there, that are best-selling authors, and then feature authors that are up and coming, because if I just feature the authors everybody knows about, obviously that’s not going to be good for discoverability. I want to introduce the listenership out there to authors they haven’t heard of and hopefully we’ll be able to do that over the next year. I have the opportunity to do about 50 episodes over the next year and I’m really looking forward to doing that. Hope you guys will stick with me for the journey and I appreciate you tuning into this week’s podcast. Thank you.

Tagged With: Blood Scent, Junkyard Druid, MD Massey, podcast, Urban Fantasy, Urban Fantasy Authors

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