podcast

Episode 8 With Lindsay Buroker!

Our guest this week is Lindsay Buroker, the author of the Death Before Dragons series. Lindsay joins co-host Paul Sating to talk writing, quick releases, and book cover gaffes in this episode of the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast.

This episode’s excerpt is from chapter one of Sinister Magic, book one of Lindsay’s “Death Before Dragons” series. You can pick up Sinister Magic at: https://geni.us/sinmagic

Lindsay is a full-time independent fantasy and science fiction author who loves travel, hiking, tennis, and vizslas. She’s written over sixty novels, appeared on the USA Today bestseller list, and has been twice nominated for a Goodreads Readers’ Choice Award.

Find Out More About This Week’s Featured Author:

Find Lindsay at: https://lindsayburoker.com/
Find Lindsay’s books at: https://geni.us/lburoker

Transcript of This Week’s Author Interview:

(NOTE: The following is a machine-generated transcription of this week’s interview. Please excuse the typos. ~MDM)

Paul Sating (00:22):

Everyone Paul Sating here again, your co-host for urban fantasy author podcast. Great to be with you once more. I’m very excited about today’s guest Lindsay broker, and we’re going to get into her episode in a second. Don’t forget. At the end of the episode, we have the entirety of her first chapter in book one of her death before dragon series to make sure you stay tuned for that. After the outro music, Lindsay is a full-time independent fantasy and science fiction author who loves to travel, hike, play tennis, and vizslas, which I don’t even know what they are.

She’s written over 60 novels appeared on the USA today bestseller list and has been twice nominated for a good reads reader’s choice award. Now let’s get to the interview with Lindsay on cue. I was warning Lindsay off air that my Chihuahua was going to raise cane and she is, and now she’s getting my Husky all wound up. So if you hear the two dogs in the background, I totally apologize. I do try to be a professional from time to time, but dogs can throw a wrinkle into anything. So patrons welcome. And this is your video exclusive portion of an urban fantasy author podcast with not just urban fantasy, but fantasy and sci-fi author Lindsey broker, but I wanted to welcome you to the show and thanks for coming by.

Lindsay Buroker (01:49):

Awesome. Well thank you very much for having me.

Paul Sating (01:51):

I’ll definitely, it’s an absolute honor and pleasure. I’ve loved your stuff, and I love following your blogs and stuff for a long time. I actually met you in at 20 books two years ago now and an in in the elevator, but I’d been in Vegas for like a half an hour. I was tired. I didn’t recognize your face to your voice kind of thing. I just said hi to you real quick. And then it was like, I don’t know, two hours later I went, wait a second. You know, I had the light bulb moment, so it’s cool to actually get to formally formally meet you. So I wanted to start off with an easy kill question for you. A little bit of background about who you are and what it was about urban fantasy that kind of drew you to the genre where you actually wanted to dabble in it.

Lindsay Buroker (02:34):

Sure. so I have always been a reader. My mom got me reading and like age two or three, because I was annoying her so much that like you need a hobby kid. So I was always making up stories when I was growing up, but I wasn’t really good about finishing them. It took me, you know, getting into the adult world and going, gosh, I wish I could be an author for a living to get serious and join a workshop and start finishing things. And that took a little while it was slow process, but in 2010, I published my first novel. It was just kind of the beginning of the Kindle age, because I was actually thinking I’m going to have to look for an agent. And I didn’t think that would go well since I wasn’t really writing anything they were looking for.

Lindsay Buroker (03:13):

And then, you know, all of a sudden it kind of blew up. People were like posting on their blogs. Hey, I’m making money, self publishing. So I went that route and I’ve pretty much stayed indie. I do have a publisher for my audio books and I’ve signed a couple of foreign rights sayings, but it’s been great. About 2012, I was able to go full time. I started with sort of high fantasy. A lot of that in the beginning, tried steam punk. I did a couple of S you know, kind of space opera series. And I dabbled briefly in kind of contemporary fantasy, but I abandoned it after only two books. I need to go back and finish that series. But yeah, this last series I did in 2020, I’m just publishing the last one in a couple of weeks here. The ninth book in depth before dragons is actually kind of urban fantasy. It takes place in the Seattle area for the most part and brings dragons and elves and doors and all the fun D and D kind of characters that I grew up with and wanted to, you know, I was like, if I’m going to do contemporary fantasy, I got to bring my dragons and elves into it.

Paul Sating (04:14):

Oh, absolutely. And as somebody who lives near Seattle, it was it’s real. It’s a really cool series, especially. Well, I mean, we’ll get into the book in a second here, but I do ha since you’ve got it on the front of my mind, I was out walking the dogs or maybe running and I was listening to it. Cause I like to do audio book as much as possible. And you have, I’m not going to give anything away folks. You’ve got to go check it out yourself, but you have a a portion of this, of a scene where you mentioned a military base. That’s like 20 minutes down the road. And I thought, God, that’s as a former military guy, that’s really cool for someone to give some love to the local base. And it doesn’t happen that often for me,

Lindsay Buroker (04:52):

It was fun. And I grew up in Edmonds actually, and I was planning to go back cause I hadn’t lived there for about 10 years. My parents retired and moved out of the area. So now I have to visit them in Arizona instead of Edmonds. So I was going to go up there and like actually going downtown and see all the things and kind of get reminded of everything. And then COVID happened as I was, I was, I had like a Airbnb and everything. I was going to go to Emerald, Emerald city, me and Rose city comic con last year. And well, that blew up. So I’ve been like Google using Google maps and the internet, just kind of, a lot of this story ends up taking place in kind of the suburbs North of Seattle, because I’m more familiar with like Woodinville Edmonton’s bottles. So people that are like, why isn’t this in cooler parts of the town? I was like, wow, I don’t know. It was, it was wow. There is some in downtown and Capitol.

Paul Sating (05:40):

You did you put a good, I thought you did well, I did that with one of my my first book of my Zodiac series and I live an hour less than an hour. Well, depending on traffic, less than an hour from Seattle and I still had to Google map it. So I don’t fault you at all. You haven’t been up in this neighborhood for awhile. I had to check

Lindsay Buroker (05:58):

Out to make sure gasworks park and Lake union still looked pretty much the same as I remember.

Paul Sating (06:03):

It’s funny how quickly, especially when you’ve got a place like this, it changes so quickly. So what was it because I interviewed with McLendon a few weeks ago, like you, he started his journey more on the Epic side of the fantasy spectrum and came back to urban Fanny fantasy, which I find not funny, like funny ha ha but ironic for me because I was dabbling in thrillers and horrors and I like them. I enjoy them, but I didn’t want to write them. I wanted to do fantasy. So as I was thinking about my conversion into fantasy, I wanted to do Epic, but for me, Epic is like the stuff you see behind me, you know, it’s those 800 page tomes and I wanted to do Andy. So it didn’t make sense. So for you, what was it that, was it a business decision or was it a matter of the heart that kind of brought you into the urban fantasy area?

Lindsay Buroker (06:54):

I actually did not particularly want to do urban fantasy because it’s very competitive, especially as indie authors, there’s just a lot of authors writing good books. And I felt like it was a little easier in sort of the Epic fantasy slash teen punk area where I’ve done a lot of stuff and I, they always recommend, and I recommend it to people that you really stick with one genre to build up a fan base because it’s just easier than asking people to like, Hey, I did Epic fantasy. Now I’m doing face offer. Now I’m going to do contemporary fantasy. You’ll get some people that will follow you for everything. But it’s, it’s easier. A lot of people just want more of what they already know. They like, and they don’t want to venture into other things, but it was just a case of the character, Val kind of coming to me first.

Lindsay Buroker (07:38):

And I just imagined her with this relationship with her therapist, you know, texting back and forth and stuff. And I was like, this is not really gonna work. I mean, you can do telepathy and things like that, but I just really saw her in his modern setting and I saw the opening scene, but I think you’re going to share with your podcast listeners where her Jeep gun ends up getting thrown up in the tree by the dragon that ends up being a main character as like, well, she’s got a Jeep, it’s got to be a contemporary fantasy. So from there I did try to read, you know, I kind of read the book one and two have a lot of the popular authors just to make sure I wasn’t completely out of left field. Cause I also drawn as a reader more to like the galaxy far, far away, then things set on earth. So I was like, well, it’s not going to be exactly like their stuff. But I know I had a lot of readers already that were fans of Ilana Andrews. And I thought, well, it’s kind of in that vein. So hopefully I got it right.

Paul Sating (08:30):

Yeah. I thought it, I thought it worked well. And I loved the I liked the Jeep and the, you know, the callbacks to the Jeep from time to time. So let’s talk about that first book in the, in the series and it’s sinister magic and it’s from, it’s in the death before dragons series, which I’m going to have another question on later because you’ve done something as an so for those of you who are authors or aspiring authors, Lindsey’s done something really cool with death before dragon series. I’m going to ask her about in a second. But sinister magic. What, what is it? What can, what about Val? Who is she? What’s what, what is her conflict? Why does she exist? What does she after or what’s after her?

Lindsay Buroker (09:10):

I would, I think she would say she’s just kind of a normal, you know, geeky, maybe slightly geeky, half elf assassin. I mean, that’s a normal game that you have in a fantasy novel. She was in the military. I was actually in the army for four years, myself. So I kind of know a little bit, I mean, it’s kind of fuzzy now. It’s long enough in the past, but I know a little bit about that. And one of the side characters, Willard, the boss that she contracts for as a Colonel in the army. But yeah, she’s just her, her goal is like the series starts, she’s having some health issues. And so her doctor and therapist are like, okay, you need to learn how to relax. Maybe have a little less stressful life. Maybe don’t kill as many people, but that’s sort of the, one of the, you know, internal conflicts.

Lindsay Buroker (09:55):

And she’s also got a daughter and an ex-husband a teenage daughter that she wants to like she’s kept away from them because her business, you know, it was very dangerous. She gets assassins of targeting her as revenge stuff a lot. So she’s really tried to keep her family at arms length. But if that bothers her, you know, and it’s something as the series goes on, we get to see her kind of developing a relationship with them again. And I thought that, yeah, a lot of the urban fantasy, I did read focused on characters, heroines that are maybe like 22. And so I thought, well, I can’t write anybody young. You should’ve seen me on Google. What do teenagers say? Cause the teenage daughter has to be like saying, Oh, this is Gucci man. Like I had to try to get the slang that is actually being used out there.

Lindsay Buroker (10:43):

So I just, I couldn’t really write a hero in that age as I, well, I’m gonna write somebody that’s my age, but I’ll make her a half elf. So she’s a little, she has a longer lifespan, but no, it was just fun. And I I’ve had a lot of readers thank me for like a character. So a lot of my readers tend to be like 30 and up more so than teenagers. I don’t know if that’s just how it is on the internet these days, or those are the people with the disposable income that are buying books on Amazon maybe. But that seems to have be the folks that gravitate gravitate towards me. So I wanted to do a character. I felt I could write and a character that they would relate to. So I’ve gotten some good feedback or just, you know, thank you is like, Hey, we’re, we’re super excited to have a character that’s actually dealing with like having a teenage daughter.

Paul Sating (11:27):

Well, and it’s nice, you know, it’s all about that. Well, I shouldn’t say it’s all about relate-ability but relate-ability is a huge thing. And a lot of people, like you said, there’s a lot of youthful, main characters out there in the genre. So yeah, it is. I absolutely agree. So let’s talk about the series. And because I’m pretty proficient, I wrote a fifth book in my series in December in 18 days. Finished it from ward one to the end. And so far in 2021, I’ve got a trilogy I’m going to jump into, I finished the first two books first draft, obviously, and I’m almost done with the a third book. I’ll actually should knock on wood, finish it after our interview today. And so I get told quite often, I don’t know how you write so much and then I try to help people.

Paul Sating (12:14):

But then I look at people like you and I look at your Amazon page and it blows me away. So folks, if you don’t know, we’re talking about sinister magic is our first book in the death before dragons. It released February of 20. I’m doing this interview with Lindsay in February of 2021. And what did she tell you at the beginning? The last book in the series book nine is coming out. All right, Lindsay, how this, like as eloquent as I can be, how do you do nine books in a series? And I’m sure you wrote wrote ahead and whatnot, but whatever you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to know, you know, that work-life balance how you were able to do it. And keep that balance keeps things fresh because I hear that a lot from series writers, they start hating their characters. So how did you do that?

Lindsay Buroker (13:03):

So I have been full time for like the last eight years. So anybody that is trying to fit writing in between like having kids and working a full-time job, you know, they’re just going to roll their eyes and they’re like, well, that’s not realistic, but so I have the luxury at this point of having the whole day basically. I mean, I have to do admin stuff and you know, the marketing and getting covers and all that too. But so I do have several hours a day that I can write most days. So that’s part of it. And I’ve just gotten more efficient with more novels written. I always tell people, my first one took me about seven years to actually from conception to publishing it. I stopped, there were some breaks in there. Those were the world of Warcraft years, which may not be most did not have a lot of productivity going on.

Lindsay Buroker (13:48):

And then the second book took about a year. You know, I was putting these two workshops at the same time. So a lot more time on the editing. And it was just kind of gradually, you know, I got inspired by other people in the, in the author community that were podcasting and saying, yeah, I did my 6,000 words today before we recorded the podcast at one. And I was like, wow, I’m slacking off. I think at that point I was writing about 3000 words a day when I first went full time. That was my goal. And it was a thousand words a day before that. And I think a lot of it is to getting better at writing a first draft that doesn’t need as much editing. I started out as a pantser gradually became an outliner. And I just realized that when I outlined first, I’m a lot less likely to have to rewrite complete scenes or cut things and veer off in another direction.

Lindsay Buroker (14:35):

You know, the first book I wrote it, I, it took me a while to realize the ending was not there. I think I had to rewrite the last eight chapters of the book among other edits and changes. And that wasn’t even my first novel. I had written a couple before that that will never see the light of day. But so a lot of it is just having the time to do it. You know, I have been self-employed in one way or another, since 2003 or show. So I’ve learned, you just got to get stuff done. It’s almost better when you go full-time and you depend on it for a living because when it’s a hobby and you don’t know yet, if you’re going to like get a publisher or be able to make any money, it’s completely your passion for it. As a hobby, that’s driving you this, your motivation, maybe you think one day, okay, I could have fans, I can have a publisher that the point where it becomes your day job and you’re relying on that income, I think it’s actually a little easier to just knuckle down and do it.

Lindsay Buroker (15:30):

Not that there aren’t days where you’re like, Oh, Twitter is extremely fascinating today. I get all the things that are trending that I probably need to check out. Some days you just got to like turn off the wifi on the computer and not let yourself get distracted.

Paul Sating (15:44):

Yeah. And if, if folks don’t follow you on Twitter, they might, I don’t people who know me know, I don’t like Twitter. I, I pop in there. I try to be social. Right. I don’t use it as a sales vehicle. I use it as a, get to know Paul vehicle. And because I like a lot of your stuff, you all the algorithm always pushes your tweets, obviously in my little timeline. And I still look at that and I go, how does she do all of this when she’s this proficient on Twitter as well? It’s remarkable.

Lindsay Buroker (16:11):

But I only post like four or five things on there a day. I probably wouldn’t be on Twitter, except that I have a, my beta readers who have become friends in real life. And we’ve done lots of stuff together. We actually have a DM chat just going who’s the time. So half the time I’m on there, it’s just because I’m popping in and like, Hey, what are you guys doing? Or, you know, share something like, why are the characters doing this horrible thing? They’re, they’re not doing the right thing. So I, don’t not sure I’d be on Twitter otherwise, because it’s not a big seller of books for me, Facebook doing the author page on Facebook has been a lot more worthwhile as far as like I, you know, I use the affiliate links on Amazon to actually see how many books I sell from posting on the author page on Facebook.

Lindsay Buroker (16:53):

And it’s actually like my number two behind my newsletter above any of the paid stuff. Like even, I mean, BookBub would be an exception, but most of the sites don’t drive that many sales, but I’ve got a lot of people that will follow me there that aren’t, I mean, some are also on the newsletter, but the Facebook’s like where the breaking news happened. So it’s been, I have a love, hate relationship with Facebook. I barely use it on my personal account, but it’s been worthwhile as an author to have that and post and post four or five little things.

Paul Sating (17:25):

It’s one of those things with a big learning curve. But if you can start unlocking at least incrementally you can start seeing some pretty nice momentum. I haven’t unlocked all of it at all by any stretch of the imagination, but I swam against the tide with those other vehicles that you’re kind of talking about too. And I never gained anything. It all seems Facebook seems to have that magic algorithm.

Paul Sating (18:52):

So how did, okay, so I’m really curious. I don’t want to fixate on it for too long, but that is something that I hear quite often from folks is about that. And I don’t want to, Jade is saying someone is jaded, comes with a lot of connotations, but was there a point when you became jaded, how long did it take you to get from the, you know, that first draft of book one to when you signed off on book nine, and was there anything that you did mentally or, or structurally in your writing habit to keep that world fresh for you?

Lindsay Buroker (19:27):

I think I try to just, I gave myself a lot of potential villains. You know, I didn’t have like one, I think that’s one thing I, as a reader, when I’m reading a series and it’s like the same villain that they can’t kill that you’ve told me back again. And I’m like, I’m like, I love like Firefly when Malai kicks that guy into the jet engine at the end, I was like, Oh, I’m going to love this guy. He just got rid of it, you know, instead of having the same villain, keep coming back. So each story there’s sort of a thread she’s got to deal with the dragons versus AV and then his family. So that is a thread. There are some things that are continuing arcs that go throughout the series, but I definitely try to have kind of different plots and different stories in each one.

Lindsay Buroker (20:07):

And since she’s the main character, I, I guess everybody has a main character, but I’m, since I came up with her first, I really have built the plots around her and like what she’s trying to achieve in her job. Whereas sometimes like with Epic fantasy, what are my star kingdom series is very, I came up with the characters first, but it was very driven by the plot. So sometimes you get, you have to make the characters, you’re trying to like fit them into the plot. And it was just very organic. The stories just came along pretty easily plus, and here’s the real secret, right. Something more complicated first. And then when you go to, like, for me not to say urban fantasies simple, but because I chose first person, there could really only be one storyline they’re much simpler novels than like the space series.

Lindsay Buroker (20:56):

I was just talking about, had like seven POV characters by the end and multiple storylines going on at once. So that actually made deathly four dragons. So like, I’m this like delightful, you know, the books are only like 80,000 words. This stories are pretty simple. One few of you character. So they were kind of a reprieve for me cause I was also finishing up the other series at the same time. So I don’t know, like if you’re stuck on anything, like if any of your listeners are doing Epic fantasy, which we talked about, and it’s just a kind of feeling like a slog and I was like 200,000 words. And when is, when is it going to end sometimes doing something just real simple, you know, it can be almost a pleasure in itself, almost a reward. So I was like, especially at the end of the started kingdom series, I was writing one of those.

Lindsay Buroker (21:44):

Cause they ended up being about 150,000 words at the end with all the POV characters and then I’d go write three and the death before dragon series. And it would just be like, and then after that, I’d be ready to go back to something else. So that, that worked for me. It was good this last year with COVID that I was stuck at home anyway, it actually ended up being a pretty prolific year for me. Like I always write a lot, but it’s like, well, I can’t take any of my, I usually go to like 20 books and Vegas, you know, Nick and Florida, some of the writer’s conferences out there. So I usually have some trips and things to break up the year a little bit, but I was like, well, I’m just stuck at home. So I’m just going to work. And then when we’re free again, then I can take some vacations.

Paul Sating (22:27):

What is your like average, roughly word count day? Are you a seven day, a week hard structure person?

Lindsay Buroker (22:35):

I tend to write pretty quickly and quite a few words a day when I’m working on the rough draft and same thing when I’m editing and then take breaks in between the project. So I try to get them done as quickly as I can. I maybe like 6,000 to 10,000 words a day, pretty typical for a, you know, a new book or a book in the progress in progress. And that’s just my preference. I really, I find that if I take a couple of days off in the middle, I have to like get back into it after we read what I wrote the day before, you know, a few days before. Whereas if I can just write it as quickly as possible, it’s just sort of, I don’t know about flow state and all that, but it’s kind of like, that is like the movie will be playing in my mind and it’s just really easy.

Lindsay Buroker (23:19):

Well, not really easy, but easier to continue on versus like taking the weekends off or sometimes it doesn’t work perfectly. Like I may have to go over edits on something else, take a break for that. Then my editor sent back, you know, and that’s, that’s fine. But my, my preferred thing is just kind of right. Start day one, knock out 10,000 words right away. I usually get harder towards the end. So I slowed down a little bit at the, but it’s kind of like Nana, Nana Ramo, they get ahead, you know, and then you slow down at the end maybe, but yeah. So I try to do it as quickly as possible. And I actually find often not always, but often there’s less editing needed on the ones that I wrote more quickly because they were just a came out more quickly. I often have to, what I do is think about the next two or three scenes, like the night before.

Lindsay Buroker (24:09):

So even though I’ve outlined, I, then there’s sort of like, you then have to plan each scene in more detail. My outlines are just kind of bare bones. And that helps me too. If I know exactly what happens in the scene that I’m about to write, it comes out a lot more quickly. I always recommend to people, you know, there’s that advice? Just write something, you know, like, no, go figure out what happens in the scene. First, take a walk, do a jog, you know, drive whatever you gotta do shower. I don’t know. Authors love to come up with ideas in the shower, figure it out and then sit down to write it.

Paul Sating (24:40):

And that may, and that makes sense that your, your outline or your structure sounds a lot like mine and I can totally, I the best thing I ever did, I was out we’ve got beaches here. Believe it or not folks in Washington state. And I was out, it never gets hot. They’re always like 71 degrees. But on a good day, I was reading a Hemingway book about a writing advice in one of Hemingway’s pieces of advice was to always stop at a, at a critical juncture. You know, somebody says something that’s been building up for a hundred pages or somebody punches somebody in the face and shocks at whatever that intense moment is, stop right there and walk away. It’s going to be hard to do, but it’s all about habit for me. Like you were talking about Lindsay, you know, writing quickly doing it every day, keeping that flow going.

Paul Sating (25:26):

And I found so for, if that on top of a Lindsay’s other advice, if that helps you at all might be something to work with as far as keeping the flow. And I agree with you as far as when it comes to just right. No, I agree. Having an idea know where you’re going in that scene. It’s so hard to look at a blank page, especially for newer writers. So one of the things I kind of want to delve into with you that might be a little 400 level for some folks. So folks, if you are just starting out your journey, just this could be a very entertaining question. Eh, we’ll see where Lindsay goes with us. For those of you who have published, especially those of you on the indie side, where you have that input into the processes and the presentation of your books.

Paul Sating (26:11):

Lindsay, one of the most interesting things that you’ve done recently with this series is when you, I don’t want to call it an addendum cause that’s not fair. But when you went and stretched out the depth before dragons and you added the secrets of the sword portion of that series, it still falls under death before dragons. And from a marketing slash branding standpoint, you did something that really shocked me. It really surprised me. And I’d love to pick your brain and have you share whatever insight you’re comfortable sharing. Because those covers, you can see that series. And then all of a sudden the secrets books come and it’s a marked shift and you still did it under death before dragons. And you know what you’re doing? So when somebody like you does that, you know, I do the little dog ears and I peek up and I wonder what went on with that. So how, however much you’re comfortable sharing. I’d love to know your thought process behind that.

Lindsay Buroker (27:09):

Well, this is actually no brilliance. This is actually going to be a warning to your listeners to make sure you have your cover art lined up like well in advance. That’s one of the challenges when you write quickly is I often will write quick, more quickly than like the cover art can be produced because those guys have lots of clients. So I actually, the custom illustrations that are used on the last three books, the secrets of the swords trilogy, which is essentially books, seven, eight, and nine in depth before dragons. And I, I wanted people to be able to find them, you know, cause they all on the same Amazon page and it’s the same characters. But the main reason for that was that I had commissioned that artwork before I actually started the series. So like October of 2019 from a great illustrator, her name is Louisa Pressler and she’s actually done some Ilana Andrews and some other really gorgeous artwork.

Lindsay Buroker (27:59):

She gets a model and use it. You know, I think that she takes pictures of the model and then makes it her own and gives it a fantasy setting. So she does people really well. I was super impressed, but I found out that’s kind of time intensive. And so she, you know, she got everything to me in time, but I didn’t realize that I was going to be writing the books as quickly as I did. And I kind of got to the point where I was like, Hmm, I’m going to be waiting on cover art. If I, if I use her plus I didn’t know if she’d want to do it. Like I originally wasn’t planning to do nine books. I thought five or six, I’m just trying out this urban fantasy thing. But I, as I wrote more and I enjoyed the characters, I was like, okay, I got to do these six.

Lindsay Buroker (28:36):

And maybe more beyond that, I knew I’d be waiting on the cover art. If I went that way in their beautiful covers too, I would have loved to use them for the first books. But so I contacted somebody else that I’d worked with before gene Mullica. He actually, he does really great covers too. He gets models at he’s over in New York. And so he has access to a lot of models and takes gives them costumes, fantasy costumes. So you get original people that aren’t on a ton of other comforters, like you get with stock photos and I’ve worked with him before. And I know because of his style, he takes a whole, he does this photo shoot and he gets a whole bunch of pictures and then he illustrates the background, but he can do that more quickly than like doing an entire painting of a person.

Lindsay Buroker (29:18):

Right. So I was like, Hey Jean, what’s your work schedule? Like, can you do some of these? And so that’s what he did. The first six. I was like, I still have these other amazing covers that I want to use as I am. Okay. I’m going to do three more. And they were definitely vow on the covers. I thought the artists did a great job really more authentic than the other ones because all those New York models like 22 and here’s Val health, half of them blood. So she does look young that is in the books. But just in the illustrations, I she’s a little older looking and I thought that was more authentic for her, but so that’s why I switched it. Wasn’t like, let me try some grand marketing plan. I wouldn’t really recommend that to people I’d recommend a consistency throughout a series and brand, but I had, you know, I was like, I’m going to use these.

Lindsay Buroker (30:07):

These are amazing. And I didn’t want to disappoint the artists by not using our artwork of course, either. So I, and I made it so in trilogy because I had finished, wrapped up the storyline around books six and I thought, well, the readers really want more. I have these amazing art, you know, this amazing art that I want to use. So I’m going to do another books, which is, they’re kind of the wedding books, you know, that’s that’s what kind of holds it together and also finding out more about the sword that she has throughout the series. But you only get teasers in the first six books about why is it the way it is so that those are the two things that were going to be the main plot drivers in the last three books. And so I did call them one, two and three to make it clear it’s kind of its own trilogy.

Lindsay Buroker (30:52):

And also if somebody was just browsing around and were like, Oh, this is book one. I can jump in here. That was sort of my plan. I’m not sure. I never really promoted that one individually. Like I don’t run any ads to it because that was the plan. But as I was writing it as I, I don’t think I can do this. I think they probably should have read the other books before jumping in here. But that was the thought process was possibly have a second place that people could come into the series. But like I said, if it wasn’t brilliant, it would recommend it. It was just a case of cover art and what I had.

Paul Sating (31:26):

That’s a good warning though. I mean that people can be surprised how long it takes you know, depending on who you go with and whatnot, but yeah, for those of you who are new or maybe you’ve dabbled in a trad before, and you’re checking out this indie thing and it’s not something you thought of seriously, seriously, if you find that person, you like, one of the questions you need to ask her to front is, you know, how long it’s going to take. I have to wait almost 10 or 11 months for mine because of the backlog too. So it’s something to definitely keep in mind at the end. Thank you, Lindsay. I was very curious about that. If you had some like very, you know, super secret advanced author tactic for that, and I was like, I’m going to copy this if this works. Sure.

Lindsay Buroker (32:12):

No, I don’t think so. My recommendation for people, if you do get to the point where you’re right quickly is probably just to stick with the stock photo stuff and the Photoshop manipulation, because usually those designers can do those pretty quickly. This was a bit like I’m kind of the point now we’re going to afford to spend more on cover art. And I want to, it’s a pride thing too. I was like, I want original models. I don’t want that. Same woman is on every third urban fantasy book or, you know, I have a, I have a fantasy kind of a fantasy mystery slash romance series I did. And the guy I picked, like, he’s great. He looks great for the part, but I was like, as soon on that romance novel, I’ve seen on that fantasy novel, it’s like, he’s all over the Kindle store and everybody’s covered.

Paul Sating (32:54):

Yeah, they do. There are a few of them that are very prevalent. Let’s just say it like that. That really are. So if you were to give somebody starting out or newer in their career, or just dabbling into this authorship, a piece of advice, what would Lindsay do? You know, what would 2021 Lindsey do to 2010 Lindsey? What would you do differently nowadays if you were back in that position?

Lindsay Buroker (33:23):

So I, I enjoy the stories I wrote, I’d write the same stories, but it didn’t know much about was marketing and selling books then. So I kind of had not very good covers for quite a while. This is like an ongoing theme with my author careers covers. So I don’t think I did myself any favors with the covers I had on the first series of my book. It was to be fair, harder to find cover designers back then it was really new industry authors actually needing their own cover designers, as opposed to just sending the manuscript off to a publisher. So I, and I learned along the way to that is actually, I thought I had these original stories. So I did kind of quirky blurbs for them to like highlight a little bit of humor, even though they were high fantasy. And those are usually I’m more serious blurbs and I’m not sure that helped anything either.

Lindsay Buroker (34:08):

I’ve since learned that you kind of actually like this, great. If you’ve got a quirky story and fun characters and it is a little different from the norm, but probably you should highlight the things that make it like the books that sell well, you know, go look through the top 100 in the Kindle store in your category and be like, okay, you know, checking, what are the covers look like? What are the blurbs like? And then, you know, you don’t have to make yours exactly the same, but it should probably fit. And then if it’s a little different inside, nobody’s going to care. As long as you have a good opening chapter and they enjoy themselves, they will have forgotten the cover and blur by the time they start reading. But so that’s kind of the big thing I learned is that people want more of the same, but just a little bit different.

Paul Sating (34:47):

Yes. Yes. That’s a great piece of advice. It’s the curse of the creative, isn’t it? That we want to be original and different. And we take that into the marketing side too. We have to have that unique cover and we have to have that unique, funny blurb. You’re absolutely right. Okay. So I don’t want to hold you because I know you have things going on, but I do want to ask you a couple more quick questions, maybe a little more fun type of question. Everybody who is a patron sees my bookshelf behind me. So secrets are revealed what Paul reads. What about Lindsey? What’s currently on your bookshelf? What are you reading or what are you waiting to get to, to read?

Lindsay Buroker (35:24):

I actually just picked up Brandon Sanderson has a Saifai series. And I didn’t know that, and I haven’t read his fantasy yet because they’re so long. And like I have way more patients as a kid than I do now. I’m kind of like, if I see something’s over 405 pages and like, all of those characters is going to take forever. So I think it’s called Skyward. I just started it. Yes, I think. Yeah. So I was excited and it’s only 400, 500 pages. So you can’t kill any chihuahuas with his, like, I’m cute. I love that. As soon as you said Chihuahua, do you have your company there? Yeah, that came early. Okay. No, that’s totally fine. Folks, we need to cut it off here, but Lindsay, where can folks find you if they want to check you out and check out your books? Lindsayburoker.com would be great or I’m on Amazon.

Ep. 7 with Urban Fantasy Author Whit McClendon

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In this episode, Paul Sating interviews urban fantasy author Whit McClendon. Whit writes The GrimFaerie Chronicles, a series about a hunter and a witch who team up to protect humankind from evil Fae.

Find Out More About This Week’s Featured Author

Buy Grim Undertakings on Amazon: https://geni.us/grim1

Find This Author on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whitmccauthor

Transcript of This Week’s Author Interview:

(Note: This is a machine generated transcript, so please excuse the typos. ~MDM)

Announcer (00:00:01):

Welcome to The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast! From indie authors to trad-pub, gritty contemporary fantasy to lighthearted urban fantasy, masquerade to unmasked… Every week, we’ll bring you new authors and novels from the world of urban fantasy publishing. Now let’s introduce this episode’s featured guest.

Paul Sating (00:00:24):

Hey everybody. Welcome to urban fantasy author podcast. I am not MD Massey I’m fellow author, equally shaven headed, and just as good looking urban fantasy author, all sating author of the Zodiac series. It was my great pleasure for MD to ask me to come on board this podcast and help him do some of these interviews. I’ve got 10 years of podcasting experience and I’ve recently retired. My writing podcast called horrible writing, even though I still have one podcast out there called audio fiction, but I was more than excited at MDs invitation. And I’m more than excited to have met you and be able to bring you some outstanding interviews starting today with this first episode with urban fantasy author, Whit McLendon.

Paul Sating (00:01:14):

So let’s get into wit’s interview with McLendon was born on Halloween in Freeport, Texas. He grew up in Angleton, Texas and was active in martial arts track and field and playing the clarinet in band one year at Texas a and M proved that lacrosse was far more fun than electrical engineering. And he eventually graduated with a degree in engineering design graphics from Brazosport college. After working in the petrochemical field as a CAD drafter for many years, we finally realized his life’s dream of becoming a full-time martial arts instructor. Now lives in Katy, Texas plays lacrosse as often as possible and runs Jade mountain martial arts. It lasts a lot more now than he did when he worked at an engineering firm. Let’s get into the interview.

Paul Sating (00:02:06):

I’ve told people in the introduction who you are, so I want to jump right in and welcome you to the show. Welcome to be in my first guest on the urban fantasy author podcast. Thank you. Hey I’m honored and thrilled to be here. I’m glad to have you. And I’ve been stalking you out there on the, you know, the big bookstore in the sky kind of have an idea of who you are and what you’ve got going on. But I was wondering, I was curious, give us a little bit of background on who you are, but specifically since you know, this is an urban fantasy author podcast. Why in the world urban fantasy?

Whit McClendon (00:03:00):

Well let’s see. My name is Whitton McLendon. I live in Katy, Texas. It’s just outside of Houston. I run Jade mountain martial arts and martial arts school out there. And Katie have for nearly 20 years out here or Epic fantasy was my first love, I mean, comic books when I was a kid and Lord of the rings, Dennis McCarran and just a, a Conan, I mean, Oh yeah. Conan. And so I always loved that kind of thing. And I used to write stories in junior high and high school just to amuse myself. I got a couple of little awards from a literary magazine and in high school, but I never really thought about writing anything beyond that. And the early nineties, I got ticked off at an author because I was trying a new author. He had tons of books and I bought the first two of his first trilogy and I got irritated and said, man, I gotta be able to write better than this guy. It took me 20 years and I gained a new level of respect for what it takes to be that guy.

Whit McClendon (00:03:50):

And so cause he turned out book after book and I was like, I go blue. So so I turned out my first Epic fantasy in 2014 and it’s been about a book a year ever since the urban fantasy came about. I just had this idea for a scene, which is usually how my books come to life and I started writing the scene and then put it away and then somebody suggested, Hey, why don’t you do NaNoWriMo? You know, it’s fun. Yeah, it’s fun. They said. So so I, I went ahead and pulled that concept out and I managed about 30,000 words. But it wasn’t you know, it wasn’t near to the end of the book, but by then I picked up some steam and I was enjoying the character and enjoying what was going on and went ahead and finished it out. And that became my first urban fantasy. It was grim undertakings book, one of the Grimm fairy Chronicles. And I just I liked it and people liked it. That was a pleasant surprise for me. People really seem to enjoy it. And so I wrote another one and I’ve got a third one that you know, that’s my newest release.

Paul Sating (00:05:00):

It’s interesting to me that you went from a Epic over to urban that’s because, and I haven’t shared this with you, but I’m doing the opposite direction. My heart is being called by the Epic journeys and you know, the battles in the worlds and all that stuff. But like you I’ve always, you know, for, at least for me when it comes to Epic fantasy, I think that I cleaned the, that word Epic and I picture, you know, the, the six to 800, 900 page tomes that I want to write. No, it is absolutely. It is. And it’s not very how shall we say responsible for, for an indie author. Who’s trying to make a career out of this, you know, trying to pump out 900 page books, you know, I can get away with shorter books with urban. Yeah. So that is interesting.

Paul Sating (00:05:53):

I do have a question cause I want to dive into your series here, but I, I see you on camera. My patrons, see you on camera as well. We know you’re in a Stu, a martial arts studio here. You, you teach all kinds of physical combat stuff. So in my head, this doesn’t make sense is big tough guy teach, teaches the physical combat arts for a living. And then he’s writing urban fantasy about fairies. So chicken and egg martial arts and fairies. What came first and how in the world did you put those two together?

Whit McClendon (00:06:23):

The, the I’ve been doing martial arts since I was 12. And I knew from day one, I wanted, I wanted to be a seafood, you know, a traditional Kung Fu instructor. And I pursued that. I took the long road, but, you know, I finally managed to get my own school. So the martial arts definitely came first in, in some ways, even though at that time I already loved reading fantasy, but in terms of writing it, it was just kind of a natural thing. I mean, you know, you write what you know, and you know, I, I feel really fortunate in that I’ve been trained in both traditional Chinese Kung Fu with, you know, swords and daggers and PSI and big giant, you know knives with long handles, all kinds of fun stuff. But at the same time, I’ve also trained in what some would say more applicable arts in terms of actual fighting such as, you know, Krav Maga and Brazilian jujitsu and judo and all of that stuff, which made the traditional stuff more accessible.

Whit McClendon (00:07:25):

Like, Oh, that’s what this is for. Oh, that’s what that’s for. And so it created kind of a really interesting body of techniques both traditional and you know, like, like street self-defense to use in the writing, because if you’ve got Epic fantasy, you’ve got urban fantasy there was going to be fighting. And in both, there are opportunities for bladed weapons for, you know good old fist to cuffs and punches kicks and elbows. And in the urban fantasy though, that’s where we bring in the guns. And so it was really fun for me to be able to talk about, you know, how to take the guns away without being super technical, but still being real in how you would deal with someone with a gun close far, whatever. And so it’s been so much fun to kind of put all of that into the stories to, I hope give them a certain sense of realism with the action.

Paul Sating (00:08:27):

You balanced that as as somebody who you, you know, you’re pursuing the professional authorship aspect, but you also run the studio. I find that I I’ve read some authors that you can see their life’s passion kind of bleeding into their stories because they overdo it. How have you found this, a technique that you’ve used to kind of like, Hey, Whit pumped the brakes. You’re, you’re going a little geek on the reader because maybe the reader need all that. They might want some of that. Right. But so is there anything that you’ve, have you even noticed that about your, or maybe your work?

Whit McClendon (00:09:03):

I try to be careful with that because as you know, I mean, I’ve, I’ve been a teacher for forever at this point. And, and I recognize that there’s a tendency when you know, something really, really well, and you’ve known it for a long time. You might accidentally expect that someone else knows the same things, you know, and they don’t. I mean, they don’t, you know, there’s, there’s so many people walking around that look very tough, but they, they literally do not know how to throw a one, two punch with anything resembling good technique. You know, they’ll filling something out there that could hurt you. But as far as technique goes, they’ve simply never been taught. Right. And so when I’m writing, I really want to be careful to describe the action well enough that someone can get an idea of what’s going on and somebody can tell, yeah, this sounds, that does actually sounds technically right. Without bogging it down. So that it slows down everything because, you know, that’s, yeah. I could geek out about, you know, exactly what, you know, Oka you’ll get up like this and then you turn it and then you’re, you know, it’s like, you could do that, but I try not to, I really want to get the action going, get it moving, but still have it feel good, feel right.

Paul Sating (00:10:16):

Is there a difference in your Epic versus urban descriptions in those fight scenes then?

Whit McClendon (00:10:22):

Oh yeah. Well, you know, firstly in the Epic fantasy, no gums, you know, you don’t have to take those things away from somebody. And I tend to have my urban fantasy is written first person, you know, from the main character’s point of view with a little bit of a third person, if it shifts a viewpoint to someone who is somewhere else. But then the, the Epic fantasy is all a third person. And so I tend to be a little bit more formal in the Epic fantasy as I’m describing the action. I don’t want to sound too pretentious. I just want it to be, to be in that fantasy feeling. You know, I want my readers to feel like, yeah, this is fantasy. And then the urban fantasy, I want them to feel much more like, well, yeah, well this is real life, except there’s a, there’s a monster there, you know? And so I’m trying to balance those two things.

Paul Sating (00:11:15):

It’s a different mindset, right? Like you and I both share that love for Epic and urban fantasy. And when I sit down with an Epic, I want you to explain the way you cook the meal. I don’t want the McDonald’s dropped on my plate, whereas urban fantasy, right. Just give me the food. I just want the food. Right. And there’s something, there’s something about that experiential submersion in Epic that we can get away with it. We can’t necessarily get away with it with urban fantasy or people would just kill us about the pacing of stuff.

Whit McClendon (00:11:46):

Absolutely. It’s well, when everybody, when it’s in present day you know, everybody knows you know, everybody knows a drive through is, you know, and so it’s like, it’s a little easier to gloss over some of those mentions of things that everybody already knows about. Whereas in a fantasy setting, you know they want to know more about the whole situation, you know, where is it, what does it look like? What’s it like to be in this? What is in actually an alien environment, although it is also familiar because so many of us have, you know, been immersed in medieval fantasy for so long.

Paul Sating (00:12:21):

Right. So let’s talk about the, this mixture then. So you’ve got this background in the, in this passion for the art martial arts combat sports. How did you get to Fay in creating this kind of, you know, tough guy, tough Gail Fe story. Was it just a moment of inspiration or did you deliberately go out and see what fantasy race species can I grab and mix this in these two worlds? You know,

Whit McClendon (00:12:53):

It really wasn’t anything like that. I am, I am so much pantser okay. Like they’re really, I get picked at, by some of my friends that are like, you could plot a little, no, I can’t. And so most of what I write is very much like I’ve got a YouTube channel going on in my head and when the connection’s good, I’m just reporting what I see. And I have the luxury of being able to change it later, if it doesn’t fit. Sometimes the connection is a little more spotty and then, you know, staring at a screen hoping for the best. And so it really, wasn’t a conscious effort on my part to blend, you know, okay, I want a Berry creature, but I want him to use martial arts or, you know, there, there was nothing like that. It was more that the CRE the, the Kane, the main character in this he appeared, you know, kind of fully formed and I followed him on his adventures.

Whit McClendon (00:13:47):

And it turns out that he is a, basically a Fe assassin who keeps the balance between light and dark by taking out some of the, some of the bad guys before things get too bad. And he, he doesn’t really use a lot of martial arts. He has claws and fangs and certain magical abilities, and he’s, you know, kind of a nasty character for a good guy. But the people that he meets there’s a a witch that he meets in the first book and she is a tough Texas girl, a two gun Toten, which, you know, and she loves her firearms and she loves her magic and, and she’s a lot of fun. And that’s where I get to explore a little bit more of what we see is martial arts, because she’s been trained, you know, she likes to kick and she has to know how, and so

Paul Sating (00:14:40):

For, for the series of talk, I mean, we can talk about that, jump into the Chronicles now that take on fairies. I, what inspired that? I’ve always that

Whit McClendon (00:14:53):

That’s a really interesting society, you know, and, and I mean, the cool thing about urban fantasy, there is so much material to draw from in terms of you know fantasy creatures legends myths so much stuff, you know I, I feel like Jim butcher has done a fantastic job in that kind of thing, you know, but it’s like, ah, w when I was looking at my face society, I’ve kept it at a very surface level so that I can explore it myself as we go and then start, you know, kind of laying out relationships and hierarchies and different things. Like at this point, Cain takes his, or his marching orders from the goddess from basically mother nature. And, you know we don’t know very much about the rest of his face society. But I can feel a lot of that burbling around in there and it starts to starting to want to come out

Paul Sating (00:15:54):

Those pesky stories. They do that to us

Whit McClendon (00:15:56):

Do that. Yeah. So

Paul Sating (00:15:59):

They do you have a world concept that you’ve, that is rumbling around in there in the head that your readers haven’t seen yet, that you are planning on getting to, at some point in the series, does a world get bigger and bigger? It does.

Whit McClendon (00:16:17):

As I, as I’ve progressed, I’ve gone through three books and I’ve managed to introduce a few new characters there in this the second and third books, I introduced a female detective who probably has some faith in her bloodline because she is intensely powerful with magic, but has suppressed it. So as she wouldn’t seem different but now it’s to the point where she’s having to be taught how to use it, otherwise it’s dangerous. But she, she’s an awesome character. I really like her. And there’s, there’s a werewolf character, basically, he’s the King of a werewolf clan. And so as these new characters emerge, bad guys and good guys it allows me to kind of fill out those ranks of the society within the books. And I’m starting to see opportunities and stories that, that, you know, that flesh, all those things out. And, and that’s so much fun. It’s just so much fun to explore those things.

Paul Sating (00:17:18):

When you start seeing the layers, it’s, it is a lot of fun. It’s one of those things that I mean, I don’t know how long of a series I could write, but like with the Zodiac series, you know, by default, you automatically think 12 books because of the Zodiac type of thing. And there’s a lot of people who say, I don’t know how you could even think to write 12 books. And now I keep saying, but there’s just so much, I haven’t even touched on yet. Right. I can see myself. There is, I was, I don’t know if you listen or read more contemporary, Epic fantasy, but if, you know, Terry Mann, Coors spell mongers series, it’s 12 or 13 books now. And I saw a recent interview with him that right now, notionally he’s, he, he said it was a 32 or 33 books.

Paul Sating (00:18:08):

I’ve never even imagined a 30 plus book, Epic fantasy series. That’s a remarkable. So let’s talk about with the writer that you’ve been guiltily admitted or not. So guiltily admitted that you’re a pantser. I am. Yeah. So kind of give us a, give a, you know, a lot of folks who will listen to this will be fans of urban fantasy as well, but there will be a lot of either aspiring authors, people who only consider themselves writers as a passion or people who are already published and maybe just interested in what other folks are doing. So what does your writing day look like?

Whit McClendon (00:18:45):

I have to fit my writing in, around my school’s activities. And so some days, you know, I’ve got classes in the morning classes at noon classes in the evening, and, you know, there’s other things that I have to do. I have, I have to get my physical training done. I have to get my own practice in as well as all the errands. And so it’s, it’s, I have to be really brutal with my time management to get any writing done at all, because, you know, it’s like the school is what pays the bills and the, you know, and I would love to kind of shift my writing and, and, you know, so that the writing is taking more you know, bringing in more income than that, but that’s a process, you know, and it takes a lot. So at this point, I’m, I’m managing my time really, really harshly so that I can, okay, I got 15 minutes, boom, I’m going to go, you know, so I’ll set a timer and I’ll do 15 minute sprints for writing. And then, you know, depending on what else is going on, maybe it’s going, well, I’ll keep going. Other times I’ll try and block out an hour or two in a row. And that’s like exciting.

Whit McClendon (00:19:49):

And so really it’s, it’s about writing when I can and making those opportunities. And so, because with all of the other stuff that I have to do, if I don’t prioritize, then stuff gets dropped off the list and then I get in trouble later. So being able to manage your time and plan when you’re going to do it, even if it’s in little bitty bursts, I mean, I wrote most of this third book and a little bitty bursts and you know, in the end it all came together. Okay.

Paul Sating (00:20:16):

Really encouraging because there will be a lot of people who will cling to folks like me who do those more marathon sessions and it can be, and I can understand it can be discouraging, maybe if you’ve only been writing for a few years or if you’re just starting out. So it’s really encouraging, even for me to hear somebody like you talk about you know, making that time and if it’s 15 minutes it’s, and that’s all I can do, it’s still 15 minutes. I get some more

Whit McClendon (00:20:43):

I have a couple of friends, one of them both authors. And one of I was she was talking about how it was difficult and whatnot. I said, look, just do a hundred words, just a hundred words and, and do your best and see what happens. And that ended up becoming kind of a joke between us. She’s like, I did my a hundred words and then I did 500 more, you know? And like, yeah,

Paul Sating (00:21:06):

I like how she gave you attitude about it too.

Whit McClendon (00:21:09):

Yeah. Attitude. She’s awesome. Yeah.

Paul Sating (00:21:13):

A number of us back in the day when I had the horrible writing podcast, I actually did an episode and it was called a hundred word day. And it was basically, I was trying to, I’ve got this theory right. Every day. Don’t give me an excuse. Why you can’t get words down. Yes. We’re all busy. Congratulations. Everybody’s got stuff going on, but you can write every single day. And I gave them an example of, you know, my average word count is between three to 5,000 words a day, depending on, and in context, I do this full time, so I’ve got more time for it, but there was a day when we had a family thing going on. So I got up a little earlier, I’ve jumped in here. I pound out literally a hundred words cause I was just struggling that day. And then I went and did important family stuff. Cause the, the stories can wait. Right. And it’s about keeping that balance. So I really liked that. You said that, especially in the context of what everything else you’ve got going on, I’m really curious how you shift that quickly. Is there any advice or any tips you could give us from the business mindset? You know, I’ve got the heating and air heating and cooling guy coming by the gym to fix a thing. And then you go right into that creative mindset. Is there anything that you’ve learned over the years to help you shift quickly?

Whit McClendon (00:22:27):

Almost everything that you want to be able to do is simply a skillset that takes practice and you will get better at it. The more times you do it, you know, it’s like, I wish that I could say, you know, it’s like, well, I come in here and I ring a chime thing and I get into, and then I hit it. But a lot of times I just don’t have time for that. And instead I pull up the document and I’d take a deep breath and let it out and be like, all right, I read the last page or so to kind of see where I am and then I’ll start the timer. And, you know, in the beginning I would get really frustrated because I only had so much time and then class would start or something. But now it’s like, I use those actively like, okay, 15 minutes. And that gives me like, see what I can get done in 15 minutes and then I’ll, I’ll get it done and then either go beyond it or because of my time constraints, I’ll just stop. But I will feel good about what I’ve done,

Paul Sating (00:23:24):

That self motivation, that self challenge. And then that learned behavior of doing it, doing it, doing it, getting through the suck. So let’s talk about urban fantasy, then I’m going to kind of shift into the genre itself. What is it besides the you said earlier, I can’t remember exactly how you started, but as something along the possibilities, right. There’s boundless possibilities in urban fantasy. What is it that drew you to it and that you’re, you’re doing it and you kind of want to play around with maybe experiment with going forward in your stories, whether it’s this series or something you’ve got planned.

Whit McClendon (00:24:00):

Well, you know I I’ve thought about that. And really the, the thing that keeps coming up for me is just, it’s, it’s fun, you know? I mean, it’s just so much fun to you know I have, I have my, my guys they’re, they’re going up into a, a skyscraper in downtown Houston, you know, and it’s like, well, the, there, there were quite a few supernatural issues in this tower because there are guards, you know? And so I just think it’s, it’s a really interesting and fun, you know, to turn a corner somewhere and then there’s a mountain troll. Oh yeah. And so, you know, being in an urban fantasy environment lets me do that. It’s like if you’re in an Epic fantasy environment and you’re walking around in the mountains well, and there’s a mountain troll, it’s like, Oh yeah, they warned me, you know, it’s but you know, you’re just going to the stop and go. You don’t necessarily expect like a Reaper to come out at you or some kind of a goblet and, and and that’s just fun. So I really enjoy that part of it.

Paul Sating (00:25:06):

It is a lot of fun to to play around with that and see the possibilities in the world, you know, that all the Epic fantasies always attracted me because they were magical and foreign and new. And I think that’s one of the things I appreciate the most about urban fantasy is that it takes this mundane world that we live in, where we’ve got the gray, concrete cities and, you know, technology, and then, you know, it could be very boring, but urban fantasy has forced us to see the fun that, you know, I’m with you

Whit McClendon (00:25:39):

On that. Oh yeah, absolutely. With you on that.

Paul Sating (00:25:41):

So let’s, let’s kind of get people to know who you are as a, as a person a little bit. What are you currently reading when you’re not busy doing a million other things that is right? What are you reading right now?

Whit McClendon (00:25:53):

Well, I, I kinda stepped into my, my youth a little bit here recently. I managed to find almost all of the red Sonja books David C. Smith, you know, and it’s just been so long since I’ve enjoyed those and that is nothing but swords and sorcery, you know, sandals and, you know, the most ridiculous armor that a woman would never wear, you know? Gosh. but in terms of the writing, it’s like, it is just, it’s pure candy for me. Yeah. And, and so I really enjoy that. And the last couple of things that I’d read before that I read Dean, thriller, the silent corner, very modern you know, with certain fantasy elements. And that’s something that I’ve enjoyed about Koons is stuff. A lot of times is that it’s a very, very real world, thoroughly research thing. And his writing is really colorful. But there’s always some kind of fantasy element in there. And it’s really well thought out. So I really enjoyed that. And Stephen King too, you know, he had some good stuff that I’ve read lately. Yeah.

Paul Sating (00:26:58):

Yeah. He I mean, tried and true his intro, we got so much, we’ve got so much in common when it comes to what we actually work on and what we actually read on the side too. I like, I love the darker stuff I always have. And it’s always interesting when you do urban, right. Urban fantasy, how those elements can kind of influence your fantasy world. For example, when you’re reading something like King and you know, you’ve got those heavy horror elements, if you will.

Whit McClendon (00:27:27):

I love that. You know, it’s like I, in fact, I looked back over my Epic fantasy and there are some pretty horrific parts in there as well. And it’s like, you know, it’s like, yeah, I know. I like the bloody stuff. Just a little, just a little,

Paul Sating (00:27:40):

Just a little bit. I I’m with you on that. I think one of the most enjoyable, I don’t know if you were a fan or not, but the Jordans wheel of time series Sanderson came on board and he finished that series in that had Hapic battle. I can’t even, I asked somebody once I’ve never looked it up myself, I think is actually I Google. Same, but that for those of you who haven’t read it, I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but there’s this massive, good versus evil battle thing in that scene. I don’t remember something like 500 pages long, just the scene itself. And, you know, you know, I liked the intense horror stuff, but man, if you can drag out the, the fighting and the blood and the killing, that’s good. And you can make it work, I guess that’s the key. Yeah, he did. He did that. Well, I couldn’t, I couldn’t Brandon, I can’t hold your a pen. So if you could do this all over again, if you could pick up the Quill for the first time, starting with books, zero again what would the aspiring author do differently? If he had that second chance?

Whit McClendon (00:28:47):

Oh man, I would jump into some indie publishing courses right away. It was, I I’d already, you know, I’d gotten the first book out and was working on the second and I don’t remember when it was sometime I think between the second and third, when I really started digging into some of the bigger courses out there that that really starts you from the ground up as far as like, okay, maybe I wrote something or maybe I’m thinking about writing something, what do you need to do to be an indie author? You know? And it’s like, well, you end up with a kind of a big checklist you know, get a website, social media presence, you know, you gotta write the book, you know, write the book how to get it up on Amazon or how to go wide. If you’re going to do that, how to think about mailing list, it’s all of these things.

Whit McClendon (00:29:37):

It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I, you know, day one in the Kung school and I said, I want to be a thief. That’s what I wanted. I want to be a kung-fu instructor. Nobody says anything about the desk work. You need to do all the other stuff that goes along with being a teacher of martial arts. If you run your own business and an author business is no different, you have to know or hire somebody and I’m not doing that. You have to know how to do all of those little things that make that your author business become a business. And I wish that I would have started that earlier. That’s the big thing that I would have done

Paul Sating (00:30:13):

Meat. I I’m, I think I’m absolutely, I’m still at that point you know, two years into taking this serious and I’m still just doing baby steps, you know, and taking those little nibbles of learning all of these things that you’re hinting at, because it’s just, you know, frankly it can be intimidating and I’ve been doing this, like I said, full time for over a year now, but seriously for the two years. And it’s just, I can see why a new person coming in would just be absolutely, you know, throwing in the towel before they even just overwhelming.

Whit McClendon (00:30:46):

Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s so much to do and there’s so much information on how to do it, that that can also seem overwhelming, but you know, I’m a Kung Fu guy, you know, I’m, I’m used to starting at the bottom. It’s like, stand like this. Okay. Now do this now breathe. You know, it’s like, I’m used to starting with just the tiniest little things and then eventually, you know, adding as you go. So it’s like also, it will take me a thousand years if I started now, then, you know, I got a shot.

Paul Sating (00:31:18):

I mean, but that’s that, you know, that is so important to keep we, you and I spoke about mindset earlier and it’s, you know, about that, my you’ve got to have that practical mindset, or, or if you do, you end up throwing in the towel and being one of those folks who was going to try to write a book and then, you know, that was one of those things on your death bed. You look back and go, gee, I wish I had tried. So

Whit McClendon (00:31:41):

People ask me like at booths at the conventions, they would come up and say, I always wanted to write a story. And then they would spend the next 10 minutes telling me the story. And my comment is always the same.

Paul Sating (00:31:52):

Go home and write that start now. Exactly. No, I’m exactly with you. Yep. What what’s the future of Grimm fairy then? What can we expect coming from it?

Whit McClendon (00:32:05):

Well, and the third book, there is just a hint of romance going on in there. So that’s been fun to explore the feelings of the characters as things emerge. And also I got kinda hit in the face the other day with an idea for some of the characters. They’re more supporting characters, but max, who is the King of the werewolf clan you know, a billionaire businessman, a very noble character throughout the series. But I, I suddenly got hit with an idea or something where they are, he is the main character and it’s, it’s a pretty involved thing and I don’t know what to do with it. Somebody dropped this thing in my lap and I’m like, well, that’s not a grim very story. That’s a Maxim story. That’s a werewolf story, you know? And, and, and so I’m trying to figure out, I feel like I’m cheating on my Granbury right now. Like yeah, no, I, yeah. Let me get, let me just get back to you. I got a little thing and then I’m coming right back.

Paul Sating (00:33:06):

I swear. I just went to lunch. I just,

Whit McClendon (00:33:09):

So just let’s talk into the wearables just a minute. So as far as the grim period goes I don’t know exactly what he’s going to be doing next because I haven’t seen it. It just, you know, pops me in the face at some point, Oh, Hey, that’s what he’s going to do. But I know that he, and one of the characters are looking at their relationship. And so I’m kind of very interested to explore that. It sounds like it’s a lot of fun to me.

Paul Sating (00:33:33):

Do you, so do you let ideas percolate because you’ve talked about how even your friends give you a hard time about your pants saying if max doesn’t leave you alone for the next year, do you just leave max out there and just let it percolate? And then maybe two years from now he goes and has a side adventure, or are you one of those kinds of authors? I got to jump into Max’s thing. Cause he’s telling he’s screaming at me for attention.

Whit McClendon (00:33:58):

Yeah. That’s that I’ve started. I’ve made way more notes right now on Max’s stuff, his situation than on any new Grimm fairy stuff that could change at any moment, honestly, because I could be, you know, working away on some, on just making some notes on max and then all of a sudden power. Here’s a really powerful scene with the with Kane, the Grimm fairy and or Ariana, the witch or, or detective Avery Lynn, you know, it’s like something will hit me really hard and it will yank me right off of that other thing. And so it’s like, I let my creative urges run me around to a certain extent, but then I have to focus some admin skills to finish it out. If I don’t, then I’m just going to have a whole bunch of different story chunks lying around. And I won’t know, in a while, I, I don’t want 20 stories and I haven’t finished any of them. Yup. So once I get one going enough, then I will make myself finish that. And then the other one will wait,

Paul Sating (00:35:04):

There we go. All right. So there’s, it sounds like there’s plenty more to come from the world. Yeah. And all of his characters. All right. So folks who want to check you out, where can they find you?

Whit McClendon (00:35:15):

I am pretty easy to find. You can go to wit mclendon.com and there I am. Also I’m easily. Find-Able on Facebook. What McLendon author and personal Facebook page Jade mountain.org is my martial arts website, you know, and you’ll see me in there. I think I have a YouTube channel. But man,

Paul Sating (00:35:38):

I, I stink at YouTube. I’m still trying to figure that nonsense out Instagram as well. You know, it’s like, I’m, I’m on all the major things. I don’t, I don’t tweet though. I don’t, I don’t tweet well, so sorry. I’m just not good at that one. Yeah. Anybody who knows me will know that you, you know, I’m with you walking side by side and I used to be very heavy in it and I just, I can’t exhaust me and I don’t under, I’ve got a, my podcast get uploaded automatically to YouTube, or I probably wouldn’t know what to do with YouTube either. So, right. I have no idea. You know, it’s not really visually stimulating to watch an author type out a story. Yeah. So yeah, one of these days I’ll figure it out. I have no idea. Alright. So w I want to thank you for joining us.

Paul Sating (00:36:25):

It was, you were very gracious as my first ever urban fantasy author podcast, interviewee, you were very patient. I really appreciate it. And I actually am very excited to dig into some of your stuff and see what you’ve got coming out, especially as I get in there. And I started seeing how you mix the, the world, the, the races of the ferry and the martial arts stuff. I geek out about that stuff. So it’s going to be really interesting to dig into. I appreciate your time today. No, thank you. Like I said earlier, it’s an honor. I really appreciate the opportunity. And I’ve had a ton of fun.

Paul Sating (00:37:01):

I have as well. Again, urban fantasy author podcast fans. I am so humbled and appreciative that you have welcomed me into your show with open arms. And I want to thank MD Massey for not only allowing me to do this interview, but others in the future coming up, including my next one with Lindsay Buroker, if you want any more information on me or my books, just head over to PaulSating.com. Keep being epic.

Episode 5 with Paul Sating

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In this episode of The Urban Fantasy Author Podcast, M.D. Massey interviews Paul Sating, author of Bitter Aries and the Zodiac urban fantasy series. And, Paul reads the first chapter from Bitter Aries.

To Find Out More About This Week’s Featured Author…

Paul’s site: https://www.paulsating.com

The Zodiac Series on Amazon: https://geni.us/satingzodiac

Bitter Aries on Kindle: https://geni.us/ariesbitter

Transcript of This Week’s Author Interview:

M.D. Massey:

All right. Okay, here we go. All right. So welcome to the podcast, everyone. I am M D Massey. And I’m your host for this episode of the podcast I have with me, Paul sating, who thrives on telling and sharing stories, no matter the genre category, if it’s a good story, then he’s reading it, sharing it or telling it his current work in progress is the Zodiac and urban fantasy series about Ezekiel Sunstone. The only demon in the history of hell, not to have magic. The first book bitter Aries released back in July and the fourth book in the series. Cancer’s curse dropped just a few weeks ago, in addition to writing fiction, Paul, also those to podcasts for writers and authors called horrible writing and a storytelling podcast called audio fiction hailing from the gorgeous Pacific Northwest. Paul spends much of a spare time searching for creatures and monsters. People claimed don’t exist. So Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul Sating:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

M.D. Massey:

All right. And for those who can’t see, I want you to know that earlier I remarked on Paul’s awesome. Blue goatee. And tell me the story again about that. Why did you dye your goatee?

Paul Sating:

So anybody who’s a fills a parental role will understand this and, and completely relate. When you do something for fun and you do it at a certain point in your life, and you’re too old to be allowed to do that in your children’s determination, it just makes you more determined to do set things. So I was telling them the earlier my, I did it as a fun thing with my wife for the fall season where I dyed it blue because of the Zodiac books, because the health fire is blue. So I said, I’m going to just die at blue, just, you know, do a quick little Twitter, dare to do it. And she loved it. She said, Oh my God, that looks good. Do it again. And my kids had a typical kid reaction to it. And my 19 year old told me dad don’t ever do that again. So that was temporary. You take a shower, it washes out. So as soon as she told me not to ever do it again, guess what I did. I went and bought permanent dye and dyed at blue. She’s coming home for Halloween this weekend. And she’s going to get to see this and, and take it in its glory.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Nothing like horrifying your kids. I can’t wait until my kid is old enough to where I can really truly embarrass him. You know, my wife tells stories about her dad driving up to pick her up from high school in his old beat up City of Austin work truck. And he would play Tejano music as loud as he possibly could just to like, just to embarrass her as he would come pick her up, you know? Yeah. That’s, that’s classic, dad humor. All right, Paul, let’s jump in here. Tell, tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us how you got into writing urban fantasy and maybe a little bit about your military background as well.

Paul Sating:

Sure thing. I I used to tell the folks who listen to horrible writing all the time, you know, that, you know, you’re a writer, the life is gonna throw a lot of things at you that kind of push you away from tapping into that creative spirit that you have and, you know, adulthood responsibilities. And it really can crush creativity. And I listened to that noise and reflecting back, I realized, man, I’ve always been a writer. I won a second grade contest. We all had to write a short story as you do for assignments I one for our entire second grade in our little Farmville school. And I got to do a book tour of all the second grade classes and read my vampires and werewolves story to all of them, which by the way, I, I did that well before other sparkly, vampire and werewolf stories ever.

Paul Sating:

But I always had that love and that desire and being an adult kind of distracted me from it. I would still be creative from time to time. I used to write music all the time. I played drums, guitar bass. I would write my own songs, but I couldn’t really focus my own fault. I couldn’t focus on those longer pieces. And when I started coming to the end of my military career, I had a wealth of experiences as you do when you serve that long in the military to draw on and the itch never went away. I write, I wanna write, I wanna write. So I sat down one day and I said, I’m going to just get up early. And I’m going to start writing an Epic fantasy that had been in my head. I wrote a 300,000 word novel. I turned around, I wrote 180,000 words of the next book and boom, back to back deployments for the next two years completely threw me out of the rhythm and all that stuff kind of sat on a shelf, but the itch never went away.

Paul Sating:

So as soon as my life settled, I really got into writing. I started out with podcasts doing audio drama, fictional podcasts, but the book thing was always there. I just want to write books and I had to be comfortable with that. And you know, obviously having the support to do it is when I jumped into it. So I grew up in horror Stephen King, Clive Barker type stories, absolutely love Clive Barker. He’s still my all time favorite just because he’s so poetically, hor horrific his books of blood. If you actually read them and they did a recent TV adaptation, I’ll reserve my judgment on that one. But, but the books were just amazing and I loved horror, but writing, it never felt right for me. And during my deployments, I was so old. You know, we didn’t have handheld devices that you could carry five, six, 700 books around on.

Paul Sating:

You had to actually have books in your hands. So I had a friend who was an NCO. He outranked me at that time. Non-Commissioned officer, he outranked me at that time and he said, Hey, check this book out, take it with us on our deployment. I think you’re going to like it. And it was Robert Jordan’s wheel of time book one. And those of you who know that series, you know, that all of those books are immense. But that was a fantasy blue, blue horror away on those first couple of pages. And I thought this genre is what I love. I love fantasy. I was slower to warm, to urban fantasy only because I’m a contrarian by nature. If a lot of people like something I tend to resist until I, until it’s valid. And so I really waited on urban fantasy and you know, some TV shows didn’t really warm me to it because I’m like a I’m a, I don’t want to say a truest, but I’ve got that allegiance, right?

Paul Sating:

If you’re going to have magic, it needs to be this magical realism in a fantastical world with foreign creatures. Don’t plop me in the middle of Chicago that will never work. Oh, how dare you? But Jim Butcher kind of changed my mind like he did for a lot of people on that. And I saw how fun urban fantasy is. And that’s what did it for me is I found, Oh my God, once I put my personal biases aside, I actually just do, these are just fun. Romps, that’s what these stories are. So that’s what got me into it. And I was moving away from my shotgun approach to publishing novels with different types of genres. And I wanted to seriously get serious about it from a career standpoint. And that’s why I started focusing on fantasy. And I had this Zodiac idea for years in the back of my head. And I thought, this is where I’m going to start, let me play around with it. So that’s what got me into it. And now like a lot of these things do, the ideas are growing this series. I’m always getting these little offshoots of, Hey, you could go do this side adventure thing with it as well, which is really neat. And that’s one of the things I love about fantasy is that we are able to do that.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s funny because I think maybe when that series first came out, I think I picked up the first book, but back then the publishing cycle was such that, you know, the, the authors would only put out a book like once every two or three years. So I read that first book and then it left me wanting more. So I started looking for other stuff and then I think I stumbled across what was it war for the roses, which is one of the, I believe the same, the title of the book that was one of the first urban fantasy books written. And that book was the first book that kind of dealt with the Fe and modern society and so forth. You know, it was a really early book. There were some, there was another series that was contemporary to that series.

M.D. Massey:

I read a few of those as well. I’m trying to think of the name of it. I can’t think of the name of it. I think it was a shared world series, but that’s what really got me started urban fantasy. And, you know, I really liked the idea of having, you know, magic and magical races and fantastical creatures and so forth and contemporary time, you know, and, and I read reorders books because it was, you know, that’s, that’s urban fantasy for kids, you know, and how love all that stuff, man. And it’s, it’s I think personally, I think it’s a fun sandbox to play in. Let me ask you this. So in your books, as I understand it, demons are the good guys. So do me a favor, explain how that works. And then also tell us a little bit about your main character.

Paul Sating:

Okay. Well, how it works, how does it work? Writers, writers get it? They, we understand, I think more than most people, unless, you know, they work the mental health field. I think we really get it, that everybody sees themselves as the good guy in their story. No matter how evil society sees someone, that person, that individual doesn’t buy into that they see themselves as the hero. And I played around with that idea for demons just on a, on a general basis is, you know, demons are demonized and gee, wouldn’t it be neat if they were, they were the good guys, have their own stories. Why wouldn’t they be everybody? Is they’re the heroes of their own stories. And you know, one of the things I do with my idea generation is I just get a spark of inspiration. I will jot down a quick note to myself and I will let that thing just ferment it until it’s ready.

Paul Sating:

And it’s, you know, it’s kind of like a different when you home brew, beers, everything, everything needs a little more time, a little less time, depending on what it is. And this one sat easily two years two-ish three-ish years in my head, just for many demons is good guys. And that’s all it really was. Wouldn’t that be fun, fun, urban fantasy romp. And I just kept playing with that cause they would be the heroes of their own stories. And I was just in the spirit of wanting to have fun with stumped. And again, cause I’d been writing darker stories. I wanted to have a character that who was fun. So it would be a deem and he’d be, you know, the good guy in his own story, but I wanted it to be just a fun character. And that’s kind of where Zeke came along was I was thinking about what would make, you know, a demon, what, who would be the empathetic character for you in, in hell filled with demons type of character.

Paul Sating:

And that’s when I was thinking about the magical aspect of it. What if everybody had magic and Zeke is literally the first one in the history of hell to not have any magic, what would his life be like? And that’s kind of, that’s how we meet him. And he grows from that, but it was fun to play with that. It’s that empathetic character. He he’s he’s ostracized. He’s an outsider because he’s different than everybody else. He’s got a glaring weakness that makes, that makes him stand out in all the wrong ways. He’s, you know, he’s a failure to his parents. He’s horrible with sucky by he can’t have, you can’t get a girlfriend to save his life kind of thing. He’s just a loser, but he cares. He’s got a big heart and he just cares. And I, for me that I did just stuck a demon. Who’s got a big heart and cares and wants the world to be a better place. And he’s got this one huge hurdle that he’s got to get over. And once I start once I had him locked down, that’s when everything started fleshing out in, in the rest of the world. And and like I said earlier, it’s only grown since then. And it continues to grow every time I sit down and think about something, I think about a new place, a new plot line, a new story, all kinds of stuff.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. You know, well, one thing I’m curious about as you grow that world and as you hear those characters what are you basing? Like what cosmology are you basing the demons moron? Is it more like a Dante’s Inferno type cosmology or something? That’s a little bit more you know, more traditional religious or contemporary.

Paul Sating:

What I did, what I wanted to do is I wanted to take Dante is nine circles model, but I want it to really, I had a little fun with it. I’m a wise guy in real life. I re I don’t take things too seriously, which, you know, as an ex military people and I used to do a lot of instruction in the military. So I’d teach leadership classes to other leaders and it used to really unnerve them. But I truly, it’s one of my core tenants as a person, literally nothing we do today, yesterday and tomorrow is going to make a difference. You know, the sun’s going to still come up for 5 billion years, no matter what we do. So just stop taking things so seriously. And when it came to this, that’s what I started thinking about was, you know, Dante has levels with Z or Dante circles with Zeke, as that idea already is to make them individual, right.

Paul Sating:

Everybody’s got an idea of what hell is. And we use that as a pejorative. We use it as a slang term, whatever, but that’s what was fun for me. Well, what is hell for me? I, you know, nothing against Chicago, I loved going to that city, but it’s held for me because it’s massive that city scares me to death because it’s too big. I don’t, I don’t like being around Houston. That would be hell for me. Whereas I would love to live up in the mountains, away from everybody and except for the wildlife and for a lot of people, they would think that sounds like, hell, I would never want to be. I’ll always away from that. So why wouldn’t my world be the same each circle of using the nine circles from Dante is model, but just taking the very big picture concepts of what that schematic, if you will outlines and just start playing with it, what does that actually look like?

Paul Sating:

You know, what does strife look like in greed? What would that, how would your buildings be designed? What would the culture in that circle be? And that’s one of the neat things about playing around with this world is with it being nine different circles. Every, every aspect has a very unique culture. Every circle has a very unique culture to it. So I can create nine different worlds right there in that one air quote setting. I can have a lot of fun with that. I think I have as much fun as the people who just come across the series, to be honest.

M.D. Massey:

Okay. So without giving too much away or without any spoilers. So how does the Zodiac theme fit into that series?

Paul Sating:

Well, the Zodiac was originally going to be a thriller series. I was going to do that and that’s one of the reasons why it sat forever in the back of my brain is I was going to do a serial killer type of thing. Yeah. I know yawn it’s been done. We’ve done. And then I started thinking about the urban fantasy taken. It was just this hard shift. It was like a hard reset. Why don’t I take this Zodiac concept and bring it into this urban fantasy model one of the benefits of an idea sitting in your head for a while and letting it germinate like that. So with the Zodiac, I just, I wanted to do that. I wanted to feature, I wanted to personify a Zodiac sign one per book and, and bring that sign to life through a character. And so with bitter Aries, that’s what, and book zero is, you know, out there for anybody who wants to go look at what a lead into the series would be, that one’s called the fall of Aries because I had bitter areas out already, but I wanted to go do something more with, with the area’s character.

Paul Sating:

Cause a lot of fans were wanting more. They wanted more and more and more of them. I thought, how can I do that? Well, I haven’t done a book zero to the series. Let me go do that. And that’s where the fall of areas came into play. But that’s what I want to do is I want to have some fun with bringing that Zodiac sign to life and the ne the fun thing I’ve found after doing that was there were a lot of readers who were excited to see what their sign was going to be, what their character would be like. They’d start taking ownership of their character. You know, I’ve had, I can’t tell you how many people, too many, honestly, as an author who, you know, does this for a living, tell me I’m going to buy your series when you do my side. And some of them are waiting on the line.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Well, so what is it, tell me this, what do you like most about writing in that world? What’s the best thing about writing in that world that you’ve created?

Paul Sating:

I love the open arena. That is that urban fantasy gives to me in that world because I defined the hell on my own terms. W we, those that nine circle structure, but everything is just, that’s where it starts and it deviates immediately and extensively from there. So I get to invent anything I want as I go. And I find that just being able to do that, that freedom of creation in this world with, with magic systems and supernatural and mortal beings is just a lot of fun. The, the playground is almost limitless, right? I mean, as I develop more and more of the world, obviously I put some self prescribed limits on it, but it’s being able to go play in that playground and entertain, you know, the, the art of what if, what could happen. If, and for me, that’s a lot of fun because as someone who spent a lot of time writing horror and thriller, I couldn’t always do that. And it’s one of the things that always drew me to fantasy was just that wide open that white canvas at fantasy writers have virtually white canvas that we have to go paint, whatever we want. Okay.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. And you know, one thing, this is kind of funny because you know, I, what I get a lot from people when I’m running ads for my books, people who haven’t read the series is they’re like, Oh, you know, this is just like books, your series, or this is just like her in series, or this is just like so-and-so series or whatever. Usually Butcher because, you know, wizard detective type stuff. But what I find interesting is, is explaining to people like, you know, this is genre fiction. And my job as a fictionist or as an urban fantasy author is to take familiar tropes, you know, familiar aspects of urban fantasy that, you know, readers have been proven to, you know, I guess you could say latch onto, or, or that they become familiar with and then tell new stories in unfamiliar ways, you know, new and interesting unfamiliar ways and share those stories with my audience.

M.D. Massey:

And then, then people kind of, they kind of get it, you know, they’re like, okay, you know, and I’m like, if you, you know, maybe you’re not familiar with the, with the urban fantasy genre sub genre now, but man, they’re like, you know, there are literally thousands of series out there, many of them following in butcher’s footsteps. Yes. You know, we, we know that for a fact, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there both traditionally published and independently published. And, and I agree with you the, the ability to create new things, you know, or take, you know, familiar tropes, familiar themes and, and turn them on their head is, is a, it’s a lot of fun. It is. Okay. So, you know, it getting back to your segue into this, I should say a lot of listeners, a lot of people who’ve listened to this podcast in the past. Many of them are my readers, they’re aspiring fiction authors. So I’m always like to ask authors about their writing process how you develop ideas, what your plotting process is, if you’re actually a plotter or a pantser the steps you go through to take an album editing to print, you know, just, you know, you know, if you could, in a nutshell, explain your process to us for the most interesting part of your process from your view.

Paul Sating:

Well, as with everybody especially depending on where your they are at it will evolve and mind still evolving. Mine evolves all the time. And one thing that stays true is that germination that I talked about is to not chase the squirrel. I see that with a lot of newer writers, they get to that sticky middle of a book. They’ve got this fresh idea and they go chase that squirrel and they never get back. And then 10 years later, they still haven’t published a book because they keep chasing squirrels. So one of the most critical things I do is I, you know, I’ve got my little trap set. I dropped the cage on the squirrel, so I’ve got it for future reference. And that’s what I was talking about with, I’m just jotting down a, a bullet point or two about that moment of inspiration that I had.

Paul Sating:

And I don’t go revisit it. I leave it alone until such time. I mean, I, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I kind of remember some of the ideas that I have in this little secret folder over on the side. Right. But my main focus is the thing that I’m working on and distracted from that. But once that thing, and as it’s sitting there in the background, it’s still germinating. You get inspired by life. Things happen, events happen, you get an experience when I’m ready to work on something, you can’t see it, it’s behind the camera, but I’ve got an old school flip chart, a whiteboard kind of thing. And I will take that thing out into my living room where I can spread out and make a mess. And I’ll take, you know, two, two or three good stacks of sticky notes.

Paul Sating:

And I just idea vomit. You know, I want to have the only demon in hell without magic, and he’s going to be an early 20 something demon. That’s all I go out to my whiteboard with. And I start writing ideas on a sticky note. And I just, I don’t put any order. I just slap those sticky notes on that whiteboard. This happens over time. And then I’ll start rearranging. You’ve talked to Joe [inaudible] before is kind of a little idea, kind of a, like a little bit of what he did is I just want to get that stuff down. I will go look at the story and the flow and the rising and falling actions. And I’ll worry about all that later right now. I just want to idea generate once idea generation is done, then I’ll start worrying about those different types of arcs, those peaks in those valleys.

Paul Sating:

And one of the things I’ve only done recently is I’ve involved my developmental editor at the outline step to kind of save us on the back. End of things is get her blessing on that outline, Hey, how’s this look for you? She gives me her thoughts. I go rework forever, cause she’s a lot smarter than I am. And then then I’ll get to the writing and then we’ll revisit. I’ll have I’ll have, you know, some advanced reader type beta reads going on while this stuff is happening. And then I’ll pretty everything up, drop it on her. She’ll give me her edits developmental edits on, on the book and then I’ll come back and re attack on it again. But you know, that’s something that I’ve worked on for years and it’s still not something I even feel completely comfortable with. I still feel there are things I could be doing better, quicker, more efficiently, but one of the most important things for me and a lot.

Paul Sating:

And I know because I, you know, I talked to a lot of newer writers over in the horrible writing group. You got to stop chasing those squirrels. You gotta stop chasing those squirrels. So you can really start focusing on that idea generation. Cause it’s a lot of fun. It is. And it’s a lot of fun to outline. And I don’t, you know, my outline have outlines have changed. I used to do, you know, two or three bullet points per chapter. That was it all walks into a store store gets held up at gunpoint. I mean, that was the whole outline for chapter one kind of thing. Now it’s, it’s flown because I’ve been more disciplined in studying, right? This is something I want to do for a living. I’ve got to get, I’ve got to treat this as a profession. I’ve got to more. And that has in turn made me more of a plotter than I ever thought I would be. I’m still not one of those 60 page plotters for a novel, but they are getting longer and longer every single time I do this.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I don’t get the, I don’t get the 60 page outline. I can’t either. I don’t understand. This is just too much detail. It’s like, okay, well you’ve just written half the novel, you know? And then what they’ll tell you is, yeah, I’ve already written half the novel. That’s why I do it. But no, I do a fairly detailed maybe like six to 10 page outline for each novel I write. And they’re flexible because I know which bullet points I want to hit. You know, I w I know what the beats I want to hit, but then I can be under off into, you know, other unchartered territory. And this book I’m writing now is the 12th book in the series. And it’s going to be the last one in this initial series with this character. And then I’m going to start a new series with that character.

M.D. Massey:

So I’ve got to cap off a bunch of stuff, you know, tie up loose ends. But you know, I’ve got like at least three or four chapter, you know, like detour that I just took in the story that I felt like needed to be told. So, you know, that’s what you gotta do. Okay. So here’s a, here’s a, just an off the wall question name, one quirky writing ritual, or habit that you have that you simply cannot do without, like when you start writing before you do that thing, or do you have to do that thing while you’re writing?

Paul Sating:

One of the things that I’ve, I dictate, I, you know, I just, I can’t, I can, I’m a lot slower if I were to type, but the I just wrote the draft of the fifth book in the Zodiac and it’s ended up being 124,000 words. I can, I can do that by hand. I did that in 18 days through dictating my hand, it would take a lot longer than 18 days, but you can see, this is my writing space here. For those of you who can actually see the camera and I can reach back here and touch these books. So it’s not very wide. So I want you, I want you to play along and imagine me at five o’clock in the morning when I’m writing a fighting scene, especially a writing scene, or to get my brain engaged in going, I’ve got right off the camera over here.

Paul Sating:

I’ve got a couple of swords hanging from the wall and I will actually take the swords off though. It’s crazy. Cause again, I can hit these books behind me and I will hold those in and I’ll start doing warmup exercises with sores in this little alley, but there’s something about that physical engagement that engages the mental for me. And it, I mean, I do drink coffee. I’m a writer. Of course I drink coffee, but there’s something about that picking up that sword. I’m going, especially if I have a fight scene now Zeke doesn’t have a store, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just about that physical aspect of moving and feeling the balance of a weapon in your hands. It just it’s transcendent experience. It takes me out of me now. I don’t know for me, it just makes me feel like a creative, you know, it puts me in that place, even though I’m sitting in the middle of a office in the middle of suburbia America,

M.D. Massey:

That’s it, that’s funny when I’m writing fight scenes. A lot of times I’ll go down to my garage, which most of my garage is set up as a, as a training areas of dojo. And I I’ll go down there and I’ll pull out, like I have a bunch of different training weapons. I have swords and stuff. Then I’ll pull out swords and I’ll work through movements. You know, as I’m writing the fight scene, I’ll have to run down there and go, Oh man, will this really work? And so I’ll go work it out. Or I’ll get my, I have a grappling dummy and I’ll give it my grappling dummy and I’ll get, and I’ll start working out news and I’ll be like, can you really do this? Can you transition here? So yeah, it does help. And I personally have to work it out sometimes in real life because I’ve done martial arts for so long. I’m like, I don’t want to write something that doesn’t make sense. So then when many times though, I have to remind myself too that there’s a certain suspension of disbelief that happens when you have magical characters with mystical powers and you know, they’re supernatural and supernaturally strong. So then I have to just go, okay, well he can do this because magic that’s that? All right. Well, tell us your plans for future novels.

Paul Sating:

Well, a fifth book for the Zodiac is already under well underway. It’s been sitting with beta readers for, I don’t know, a week and a half ish now I’ve started outlining the sixth book in the series. Obviously it’s a Zodiac. So the plan is to take it out to the 12 books and see what happens from there. But I, you know, I do also feel the call of other things. There are things that I like, I love Epic fantasy. I love high fantasy. And you know, before I leave this mortal coil, I want to actually delve into those too. So I’ve got a trilogy and that sitting on the side, it’s kind of like a I call it like blood porn. It’s kind of like Witcher and Conan mash. Yeah. So I’ve been, it’s kind of like I just said, I can’t be a hypocrite, right.

Paul Sating:

I gotta be candid and real with everybody. I talk about the squirrel. This thing is a noisy squirrel. It’s sitting over in the cage, just rattling calling me. So, but I’ve promised myself, I mean, I’ve got my cover artist. I’ve got my editor all booked for books, five and six. So that helps me stay accountable, accountable to me. But after that six book, I think I’m gonna hit the pause on the Zodiac for a little bit and go see what happens with this. Who knows we’ve got months to go yet. And I can, I can knock out first dress, really easy. It’s all the revision stuff that kills me. It’s much more fun to create than to fix the things I create. Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Hey, you know, that’s why, you know, I keep trying to get myself to dictate and I actually did dictate a good chunk of, of some of my earlier books, the series, and it turned out great. But I’ve gotten to the point now after writing, you know, 20 novels and short story collections that I have this rhythm where it’s actually a habit, we’re, I’ll turn out the cleanest first draft I possibly can. So the editing process goes super quick and then I can just send it off my editor. She’s working on a PhD in literature and she’s actually an urban fantasy reader and she is a fan of the series now. And I can just send it out to her and I know she’s going to like clean it up. She knows exactly what my style is now and what I like and what I don’t like. And she sends me back edits and it’s just click look like, so the editing go super fast. Then that’s hurting me because I know that I could probably have faster output if I was willing to edit more. So yeah, I get you give because you know, when you’re dictating, it does require you to have to clean up a lot. Yes.

Paul Sating:

Yeah. It’s a lot more, it’s a lot more cleaning up. One of the things I found though for me, I don’t know about your own experience though, with dictating for me is I can, like I said about that sword play type of thing, how it transcended, it takes me into this transcendental type of experience. I can tap into more raw emotion. Yes. I have to clean that up. Right. Because it is sloppy when your raw emotion comes out. But at the same time, I feel like I tap into deeper raw emotions if you will, when I’m dictating them typing. I, and they may just be unique to me. I don’t know.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I’ll be honest to that. I think it’s just habit, but the word seemed to flow better when I’m typing and there’s, you know, if you think about it, there’s really no difference. I mean, there’s actually, there, there are more I guess you could say barriers to cross, you know, there’s, there’s more that has to happen to get those words from your brain, through your hands, through the keyboard, onto the page. And there is just speaking to them. So, so it’s probably psychological on my part. All right. So we’re trying to keep these interviews short because Paul is going to, he has provided us with, do you narrate your own books or somebody else’s narrative for you?

Paul Sating:

I actually do behind me here is my little recording studio. I’ve got it all sound soundproofed and everything back there. So yeah, I enjoy doing it because of my podcasting. So

M.D. Massey:

Cool. Well, Paul providers with the first chapter, from the first book in the series, correct? For better areas? Correct. Okay. So you’re going to hear that next. So real quick, tell us where listeners can go to find your books and learn more about your work.

Paul Sating:

They just want to head over to a pulsating.com. That’s where they can find all kinds of stuff about me and you know how we can, you can follow me on the socials and all that good stuff. Pulsating, SATs.

M.D. Massey:

There you go. Okay. PaulSating.com. All right. Very good. Well, Paul well, and I want to mention too, Paul’s actually gonna help me resurrect this podcast. They had to like kind of step away from it for awhile. First 2019 was disastrous for me than 2020 has been disastrous for everybody else, but we’re reviving this podcast. So Paul’s going to help me out with that. And I think we’re going to be bouncing back and forth on having other authors come on and doing interviews. So you’ll be hearing more from Paul in future episodes. So stay tuned for that. All right, Paul, once again, thanks for the interview. And everybody else stick around. You’ll be hearing Paul’s first chapter from his first and series in just a few.

Episode 4 With Joe Nassise

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In 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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Click here to purchase Joe’s novel, The Heretic

Transcript of This Week’s Author Interview:

M.D. Massey:

Hello 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.

Episode 3 with Lori Drake

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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:

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 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.

Episode 2 with Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele

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In this episode of the Urban Fantasy Author Podcast, M.D. Massey interviews husband and wife author team Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele, co-authors of The Misfit Series and The Chaos Mages series. And, Alex reads a chapter from his book, Stolen Trinkets.

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:

M.D. Massey:

Hey everyone. This is M.D. Massey here with Urban Fantasy Author podcast, and today we are interviewing Stephanie Foxe and Alex Steele, who are a husband and wife team who write together. They write urban fantasy novels together. And what’s interesting about their approach is they each are kind of in charge of a separate series under each pen name.

So Alex Steele is kind of in charge. His series is the Chaos Mages. And then Stephanie, she writes a series called The Misfit Series. So we’re going to get into talking to them about their process and how they work together. And we’re going to find out more about their series today. So Stephanie and Alex, welcome to the show.

Stephanie Foxe:

Hey, Michael.

Alex Steele:

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having us over.

M.D. Massey:

Pretty good. Yeah, and I haven’t seen you guys since Boston Fantasy Fest. So I’m really excited to talk to you because I met these guys at Boston Fantasy Fest, and they were super, super nice and I think everybody had a good time at that event. Kind of looking forward to the next one.

Alex Steele:

It was fantastic.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, and man that was like the perfect time of year to go to Boston too, wasn’t it?

Alex Steele:

It was beautiful. Traveling around, seeing some of the sights was great. We had never been before.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah neither had we, and I think I told you before we started the interview that I don’t like big cities and I did like Boston so it was a surprise.

Alex Steele:

Yeah, it was a nice event.

M.D. Massey:

I don’t know, I think next year they’re probably going to have it in California. I’m not sure if I’ll go because I don’t like southern California, apologies to anybody who lives in southern California. If they have it northern California I’ll go. But anyway, okay, so just start off let’s jump in the interview. So first, why don’t you guys tell us a little bit about your books and your series.

Stephanie Foxe:

So I’ve written two series. One was a shorter series called The Witches Bite Series. The main character, she brews potions and stuff like that. The series I’m working on right now, that I’ve been having a ton of fun writing, is called The Misfit Series, and it’s about a group of people who get kind of sucked into being werewolves. They live in a magical society, there is no masquerade, magic isn’t hidden. There’s actually trolls and witches and elves and magical marketplaces and stuff like that, which is something I’ve always thought was really fun.

Stephanie Foxe:

So the just three humans they’re, they don’t fit together, but when they get attacked and bitten by a rogue werewolf they end up having to make it work. Yeah, that’s been a lot of fun to write. I really like writing people coming together and having a found family.

M.D. Massey:

Stephanie, how many books do you have in each of those series?

Stephanie Foxe:

The first series, The Witches Bite Series has four books out, and that series is complete. The Misfit Series has two books out so far and the third one is hopefully coming in mid-February.

M.D. Massey:

Okay, cool and I understand that hopefully thing because I always tell my readers, “Hopefully this time,” but that never happens so. Okay, Alex tell us about your series.

Alex Steele:

Okay, so I wrote the Chaos Mages, and essentially where my inspiration came from that was anime and like buddy cop stories like Lethal Weapon. I mean some of our readers and kind of what we like to say is it’s basically if Lethal Weapon and Marvel was to meet essentially and they had a baby or whatever because that’s what it is. There’s just lots of destruction happening but it’s focused around Logan Blackwell and Lexi Swift and together they’re … They’re kind of forced to work together in the beginning but they really start to come into their own by Book Three and really start to be a good cohesive team and it’s just about basically solving and fighting crime but also there’s a deeper, you know, perhaps subplot going on. I don’t want to give any spoilers but there’s a deeper subplot going on that they’re kind of, sort of forced into. But essentially they’re just detectives and they just like to fight crime, and they kind of blow stuff up a little too much occasionally. They [crosstalk 00:04:10] quite a lot.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

I personally like destruction and mayhem in my urban fantasy so.

Alex Steele:

Yes.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to write, you know, [crosstalk 00:04:20] what they can blow up next.

Alex Steele:

And so, what’s interesting about my series is it’s my idea but Stephanie does all the writing for it. I mean, I’ll go through and I’ll make some suggestions and I’ll write little lines here and there but the bulk of the writing is all her.

M.D. Massey:

Okay, so, since you jumped into that, tell us a little bit more about your writing process. So Alex, when you’re working on your books, do you do the outlining or do you guys collaborate on outlining and then Stephanie does the bulk of the writing, then you come back in during the editing process? How does that work?

Alex Steele:

Well, it’s flexible. Originally, I did all of the outlining and ideally I would be doing all of the outlining. Book three kind of was a little bit of a chaotic mess [crosstalk 00:05:06] and we kind of outlined it together but in pieces because we weren’t 100% sure how to make the story go for a longer series. Like we had an idea for this longer series but we weren’t sure how we wanted this book to be and how we wanted it to work cohesive. So that book was a little bit more chaotic and this book won’t be coming out until January 15 which is when the pre-order is up and once it goes live there the whole series will be going into KU at that point. Currently this series is live but. Anyway, back to the outlining. So, I do that and then she kind of takes it over and then.

Stephanie Foxe:

Well, part of the problem is, so we’ll normally start out with an outline but I’m not very good at following outlines, so I’ll get about halfway through and I’ll start diverging from the outline and I’ll be like, oh hey Alex I did this thing that changes the plot completely, do you like it? So I do a lot of that but he tends to read it as I write it, like every chapter, every scene, I’m like sitting down with him and having him read it, getting his feedback on it. I do that actually to a certain extent with books that I write on my own as well just because he’s always been like my alpha-reader, you know, he’s the first person that sees it, he’s the person that makes sure I don’t have a ton of plot holes, so writing a book together sprung from that.

M.D. Massey:

You know, it’s interesting that you guys work together in this way. I know probably the most famous husband wife writer team in urban fantasy is [inaudible 00:06:40]. You know, I’ve always found it fascinating that, you know, two people could get together and write a book together and, you know, one person be more in charge of the writing, the other person be in charge of the ideas and so forth, but I guess it works?

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, it works. We definitely butt heads sometimes but I think that makes it better, because, you know, he’ll sit down and be like, you know, you’ve been having all these magical fights and then they’re just throwing fireballs back and forth, like make it more interesting. So he’ll push me to be more creative, and it gives me the confidence to publish the books because I know someone’s already nitpicked it.

Alex Steele:

Yes, and. Go ahead.

M.D. Massey:

No, go ahead Alex, go ahead.

Alex Steele:

Yeah, I was gonna say, the working together, like it does create its own stress and environment and I can tell you it’s a lot less stressful whenever I’m helping her on her own Misfit series for instance because I can give her some feedback and she doesn’t seem as angry all the time. But whenever we’re working on mine, there’s like this big anger and it’s not directed at me, she’s just like grr at the story sometimes and it’s really hilarious looking back on it once we’re done, but in the process it can definitely be a little hair-pulling.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah. Writing can be anger inducing, but it’s a lot of fun.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, you know, I guess when you’re writing something and then somebody comes in and says, hey, you know, change this, that would be kind of frustrating, but in a way, that’s really what traditionally published authors deal with all the time when they’re going through the editorial process.

Stephanie Foxe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and I’ve actually gone and worked with a developmental editor before, and that was a fantastic learning process, and I think that’s made me a little bit more open to getting that kind of feedback because she had me completely rewrite the book a couple of times. [crosstalk 00:08:29]

M.D. Massey:

Wow.

Stephanie Foxe:

But, yeah. It was a great learning process. That book still isn’t published, it’s sitting on my computer. It might get published one day but yeah, it was a good learning process. And I think Alex learned a lot from that process as well, because as I was getting all this editing feedback, he was seeing it too. So he started learning kinda how to think like a developmental editor, so that’s been really helpful.

Alex Steele:

It really was.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, my main editor, because I have a couple of editors, but my main editor, she acts more as a developmental editor then a line editor, and at first, I was kinda like, oh gosh, you know, can you just, you know, find the grammatical errors and spelling and syntax and, you know, leave the story alone. But then after a while I realized, because she’s really sharp, she’s working on her PhD in medieval literature I think, really sharp. And she finds stuff [crosstalk 00:09:23], you know, and points out plot holes and stuff that I never realized were there. So yeah, having a developmental editor, or someone else who knows the craft and can look at your work, honestly man, it’s just invaluable.

Stephanie Foxe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alex Steele:

Yeah, it really is. It’s something that just, I don’t know how people live without, in a weird way. I mean some people are just amazingly creative, but having that barrier is just so helpful.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, so, you know, speaking of which. What got you guys started writing? What got you involved in writing? And more specifically, what got you involved with writing urban fantasy novels?

Stephanie Foxe:

So I’ve always loved writing. I was a big reader as a kid. I grew up reading, I actually started out, like one of the big novels I remember reading first when I was like ten years old was The Hobbit, and that got me started into fantasy, which opened up this whole big fantastic world. So I used to write with my cousin, we actually racked up really expensive long-distance phone calls because we would sit on the phone, we would write a story together and they were terrible stories but it was so much fun.

And then I just kind of stopped writing for a while, but I read a ton. I didn’t realize at the time that I was reading indie authors but I would go on Amazon and I would buy those 99 cent e-books. I think one month I spent $150 on e-books and it was mostly 99 cent books. I was just reading like two or three books a day. And a lot of them ended up being urban fantasy. I read a little bit Anita Blake. I think one of the first urban fantasy ones I remember reading where it clicked that it was urban fantasy was the Jane Yellowrock series, Skinwalker.

M.D. Massey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephanie Foxe:

And it was just so much fun. I loved the idea of magic mixing with the modern world. After I worked with the developmental editor, I’d had this idea in the back of my head and I just sat down and I wrote the book in two weeks and that was Borrowed Magic, and it was so much fun, and I realized that was kind of what had been missing from my writing, why I struggled with word counts so much for a while.

So, yeah. It was fun to just dive into like, yeah I think everybody has, well, not everybody, but maybe some Harry Potter nerds, is like you want to get that Hogwarts letter in the mail and stuff like that. So urban fantasy is like me getting to pretend I’m a witch or pretend I’m an elf or any of that other stuff kind of in the modern day.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, and you know, going back to the writing thing, I don’t know about you, but when I first started writing fiction, what I found was I could complete scenes, like I could write a complete scene, but I could never finish a novel. I probably have four or five unfinished novels on my hard drive.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, absolutely, I keep a Google Drive folder with a bunch of unfinished story ideas that I’d started years ago. The first thing I ever actually finished was [inaudible 00:12:39], it was actually a Harry Potter fan fiction. And it was almost 50,000 words. It was like 48,000 but it was the first time I’d written a story from beginning to end. And that kind of proved to me that I could do it, so then, you know, it’s when I started working with the editor and wrote a terrible book, but she helped me get past it.

Alex Steele:

It’s no longer terrible after the third time of rewriting it, I will say, but she’s so like, frustrated with it after rewriting it over three years over and over again.

M.D. Massey:

You get sick of seeing the same thing, right?

Stephanie Foxe:

Absolutely.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, yeah. My first book was a real clunker too, and I released it and then I actually pulled it off Amazon and it was only available in resale. And then, people started asking for it again, so I sent it to my editor and we heavily revised and edited it. And it was interesting going through that process, because I knew it wasn’t the best work I could produce at the time, but, well it was at that time that I wrote it, but revising it was interesting because I got to see all the mistakes that I had made, and I got to realize how far I’d come as a writer five or six novels later, so.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, and it’s interesting to see that even now, like the first series I published, I like it, I think it’s enjoyable, but I feel like I’ve gotten so much better as a writer, like with the new series, the Misfit series. And I think that’s reflected in the reader response to it.

Alex Steele:

Yeah, I mean, that book in the first month and a half got nearly 70 reviews, it’s over 100 now, and it just absolutely kind of blew up compared to the other books that we’ve written. It just, it really resonated with readers on the Misfit series.

M.D. Massey:

And that’s always so exciting as a writer, to see a series or a first book in a series that you have planned that you’re enjoying writing, and to see readers, you know, really, you know, kind of relate to it and to see it start rising through the rankings on Amazon is always a great thing.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, and it was also really nice, because I tried something new, I did multi-POV in the Misfit series and I’d never done that before. So it was really interesting getting to tell the story from four different perspectives and getting to really show each characters’ growth. It was really kind of freeing, actually, as a writer.

M.D. Massey:

Did you have a hard time tracking the story that way? I mean even with outlining, was it difficult sometimes to track the story as you were working between each characters’ point of view?

Stephanie Foxe:

I don’t think so, actually. It let me focus on the most interesting thing that was happening at any point. I think there was a few times I felt like one POV was a little neglected, but as far as tracking the story, I didn’t actually struggle with that all that much, partially because I did have such a good outline for that first book. And actually my developmental editor, she critiqued that outline for me and really helped me kind of bring it to its best form.

Alex Steele:

Some of the best piece of advise we actually got on multi-POV I believe was from Alida Winternheimer.

Alex Steele:

And her thing on POV was kind of like when you’re telling a story with multiple POVs, only tell the point of view that is interesting at that particular moment. And so the story flows from point to point to point, but it’s hopping heads to a different person that it actually matters to tell the story from that person’s perspective. And in many ways it actually makes it better than a single POV because sometimes, you know, or it can get really challenging to make a single POV book interesting throughout the entire thing because sometimes things need to happen but they’re not necessarily the most interesting.

Stephanie Foxe:

Or they’re not happening to the main character.

Alex Steele:

Yeah or it’s hard to make it interesting for the main character when you’re writing [inaudible 00:16:37]. So it was really fun.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, that is interesting, it’s good advise actually, and timely advise for me because I’m about to embark on my first co-writing project, so it should be interesting. I’m working with another writer, we’re developing a multi-POV, it’ll be two characters. I’m gonna write one character’s point of view and my co-author is gonna write the other one, so that’s something to consider, I’ll consider that as we go into this project.

Alex Steele:

Awesome.

M.D. Massey:

Well, tell me a little bit. Okay, let’s go back to your characters. Each of you tell me about your main characters. What do you think makes your main characters likable or relatable for the reader, or at least somebody that the reader wants to follow along on whatever adventure you have planned for them.

Alex Steele:

So my character, Logan Blackwell. So it’s kind of funny, a lot of the reviews say he’s a chauvinist or he doesn’t like women, or whatever. [crosstalk 00:17:39]

Stephanie Foxe:

I tried really hard not to make him a chauvinist.

Alex Steele:

So that’s the thing, he’s actually not. He just doesn’t like other people at all, like regardless. So he’ll be like, no, I’m driving, or I’m doing this, or everything’s my way, and it comes off as chauvinist I think because he has a female partner, but we really make it a point to say honestly it’s not because you’re a female, I would do the same even if you were a male. He’s not chauvinist, he just doesn’t like other people, and I think in a way that kind of helps relate to, I guess more introverts would relate than extroverts, to not liking other people. Like no, I just want to do it my way, it’s kind of a type A personality.

Alex Steele:

But he is forced to work with other people, and so he does grow as the books go on where he does become a better person. Though, he does still have his moments, because he’s still growing, and we want him to grow over a course of several books, but other than that.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, and one thing I think is fun about Blackwell is he’s very much a go getter. And it’s like the same thing, you like action movies and you like anime, it’s because you can watch the character doing awesome things.

M.D. Massey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephanie Foxe:

And you root for them to succeed, and he has his internal struggles and stuff like that, but ultimately I think it’s like, you really feel like he’s gonna overcome them. And you can have fun watching the inner play between him and his partner.

Alex Steele:

And the funny thing too is like Lexi Swift often times will steal the show. So even though she is the woman, we made her the most, most awesome female, I don’t know, I don’t wanna swear or anything, but we made her… we gave her a huge hammer, this hammer weights several hundred pounds, alright, because they’re [inaudible 00:19:21], right, they have magical powers. She’s a berserker, and so she’ll just go in and smash people’s faces. I mean, she is in many ways stronger and just better, so we made her awesome so she can steal the show from Logan Blackwell occasionally, and balance it out that way as well.

M.D. Massey:

You know, it’s funny because I think that there’s always a struggle in writing characters, because, you know, you guys are right. Readers, they don’t wanna read about a character that isn’t doing awesome things, you know? They wanna read about a character that is, you know, doing the things that they wish they could do, whether it’s saying the things they wish they could say, or treating other people they way that they wish they could treat other people, generally that they don’t like, or etc. You know, just basically just kicking ass in life and you don’t wanna make your characters like Mary Sue or Marty Stu, but on the other hand, you gotta give them some kick ass stuff to do, so, [crosstalk 00:20:18] it’s interesting that you created a secondary character that can upstage the primary character. I like that.

Alex Steele:

Oh, she has her own problems too. She has some deep-seated family issues is what we’ll say.

M.D. Massey:

Don’t we all?

Alex Steele:

Very true.

Stephanie Foxe:

And then on the other side in the Misfits series, my main character is Amber. I think she’s relatable because she has some really, I guess common struggles. I realized I put a lot of family struggles into the book for all of my characters, actually. So she’s thrust into a situation and kind of given responsibilities she’s not ready for and doesn’t want, and she has a lot of guilt from the death of her twin brother.

Stephanie Foxe:

So, you know, she’s put in a position where she has to protect these people that she doesn’t really know, but I think one of the things that makes her the most relatable is she really wants to do the right thing. Even if it’s the hard way, she’s not gonna choose the easy way out. She’s gonna choose the right thing. So I think that makes people root for her. But on the other hand, she’s also a little bit of a worry wart and it kind of drives some of the other characters crazy. But it’s been really interesting to kind of write her, because she’s kind of brusque but she’s also worried about everyone. She’s kind of like a mother hen but she’s an alpha werewolf, so.

Alex Steele:

[crosstalk 00:21:45] That kind of brings me into a weird point too about both of our stories is that, in a way, both of our stories are more about the family you choose than the family you are born with, so to speak. Especially with the Misfits series, it’s really about bonding with these people that, they don’t know each other, they are all bitten at the same time, and they end up kind of in their own pack, and then they decided to be together because it ends up working for them.

Alex Steele:

And they all three of the pack members, there will be a fourth but that would be a spoiler as far as how that person gets into the pack, but all of the people in this pack that ever become a part of the pack essentially have family problems in some way or another. Not even necessarily bad family problems, like one person, her family is overly lovey.

Stephanie Foxe:

Well yeah. All of them, they have some reason that they don’t fit into society [crosstalk 00:22:41].

Alex Steele:

That too.

Stephanie Foxe:

Because it’s this magical society where power is kind of held up as the ideal. So, you know, you have a witch who doesn’t wanna hurt animals, and you have this girl, she has pink hair but she’s also a lawyer, but she has this intense fear of failure. And you have a homeless seventeen year old who got kicked out by a stepmom. So, they find that they can fit in together even when they can’t fit in with society, and they’re kind of forging their own path even though people are trying to stop them from doing that. So I think they are literally the underdogs. [crosstalk 00:23:20]

M.D. Massey:

So that’s kind of the one common thing that bonds them together, then.

Stephanie Foxe:

Right.

Alex Steele:

Yes.

M.D. Massey:

Besides lycanthropy, or therianthropy.

Alex Steele:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

Okay, so let’s switch away from writing for a bit. Tell me, what do you guys like to do when you’re not writing? Now, we did talk about, before the interview, which I thought was so fascinating when I met you guys, that for a while, you guys traveled in an RV. That was your home base, right?

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, we sold our house, we sold most of our belongings, and we bought an RV and we traveled for about a year. It was fun. It was a little bit more challenging than we expected, which we should have expected, but, yeah, we got to see some cool places, I had no idea Idaho was so pretty.

Alex Steele:

Yeah, so we, like she said, we basically traveled for a year and we did an extensive amount of research. I mean months and months of research, and I would say that, the trailer we got was fantastic, but the research that I guess we failed or didn’t really understand was we wanted to stay monthly in all of the locations, and in order to do that, apparently you have to basically book six months to a year out, otherwise they’re all taken.

Alex Steele:

Yeah. And so that was the struggle, aside from moving all the time, which became a struggle for the publishing side of the business and just getting the writing done. Traveling and having to have the stress of finding a new location all the time, it really just took so much time out of our lives. And so we kind of are moving away from that and will probably end up just having an apartment in different locations every year or so or until we find a place. I mean, I don’t know how long we’ll keep this up. We don’t have kids yet, but we’re gonna get as much traveling as we can before we decide to have kids.

Stephanie Foxe:

I know you kind of asked what we like to do for fun and like the honest answer is like we don’t do anything for fun because we don’t have time. We’re trying to fix that, we’re trying to give ourselves one day off a week or something like that, but we’ve just been trying so hard to like get the words down, make the publishing stuff work, and relaxing is still a few months off. But.

Alex Steele:

And fun would be, we actually really do just enjoy travel as some of our fun, so we sacrifice a lot in our daily lives to be able to afford to travel. We traveled a lot before we were authors too, I mean we’ve been to Japan, we’ve been to Sweden and Israel as well and we did that by not drinking alcohol or anything like that and not going out with friends and eating out. We like really penny pinched a lot [crosstalk 00:25:54] because we didn’t have hardly any money when we were younger, but we still made it work in other ways.

Alex Steele:

As far as other fun for me, though, I love hiking, actually. Hiking, I like biking, I’ll even go to the shooting range occasionally, though I haven’t been in a long, long time. And so basically adventure type stuff for me is definitely what I like to do for fun. Stephanie is probably more the shopper.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah.

M.D. Massey:

You know, I have to say that I have a little bit in common with both of you, because I like all that stuff that Alex mentioned, but I also like to shop so.

Stephanie Foxe:

It is fun. It’s more fun when you have, you know, like a bunch of money to spend on it, but, you know.

M.D. Massey:

This is true. Well, you know, it’s interesting though, because you guys, you know, honestly what you’re talking about is starting a publishing business. I remember when I was in my early to mid 20s when I was starting the business that I ran. That was my career before I started writing. I remember for like two, three years straight I just did not have a social life. It was just, you know, sleep, work, business, and all over again, until the business took off, but boy, it was worth it. Definitely, all that sacrifice was definitely worth it.

Alex Steele:

And definitely something that people don’t really talk about whenever they have or start a business, but the sacrifice that you have to make to get it to work, it’s very real, but it’s totally worth it. Like we, neither one of us have worked harder in our lives or more hours in a day in our lives for the money that we make, which isn’t as great as we were making, but it’s way more enjoyable.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, I worked ten years at a corporate job, and it was just really kind of like killing me and my soul towards the end there especially, but I would rather work 80 hours a week doing this than work 40 hours a week doing that, because it’s just so much more fulfilling.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, and I’ll tell you something, when you get to a point to where you can kind of enjoy your leisure time and things are going well for you, I think as writers in any publishing business, I think, I don’t know of a successful indie writer, indie author that doesn’t just bust their tail. But I will say, you’ll start to hear people, you know like when you’re at the movie theater in the middle of the day, people will be like, oh must be nice, and I’m like, you don’t really know what I went through to get here, so. You know. [crosstalk 00:28:15]

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah.

Alex Steele:

Yeah. It’s actually hilarious sometimes to tell people that we’re a publisher, we’re an author. It’s amazing how many people I realize, they’ll be like, well what do you write? I’m like, well we write urban fantasy, and it’s amazing how many people don’t really understand or know what urban fantasy is. Obviously most people aren’t readers, so like as a reader, I’m sure all the readers listening out there are like, how can you not know what urban fantasy is? But it’s just amazing that a lot of people, even though there’s a lot of people that read, probably a greater majority don’t or don’t really read enough to understand what the different genres are.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, it’s funny because I didn’t really understand it either, and I think the first book I read was Emma Bull, what is it, is it War for the Roses, I believe? Which is one of the early urban fantasy books, I think that’s the name of the book, it escapes me now. But then I jumped in, you know, with both feet, and I started reading all kinds of stuff, you know, like Simon Green, and a lot of that old school urban fantasy. Now, it’s amazing how much the genre has taken off and how many writers have jumped in, indie authors and traditionally published authors, you know, it’s just, there’s a ton of urban fantasy out there to read right now, which to me it’s outstanding, it gives me lots of stuff to read.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, it’s awesome.

Alex Steele:

Yeah, I never get to be bored anymore, which is funny, because I also had a funny little quirk side note about my life. I never read until about a year ago when she started writing and actually getting into the publishing, and I started reading her stuff, and then I started trying to understand the market more, so I started reading a bunch of other stuff, and so I’ve actually read like, I think I’ve read 30 or 40 books this year, which isn’t a lot by most readers’ standards, but it was a lot for me considering I hadn’t really read a book since a textbook in high school basically, which was ten, fifteen years ago, something like that. So yeah.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, he reads more than I do now, which sometimes makes me really jealous, but.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah, well, when you’re writing all the time, there are two effects that come out of that. The first thing is time, you know, you don’t have as much time to read, but the second thing is you get a lot more picky about what you read, I think.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, and also I’ve discovered, reading is kind of like my heroin or something, it’s like, if I start a book, I have to finish it like that day.

M.D. Massey:

Oh wow.

Stephanie Foxe:

So that, yeah, it normally means like if I’m reading, I won’t write that day. I can do one or the other.

Alex Steele:

She is an incredibly fast reader, I mean she read the Dune book in one day, she read the last Harry Potter book, which was 800 pages, she read it in eight hours flat, so she can do about 100 pages an hour, so yeah, when she says one day, she means it.

M.D. Massey:

Well, you know, it’s funny, because I used to binge books like that, and I can’t anymore, I have to take them in small bites, because it’s the same thing. If I get sucked into it, then it’s gonna get in the way of everything else, and I think the last series that I binged I think was Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.

Stephanie Foxe:

That is interesting, I’ve only seen the TV show, but it was a really interesting premise.

M.D. Massey:

Books are better, [crosstalk 00:31:12] the books are way better.

Stephanie Foxe:

I’d imagine.

Alex Steele:

I could totally see those being great books.

M.D. Massey:

Yeah. Well okay, we’re kind of coming up to our time limit, so why don’t you guys go ahead and tell us what you have planned for 2019. What do you have coming up?

Alex Steele:

Okay, well so for me, since that’s the first thing really coming out this year, is we just wrapped up The Hallow Beckons, which is Book 3 in my series, and the pre-order is up on all sites. So my books currently are wide. And the pre-order for like, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, those are actually available earlier, they’re available on January 1. And the reason why it’s later on Amazon, it’s available on January 15, is because I’m going to be pulling all of my books wide, so this will be the last chance you have to get the books is through the pre-order, if you’re wide, and then from here on forward I’m going to be putting all books into Kindle and then that’s it.

M.D. Massey:

Okay, so pulling those books off other platforms like iTunes, Kobo, Nook, etc.

Alex Steele:

Correct, so I’ll be putting [inaudible 00:32:18], and that means exclusivity, so that means you’ll be able to read them into the KU platform, which a lot of readers really have that subscription service, especially at urban fantasy, is where I think it’s almost every reader has that it seems, so it’s the way to go for us on that series. So we’re really happy about that, [inaudible 00:32:36] readers currently have it, they’re really liking it, and then for her.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, Misfit Fortune, the third book in the Misfit series, is hopefully coming out mid-February in 2019. And really the goal for 2019 is to get a book out every month or month and a half, so, you know, we’ll try to keep getting the books out as fast as I can write them well.

Alex Steele:

Yes.

M.D. Massey:

Nice, yeah. Excellent. Well, tell the listeners out there where they can find out more about you guys.

Stephanie Foxe:

So, for my books, you can go to stephaniefoxe.com or you can find me on Amazon.

Alex Steele:

And for my books, you can go to alexsteele.net and you can also find me on Amazon there. The best way to get ahold of either of us is Facebook, finding us on Facebook is, we live on Facebook. And quick with our names, so I don’t know since this is a podcast, people might not be reading anything, so Foxe on her last name is F O X E, and Steele on my last name is S T E E L E on that. So it’s a little weird on the last names, we’ve tossed an E in there, that’s just how it was. So people don’t realize, it’s not a phonetic spelling.

M.D. Massey:

I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was just about to jump in and say hey, don’t you spell your names with the, okay, so good. [crosstalk 00:34:04]

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, we spell it weird.

M.D. Massey:

Glad you covered that. Is there anything else you’d like listeners out there to know?

Alex Steele:

No, I mean, we really enjoy all of your all’s support, anytime you come in and make a comment or review a book or anything, we really love it. Joining us in Facebook groups and interacting is just like crack for us. It’s so encouraging to help us get that writing energy, I think.

Stephanie Foxe:

Yeah, if you ever have questions or anything, just reach out, we’re always happy to chat.

M.D. Massey:

Excellent. Very good. Well I wanna thank you, Alex and Stephanie, for coming on the show, and for all the listeners out there, go to amazon.com now, look up Alex Steele with an E and Stephanie Foxe with an E, check out their books.