Author Interviews: What Not To Do!

To celebrate the release of the third book in what's probably a trilogy, the Maelstrom Chronicles, I've been doing a blog tour and I've answered quite a few questions! It's fun, so I thought today I'd interview myself. This is probably a good example of how not to do promo, but I enjoyed it :).

1. Can you remember the first romance novel you read?

The Sheik's Captive by Violet Winspear. Punishing kisses have been branded on my brain since I was 12!

2. Can you remember when you first decided to write romances?

In my 20s.

3. Which ties into, why do you write romances or books with heavy romantic subplots? 

My 20s. (Note: I didn't settle down until I was 30...)

4. How do you handle people who disrespect your profession?

Disrespectfully.

5. How long and steep was your uphill battle to get published?

There was snow, and I had no shoes, and...

6. Do you ever clean your house or get 8 hours of sleep (in a row, not collectively over 3 days)?

NOT TONIGHT, SATAN.

7. One piece of advice for aspiring writers:

Finish writing the book, even if you think it's crappy.

8. One piece of advice for readers new to romance:

If you end up not liking it, don't be an ass about it. There are people out there who don't like chocolate, and romances are pretty much the chocolate of the genre fiction world.

9. What do people usually do when they find out you're an author? 

"Well, bless your heart." (I live in the South.)

10. Do you like book signings, writers' conferences, and otherwise appearing in public as your author self?

No.

11. How has your career or your writing day changed due to all the changes in the industry right now? 

I'm so effing desperate and bad at doing promo, I'm interviewing myself. What do you think?

12. If you weren't a writer, what would you be besides wealthier and possessed of a great deal more free time? Oops, am I making not-writing sound very appealing? Okay, what would you be besides empty and depressed because you weren't telling lies for fun and profit?

I'd be an editor. Speaking of which... http://www.meankittyediting.com

13. Is writing your primary outlet for creativity or do you have others you'd like to share?

I also crochet penises. Like you do.

14. What's one very annoying thing about being an author?

Promo.

15. What's the most appealing thing about a writing career that keeps you going back for more, time and again?

I like to lie.

16. What was the most marked creative or writer's block you can remember having, and how you did you recover from your brain drought?

It started earlier this year, and that's all I'm saying about that.

17. What do your family and friends think about your writing career?

They think it would be nice if I made more money so we didn't have to cut grocery coupons and make our own yogurt.

18. Let's say you were going to be devoid of a computer, the internet or any type of word processor for a year, but you would have an ample supply of pens, pencils and paper. Would you keep writing? 

Yes.

19. If you would keep writing, what if you were also going to be devoid of research materials for that year? How would you write around that?

Duh. Lie?

20. Let's say you wouldn't even have paper and... Ok, let's not say that. This is an interview, not a nightmare counseling session. Speaking of which, in your current WIP, what do you think your protagonists would have nightmares about?

Having to interview themselves, probably.

*

Jody Wallace
Smart. Snarky. Seductive. And that's just the books.
http://www.jodywallace.com  *  http://www.crochetpeen.com

What I'll Miss After The Apocalypse

Contrary to what you might expect, this isn't a political post about what I think will happen if Trump wins the upcoming US Presidential election. I'm about to release (via Entangled Publishing) PRODIGAL, the third book in my SF-romance trilogy, the Maelstrom Chronicles, and it all takes place after an alien invasion that pretty much serves as an apocalypse. The book comes out September 5, and the hero is a character we've heard mentioned in the previous two books and would never have expected to become a hero...because he's the guy who kind of CAUSED the apocalypse in the first place, by failing in his job to prevent it.

Apocalypses are popular fare in our media. We've been watching The Last Ship and enjoyed Falling Skies when it was on, and I've been thinking a lot about what humans would really do in times of great crisis like pandemics or zombie hordes. While we don't watch The Walking Dead, I've heard it is a gritty representation of post-apocalyptic times. Also -- Defiance (post apocalypse alien invasion all out war and not much like my books), and does anyone remember Dark Angel? Man, that was a fun two season show! Lots of movies (FURIOSA!) and books about apocalypses, too, proving I'm not the only creator fascinated by this plot line.

ANYHOO.

What would YOU miss after the apocalypse? Beyond standard fare like "my family" and "what we consider a normal life in the US," there's electricity, air conditioning, modern medicine, coffee, chocolate, washing machines... Travel for pleasure. Frivolous stuff indeed, but still a hallmark of our civilization. In some part it depends on the kind of apocalypse, and how savage humanity ends up becoming. In many many many interpretations, of course, it's all-out Patriarchal Darwinism with women being chattel, and you can see countless glimmers in today's world cultures why this is a logical conclusion.

My characters in the Maelstrom trilogy get involved with the "good aliens" who have advanced medicine, the loss of which is probably one of my biggest concerns. But they have to struggle with limited supplies, waste disposal, bandits, food, livestock, and so on, though not in such gritty detail that I've written a survival manual.

Started a Pinterest board for when I think of things I'd miss... this list currently has a lot of chocolate on it, heh.

https://www.pinterest.com/realmeankitty/what-ill-miss-after-the-apocalypse/


Tell me what you'd miss in the comments! If you want to participate in my upcoming blog tour, you're more than welcome. Think of it as free blog content for a day that will probably involve cats and snark.



Jody Wallace
Smart. Snarky. Seductive. And that's just the books.
http://www.jodywallace.com

 

Feminist Heroines in Science Fiction Romances

My children, who've never been all that into SF, are, like the rest of the world, quickly being converted into Star Wars superfans. (NO WE HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET NO SPOILERS BUT WE TOTALLY WATCHED SPACEBALLS TODAY!) From what I hear, it won't pain me to take my daughters to The Force Awakens because the female protagonist is not stuck in a role of damsel in distress, prize to be won, evul sexorina, or what have you. They may not be getting a Black Widow movie anytime soon and the Supergirl currently on TV may be a little...pallid...but they will have Rey (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/star-wars-the-feminism-awakens/420843/) an article about how she's a great feminist character that I only read the first paragraph of to verify the spelling of her name). One day they may also have Furiosa, if they get tough enough to watch the herky jerky blood bath that was Mad Max 2015.

These two characters in particular have got me excited that it might be the first of a new breed of female protagonists on the screen and between the pages. And by "new breed" I know good and well these women have existed always, but they don't always capture the attention and respect of the masses and make the big bucks. SF romances, in particular, have never been a fantastic seller for romance publishers, as far as I can determine, though they do have a devoted readership. Before self publishing was such a thing, right when small internet-based publishers and ebooks were starting to take off, I had a pretty complete collection of "mainstream" mass market futuristics from the standard publishers.

Johanna Lindsey, Saranne Dawson, Marilyn Campbell, Susan Grant, Dara Joy, Stobie Piel, Pam Rock, Catherine Spangler -- many of these were released starting in the 1980s and early 1990s. With the onset of electronic publishing, the field became way too large for me to maintain any kind of complete list.

 

But I always loved romances with hearty SF worldbuilding and always hoped for characters like what I'm assuming Rey in The Force Awakens seems to be. (*Also, if anybody WANTS some of these old paperbacks, please let me know and I'll mail you a box of lust in space goodness!) In my SF series with Entangled, the Maelstrom Chronicles, I've written all my female characters with my daughters and with this type of female character in mind. Smart, self-reliant, in tune with their own strengths and weaknesses, Adelita Martinez (ANGELI), Sarah CallenJoseph (TRAITOR) and, in novel currently in edits, Claire Lawson (PRODIGAL) are as likely to rescue their heroes as they are to need rescuing. I can't imagine writing them any other way.

Please don't spoil Star Wars in the comments -- but please DO share some other books and movies which you think feature feminist heroines who are equal to the male characters in their world-saving abilities!

Incidentally SPACEBALLS does NOT qualify for this category of movie, but at least the heroine's uselessness was played for laughs instead of for serious.

Jody Wallace
Smart. Snarky. Seductive. And that's just the books.
http://www.jodywallace.com  * http://www.meankitty.com  

Excerpt from PRODIGAL, Maelstrom Chronicles #3

 

Recently I released TRAITOR, Maelstrom Chronicles #2, with Entangled Publishing. I'm chugging away at #3 and I wanted to share the first page or two with the readers at Here Be Magic! We don't have a release date for it yet, but it does contain some spoilers if you haven't read the previous books (ANGELI, TRAITOR). It's a post-apocalyptic alien invasion Earth-based SFR.

Our heroine Claire appears in both ANGELI and TRAITOR, and she's pretty grumpy about getting her own book. But she's always grumpy.

And yes...I'm putting a cat in this book :)

***

Chapter One

 

Claire flipped the visor of the Humvee down when the late afternoon sun nearly blinded her, reflecting off the white of the latest snowfall. She and two other loads of able bodies out of Camp Chanute were returning from a foraging mission to the mostly deserted city of Bloomington, Illinois. The long, straight roads in this area, free of debris and stalled cars, didn’t lend themselves to ambushes. Detritus littered the highways to the north, thicker as the roads approached Chicago.

She didn’t make foraging trips to Chicago if it could be helped.

But the visor didn’t cancel out the glare. She blinked and squinted. Her eyesight had been enhanced by her Shipborn associates, but not so much that her DNA had been tainted by the tech. Still, it was enough to ascertain the flash of light wasn’t reflecting off the snow, but off some kind of metallic object in the middle of a field.

An object that hadn’t been there when they’d driven this road this morning. She knew this highway well, and that huge field had the remnants of corn stalks in it. Nothing else.

“Slow down,” she told the Humvee driver. “You see that?”

Will shook his head. “I just see snow. Snow and old dead corn. Maybe it’s a child of the corn.”

“Shut up.” Not visible to the human eye, then. Claire flicked on the radio to the supply truck. Dixie had the best binoculars and was enhanced like Claire to boot. “Dix, what do you make on the right side of the road? Far mid field.”

A little static crackled through the speaker before Dixie’s response. “I don’t see any...wait. Huh. There’s a big silver thingamabob, but sugar, I don’t know what it is. Fighter jet or something? Could be Shipborn.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Gimme our eyes.” She reached across the back seat to Eduardo Martinez, another of her officers. He complied, and she lifted the heavy black binoculars to her face. Twisting the focus, she spotted the unidentified object.

Sleek and silver, possibly some kind of vessel. No landing marks around it, but no snow built up on it. Didn’t look like Ship 1001 or its shuttles. More like a giant pill, so brightly silver it was almost white. Hard to see against the patchy snow. Was that a window? A door?

The sun emerged from behind a cloud and sparkled on the metal again, obscuring details.

“I’m going to check it out. Hold position,” she advised Dixie before directing Will off road.

The Humvee thumped through the corn stubble that rose above the snow, some of the rows lumpy enough that she pressed a hand against the ceiling to keep from bouncing into it. A gentle rise ahead took them out of sight of the object temporarily.

“Be careful,” Dixie chided. “Last time you went to check something out, that group from up Chicago way ambushed you.”

(c) 2015 Jody Wallace　

Jody Wallace

Smart. Snarky. Seductive. And that's just the books.

http://www.jodywallace.com * http://www.meankitty.com