Interview: Lee Nichols

UFI Is pleased to welcome Lee Nichols Author of the Haunting Emma Series. Thank you so much Lee for stopping by today.

  About Lee:

Lee Nichols was born in Marblehead, Mass., raised in Santa Barbara, and now lives in Yarmouth, Maine. Which is probably why the four years she attended Hampshire College in Amherst, where she studied history and psychology, made her antsy. It was much too far from the ocean. She is the author of five novels for adults and the HAUNTING EMMA series for young adults. She is married to novelist Joel Naftali, who sometimes writes as Joel N. Ross, and they have one son.

 

* I see from your bio that you live in the New England region, what is your favorite part of living in that area of the US?

Certainly, not the weather. The people, I guess. I love that New England savvy attitude and big personality that most people seem to have

 * What do you enjoy doing on your down time?

 
I probably spend the most time reading, hanging out with my husband and son, and hiking with the dogs.

* What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?

Hmm ... I'm having a hard time thinking of something, which is making me feel pretty boring. How about I've been a vegetarian for a very long time. I don't think that's ever come up in an interview. But I'm the non-proselytizing kind. I don't care if you eat meat, I just don't eat it.

*  What is your Favorite part of writing?

My favorite part is when I'm about half-way through the first draft, I know who the characters are, where I'm going with the story, and my writing days are pretty fun and easy.

* Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?

I always have a word quota I'm working with, a certain amount of words per day. That way I know how long it'll take me to get the first draft out. I do a lot of planning before I start writing and work off a scene by scene outline, so I know what I'm doing every day.

* What are some of you Favorite books or Authors in the Paranormal Genres?

I absolutely love the early books in Laurel Hamilton's Anita Blake series. In YA, probably my favorites have been Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series

* How would you pitch your Haunting Emma series to someone who has never heard of it before?

Usually I tell people it's about a girl who discovers she and see and control ghosts and she kicks a lot of nasty ghost-butt.

* Which character was your favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about?

I honestly have a fondness for most of the characters. I love Emma, she's the kind of girl I'd want as a best friend. But it was fun to write funny lines for Harry and the ghost jocks. And always enjoyable to give Natalie some kind of attitude.

*Spoiler Alert--Don't read, if you haven't read Deception.* To this day, I feel guilty for having killed off Coby in the first book. He was always sort of hard to write, because I felt bad about him. 

* What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?

The third and final book in the Haunting Emma trilogy, Surrender, comes out in December. I'm still thinking about the next book, not sure what it's going to be yet, but I've got lots of ideas.

 

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Find Lee and her books

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Deception (Haunting Emma #1) by Lee Nichols

 When Emma Vaile's parents go missing while away on a mysterious business trip, her brother's very cute best friend, Bennett Stern—Emma's knight in J. Crew armor—arrives unexpectedly to whisk her away to New England. There, Emma settles into his family's museum-like mansion and enrolls at an old-fashioned private school. Emma has memories of Thatcher that she can't explain—it's as if she's returning home to a place she's never been. Finally, Emma confides in Bennett and learns she is a ghostkeeper, a person who can communicate with ghosts. Bennett brought Emma to Thatcher to protect her, but now he needs her help tracking an other-worldly murderer.  

 

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Betrayal (Haunting Emma #2) By Lee Nichols

Emma Vaile is the most powerful ghostkeeper in centuries. Which is great for battling the wraith-master Neos and horrible for her social life. Emma knows fellow ghostkeeper Bennett Stern is her soul mate, but when ghostkeepers fall in love, the weaker one loses all power. And until Neos is defeated, Bennett and Emma can't risk it. 

When the temptation of being with Emma gets to be too much, Bennett disappears, pursuing a dangerous path to increase his powers. Heartbroken and alone, Emma tries to lose herself in school. But when the Knell, a secret ghostkeeping society, sends two new ghostkeepers to Echo Point—one a snarky teen guy, the other a British scholar—Emma throws herself into training to battle Neos. But as the team grows stronger, so do the ghosts. And worse, one of their own will betray them. One Emma never suspected. . . .