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By Christina Radish
 New Mexico native Lilith Saintcrow (www.lilithsaintcrow.net) knew from a very early age that she was born to be a writer. With a nurse for a mother and a stepfather in the Air Force, she spent time in England and Wyoming, before settling in the Pacific Northwest, where she still resides.
The latest sensation to the dark urban fantasy genre, Saintcrow’s first published book, Dark Watcher -- about a healing witch and the Watcher who is sworn to protect her -- was released in 2004 by ImaJinn (www.imajinnbooks.com). Since then, ImaJinn has released Storm Watcher (2005) and Fire Watcher (2006), with the upcoming Cloud Watcher (Fall 2006) and Mindhealer (2007) next in line in the Watcher series; and The Society (2005) and Hunter, Healer (2005) -- a series about a black-ops government agency looking to turn psionics into killers. With the Dante Valentine series, about a necromance for hire, currently being released on Warner Books, Saintcrow has quickly become a writer to watch.
“I’ve always been in love with books. There’s a picture of me on my great-grandfather’s lap, and I can’t be more than a year and a half old, and he is reading to me from a little Golden book. Apparently, I learned to read very early and just never stopped. My mother would get me to behave by telling me, ‘If you don’t behave, I’m not going to buy you a book,’ which was an instant guarantee of good behavior, on my part.”
The progression from reading to writing was seamless for the 30-year-old mother of two, who took home second prize for a sixth grade fiction contest. “I flinch to think about it, but I wrote this terrible novella about a young girl who had been kidnapped by Indians, and it was completely politically incorrect. I had read a bunch of Louis L’Amour, so I had only a very dim view of political correctness when it came to the native peoples of America. My thought was, ‘My God, people are going to reward me for doing this?’ I felt like somebody was giving me a reward to see how much candy I could eat ‘cause I just loved doing it so much. It felt like cheating. And, from that point on, I was firmly hooked.”
Saintcrow says that her first novel was a horrible attempt at fantasy that lives in a drawer, except for the rare occasion that she takes it out to look at it. “It will never be published and nobody’s ever going to read it, but I can’t let go of it ‘cause it was the first thing that I finished that was my own. And then, between the time I finished that, and the time I finished my second novel, it took six years, during which time I got knocked up, got married, divorced, moved around, went to massage school, met my current husband, settled down, and started sleeping again because, during the last two years of that phase, I don’t think I really slept. Since finishing my second novel, I’ve written three or four a year.”
Even though she knew her calling from a very early age, Saintcrow admits that her family didn’t exactly support her writing endeavors. “‘Why don’t you get your head out of the clouds? That artsy fartsy stuff will never put food on the table. Why don’t you get a real job? You have so much potential. You could be a doctor or a lawyer.’ I could have been those things, but that was entirely the wrong way to put it to me because it just made me dig my heels in and go the opposite direction. Violent stuff sticks in my head and, when you’re a teenager, everything is heightened and dramatic. I got into trouble over things that I would write in my notebooks that I thought nobody had read, but it turned out that somebody in my family had pawed through them. Even to this day, I can’t write if somebody is looking over my shoulder. When I got my first book, Dark Watcher, published, I gave one of my author’s copies to my mother, and that was vindication.”
Saintcrow was already working on the Watcher series when Danny Valentine first spoke to her, late one night. “I’d just finished a book, and I do not like to leave my laptop without something unfinished on it. It’s my own personal talisman. So, I opened up a new document, figuring I would just write a paragraph or two of something disposable, and I’d go back to it the next day. It was 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, everybody was in bed, and I was sitting there, looking at the blank screen. All of a sudden, Danny whispered into my left ear, ‘My working relationship with Lucifer started on a rainy Monday,’ in a very low, husky voice, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s good.’ I wrote it down and then, when the sun came up, five chapters later, I was still chained to the laptop. I don’t know where she came from. I think it was just her time. She was tired of waiting and decided that I was good enough to tell that story.”
Once Danny was on the page, the secondary characters quickly followed. “They barged into the story. Interestingly enough, Japhrimel started out as the bad guy who had double-crossed Lucifer and was going to get his comeuppance. And then, he just started throwing these curve balls. I finally realized what he was trying to tell me, with a wink and a nudge, was that he really liked this necromance. And, Gabe and Eddie horned their way in. They were originally only supposed to be in one or two scenes. The secondary characters showed up, trappings and all, and said, ‘You’re going into this story and we’re going with you.’ Jace is the only person that I had planned for a real secondary character. He’s my favorite character in the series. Unfortunately, he’s the one that the readers seem to hate the most.”
{quote_top}Released in March of 2006, about two years after Saintcrow finished writing it, Working for the Devil introduces readers to Dante Valentine, a tough-as-nails necromancer who is enlisted by Lucifer to help him catch a rogue demon. Insisting that she be accompanied by a demon assassin named Japhrimel, the brave, charismatic protagonist with a smart mouth and a suicidal streak soon finds herself in deeper than she ever could have imagined.
In Dead Man Rising, the second, and darkest, installment of the series, released this past September, Dante is called in to help the cops track down who is responsible for the deaths of psions in Saint City. While she tries to pick up the pieces of her own shattered life, Danny is soon forced to face the one thing she was hoping to never have to revisit -- her childhood.
“There is nothing so dark as childhood demons. Everybody goes through a phase in their life where they have to face those things again, and you either break or you get strong. Danny got strong. A lot of people think that the point of writing, or making a movie, is to make people feel all happy, warm and fuzzy inside. It is, but it’s not. The Greeks were onto something with their comedy and tragedy being two halves of the same face. It’s what professional wrestlers call heat. When you go out to the crowd, you don’t care if you’re hearing the boos and hisses, or if you’re hearing wild cheers. The worst thing you can hear is silence. So, the books that survive are the books that call out an emotional reaction, whether it’s, ‘Oh, you bitch,’ or ‘Oh, that’s great, it makes me so happy.’ Those emotional reactions only come from truth and catharsis.”
Along with being fiercely loyal, Danny Valentine is bitchy, flawed and, at times, downright unlikable. But, one of the things that makes her so intriguingly complex is the fact that she’s not the typical sympathetic character that many protagonists tend to be.
“Danny is a product of her environment. In Working for the Devil, she starts out as an extremely black and white person. ‘You betray me once, I’ll cut you out of my life forever.’ I think everybody goes through that, but then you grow up and you start learning about compromises and shades of gray. A lot of Danny and Japhrimel’s relationship in Working for the Devil is Japhrimel teaching her that you can be wrong about people, and people can be good people, but not necessarily nice people. There’s a way to be more vulnerable and more human, which this inhuman creature ends up teaching her. A lot of the books are her undergoing that great lesson that things are not always so simple and there are compromises to be made in adulthood, which makes her a much more sympathetic character.”
 As the relationship between Danny and Japhrimel evolves, Saintcrow says that it will also become more complicated. “I hate series where the hero and the heroine get together and then have this perfect wisecracking relationship where everything’s right between them and they always count on each other in a pinch. That’s just not how real relationships are. Being in a long-term relationship is a balancing act. When you’re a neurotic trigger-happy, katana-happy necromance, and you’re dating a demon who’s way older than the human race and has his own moral system that isn’t necessarily humanity’s, you’re going to have some problems and some communication difficulties.”
“I hate perfect relationships in books. But, there are imperfect relationships that work because people learn to make them work. The Valentine books explore how you trust somebody once you’ve made yourself vulnerable to them, and how you deal with it when somebody that you love does something that’s incomprehensible to you.”
Although Saintcrow plans on ending Danny Valentine’s story with a five-book arc, she has had thoughts of kicking around a later series with Gabe and Eddie’s daughter and the Hell Wars, which would begin about 20 years after the events in the fifth Valentine book. “That’s a project that I’m not going to be able to take on for at least five years. The five books are pretty much the whole story, and then I need to say goodbye to it. If I went back to it after that, there would be nowhere for the characters to go. I know a lot of people are doing open-ended series lately, but this one just isn’t like that.”
As for what will happen with the characters in the remainder of the Valentine series, Saintcrow, who spends some of her time working in the local independent bookstore Cover to Cover Books (www.covertocoverbooks.net), says that readers can definitely expect the devil himself to make a reappearance. “The devil needs to call on Dante’s services again, and he maneuvers her into a position where she has to take the job, but it mushrooms into something more complex. Basically, there’s a fight for who’s going to rule in Hell, and it ends up that somebody the devil has done dirty before holds the key to it all. I won’t deny a certain satisfaction in Lucifer getting his comeuppance. If there’s any character that I just really don’t like, it’s that one. But, you write a book about the devil and you’re going to find things that you don’t like.”
{quote_middle}A very visual writer, Saintcrow admits that she does fantasy casting for her characters inside her head, so if Danny Valentine’s story ever makes it to the big screen, she’s given thought as to who she’d like to see portray the characters. “I think it would do very well for a movie with Brad Dourif (Deadwood) as Santino. And, I was thinking of Kate Beckinsale (Underworld) for Gabe, Giovanni Ribisi (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) for Eddie and Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles of Narnia) for Lucifer. I think Fairuza Balk (Almost Famous) could do a really good job as Danny, or Rachel Weisz (Constantine), if we could mess her up and make her hard-edged, dirty and not so much of a lady. The biggest problem was finding somebody that I could look and see as Japhrimel. Japhrimel is ugly, until you take a closer look at him. So, I settled on Karl Urban (The Bourne Supremacy) because of his eyebrows and eyes.”
Some of Saintcrow’s novels have had happy endings, while others have not, which occasionally upsets her readers. However, the author feels that it’s more important to stay as true to the story and characters as possible, rather than worrying about perfectly wrapping everything up.
“If it rips my heart out or it makes me cry, that’s usually an indication that there’s good stuff in there. I’m a sadist. When I write the Watcher books, they’re not formulaic, but there’s definite components to each one that make a happy ending much more likely. The Society series was intended to be really bloody, dirty and gritty. Often, I will know how the story ends, but I don’t know how I get there, so I just try to stay as open as possible. Whether it’s a happy ending or not, they all kind of break my heart because I have to say goodbye to these people who I’ve literally inhabited, or who have inhabited me. Each book is different, and it’s a different experience. There’s a high to feeling that intensely. It’s an adrenaline rush, and I’m hooked on that intense breathing, eating, sleeping a book, and living inside the character. Part of the reason why it took so long for me, in between my first novel and writing my second and third novel was that, with my second novel, I literally took on that character, who was really messed up. I’m surprised I had any friends left, when I was done with it. It was a pretty damaging experience. I can’t allow myself to get that close again, but I do get very close, so it’s hard for me. It’s an absolutely wrenching experience to finish a book.”
Since completing that first cringe-worthy book, Saintcrow has had plenty of time to contemplate exactly where it went wrong, and learn from her mistakes, which she believes is important for any writer to do. “If you don’t look back through your old work and wince internally and say, ‘I could have done better,’ you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. Writing should always be a process forward. In terms of characterization, I’ve really learned to let the character not be perfect. I don’t know any perfect people. The best thing that ever happened to my writing was actually living homeless for awhile because I saw incredibly horrible things and incredibly wonderful things, and they often happened at the same time. I saw the most compassion and the most horrific cruelty, during that period in my life. Those six months, I was really young and it brought home to me how everybody just does the best that they can with a situation, and we’re all just fumbling through. If you look at somebody and you see someone that knows what they’re doing in life, chances are, you’re wrong. They’re just faking it. Growing out of having to have perfect characters was the best thing that ever happened to my writing.”
{quote_bottom}Of all the books that she’s written, Saintcrow has a particular soft spot for an upcoming ImaJinn release, slated for 2007, called The Demon’s Librarian. “One of my blogging buddies is Wendy the Super Librarian, and she went into this rant one day about how she hates librarian heroines in fiction because they’re either prim, prissy virgins who let their hair down, take off their glasses and become sex goddesses, or they’re dowdy and spinsterish and too brainy to really have an orgasm. I asked her what the qualities are that a librarian heroine should have in books, and she wrote back this whole list, so I wrote about this demon hunting librarian who rides a Ducati and kicks ass all over demons, and ends up with this half-demon guy. It’s a really fun romp. Her name is, ‘Francesca Barnes, thank you very much, but my family and friends call me Chessie.’ I really love the character.”
The third installment of the Dante Valentine series, The Devil’s Right Hand, is tentatively scheduled for release in Fall 2007. Currently in the midst of writing the fifth and final book, which Saintcrow admits she is struggling with, out of fear that she’ll leave the audience disappointed with the big finale, she is also quite anxious to get her next book series published and into the hands of her readers.
“Jill Kismet is a hunter. She says, ‘It’s not the type of work you can put on a business card.’ There are things that go bump in the night, and she bumps back. She works really closely with the police and the DA’s office. I get really tired of this urban fantasy where you have these characters who the police are against, and they’re constantly having to battle the cops and hide things from the cops and get flack from the cops. I just thought, ‘If the cops know that these things are out there in the night, and they have somebody who does this law enforcement to take care of them that’s one of their own, they’re going to be supportive.’”
“There’s hellbreed, which are a different kind of demon, and there’s different kinds of werewolves and shapeshifters, and these different orders that are all jostling around. Her job is to keep the balance between regular people, who don’t want to know anything about the night side, and the night side, which does pray on and feed on some forms of human emotion. When they step over the line, it’s her job to step in and restore the balance.”
Seeing the Jill Kismet series as much more open-ended, Saintcrow has already written the first two -- Hunter’s Prayer and Night Watch -- and says that she has the idea for the third book in her head. “My agent says that it’s my best work. It was tearing the insides of my head out. That’s the next big thing for me. And then, I’ve got a couple of fantasy books to write that I’ve had on the back burner for awhile. Once I’m freed up with Danny, I’m going to start working on my re-telling of fairy tales again. I did a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty is a traveling witch and fortune teller with tarot cards, and she runs across this guy who lives in a mansion with an occult library, and he’s horrifically scarred and burned from a childhood accident, but he turns into a tiger whenever he leaves the house. I love fairy tales, and I’ve got these versions locked up in my head, like a Snow White where the seven dwarves are seven mob bosses, and a re-telling of The Swan Brothers.”
Also on her plate is a return to the Serafim comic, about winged soldiers of God who work for law enforcement, that she has already released one issue of, with illustrations by New York artist Josh Z. Carter. “Right now, Josh is doing the illustrations for my fantasy novel, Steelflower, due out in March 2007 from Samhain Publishing (www.samhainpublishing.com). Once we get those illustrations out of the way, we have at least 15 issues of Serafim to get around to, that I’ve already done the outlining for. Then, there’s another web comic that Josh is really interested in doing.”
To enter to win an autographed copy of Lilith Saintcrow’s latest release, Dead Man Rising, please send an email to
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