YG: What do you love most about what you write?
SI: Creating the characters, their stories, and building the world in which they live. It’s like taking a bunch of puzzle pieces and trying to put them together as a cohesive whole. Plus, it’s great writing in urban fantasy because you get to make up some of your own rules about how things work.
YG: Tell me the name of one of your characters, and what you loved and struggled with most while writing them?
SI: I think Conrad (from the Dragon’s Breath Series) was the hardest one to figure out at first. In the first book, I had to do a lot of revisions until I was happy with him. The big problem is he becomes a sort of sidekick to my main female character, Bailey. I wanted readers to see him as being valuable as a fighting partner and friend, rather than a love interest. He is also good at providing comic relief in a story that would otherwise be dark and intense all the time.
YG: What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever received from a fan or bought for your writing?
SI: I can’t think of anything odd I’ve received from a fan. For myself, I’ve never bought anything odd either, but some people might look at the titles for my research books as being a little strange. Such as- “The Book of Barely Imagined Beings” and “A Natural History: Dragons and Unicorns”
YG: What do you want your readers to take away from your books?
SI: I hope they enjoy the stories, consider what they’d do in similar situations to the characters, and maybe learn a new thing or two about the settings.
YG: You get to pick three celebrities to help you fend off the Zombie Apocalypse. Who do you choose?
SI: Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kate Beckinsale (seems like they could be a fun group!)
YG: What do you have coming out next, or what just came out?
SI: I’ve got the third novel in my Dragon’s Breath Series, Forged by Flames, coming out toward the end of October.
YG: Will you have espresso, mocha, cappuccino, latte, coffee, tea, or some other concoction?
SI: I will definitely be going with a white chocolate mocha 🙂
STALKED BY FLAMES IS AVAILABLE IN:
KINDLE-US * KINDLE-UK * NOOK * iTUNES
Susan Illene served in the US Army for eleven years and worked as a human resources specialist and an Arabic linguist. She served two deployments to Iraq, and after leaving the army, she studied history at the University of Oklahoma. She and her husband currently live in Oklahoma with two high-maintenance cats doing their best to help her write her books.
Great interview!
White chocolate mocha and third book in the series sounds like a perfect fall evening to me!