written butterfly...let romance take flight: Q & A with JJ King!

Hello JJ! Thank you so much for visiting Written Butterfly with me today! It’s such a pleasure to chat with you. So tell me…

Q) How did you dream up the dynamics of your characters?

Hi, thanks for having me! I love my characters, I don’t know anyone would voluntarily create characters they hate. You have to spend so much time with them, so even if they’re horrible, you have to love writing them.

The main character in Blood of Eden is Katherine LaFlamme, a smart, sexy redhead with an independent streak to rival her loyal side. Since I write a lot of different characters, like her three brothers, father, mother, friends, and lovers, there are a lot of dynamics in this book. I don’t know where those dynamics come from, dreams or my hindbrain, who knows! I just put my fingers on the keyboard and they appear. I’m what you call a pantser, which means that I write by the seat of my pants. I literally have no idea where my story is going to end up when I start writing it. I have ideas, general directions that I want to go in, but, inevitably, somewhere along the way, I write something that changes everything. It’s more exciting for me this way. I write because I want to know the ending as much as the reader does.

Q) Is this book part of a series? If so, can you tell us about it?

It is! Blood of Eden is the first book in a paranormal romance trilogy called The Guardians. Book II is called My Brother’s Keeper and book III is going to be called Sins of the Father. I’ve also written two short stories that introduce the main character, the fierce Katherine LaFlamme, before the events of book I, and plan on writing two more.

Katherine is a wolf shifter and she’s lived over 300 years, so I started wondering about the different things she’d done, the different decades she’d lived through, to make her the woman she is in Blood of Eden. The short stories, which will be free by the way, will just be fun additions to Katherine’s story.

As for the series, it’s getting really exciting! Like I said above, I don’t know for certain how the whole thing will end, even though I’ve obviously been planning for it. At the end of My Brother’s Keeper, something happened. I had an epiphany and it changed book III altogether, which is why I’m having such a fun time writing it! And don’t worry, I’m not George R.R. Martin, book III will be out this year. I won’t make you wait forever!

Q) What gave you the inspiration for your book?

I’ve been reading paranormal romance for a long time now and I’ve always loved it, but the genre is filled with a lot of alpha males and the women who fall in love with their animalistic side. It got old. Then I picked up Kelly Armstrong’s Bitten and found a completely new character, an alpha female with looks and brains that rivaled any man. She was respected and treated as an equal, and I loved it. Katherine was born from Armstrong’s Elena, I think. The stories differ a lot, my ruling wolf structure is unique, but the strength of her character is reflected in my Katherine and the other women in the series.

Q) How much real life do you put into or influences your books?

I think we all put what we know into our novels. For me, that was making Katherine a redhead to start with. Can you guess what color my hair is? My friends actually laugh at how many red headed heroines I have in my stories.

In Blood of Eden, Katherine and the relationship she has with her family is what most reflects me as a person. That changes in My Brother’s Keeper, where my Mi’kmaq heritage and cultural past come into play a bit more. It’s also partially set in my home province of Newfoundland, which was really great to write.

Q) What are your upcoming projects?

Well, I’m currently working on book III, Sins of the father. I love my titles, by the way. They’re biblical references that give hints about what the book will include, but in no way give away the mystery. Sins of the father hints at a lot, I think, especially if you’ve read up to the end of My Brother’s Keeper.

I’m hoping to publish Sins of the father in late summer or early fall. This is the finale, the big finish, so it has to be perfect.

Outside my paranormal world, I’m also working on a few things for Evernight Publishing. My first contemporary romance, Finding the right words book I of the Rocky Coast Romance series, was released in November of last year and now I’m working on a series of short stories for their Romance on the go line. Short stories for busy people with all the impact and romance of a full-length novel. I’m also working on a second book in the Rocky Coast Romance series.

Beyond all that, there are always a few things floating around in my brain that want to be written. Lately, I’ve been obsessing over Medusa. I love Greek mythology and have a vast knowledge on the topic, so it’s just a matter of time before I dive into a project in that area.

Anyway, thank you to the Written Butterfly for having me! It was a ton of fun! If anyone would like to get in touch, I’m very social of Facebook and I have a website with regular blog posts.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjjking

Website: http://jjking.ca

Twitter: @JJKing_Author