Hunter’s Season Blog Tour: Interview with Thea Harrison

Read my review of Hunter’s Season here!

TH: Hi Smash! I’m excited to be here on your blog again. Thank you so much for having me.

Smash: You are welcome here anytime! I’m so pleased you decided to talk with us about your new novella in the Elder Races universe. My first burning question is: what inspired the main characters in Hunter’s Season? Have we met them before?

TH: Readers HAVE met the two characters before.  The hero is Aubrey Riordan, the Chancellor of the Dark Fae.  Aubrey was a secondary character in Storm’s Heart, whose wife ended up being a traitor.  He has had a lot of healing he’s needed to do.  Hunter’s Season gave me the chance to help him do that.

The heroine is a secondary character from novella #3 Devil’s Gate.  Xanthe Tenanye has been working as a Dark Fae agent for the crown, and she has recently returned home to Adriyel after a long, exhausting and dangerous assignment in America.

Smash: Ohhhh. I am excited for that match-up. So, you’ve written 4 novellas set in the Elder Race’s world now. What sets the characters apart, in terms of receiving a full-length novel or a novella? How do you choose who gets what?

TH: This is an awesome question!  Part of the decision has to do with how well I think readers may react to the characters.

For example, in Devil’s Gate, the heroine is a medusa, Dr. Seremela Telemar.  I loved Seremela’s character in the full length novels, but… well, you know the snakes were an issue.  I was pretty sure that I was taking a bit of a chance on her, and here’s a confession for you: the snakes were an issue for me as a writer too.  It was interesting and fun to stretch a bit to write about her.  The world building of the medusa culture was great to create, though, and overall reader reaction has been much more welcoming than I had feared.

In novella #2, Natural Evil, I wrote a gender reversal, where the heroine is the wounded soldier and she is twenty years older than the hero.  In novella #1, True Colors, the hero and the heroine are much more traditional, but the heroine is a strange sort of Wyr called a rainbow chameleon.

I think that all of these stories have added to the overall complexity in the Elder Races universe, allowing for more world building and stories with a different flavor from the full length novels.  I’m hoping that for readers, they’ve given the series a depth and character that it might not otherwise have had.

Smash: I understand what you mean, though I truly loved the rainbow chameleon. And Seremela. #JustSayin. So, do you listen to music while writing? If so, what was the playlist for Hunter’s Season?

TH: This is another awesome question, and I DO actually listen to music sometimes when I write.  In fact, I’ve created a high energy playlist for my next full length book.

However, sometimes listening to music doesn’t feel right for the mood of the story, so I write in silence.  Hunter’s Season was actually one of those stories.  The scenes where my hero and heroine were quiet places, and music ended up feeling intrusive.

Smash: That makes sense. I’m always curious to know what’s the most difficult part about writing is for an author. What is the most difficult part for you?

TH: There’s no doubt about it, writing is a challenging profession.  I love it, and I still write that.  Sometimes the story won’t flow right no matter what you do, so you have to wrestle with it endlessly to get it to behave.  Sometimes contracts take two months to arrive in your mailbox—and sometimes paychecks do too.

But I think the most difficult part about writing is when I pour weeks, and maybe months, of passion and hard work into a project, and then I hit SEND on that email and… I have to wait for feedback for weeks, and sometimes months.  For me, the waiting is the most difficult thing of all, without question.  It can take me a few days to disconnect from the project I’ve just finished.  But then it always helps to start another project, and to begin investing all over again.

Smash: What do you enjoy when you aren’t reading or writing?

TH: True confession time:  because I love my work so much, I’m actually a bit of a workaholic and often work seven day weeks.  I’m trying to develop hobbies that are completely outside of both reading and writing, and so far I’ve played with soap making.  It’s fun, but I also need to look into other hobbies as well.

Smash: Since you have a new family member, maybe scrapbooking would be nice? I promise I’m not a scrapbooker who is trying to persuade you. Finally, what’s something about you that would surprise others?

TH: I’m shy?  That would probably surprise others because I’m… actually not.  Geez, I’ve been sitting here for over five minutes trying to think of something surprising, but I can’t come up with anything.  I tend to be a straightforward kind of person and quite boring in real life.  I think my imagination is probably the most entertaining thing about me.  Luckily we’ve been given the opportunity to play with that.

Smash, thanks again for having me today. It’s always a pleasure to visit with you.

GIVEAWAY

For readers, what is something about you that would surprise others? Do you keep a part of yourself private?

Comment for a chance to win the ebook of your choice from Thea’s Samhain backlist! If you already have the three novellas on her backlist, you can always give your prize to a friend!

• Ends 9/26/12.
• 18 and up, only.
• Winner will be chosen randomly using Pick Giveaway Winner plugin.
• Winner will need to respond to email within 72 hours or a new winner will be chosen.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNER!

Meet Thea Harrison

Thea Harrison is the pen name for author Teddy Harrison. Thea has traveled extensively, having lived in England and explored Europe for several years. Now she resides in Colorado. She wrote her first book, a romance, when she was nineteen and had sixteen romances published under the name Amanda Carpenter.

She took a break from writing to collect a couple of graduate degrees and a grown child. She experienced waitressing as a teenager, has worked as an activist for a non-profit consumer rights organization, has been a receptionist, an office manager, a penniless graduate student, a director of development and research, and a single mom. Her graduate degrees are in Philanthropic Studies and Library Information Science, but her first love has always been writing fiction. She’s back with her paranormal Elder Races series, which began May 3, 2011 with Dragon Bound.

She adores animals and currently resides with several small pets that have very large personalities.

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