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In 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:
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 cliché 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.