UFI welcomes Jeaniene Frost Author of The Night Huntress and The Night Huntress World series. Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?
Wow, that’s a hard one. I’ve had so many great interview questions over the years that my readers probably know more about me than my immediate family *wink*. Hmm. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that I will write certain scenes with songs on endless repeat because they set the “mood” for me. This drives my poor husband crazy, I might add, because I don’t use an iPod so the music can be heard in the house. For example, in a scene with Vlad and Cat in a graveyard in This Side of the Grave, I had “Run This Town” repeating for hours while I wrote it. Now whenever my husband hears that song on the radio, he immediately changes the station.
What do you enjoy doing on your down time?
I love to read, which surprises no one, I’m sure. I’m also a TV series junkie, and I blame Netflix and Amazon Instant Video for this. Before them, I’d watch one, maybe two shows a season. After getting sucked in with the “Try the first episode/season free” promos that those two sites offer, I’ve gotten hooked on Justified, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Supernatural, Merlin, Dexter, Sherlock, and Torchwood, to name a few.
What is your Favorite part of writing?
Discovering new things about my characters. I’m an organic writer, and while I *think* I know everything there is to know about my characters when I start a book, by the end of the story, I realize I only knew about half of what makes them tick. Learning those additional character details inevitably changes the plot in small or big ways, too, so it’s exciting to discover new twists and turns in the story that I didn’t see coming. I think if I knew everything that was going to happen in the book before I started writing it, a lot of the magic would be lost for me.
What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Genres?
Let me stress that these are only some of my favorite authors. Not all of my favorite authors. I read a lot in my genre so I have many favorites, but in the interest of space, I’ll only list a few: Ilona Andrews, Melissa Marr, Charlaine Harris, Kresley Cole, Gena Showalter, Yasmine Galenorn, Rachel Vincent, Vicki Pettersson, Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Lara Adrian, and Colleen Gleason. For a full list of my favorite authors, you can go here:
http://jeanienefrost.com/links/
How would you pitch The Night Huntress series to someone who has not heard of your books before?
I’m awful at pitches (you should have seen how bad my query letters were!) but if I were talking to someone new, I might ask if they liked the movies Underworld, Kill Bill, and Blade. If the answer was yes, I’d say that my books have similar sexy/violent/funny/ sarcastic/over-the-top themes and suggest reading the first 20% of Halfway to the Grave (start of my series) to see if it fits their taste. I’m a big fan of Try Before You Buy, which is why I direct a lot of people to those free 20% links on my website. If someone doesn’t like the first quarter of the book, he/she probably won’t like the rest, so it’s a good way for readers to test a book before shelling out any money for it.
Can you tell us a little bit about the world that The Night Huntress series is set in?
It’s our world today – with a twist. Vampires, ghosts, ghouls, and demons also exist, though they hide that fact from the average person. My vampires can walk around in the daylight (in fact, demons in my series are the only creatures who are light-sensitive) and my ghouls look any other average person (no rotting parts or longing for brains ;). Ghosts are usually looked down upon by other supernatural creatures for being non-corporeal, but that also makes ghosts the best spies. Also, certain types of ghosts (remnants and wraiths) are so powerful they can actually cause a vampire or ghoul to explode.
Do you have a favorite scene in One Grave at a Time?
I have a lot of favorite scenes in the book. Tyler and Ian frequently made me laugh while writing it, Denise got to flex some of her shapeshifter muscles in a way that was really fun to detail, and it was great showing the progression of Cat and Bones’s relationship. It’s very different than it was at the start of the series, and certain scenes in this book showcase how Cat and Bones have grown as a couple in very specific ways.
Which character was your favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about?
I’m fickle, so my favorite characters are usually whoever my heroine and hero are at the moment. Right now I’m writing Vlad and Leila’s book, so they’re my favorites. When I write a Cat and Bones book, they are. My villains are probably the hardest for me to write because I try to get into their heads to see why they feel justified in the despicable things they do (and every villain feels justified) and that’s a dark mentality to get into. I think it’s necessary, though. If I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my villains and why they do what they do/what molded them into who they are, then they’d feel very two-dimensional to me, and thus feel that way to readers as well.
One Grave at a Time is the 6th book in the series. Have you found it any easier or harder to write the series as it gets farther along?
I wouldn’t say it’s harder, but it is more complex to write the later books in the series. There are so many little overarching plot threads and different characters introduced in earlier books to tie together in the later books that it takes a lot more thought and planning. The Cat and Bones series ends at nine books, so a lot of things hinted at before will come to fruition before the finale, and there are only a few books left until that.
What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?
The Bite Before Christmas anthology with me and author Lynsay Sands releases onOctober 25th and features a long Cat and Bones novella. Look for big secrets regarding Bones’s past to be revealed! I can’t wait for readers to finally be let in on this surprise because I’ve been itching to reveal it for a while now.
Also, in spring next year, Once Burned, the first novel in the new Night Prince seriesreleases. That’s the book I’m writing now and I am so excited to showcase NightHuntress regular Vlad as the hero and a new heroine named Leila as the woman who will rock his world. Vlad and Leila will start off with two books, and there might be more if I find that their story isn’t done at the end of the second novel.
