Faith Hunter, Show Your Work!

This week, I’ve asked some amazing urban fantasy and paranormal romance authors to participate in Show Your Work week and share their processes with you.  Today, please welcome Faith Hunter!

Faith Hunter, urban fantasy writer, was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Hunter fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SciFi, fantasy, and gothic mystery. She decided to become a writer in high school, when a teacher told her she had talent. Now, she writes full-time and works full-time in a hospital lab, (for the benefits) tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for travel, jewelry making, white-water kayaking, and writing. She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their dogs to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast. She is the USA Today bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock novels, as well as the Rogue Mage series.

We remodeled this summer … aaaaaall summer long. On the main floor we have new wood flooring where there was old, decrepit carpet, and refinished wood where there was scratched wood. We have a new kitchen. But mostly, we (okay, I) have a new writing space. (Squeeeee!) I have wood floors, built-ins, storage for my writing books and my written books, a new desk, soothing green walls, a fireplace (with gas logs), and no. It isn’t finished. It’s nearly done. But the process allowed me to discover several somethings about my writing:

– My writing room doesn’t have to be finished for me to be happy with it, in the same way that I can be happy with a book that is nearly done. I can see it coming, see the form and shape of the finished project. And yes! It will work! So, I am happy and feeing particularly creative just now.

– I can (if I have to) write anywhere. Anywhen. Anyhow. Because I’m a writer. It’s what we do. Who needs a muse or inspiration if we have deadlines.

– The benefit of an office is – no interruptions. Except for phone, cell, and regular email breaks. Dog breaks. Social media breaks. Okay, breaks. Lots of breaks.

As to writing style – I write directly into a computer and I do most of my editing digitally, but I still use the old Post It notes for the really important stuff, the stuff I can’t forget or the WIP (work in progress) falls apart or goes flat or something dreadful goes wrong with the plot line. When I write, from about page fifty on, I leave myself notes on brightly colored Post It notes sticking to the monitor and on my special editing clipboard! But this is my special writing place. And I think it’s beautiful!

Faith Hunter is the USA Today bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock novels.

Jane Yellowrock is a shape-shifting security expert who rides a pan-head Harley and solves crimes perpetrated by vampires for a living. She also hunts rogue vampires. But, once hired by Katherine Fontaneau, one of the oldest vampires in New Orleans and the madam of Katie’s Ladies, to hunt a powerful rogue vampire who’s killing other vamps, she become enmeshed in the vampire society of the modern day Crescent City.

The last of her kind, Jane is a skinwalker of Cherokee descent who can turn into any creature she desires. Though shifting can be dangerous, it requires only a small genetic sample of the creature she wants to shape-shift into, and it’s far easier for her to shift into a creature who might, genetically, be her own mass/weight/size. And even easier if the creature is a predator.

Jane hopes one day to discover another skinwalker, though so far, she is the only one, a singularity in her world. She loves to dance, drinks high-grade tea instead of coffee, (she calls herself a tea-snob) and has accepted her non-human nature. She has learned how to harness and control her gift of skinwalking, the magic that sets her apart from the Cherokee who were once her people, a people she still loves. But Jane is also something more—or less—than a skinwalker. She carries inside her the soul of her Beast.

The mountain lion’s soul merged with hers when she accidentally did black magic when she was a child of five, and fighting for her life. Now, she and her Beast stalk the dark streets of New Orleans, bring rogue vampires true-death.

Jane’s business card reads, “HAVE STAKES, WILL TRAVEL.”

Skinwalker, Blood Cross, Mercy Blade, Raven Cursed, Death’s Rival, Blood Trade, and coming on Jan.07, 2014 … BLACK ARTS!

Here are more ways to acquaint yourself with Faith and her work:

• Website: www.faithhunter.net
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HunterFaith @HunterFaith)
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/234115.Faith_Hunter

Thanks so much to Faith for joining us today!