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Virtual Sitdown with Jennifer Estep

You have an exciting new series out this year called the Elemental Assassin. Tell us about it.

The Elemental Assassin books are set in the fictional southern metropolis of Ashland, where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina meet in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. The books focus on Gin Blanco, an assassin codenamed the Spider who runs a barbecue restaurant in her spare time. Gin is also an elemental or person who can control one of the four elements – Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Gin has the rare gift of being able to control two elements, Ice and Stone in her case. Besides elementals like Gin, Ashland is also home to giants, dwarves, and vampires.
The books are very dark, gritty, and Southern, but I think they’re a lot of fun too. The first book in the series,  Spider’s Bite , was released on Jan. 26.

The first novel in the series,  Spider’s Bite , introduces us to Gin Blanco, as assassin known as The Spider because she is extremely patient, waiting for the kill. What happens in this novel?

In Spider’s Bite , Gin takes a job to assassinate a corporate whistleblower. But before she can kill him, another assassin tries to kill her instead, and Gin realizes that the hit is actually a double-cross. After her handler is brutally murdered and another one of her friends is almost beaten to death, Gin decides to get to the bottom of who set her up and why – and she has no qualms about killing her way to the top of the food chain to get the answers that she wants.

Along the way, she teams up with Donovan Caine, a sexy detective who has his own reasons for hating Gin, since she killed his corrupt partner on the police force.

I love protagonist Gin Blanco.  She has a hidden past, and is an assassin who kills bad people - without mercy. (I love that about her.) Plus, what girl wouldn’t be a little jealous that a sexy detective has the hots for her? How did her character first come to you? Did it take a while to develop, or did she just blow you away with her personality?

Gin Blanco and Spider’s Bite did take quite a while to develop. Ever since I started reading fantasy literature, I’ve always been fascinated by assassin characters – I just think they’re some of the most interesting characters around, especially because of the questions they raise. Is it okay to kill someone for money? Do some people deserve to die? Is an assassin automatically evil? And so on and so forth.

Then, a few years ago, I wrote an epic fantasy novel, and I realized that my secondary assassin character was more interesting than my heroine! So I decided to switch gears and write a book where the assassin was the main character and heroine. After several drafts and false starts, I hit upon the idea having my assassin character be part of a dark, gritty, violent urban fantasy landscape.


Somewhere along the way, the first line of Spider’s Bite came to me – “My name is Gin, and I kill people” – and the character just flowed from there.

Can you give us a hint as to what happens between Gin and mouth-watering Det. Donovan Caine?

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Virtual Sitdown with Patrick Lee

What was it like to transition from screenplay writer to novelist?

A lot of fun.  There are interesting differences between the two kinds of writing—at least there were for me.  The day-to-day process of writing a novel, when it’s going well, feels surprisingly like reading one.  Even a little like living one.  You can get inside the story and feel it coming to life in a way that’s harder to do with scripts.
That’s probably because you can allow a book to surprise you as it develops; you can work from a single compelling idea and let the story unfold as you write, as Stephen King advises in his book On Writing.  It would be very hard to do that with a screenplay, which you usually need to outline in detail before you begin.

Tell us about your latest, The Breach.

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Lead Poisoning with James Thompson

Snow Angels, by James Thompson is dark. It’s supposed to be; it’s noir. But set in Finish Lapland during Kaamos, it’s dark quite literally. Weeks pass without sunlight. People are morose. People are edgy. As Thompson writes, “That’s the way things are here in winter. A bunch of depressed hard drinkers freezing in an endless night. Kaamos is tough on everyone.” And as the story progresses, things get so dark the novel itself threatens to collapse into a black hole.

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Virtual Sitdown with Mark Coggins

How does a guy who worked in several Silicon Valley computer and venture capital firms start writing PI novels?

I stared in college when I had the opportunity to take classes from Tobias Wolff and Ron Hansen. I ended up writing the first story featuring my series character August Riordan in a class taught by Hansen. That story, “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” was later published in The New Black Mask, which was a quarterly trade paperback done as a revival of the famous Black Mask pulp magazine that flourished in the 30s and 40s.

Why this genre? Have you thought of writing in other genres?

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Virtual Sitdown with Susie Larson

Tell us about yourself.

Thank you for your time. I’d love to share a little bit about myself: I am an author, speaker, and an on-call radio host for a two-hour talk show. I am married to a great man who makes me laugh every day. We have three wonderful sons who are in their early twenties. I speak nationally and occasionally internationally at women’s conferences and retreats.

A word about a passion close to my heart…

About five years ago, my husband and I joined a partnership with national recording artist Sara Groves and her husband Troy as co-chairs for the International Justice Mission benefit in Minnesota. IJM, among other things, rescues young girls from the horrific life of human trafficking. Last March, Sara, Troy, my husband and I, had the privilege of traveling to Washington D.C. to lobby for legislation to end the trafficking and slavery of children.

My deepest passion and conviction is to mobilize women to be fully free in Christ that they might become the world changers God intended them to be.

How did your writing career begin?

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Bumping Up Your Humor IQ

A few months ago I interviewed best seller humor author Christopher Moore, and I asked him if he could give any advice for writing humor.  Instead, he conked me on the head with a whoopee cushion and shoved cole slaw down my shirt.

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Melissa Ramirez Talks about Writing a Latina Mystery Series

There’s one thing that I’m asked (and sometimes not asked verbally, but with raised eyebrows) as a writer of a Latina mystery series.  Bet you can’t guess what the question is.  I’ll give you a hint.  I’m not Latina.  In fact, I say in my bio that I’m proud to be Latina-by-marriage. 

So, the question is… drum roll…

“Why do you write a Latina character, and how did you manage to make her so authentic?”

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Stumble into the Otherworld with Donna Grant

Romance novelist Donna Grant, author of the Dark Sword series, talks about hot Scotsmen, magical romance, and life as an author.

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Horror Corner with Marley Gibson

Marley Gibson discusses her third book in the Ghost Huntress series, “The Reason” and tells us what she’s really afraid of.

“I’m addicted to surfing the Internet, listening to House/Dance/Trance music and collecting fabulous shoes. I always wear black, my preferred color, and I love turkey sandwiches – could eat them for every meal. I e-mail people way too much, drink way too much Diet Coke, and I have a stack of books next to my bed that resembles the library of a small country. I love to use my imagination and I hope I never, ever lose the fervor to create characters, worlds and stories.” ~Marley Gibson, author of the Ghost Huntress trilogy.

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Virtual Sitdown with Harry Oliver

What is it about quirky facts and old wives tales that fascinate you?

It’s that in an age of science, technology and business, people still find comfort (and fear) in beliefs that are often as old as the trees. I love the idea that a guy walking down Wall Street might be holding onto an idea that’s been around since we were beating clubs.

When did you first start writing them down? Did you ever think they’d become full-length books?

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