Hawthorne University Witch Prequel Series – Book Tour and Giveaway

What inspired you to write this book?

The characters. When the Hawthorne University series was written, I focused on Cadence Hawthorne. But I’ll never forget a reader telling me that they wanted to learn more about Cadence’s antagonist—her teacher and witch mentor—Alondra. Then I thought of the fun of writing about characters in the 1990s.

So I embarked on creating the book Alondra, the first book in my prequel series. But Alondra always felt unfinished. I mean, there’s no cliffhangers, but I felt like there was so much more between her love relationship with Liam that it necessitated more stories. That made me write Book of Shadow.

In Book of Shadow, I “reversed” the last books of the Hawthorne series. In the last book of that series, Cadence learns to be evil to fight evil. Well, I wanted to see what would happen if Liam became evil in the prequel series. And, more particularly, what would happen if he became an evil witch like his girlfriend Alondra. That’s what Book of Shadow and Walpurgis are about. His and Alondra’s struggle with evil.

Convince us why you feel your book is a must-read.

Aside from it being Halloween ;) I mean, it’s a witchy dark fantasy romance. And not only is the book about witches, it’s real researched occult magic. For instance, the enemies in Book of Shadow and Walpurgis are a satanic cult based more on Thelema and Crowley magic than Wicca. So it’s interesting to see what happens when practitioners of moon witchcraft fight wizards and cult members practicing “real” magic’k’.

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in the books?

Alondra is a wicked witch quite sure of herself. Cadence is the opposite in the main series, unsure of herself and humble. Alondra has this same interaction in her romantic relationship to Liam in the prequel books (‘cause Liam is most similar to Cadence). So I think the fun of the series is this interaction between Alondra with Liam and, later, Alondra with Cadence Hawthorne.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Oh, boy… I’m in between projects. It took a lot out of me to spin out these two yarns, Book of Shadow and Walpurgis, in such a short time, so now I’m in a bit of a hiatus. I’m in the beginning stages of four possible projects: a conclusion to my Furies series, a vampire romance, a short story about Enora (another witch from the series), or a mythological story about Medusa in ancient Greece. I’ve always wanted to write a vampire book as a paranormal novelist so I’m probably going in that direction.

Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reins?

My characters lead every story. I watch from behind the scenes. Mostly, the whole story is created through their eyes. But there are some scenes that were created from settings. My book Haunting Joy, for instance, about a ghost romance was more created by the Vermont woods as a setting in my head. But even there, there wouldn’t be a story without the whimsical ghost character.

Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?

All my contemporary romance books are cinematic. Particularly, the Hawthorne Witch series, including this prequel series, is written in present tense, first-person. I did that to create a more action-packed feel than some of my other novels. I find that perfect for cinema. Truly, I write with images in my mind, so it’s not hard to see those images put up on a silver screen. Trouble, of course, is cost. For now, I’ve settled with a love for creating audiobooks of all the novels and short stories. That’s been a blast, particularly with the amazing talents of my narrators, Alexa Elmy and Preston Geer.

What is your favorite part of this book and why?

For Walpurgis, it’s fire. I don’t want to give away too much, but you can just look at the cover. Fire represents cleansing or burning away. Of course, in ancient times, witches were literally burned at the stake. Well, in Walpurgis, a little girl hunts witches. And she wants to burn them all—and the ones most threatened are the main characters Liam and Alondra.

Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?

The entire series is a prequel to my bestselling Hawthorne University Witch Series. But it takes place twenty years ago, so that we can learn about Cadence’s teacher back when Cadence was a student. The series, now spanning thirteen books, has a ton of side stories and bingeworthy material to enjoy ;) And you can start with this series or with Broomstick.

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

I’ve always been fascinated by religious studies. All the studying I did about the occult made these witch projects really interesting. I also loved romance, the push and pull of love between a man fallen head over heels for a witch—but not only a witch, a bad witch. That femme fatale thing was loads of fun to write.

What’s a fun fact or behind-the-scenes tidbit about the book or writing process?

I’ll tell you one. The hallucination or ritual scenes were extremely challenging. It’s all about showing imagery popping up in my imagination—sometimes connected with the plot or something with the occult—other times with no connection at all to anything. Just like in the book Ravens, I shut off all lights and turned off my computer screen, feeling for keys, so that I could try to directly jot down the happenings in my head. You can’t think these scenes. You’ve gotta approach it with disorder to get it right, I think. And I was happy with the result.

What made you decide to get the book made into an audiobook?

My books are very dialog driven. It’s really all about the characters and having them come to life via audio has been such a blast. All the books in both the prequel and the standard series will have accompanying audios. And what’s truly exciting about Book of Shadow and Walpurgis is that it’s dual narrated again (just as Alondra was). So you get Alexa Elmy’s magic of multiple voices coupled with Preston Geer’s narration and reprisal of Liam making for an awesome prequel trilogy. Duets are harder to produce but I had already done this for Alondra, so I wanted to carry it over to the three prequel audiobooks.

Who did the narration on the audiobook and what made you choose them?

First and foremost, I was looking for narrators who could act because even the narration, when in 1^st person, is acting. Both narrators are professional actors. Preston Geer did the main narration and played Liam. Alexa performed Alondra and all the other voices, including the possessed girl Melanie.

What goes into making an audiobook?

Much of the hard work isn’t done by me. Actors are commissioned. I do get a final to gloss over. The thing that’s different about an audiobook versus theater or movies is that there’s no director. The narrators are their own directors, so they have to interpret the books. But sometimes, the interpretation is off and I have to work on revisions. That’s the only time I’m directly involved when finalizing the product.

How many audiobooks do you currently have and are there any more on the horizon?

 Sure. I absolutely love the format.

Do you have a favorite scene from the audiobook? What makes it special?

I don’t really want to give anything away. What I would say is that multiple characters coming together at once, like during witch battles and such, were super hard to do because you have to be able to differentiate different voicing by the voice artists and you have to make sure the timing is done right in an action scene. So the busy battle scenes were probably my favorite. Only because Alexa mastered so many voices and my engineer, Zach Grappone, was able to tie it in perfectly with Preston’s performances.

Did you have to adjust/change anything in the book before getting it narrated?

Very little. My narrators are top notch and I just send out a tweak or two.

What was the first audiobook you ever listened to?

Oh… probably Tolkien. Lord of the Rings. Not sure.

Do you prefer to listen to audiobooks or read a book?

I prefer to read because I skim and read far faster. I wish I had more time to enjoy an audio performance, especially ones performed like mine.

Have you written any other books that are not published?

I don’t like unfinished things. I only have two not published. One is a side epic fantasy novel from my Azure series featuring a “Conan-like” character. It’s a good story, but I haven’t had the time to finish it. The other one is memorable to me because it’s the first book I ever wrote. That one was a dystopian sci-fi book about a man with powers connected to a mainframe. It was very similar to The Matrix. I never completed it because I felt like it was too much of a downer. It also didn’t have the fun felt by the bombastic ruthless supreme leader, Elise, in my sci-fi Candy Savant series.

What did you edit out of this book?

You might be surprised to find that it wasn’t much. From Book of Shadow, I deleted a dinner scene with Liam and Alondra meeting Alondra’s dad. It was fun but it really was unnecessary in moving the story.

How did you come up with the name of this book?

In the series, Alondra is the introduction to the character Alondra in college. Book of Shadow represents the name of magic books for witches, which are named your book of shadow, or grimoire. Walpurgis is about witches and a little girl hunting them all to burn them. Walpurgis is a bit harder to understand, I guess. Basically, Walpurgis is the name of Saint Walpurgis, a saint who helped rid people of diseases and “witchcraft”. Well, on Walpurgis night, villagers for hundreds of years have burned effigies of witches. So I felt it’s a perfect name for a girl hunting witches (interestingly, the book takes place on Halloween, not Walpurgis Night. That was because I wanted to bring in our familiarity with Halloween for the final book).

If you could spend time with a character from your book, who would it be and what would you do?

I think I could spend time with any of them. Even the evil antagonists. In order to write about characters, you have to have a little bit of them inside yourself. So there’s a bit of a familiarity with all of them. If I was to pick one, it’d be Cadence from the main series. And Liam. Because both represented me. In the series, it’s always been me as the outsider, watching all the magic come about just like the reader.