Interviews

Barb and JC Hendee are the authors of the fantastic Noble Dead saga. Through Stone and Sea releases next month from Roc Books.
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What can you tell us about your upcoming release, Through Stone and Sea?

Barb: This is the “fattest” book our publisher has let us get away with to date. Hah! It’s an exciting tale. Wynn, Chane, and Shade travel to Dhredze Seatt, the mountain stronghold of the dwarves, looking for the ancient texts that Wynn’s superiors confiscated. Unexpected threats and mysteries quickly arise.

JC: Along the way, the readers will be introduced to a new race as well as a new culture, with a long history that most of the world doesn’t know about. In addition some characters who appeared briefly in the first book play some startling, more active roles. There is lot more going on in Wynn’s world than even she ever knew about, and perhaps the royal city of Calm Seatt isn’t as calm as everyone thought.

How did your ideas/thought process for Magiere and Leesil come about?

Barb: One night, we were researching another project when we came across an interesting entry in a book called The Vampire Encyclopedia by Mathew Bunson. It related information regarding the origins of the “dhampir,” a name given by Slavonic gypsies to the child of a vampire. In medieval Serbia and Yugoslavia, charlatans took advantage of this myth by pretending to be dhampirs. They would convince a troubled village that it was beset by a vampire, and that only a dhampir could see the undead creature. Then they would stage elaborate “battles” and claim they had destroyed the vampire—and charge the village quite a fee. This is what sparked the original idea, and the story of Magiere and Leesil began to grow.

JC: From there, we considered the fantastical possibilities. We asked ourselves “what if one charlatan had to face the concept that vampires were indeed real—and that she was a true dhampir?

Our aim was always to write fantasy, not vampire fiction, and we wanted to write a female protagonist living the more active side of action fantasy in a role most often reserved for male characters. And so Magiere came into being. Leesil followed quickly, first shown only to the reader as a sidekick, but it wasn’t long before everyone (including the readers) saw how he would shape – and perhaps had always shaped – the story and Magiere’s world in new ways.

Magiere, the dhampir, has such a complex back-story. Did you plan it out ahead of time, or was it a gradual process?

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Author Julie Kenner was kind enough to respond to an exclusive interview for SciFiChick.com. Kenner’s latest series, the Blood Lily Chronicles, begins with Tainted, recently released, followed closely by Torn and Turned. Keep reading for more about the author and her latest series.

Can you tell us a bit about the new Blood Lily Chronicles?

Sure! The series centers around about a woman who goes out to murder the man who raped her sister, but is killed in the process. She’s given the chance to come back to earth in the body of another woman to earn her redemption as a demon assassin. But things aren’t always as clear-cut as they seem, and as Lily tries to navigate life in a murdered girl’s body, she has to figure out who her allies and her enemies really are.

Unlike most series which produce new novels each year, Tainted, Torn, and Turned are coming out in quick succession each month. How did that work out?

More and more publishers seem to be doing that lately. As a reader, I think it’s awesome (except, of course, after book 3 you have to start waiting again, and I’m impatient!). The idea is to build excitement and let readers have a chance to really get a feel for the series. I was happy to learn that Ace intended to publish the books that way!

Where do you get your ideas for your characters?

I like to tease and say Wal-Mart, but the more honest answer is that I really don’t know. With Lily, I thought I knew her in the proposal, but after a few false starts, I realized I didn’t know her at all, and the character who ended upon the page is much different from my original incarnation. In contrast, Kate (demon hunting soccer mom) hasn’t changed at all from the way I first envisioned her. As for where they came from, Kate in a lot of ways came from me and my new-mom status. Lily comes from a darker place, and I can’t point exactly to where because I don’t really know. I started with the idea of an assassin, and spun off from there. Characters, to me, are very organic.

Lily is a demon hunter, and so is Kate Connor (from the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series). But the Blood Lily Chronicles is much darker than your previous series. What made you decide to go this route?

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Author Nicole Peeler was gracious enough to provide SciFiChick.com with an exclusive interview to talk about her debut novel Tempest Rising (released today from Amazon!)…

Can you tell us a bit about Jane True, and how your idea for her came about?

Jane thinks she’s a human being with a weird secret, till she learns the truth of her supernatural heritage. She’s actually half-selkie, which is a myth about seal-human shapeshifters that comes from Scotland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Ireland. Jane’s pedigree, meanwhile, developed through knowing what kind of protagonist I wanted to write about. I wasn’t comfortable creating an already powerful heroine who automatically kicks butt; I wanted to write about a woman who was vulnerable and very human, despite being supernatural. When I created Jane, I was living in Edinburgh, Scotland, right on the shores of the Firth of Forth, so landing on “selkie” for Jane’s heritage was fairly obvious. And selkies are a perfect mythology for my purposes: they’re tragic, beautiful, and Jane’s hybrid nature was already outlined in the legends of selkie maidens marrying human husbands and then abandoning them for the sea.

Urban fantasy/paranormal novels are popular and widespread right now. What different about the Tempest series that sets it apart from the others?

My book isn’t about a superhero type who goes about singlehandedly saving the world. Instead, Jane is an everywoman who has to step up and meet an unexpected challenge. So the series is more about seeing Jane develop as a character than it is about watching her destroy stuff with a flaming sword.

How many are planned for the series?

We’ve got a contract for three, so far, but I’ve got a six-book arc planned for Jane. I’m also working on a trilogy set in the same world, which stars a very different protagonist in a very different set of circumstances. That’s probably what I’ll start working on next, as the protagonist in question is clamoring to get out. She’s feisty.

Can you talk about what’s next for Jane?

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