UFI welcomes Author Cathy Clamp. Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from
looking your bio or reading in another interview?
I love reading about archaeology. I thought about going to school for it, but
went into law instead. I read several different archaeology journals every month
and a number of plot twists in my books have come from “what if” extensions of
actual discoveries in the journals.
What do you enjoy doing on your down time?
Lots of things! Readings is, of course, first on the list. But I also like
fishing, and hiking, and playing with my dogs. I also enjoy playing games at
GSN.com and games like Hay Day, Fruit Ninja (I especially like the Puss N Boots
variant) and Angry Birds.
What is your Favorite part of writing?
Creating characters. They don’t come to me fully formed like some authors. I
craft them from hand, one at a time. Their background, their likes and dislikes,
their whole personality is molded from scratch with every book.
Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?
In a way. I have to work out the whole plot in my head before I sit down to
write. It makes for a slow creation process, but a very quick write. I also
write fully formed. No edits. When I type “The End” it’s ready to go to the
publisher.
What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban
Fantasy/Paranormal Genres?
Wow! So many of them! I like Jim Butcher and Laurell K. Hamilton, Yasmine
Galenorn, Jaye Wells, Rachel Caine, P.N. Elrod, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jeaniene
Frost, Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Lori Handeland, and on and on!
How would you pitch FORBIDDEN to someone who has not heard of it before?
Two wolf shapeshifters must join forces to find a group of kidnapped
children, fighting against their mutual attraction and the forces trying to keep
them from finding out the truth.
Can you tell us a little bit about the world that FORBIDDEN is set in?
In the forest of northeastern Washington of our current world, there’s a
small town where a group of shapeshifters known as the Sazi live. Everyone in
town is a shapeshifter of various animal species. Wolves live beside cougars and
owls and eagles. It started as a refugee camp after a horrible attack by the
snake shifters a decade ago, all of which occurred in the Tales of the Sazi
series. Alek Siska was an orphan brought to the camp as a child. He’s grown up
in town and is ready to move forward with his life to become a cop. Claire Evans
moves to town. Everyone thinks it’s to become a teacher, but she’s really an
undercover agent of Wolven, the law enforcement branch of the Sazi. She’s in
town to investigate missing children that nobody admits have been kidnapped.
It’s especially important she help the children because she was once a kidnap
victim herself, taken by the snakes and forcibly turned into a wolf. Alek seems
to be the only person who believes there are missing children, but can he be
trusted?
Do you have a favorite scene in FORBIDDEN?
I do! I really enjoyed the action scene where Claire and Alek have to chase
down a rogue cougar. But she’s Alek’s foster sister and he can’t bear to hurt
her. He wants to save her even as she attacks them and then tries to kill
herself.
Which one character out of all your books was your favorite to write
about? What about the hardest to write about?
Probably my favorite character is Tony Giodone, the anti-hero who started the
Sazi world. The hardest one to write was Ahmad al-Narmer. I’d built him up to
be such a jerk in six books that to make him the hero of his own book was hard.
I really had to dig into his psyche to figure out who he was down deep.
What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?
Well, I just finished with Book 2 of this series, called ILLICIT. The heroine
of that book is a secondary character in FORBIDDEN, named Rachel Washington, and
the hero is a Wolven agent going down a wrong path, named Dalvin Adway.
I’m also working on a story for a fun new collection of blue collar heroes
and heroines, called “Hunks, Hammers and Happily Ever Afters.” It’s scheduled to
be released in November.
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Hi, I’m USA TODAY and Nielsen Bookscan bestselling author Cathy Clamp. I
write urban fantasy/paranormal romance for Tor Books, including the Tales of the
Sazi (shapeshifter urban fantasy romance) series, The Thrall (vampire) trilogy,
the Blood Singer (urban fantasy, as Cat Adams) series—through book 6, and the
new Novels of the Sazi series, beginning in August, 2015.
I’ve won a bunch of awards for my books over the years. My favorite was the
Career Achievement Award for Paranormal Romance in May, 2008 from RT Bookreviews
Magazine. I also shared the win for several co-authored books with C.T. Adams of
the Book Buyer’s Best Award, the RT Bookreviews Reviewer’s Choice Award, the
Reviewers International Award of Excellence, the Texas Gold Romance Award, the
Write Touch Readers Award, and several others. It’s gratifying and humbling to
win awards for books that you put your heart into, and I hope you enjoy them as
much as other readers have!
I’ve also written several stand-alone novels, not in series, including my
very first novel, The Road To Riches, an historical fiction about a railroad
race in Colorado’s Silver Boom period, and Magic’s Design, the first urban
fantasy published as Cat Adams.
I also write short stories, which is a whole different kind of writing.. I
like writing in a lot of different genres, and it’s in short stories where I let
my wings spread. I have published short stories in horror, science fiction,
mystery, literary, Young Adult, romance, thriller, fantasy and western.
Find Cathy and her books
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Forbidden
USA Today bestselling author Cathy Clamp reboots the Sazi universe in Forbidden, a tightly-paced, high-tension urban fantasy thriller.
Ten
years have passed since the war that destroyed the Sazi Council and
inflicted a horrible "cure" on thousands of Sazi, robbing them of their
ability to shapeshift.
Luna Lake, isolated in Washington State,
started as a refugee camp for Sazi orphans. Now it's a small town and
those refugees are young adults, chafing at the limits set by their
still-fearful guardians.
There's reason to fear: Sazi children
are being kidnapped. Claire, a red wolf shifter, is sent to investigate.
Held prisoner by the Snakes during childhood, Claire is distrusted by
those who call Luna Lake home.
Before the war, Alek was part of a
wolf pack in Chicago. In Luna Lake he was adopted by a parliament of
Owls, defying Sazi tradition. The kidnappings are a painful reminder
that his little sister disappeared a decade ago.
When Claire and
Alek meet, sparks fly—but the desperate race to find the missing
children forces them to set aside their mutual attraction and focus on
the future of their people.
“Sazi fans are about to hit the jackpot as Clamp returns to re-energize
this amazing series . . . Searching for layered plotlines and complex
characters? Look no further, as Clamp truly delivers!”
—RT Book Reviews
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