MVF Interviews Author Jeanine Frost

Posted by Saluki in Interviews | 4 comments

If you are already familiar with Cat and Bones, then Jeanine Frost needs no introduction. If you aren’t familiar with her Night Huntress series, it is a crazy good urban fantasy series featuring half-vampire Catherine “Cat” Crawfield.

Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father—the one responsible for ruining her mother’s life. Then she’s captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unholy partnership.

Jeanine was awesome enough to take a few minutes away from writing to sit down for an interview with us.  We hope you enjoy it!

SusanAshlea: Where did the inspiration for Cat & Bones come from? How was the series “born”?

Well, it wasn’t my original intention for this to be a series. My big goal at the time was to finish a novel – something I’d never accomplished before. The idea for Cat and Bones came from a dream where I saw a half-vampire woman arguing with a Master vampire man about why she’d left him years before. In the dream, I knew she still loved him even though she’d left him, and I also knew he’d been looking for her for a long time. Fleshing out the story of who those people were, and how they came to be at that point, turned into the novel Halfway to the Grave. Readers of the series know the argument that prompted the dream actually took place in the second book, One Foot in the Grave, so although I didn’t plan to write a series, Cat and Bones’s story turned out to be far bigger than one novel.

SusanAshlea: What prompted you to pursue writing as a career, and can you tell us a bit about your journey into publishing?

I’ve wanted to be an author ever since I was twelve and began jotting down my dreams to make stories out of them. Because I am a procrastinator at heart, however, I would only get through a few pages and then set the stories aside. Right before I turned thirty, I realized how much time I’d wasted on that “later” mentality and resolved to either start and finish a book, or give up on my writing dream forever. At the same time, I had that vivid dream about a vampire and a half-vampire arguing. You could say it was fate .

As for the path to publication, that’s a long, long answer because writing a book turned out to be the easiest step in getting published. For a breakdown of the process, please see my post here: http://frost-light.livejournal.com/16905.html .

SusanAshlea: What is your writing process? When you sit down to start on a new book, do you outline? Do you already have a basic idea about the way the plot will unfold or do you let it change as you write?

Before I even type ”Chapter One”, I’ve spent a while thinking about my hero and heroine. What they look like, what type of background they came from, what they want the most, what they’re most afraid of, what their strengths are, their weaknesses, flaws, etc. For me, the plot evolves from the characters, not the other way around, so if I don’t have a detailed picture of my hero/heroine in my head, I can’t begin to orchestrate a plot. Equally important is the villain. I ask all those questions about him or her, too, because if I don’t know what drives the antagonist, then I’d miss a vital part of the story.

Once I’ve got a detailed picture of my hero/heroine/villain in my head, I write a skeletal outline that highlights the basics of the main plot, but yes, that’s subject to change. I’m an organic writer so most subplots, side characters, twists and scenes come to me as I write, not before I write. Well over 50% of what’s in each of my books was not plotted out in advance, to put a number on it. That’s what works for me, but some writers need a detailed outline showing all of a story’s events before they start a book. There’s no “one size fits all” approach to writing, so my advice is to stick with whatever works best for you.

SusanAshlea: Who is the next supporting character to get their own “spin-off” book in the Night Huntress World series?

That would be Vlad, and he’s getting two books. I don’t intend to write more than two books with him, but then again, I only intended for one Cat and Bones book, and look how that turned out *wink*.  I’m starting his book now and it’s tentatively slated to release in spring 2012. Vlad is a perfect example of my not plotting in advance. When I first started writing vampires, I swore to myself that I’d never touch the Dracula mythos because it was so overdone. Then while writing a scene in At Grave’s End, my hero Bones was annoyed because “the bloody showhound” was at his door, and I just knew he meant Vlad. I even tried to delete him in that scene but Vlad popped into my head with his character so vividly fleshed out that I couldn’t give him the ax. Now I’m giving him his own series. Just goes to show that you should never say never.

SusanAshlea: Will Ian ever find his one true love?

Ian’s not ready to do that now because he’s having too much fun raising hell and sleeping with anyone who will hold still long enough, heh. I have hopes for Ian in the future, though. Some things happen in future Night Huntress stories that might pave the way for Ian to mentally – and emotionally – grow up enough to love someone. We’ll see :).

SusanAshlea: Chapter 32 is rather famous amongst fans of the series, and it’s written quite well. Do you ever get nervous when writing explicit scenes like this?

I write sex scenes as though I’m a fly on the wall recording my characters’ actions. That means I set aside my own comfort level, morality, or embarrassment because I’m telling their stories, not my own. After those scenes are written and I can’t pretend that I’m the only one who’s going to read them, then yes, I get nervous. I’ve told my parents that I never want to hear their opinions on sex scenes in my books because in my mind, they skip over those parts. Hey, denial works for me!

SusanAshlea:  Have you ever ventured onto fan sites, looked at fan art, or read fan-fiction? In general, what is your opinion on fan-fiction?

I have an official fan site (http://www.frostfans.com/forums/ ) and I visit there regularly, but I don’t go onto other sites. I’ve occasionally looked at fan art because people email me pictures, or they post pictures on my fan site and Facebook page. Some people have even sent me pictures of tattoos they’ve gotten with quotes from my book or images from my covers, which floors me. But I don’t read fan fiction, though I’m as flattered by the reasons behind it as I am by the fan art.

The reason I don’t read fan fiction is simple – I don’t want anyone accusing me of “stealing” their idea if they happened to write something that is similar to a plot line in a future book. Plot coincidences in the same genre are rampant. You’d think people would know that, but I’ve seen writers get accused of stealing plot ideas from people they’ve never even heard of before, let alone read. So reading fan fiction has too many potential negatives, though again, I’m flattered that people are invested in my characters enough to write it.

SusanAshlea: Will Justina ever find a sense of peace with what has happened to her? She seems to keep getting hit with blow after blow; will she come to terms with being a vampire? Will she find love again?

Justina is a character who’s gotten very polarized reactions. Reader seem to either want to see her happy, or they want to see her DEAD, lol. I’d like to see Justina in a more stable place, emotionally and romantically, but I don’t know if she’ll let herself get there. She’s grown as the series progresses, and I hope she continues to, but Justina can be her own worst enemy. Time will tell if she can defeat that tendency.

SusanAshlea: Is the Night Huntress series finite, or is it open ended?

The storyline with Cat and Bones will end at book nine. I don’t plot much in advance, as I stated before, but I’ve known for years how their tale will end, and every novel brings them closer to that resolution. I do intend to write more spinoff novels from the Night Huntress series, however, so Cat and Bones may pop up as secondary figures in one of those even after their main storyline is finished.

SusanAshlea: What else do you have in store for Cat & Bones? Can you give us any hints about future projects that involve the Night Huntress world?

One Grave at a Time, which comes out August 30th, picks up right where This Side of the Grave left off and expands on the threads concerning Cat’s new connection to ghosts. The villain in One Grave at a Time is actually a phantom, but one that Cat and Bones have never come across before.  And after that, longtime secrets of Bones’s past are revealed in The Bite Before Christmas anthology that comes out October 25th, so readers will have two more doses of Cat and Bones before the end of the year.

Please take a few minutes to leave a comment for Jeanine, and if you haven’t read the Night Huntress series yet, what are you waiting for?