If you missed the previous post in which I introduce Faith Hunter and talk about her upcoming book, Circle of the Moon, and her blog tour, please check it out here: ~ Faith Hunter Blog Tour, Interview, & Giveaway – Part I.
As promised, below is the interview with author Faith Hunter.
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Roh: You started out as a thriller writer, publishing over two dozen books under the names of Gary Hunter and Gwen Hunter. In 2006, you released your first fantasy in the post-apocalyptic Rogue Mage series, then went on to your wildly popular Jane Yellowrock and Soulwood urban fantasy series. What prompted your switch to fantasy, and who in the fantasy genre provided your early inspiration?
Faith: Readers go in cycles. Sometimes mystery is hot, sometimes not. Writing mystery was an iffy prospect that brought success and professional heartache in waves. I loved fantasy from the first days of Pern and on into Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I just never had the right character voice until Thorn St. Croix and the Rogue Mage series came along. That happened at a fortuitous moment when mystery was in a major trough and fantasy was on a crest in reader minds. The mixture of reality, tech, and magic to solve wars or crimes or paranormal dangers was a perfect fit for me.
Roh: In the Jane Yellowrock series, the heroine is a full-blooded Cherokee whose past is hidden by amnesia. As the series unfolds, Jane encounters others of Native American descent and begins to learn about—and remember—her people and her culture. As readers, we feel as though we’re privileged to have been allowed a peek into the “real” native world. How do you find the information on the customs, language, and other aspects of Cherokee life portrayed in Jane’s story?
Faith: I have a friend who is a Cherokee elder. I do research. It’s amazing fun and opens a brief view into my own heritage which is Cherokee and Choctaw.
Roh: The Soulwood series follows Nell Ingram’s first forays into the outer world after years of isolation as a one-time member of a repressive religious cult. Each new experience is colored by its contrast to her life in the cult. As a writer, are you just following the character’s lead based on her history, or have you done research on the integration of ex-cult members into normal society?
Faith: Both. I wrote the DeLande Saga early in my writing career as Gwen Hunter. The research for that sort-of-trilogy has stayed with me and allowed me to see into the healing minds of people who have been brainwashed all their lives.
Roh: At what point in your writing career were you able to leave your day job and begin writing full time?
Faith: The day the ACA offered me health insurance. Financially, I could have stopped sooner but I needed those benefits.
Below are several questions from Faith’s fans on Facebook:
From Abby Christina, “Jane Yellowrock and Faith Hunter’s worlds Discussion” Facebook group:
“Ms. Faith, your books are always cleverly crafted, leaving your readers in the dark and then blowing our minds with where you end up taking us. It’s not just the big plot points, but little things as well. It seems effortless. My question is thus, (other than the occasional foreshadowing that allows for a peak into the next book) do you plan things out well ahead of time or do you just go with the flow and see what happens?”
Faith: I have ideas of where the plot will go. It’s loosely planned out. When I started out with Jane Yellowrock, I knew I could do 3 books, or 6 or 9 or 13. The plots could be expanded or cut based on book contracts and sales figures. And of course, now I’m looking at book 14, so things expanded even more! For Nell, I had 3 books in mind. Period. I’ve had to work with the existing structure and the, “Things left unsaid, the questions left unanswered,” aspect to write on through books 4 and 5 in the Soulwood series. And I am loving where the unanswered questions led me into Circle of The Moon!
From Tex Mex, “Fans of Urban Fantasy” Facebook group:
Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4) is scheduled to be released on February 26. Will we be seeing any characters from the Jane Yellowrock series that haven’t previously appeared in Nell’s story? Any new supernaturals we haven’t met before?
Faith: No and no. For now, the series have shifted apart, though they may come back together again someday.
I am being careful about bringing too many new paranormal species into the story. I don’t want to overwhelm the readers with new magic methods, new species of bad guys or good guys.
Roh: Thank you, Faith, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat. I wish you the best on your upcoming release of Circle of the Moon!
Faith: Thanks for having me!
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Faith’s next book is Circle of the Moon from her Soulwood series. You can read more about it in my previous post, ~ Faith Hunter Blog Tour, Interview, & Giveaway – Part I.
Circle of the Moon is scheduled for release this week on February 26th, and is available for pre-order from these retailers:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.
Barnes & Noble: https://www.
Books-a-Million: https://www.
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/
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Don’t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY for the first two books in the Soulwood series!
Five winners will receive the first two Soulwood novels, Blood of the Earth and Curse on the Land!
The contest runs February 11th through March 7th. You can enter the contest HERE.
And if you’d like to check out guest posts, reviews, and other interviews from her blog tour, here is a list of her tour stops:
- Feb. 11 The Irresponsible Reader (review, excerpt, giveaway)
- Feb. 12 Diane Lynch (review & giveaway), Drops of Ink (excerpt & giveaway)
- Feb. 13 Urban Fantasy Investigations (excerpt)
- Feb. 14 Gizmo’s Reviews (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 15 Angel’s Guilty Pleasures (excerpt, Q&A)
- Feb. 16 The Book Crumb Trail (review, guest post)
- Feb. 18 Tome Tender (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 19 Books of My Heart (review, guest post), www.ken-schrader.com (excerpt, Q&A)
- Feb. 20 Scorching Book Reviews (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 21 Words I Write Crazy (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 22 BTH Reviews (review), musings of a moonlight writer (Q&A), The Reading Addict (excerpt)
- Feb. 25 Quirky Cats Fat Stacks (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 26 The Genre Minx Book Reviews (review, excerpt)
- Feb. 27 Slippery Words (review), Book Junkiez (excerpt)
- Feb. 28 Rantings of a Reading Addict (review, excerpt)
- Mar. 1 Vampire Book Club (excerpt, guest post)
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Faith Hunter is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series, the Soulwood series, and the Rogue Mage series, as well as the author of 16 thrillers under pen the names Gary Hunter and Gwen Hunter.
- Faith’s Jane Yellowrock series is dark urban fantasy. Jane is a full blooded Cherokee skinwalker and hunter of rogue-vampires in a world of weres, witches, vampires, and other supernats.
- The Soulwood series is a dark-urban fantasy/paranormal police procedural/para-thriller series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram, an earth magic user and a special agent of PsyLED.
- The Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, Host, along with several anthologies and the RPG Rogue Mage—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality.
Faith writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay – that’s a joke. She does still make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally, she remembers to turn on Roomba (that she named Duma$$ because it fell down the stairs once.)
Faith researches in great detail, and tries most everything her characters do. Research led to her life’s passions – jewelry making, orchids, bones, travel, white-water kayaking, and writing.
Jewelry-making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix, the Rogue Mage, and the main character of BloodStone, written by her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She fell in love with the art form. Faith makes, wears, and sometimes gives away her jewelry as promo items to fans and as prizes in contests. See her Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter for pics. She works with stones, pearls, crystal, and glass, wire wrapping larger, undrilled, focal stones. Labradorite, Amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are her favorite stones.
Faith loves orchids. Her favorite time of year is when several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at her Facebook page. And yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of her orchid pics are juxtaposed with bones and skulls —a fox, cat, dog, cow skull, goat, and deer skull, (that is, unfortunately, falling apart) and the jawbone of an ass. She just received a boar skull, and the skull of a mountain lion (legally purchased from a US tannery) killed in the wild.
She and her husband RV, traveling to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.
And that leads Faith to kayaking – her very favorite sport. Faith discovered whitewater paddling when she was researching her (Gwen Hunter) mystery book, Rapid Descent. She took a lesson and—after a bout of panic attacks from fear of drowning—discovered she loved the sport.
Faith is one of the founders and a participant at the now defunct and archived www.MagicalWords.net, an online writing forum geared to helping writers. And she is a voracious reader.
Under other pen names, notably, Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. As Faith, her books have been on the New York Times and USA TODAY Bestseller lists, been nominated for various awards and won an Audie Award with Khristine Hvam. Under all her pen names, she has more than 40 books, anthologies, and complications in print in 30 countries.
For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net, www.gwenhunter.com, and www.magicalwords.net. To keep up with her daily, join her Facebook fan pages at: www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter
~RM~
Great interview, cant wait to get my read on!