Please welcome today's paranormal guest author Faith Hunter. Faith writes the Urban Fantasy Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock:
Skinwalker
,
Blood Cross
,
Mercy Blade
,
Raven Cursed
,
Death's Rival
and
two short story compilations,
Cat Tales
and
Have Stakes Will Travel
. Her
Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban, post-apocalyptic, fantasy
series—
Bloodring
,
Seraphs
, and
Host
—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone
mage. A role playing game based on the series, Rogue Mage, is due out
in the fall 2012. Under the pen name Gwen Hunter, she writes
action-adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Faith and Gwen, she has
20+ books in print in 27 countries.
Interview with Faith Hunter:
EJ: When did you begin writing?
Faith:
In tenth grade, a teacher told me I had a talent for writing,
and that I should make my career. I believed her, and started
researching the writing life immediately. It still took a lot of years
to find an agent and a publisher, but all the prep time was worth it
because, frankly, it took that long for me to hone my craft. Very few of
us go into writing with all the skills that the art form requires. By
the way: I tracked that teacher down a few years ago and thanked her.
She has meant a lot to my life, probably one of the top 5 or 6 people to
influence the person I am today.
EJ: What brought you to the paranormal genre?
Faith:
I always wanted to write fantasy, but I couldn’t find the voice.
As Gwen Hunter, I wrote mysteries and thrillers and suspense for nearly
20 years. And then urban fantasy came along, and a tough female
character voice—like that in thrillers—was perfect for the genre. Urban
fantasy is a thriller, with vamps and weres and witches. Such fun
working with twisty story arcs with magic in them.
EJ: If you could be any paranormal or have any one supernatural talent, what would it be? Why?
Faith:
Healing. So I could (sounds corny) help people.
EJ: Tell us why readers will enjoy your new release.
Faith:
Death’s Rival will be out in October 2012, and it takes Jane
deeper into her own Cherokee past as well as introduces a new story arc
for the series. The cover copy says it all!
Jane Yellowrock is a shapeshifting skinwalker you don’t want to cross—especially if you’re one of the undead…
For a vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as a boss took
some getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as
Master Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and is not afraid to go
through Jane to do it. After an attack that’s tantamount to a war
declaration, Leo knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo’s
not about to run scared. After all, he has Jane. But then, a plague
strikes, one that takes down vampires and makes their masters easy prey.
Now, to uncover the identity of the vamp who wants Leo’s territory, and
to find the cause of the vamp-plague, Jane will have to go to
extremes…and maybe even to war.
The Rogue Mage World Book and Role Playing Game has been Kickstarted and
is in production as I write this. I have 2 more Jane Yellowrock books
to write, and then I have nothing. No contracts. But I want to do a few
more Jane books, and maybe a couple of standalone spinoffs, one with
Rick LaFleur as main character and one with Molly Everhart’s witch
family. If I can find a publisher for them. The market trends will guide
that, of course.
EJ: If your book(s) were being made into a movie, who would you cast for the leading roles? Why?
Faith:
I have no idea. I fear I don’t watch movies. Yeah I know. Gasp
gasp gasp. But I’m open to any female actress Hollywood can find who is 6
feet tall, Cherokee, and has mad fighting skills. Oh – and yellow
eyes. (rolls my own)
Death's Rival (Jane Yellowrock, #5) by Faith Hunter
Jane Yellowrock is a shapeshifting skinwalker you don’t want to cross—especially if you’re one of the undead…
For a vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as a boss took some
getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as Master
Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and is not afraid to go through Jane
to do it. After an attack that’s tantamount to …a war declaration, Leo
knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo’s not about to run
scared. After all, he has Jane.
But then, a plague strikes, one that takes down vampires and makes their
masters easy prey. Now, to uncover the identity of the vamp who wants
Leo’s territory, and to find the cause of the vamp-plague, Jane will
have to go to extremes…and maybe even to war.
Haints Excerpt:
Haints is a short story taken from
the e-book compilation released in September 2012 HAVE STAKES WILL TRAVEL. It
is written from Molly Everhart Trueblood’s point of view, the story giving us a
vision into who and what Jane is, early in her career.
Haints
by Faith Hunter
“Nothing
unusual here, Molly,” she said.
I
watched Jane Yellowrock as she crawled across the floor of the old house on all
fours. Most adults looked foolish or ungainly when crawling, but Jane was
graceful, her arms lifting and moving forward with feline balance, her legs
raising and lowering, toes pointed like a dancer, even in her western boots. My
friend moved silently in the hot, sweaty room, easily avoiding the bird and
mouse droppings, the holes in the old linoleum, and avoiding the signs of
recent reconstruction—the broken plaster walls, large holes in the floor, and
the shattered remains of the toilet, tub, and kitchen sink in the corner. Her
shoulder blades lifted up high with each crawling step, visible beneath her
thin T-shirt, her head lowered on the thin stem of her neck, moving catlike. I
envied her the grace and the slenderness, but little else. Jane was more alone
than anyone I had ever known.
Now
she breathed in with a strange sucking hiss. Flehmen behavior, she called it,
using her hypersensitive senses to smell things the way a cat would, the way a
mountain lion would, sucking air in over her tongue and the roof of her mouth,
her lips pulled back and mouth open. Mostly, she did it only when she was
alone, because it sounded weird and looked weirder—not a human action at all.
But because I had asked her for help, and because no one but me would see her,
she did it now, scenting for the smell of . . . of whatever.
As
I watched, Jane crawled out of the half-renovated kitchen and into the dining
room beyond. We were both dressed in old jeans and T-shirts, clothes that could
get filthy and be tossed into the washer, and already Jane looked like
something the cat dragged in, which was funny in all sorts of ways. Jane
Yellowrock was a Cherokee skinwalker, and her favorite animal form was a
mountain lion. She called it her inner beast, which I still didn’t understand,
but I figured she’d tell me someday.
I’d
met Jane in the Ingles grocery store, when a group of witch haters caught me in
the frozen foods section and harassed me. None of us Everharts were officially
out of the closet then but most townspeople were okay with my family maybe
carrying the witch gene. It was the out-of-towners who had the problem—a group
that wasn’t from the religious right, but were just as rabid. I still don’t
know what Jane did—she stepped in front of me so all I saw was her back—but the
haters departed. Fast. I gave her my thanks and a card to my family café and we
parted ways.
The
next morning Jane came into the Seven Sassy Sister’s Herb Shop and Café, and
nearly cleaned us out of bacon, sausage, and pancakes. The appetite of that
morning was because she had just changed back from an animal form and needed
calories to make up for the shift, but I didn’t know that then. I just thought
it was a crying shame that a woman who was so skinny could eat like that. If I
tried to shovel in that much food, even half that much food, I’d weigh four
hundred pounds. I think I gained three pounds just watching her eat, that first
day.
And
then the group of witch-haters from the day before started picketing out front.
I guess they were in town and figured they should make the most of it. They
were carrying signs about not suffering a witch to live—the usual crappola—and
chanting, “Save our children! Save our children!” Two cars pulled by and
slowed, as if to turn in, and then pulled on away. This kind of attention was
going to be damaging to business.
Jane
paid her bill, went outside, and revved up her bike. And revved up her bike.
And revved up her bike again. At which point I realized she was doing it on
purpose. Then she did something to the engine, and revved it up again. And
black smoke came out. So Jane rode in circles around the parking lot, shouting
to the witch haters, “So sorry about the noise! I have engine problems!” After
about ten minutes of noise, the witch haters left. It was so cool! I thought
the twins, Boadacia and Elizabeth, were going to have twin cows.
That’s
Jane. A loaner with a cause. Any cause, as long as it’s protecting someone.
She
sneezed, bringing me back from my daydreams to my friend crawling around on the
floor of a deserted, possibly haunted house.
Thank you Faith for joining us here today at From the Shadows!
To learn more about
Faith Hunter and her books, please visit her website.
, 
, and 
,
the first three books in the Spirit Guide young adult paranormal
series by E.J. Stevens.
