Blog Tour Stop: Trick or Treat

Nov 6, 2013

I’m a bad blogger. But in my defence, I have a nine day old son at home and that has quite an effect on everything, especially deadlines. But mea culpa, this was supposed to go up two days ago. I was tagged in this one by the wonderful Angel Leigh McCoy, and it goes like this. Basically it’s a tag to tag set of posts where authors answer four questions and pass the baton along so readers can see what’s happening in all these different worlds and maybe find a few new authors to read along the way. Angel described it like Trick or Treat – You go from “home” page to “home” page and get a little treat at each one. I like that idea, so I’m rolling with it. Also, sleep-deprivation, so new ideas not so good right now. Here are the questions and my answers:

1. What are you working on right now? 
I’m currently ensconced in two projects. One is writing some game dialog on a freelance basis for a new open world RPG game called Frontiers. The other is polishing up book three of the Alex Caine series, Abduction, as that’s coming out from HarperVoyager next year. Nope, still can’t get used to that, even though it’s true. Holy crap, I’ve got a trilogy coming out from HarperVoyager next year! *hyperventilates*
Aaannnnyway, books 1 and 2 are polished, finished and delivered, but book 3 needs some more work. I’m hoping for some beta-reader feedback soon and I’m making notes of my own and I’ll soon be using every available writing hour to make sure that book is as good as it can get. I’m really excited about getting that done and delivered early next year.
2. How does it differ from other works in its genre?
This is a bit difficult to answer. The Alex Caine series is a grim dark urban fantasy. The main difference, I think, is the protagonist. He’s an underground MMA (mixed martial arts or cage-fighting) champion, who finds himself entangled in a world of magic and monsters and considerable personal danger. I like to think there’s lots of other original stuff in it, but you’ll have to wait til next year to find out about that. (I’m not really a fan of this type of question!)
3. Why do you write what you do? 
Most of my stuff is horror and dark fantasy set in our own contemporary world. I love to play with magic and mythology, monsters and demons, the supernatural and the just plain weird, and I like to set it in our world because I think it has most impact there. It also carries the most powerful allegory to our own actual lives. It’s not so much of a stretch to imagine that monsters really exist in our world, that magic is really possible, and dickheads out there will abuse it and there will be consequences. A lot of my writing explores the ideas of justice, fairness (or lack of them) and consequences.
4. How does your writing process work? 
I think shit up and write it down. Honestly, beyond that I don’t really know what my process is. I’m always writing in my head, regularly stopping to make notes wherever I may be, always observing people and situations I see around me. And when I get writing time, I inject all of that into whatever project I’m working. Keep writing, keep reading, keep working fucking hard at getting better. I guess that’s my process.
And now I have to tag three people to pass this on to. So I choose the following three lovely folks:
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