Happy All Hallow’s Eve, readers!

This is my the first Halloween for Darkeva’s Blog, and I’m very excited to be able to share reviews, interviews, and giveaways for not one but two very talented authors, J.L. Bryan and Richard Kadrey. This is the first of those interviews, with Mr. J.L. Bryan, author of the phenomenal novel “Jenny Pox,” which you can buy on Amazon in both print and e-book editions!

Please see my earlier post today for a review of the novel, which is all the things that a book is supposed to be–engrossing and un-putdownable, even if it is on screen

Enjoy the interview, and be sure to scroll to the bottom for details on my “Jenny Pox” giveaway

Interview:

Q: How did you initially conceive of the character of Jenny Pox? Were you inspired by the Egyptian mythology behind the concept of her rare ability?

The story began with the idea of this girl whose touch spread pestilence and death. She’s too good of a person to enjoy that power, so she fights her whole life to avoid touching anyone—it’s the main theme of her life, and I was really interested in exploring the emotional and social consequences of that.

I knew the ancient Egyptians would have something for me, but I was really fortunate to discover Sekhmet. She’s not as well known today as other Egyptian deities, but she was one of the oldest among the thousands of Egyptian gods. She is portrayed as lion-headed, and associated with pestilence, warfare, justice, and protection of the pharaoh. Her breath created the desert. She was one of the most important gods in early Egypt. There is also an interesting African goddess, Nyabinghi. These helped enrich the story of Jenny and provided some guidance for her character, too.

Q: Were you influenced or inspired by Rogue of the X-Men and her inability to touch people or risk zapping their powers, even killing them? You make it abundantly clear that Jenny’s touch literally kills if applied long enough.

Jenny is similar to Rogue in that she can’t touch anyone. I did think of Rogue as I wrote about the logical implications of that, because once you’re in that situation, you have to take certain obvious measures. I was already familiar with the X-Men before I wrote Jenny Pox, so there’s no way to know whether that might have been one of the subconscious influences!

I was more of a DC and Dark Horse reader than a Marvel reader, so I’m not sure what they’ve explored in the comic books, or what the details of Rogue’s character are there.

Q: Speaking of characters, the main antagonist, Ashleigh, is so startling not only for her ability to piss off the reader but also because girls like her do exist in real life, and do get away with similar things, although not quite as large in scope as what Ashleigh does (what she plans is just purely diabolical. There’s no other word for it without making her sound like a cartoon villain, which, most assuredly, she is not). Did you draw on someone you knew in the past? How were you able to make your female characters so vivid?

The key to strong characters, I think, is knowing their motivation, their personal history, their moral sense and their capabilities. Ashleigh has a strong drive to touch centers of power—her ambitions are high, and she’s ruthless. She surrounds herself with talented and intelligent friends and takes complete control of them. A powerful and driven personality like that is easy to write, because she’s always running to the next goal, always plotting a few steps ahead. I never have to wait for her to do anything.

For Ashleigh’s character, I drew from assorted tyrants and cult leaders of the past and sort of translated that character into the context of a manipulative and intelligent teenage girl in this little town in the middle of nowhere. There’s a part of her that really enjoys inflicting suffering just as a demonstration of power, and to make others fear her. And there’s a part of her that relishes getting away with it, especially if the blame can be directed elsewhere, towards someone else she wants to punish. And all the while she stays in public character as this very moral and religious person deeply concerned about her community.

Q: The book has clear horror elements although it is told as a YA story–did you always plan it as a young adult novel? Was that a deliberate choice?

I always saw it as a horror novel. Only when I put it out there and got reviews and emails back from readers did I bump into the category problem. People call it YA, or paranormal, or dark or urban fantasy, or some of those words combined.

I actually set the story when the characters were as old as possible. Things were going to come to a head while they all still lived in that town. Had they grown any older, Ashleigh would have gotten her way on everything, then Ashleigh and Seth would have left town for college in Washington, DC. Jenny would have stayed far from any city, wouldn’t have learned the things she does in this story, and so on. Ashleigh would have been out of Jenny’s reach, and Jenny certainly wasn’t going to chase Ashleigh anywhere. So to have the story at all meant it had to happen while they were all still in Fallen Oak, and that meant high school.

I did want to write the teenage characters as honestly as possible. But I didn’t make any special effort to create a book intended for a teenage audience. The logic of the story dictated the decisions. Had it made more sense for them to be forty or fifty years old when things collided, I would have written it that way instead.

Q: As I was reading through the first few chapters, I kept thinking, “Why isn’t this published by a huge print publisher?” It kicks the competition down, and it’s one of the best YA books I’ve ever read. Period. (And I don’t usually like YA except for very rare cases, so that’s saying a lot! ) Why the decision to publish it as an ebook?

Thank you! That’s a very kind way to ask a question.

I had experimented with putting a couple of books on Kindle and Amazon’s print-on-demand service before, but basically just stuck them out there and forgot about them. For Jenny Pox, I hired the editorial service of horror writer Scott Nicholson, since he writes great books in the genre, he lives in North Carolina (not a vast distance from the setting of Jenny Pox), and he was offering the service. He reviewed a draft of Jenny Pox, really liked my writing and encouraged me to build up my Kindle list and get active there. He is one of these renegades who has published many books through traditional publishers, but discovered that independent publishing can be much more rewarding for an author. Obviously, that’s not the case if you’re J.K. Rowling, but if you’re a small-press or even mid-list author, especially of genre fiction, you can sometimes do better by jumping ship from the publishing industry and taking your audience with you.

I submitted Jenny Pox to more then a hundred agents, basically any of them who seemed legitimate (thanks, Preditors and Editors!) and stated they were willing to represent horror. I didn’t get any representation for the book, but then I noticed I was getting larger and larger deposits from Amazon. It turned out that my book Helix was climbing up some Amazon sales algorithms and somehow getting automatically recommended to people with an interest in genetics and biotechnology (Helix is a science fiction book that centers on those subjects). So it’s suddenly selling a few copies a day with no help from me at all. All I ever did was upload it to Amazon DTP one night in early 2009, at a time when I didn’t really know what a Kindle was. It was suggested to me by Amazon, in the course of uploading it as a paperback on CreateSpace, so I went ahead and did it. I probably would have forgotten about it if not for the bank deposits.

Then I discovered a whole community of indie authors in the summer of 2010, and some of them are doing very well. There are people who’ve never been traditionally published selling thousands of books a month because of the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers. And everybody’s sharing advice and experiences with each other. So I decided that looked like fun and got involved.

Q: You also have a very unique character blog in which you, in essence, blog as Jenny, and it’s very creative! Did you have a pretty solid idea of the ways you were going to promote and market the book after you wrote it?

Not at all! I wrote the book in 2009, and spent a lot of time trying to get it represented by an agent. Months of that. Then I gave up, since there was no one left to query, and also the Helix sales were picking up and I saw the new opportunities that e-readers have brought to indie authors. Really, the whole idea of “indie authors” who actually make income from their work has only come about in the past year or so with the growing interest in e-readers. There have been indie filmmakers and musicians for years, and of course most painters and sculptors would qualify as “indie,” but book printing and distribution has always been so expensive that you couldn’t do it independently. Now that’s changing.

Q: Aside from budgeting and print media coverage, what kinds of challenges have you run into in terms of self-promotion?

The main challenge is knowledge. There’s a learning to figure out how to do it right and how to do it wrong, and there are a lot more wrong options than right ones! There’s a learning curve. The most effective things to do aren’t really expensive. You go where the readers are looking for books to read, like Goodreads and Kindleboards. Book bloggers are very important to indie authors, because book review blogs are places where people are looking for something to read (or avoid reading!). So you have to go where people are looking for the kind of book you’ve written.

Q: Any advice for writers who are contemplating a foray into e-publishing?

It can be very rewarding. The main thing to consider is the quality of your work. Get plenty of honest feedback from people who like the kind of book you’ve written, and be sure to welcome criticism and have a sense of humor about that. Edit and polish, proofread and proofread and proofread. Putting out quality, professional material is the most important part.

Q: What do you have planned next?

I’m going to have a new book coming out in a few months. It’s about a haunted book—reading it brings back a ghost who starts haunting you in a very wicked way. I’m planning an organized blog tour for it, with some prizes.

Thanks for having me on the Darkeva’s blog! Happy Halloween!

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And there you have it, folks!

Now for the giveaway details!

Note: there are 2 e-book copies of “Jenny Pox” up for grabs, so two winners will be selected!

1. Contest is open to North American and European entrants, because the books are in e-book format and can be conveyed via email on behalf of the author

2. To enter, simply write a comment on this post about what aspect of “Jenny Pox” excites you the most, and include your name, email, and Twitter handle if you have one.

3. To gain one extra entry, “Like” Darkeva’s Blog on Facebook (link in sidebar) and be sure to mention that you’ve done this in your comment.

4. To gain two extra entries, add me on Twitter.

5. To gain three extra entries, add me to Google Friend Connect located in the left sidebar, and be sure to mention this in your comment!

6. Contest closes on Saturday, November 13 at 12am EST.

Good luck to all the entrants!