By Christina Radish

 **To enter to win autographed copies of the first three Night Huntress novels – Halfway to the Grave, One Foot in the Grave and At Grave’s End -- please send an email with your name and mailing address to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it    with NIGHT HUNTRESS in the subject. The contest ends on May 7, 2009 after which the winner will be chosen randomly and notified via email. Only one entry per mailing address.

Jeaniene Frost at the Romantic Times BookLovers Convention Book Fair held at the Hilton Hotel in Pittsburgh, PA on April 19, 2008.

Frost spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about developing the successful book series from a vivid dream.      

MediaBlvd Magazine> How long have you been writing, and have you had any formal training?

Jeaniene Frost> If you look at the back of books and read the author profiles, most of the authors list continuing education credits or specialties in this field or that field. That makes perfect sense, except I don’t have any of those. I’ve been writing six years, but I never went to college, took a writing course, or even had any continuing education after high school. When I first had to do my bio, my publisher said, “List anything pertinent about yourself, like continuing education, awards you’ve won, classes, articles you’ve published, etc.” I called my agent and said, “I am so screwed! I have none of those things.” And she said, “Oh, just make it fun.” So that’s why my bio consists of my odd quirks, likes, and dislikes instead of academic credentials. But, on the plus side, people who read it can say, “If Jeaniene can become an author, anyone can!”

MediaBlvd> When did you know you wanted to have a career as a writer?

Jeaniene> I didn’t. I had spent over a year writing when my husband said to me, “Honey, you’ve obviously put a lot of time into this and you’re on your third book. Do you want to see if your first one sells, before you just keep writing the same characters?” That was practical advice, but I kept saying, “Oh, I’ll do it later.” My husband kept after me, though, so I started to query just to shut him up.

MediaBlvd> How much easier or harder was it for you to get an agent than you expected it to be?

Jeaniene> It’s good that I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem before I started because it would have been shredded down to size. It’s so disheartening when you send queries out and you get back those form letter rejections. You wonder, “Is it just that my book wasn’t right for this agent? Or is it that I suck worse than anything else they’ve ever seen?” They don’t give you any reasons with form letter rejections, so your imagination can go wild, wondering what it is, and that’s really hard. I sent to agents and I sent to small press publishers, at first. And, this one extremely small press e-publisher requested a partial book, which I gave to them. Then, I got comments back from them about my book. It was the first professional feedback that I’d gotten that was positive, so that gave me a lot of encouragement to keep trying to query agents. It was at that time I decided, “Okay, I’m going to knuckle-down and be in this for the long haul.”

MediaBlvd> When you did finally get an agent, what was that process like?

Jeaniene> I bought a Writer’s Market book and highlighted every agency I was interested in. It was tough, because I wasn’t sure what genre my book was in. I didn’t know if I was romance or science fiction or fantasy. Vampires can fall within the horror as well, so I wasn’t sure what I should list my book as in my query letter. When I looked for agencies, I ran the gamut from small to stellar. It’s important to have realistic expectations and not get your hopes too far up, but I figured I may as well query the crème of the crop as well as new or smaller agencies. After all, when I started out, I didn’t have a book published, so the worst thing that could happen was that at the end of it, I still wouldn’t have a book published. Either way, I wouldn’t be any worse off. Yes, it took a while and there were dozens and dozens of rejections, but after a lot of revisions and work, I eventually signed with an agent.

MediaBlvd> How soon after you signed with your agent were you able to interest a publisher in the book?

Jeaniene> Three months, almost to the day.

MediaBlvd> Was it always the fantasy genre that you wanted to write in?

Jeaniene> Halfway to the Grave was the first book I ever wrote, so it’s always been the fantasy/paranormal genre. I don’t really count the short stories and poetry that I did, prior to that, because I never tried to publish them. The short stories were half-written dream fragments. They weren’t even really stories. But, I’ve always loved the supernatural/paranormal/fantasy elements. I was a big horror movie fan, as a child. We used to watch them, as much as we could sneak and watch them. And, most horror movies have a supernatural element in them. Granted, you get the thrillers here and there that don’t, but in a general horror movie, there’s usually something supernatural going on, and I just loved that. And, I loved romance books. I read my first romance at about 12. I stole it from my mom, and then read them ever since. When I actually decided I was going to write something, aside from the fact that I’d had the idea for Halfway to the Grave from a dream, it couldn’t have been anything but a paranormal. My brain was not wired to do anything else.

MediaBlvd> For those who have not yet read your work, who is Cat and what can readers expect, if they pick up your books?

Jeaniene> Cat is half-vampire. When she was growing up, she always knew she was different, and at 16, her mother finally told her that her father was a vampire. She basically drilled into Cat’s head that all vampires were evil, and that Cat had the tendency for evil inside her because she was half-vampire. So, Cat decided that the only thing she could do was to go out and kill vampires, as revenge for her mother’s rape and to get back her own sense of self-worth. When Cat meets Master vampire Bones, however, she finds out everything she knew about vampires -- and thus, the other half of herself -- might be wrong.

MediaBlvd> How soon into developing Cat and her story did Bones come to be?

Jeaniene> I always knew him. When I had the idea for the book, it was from a dream where the two of them were fighting. I knew Bones was a full-vampire and Cat was a half-vampire, and I knew that she had prejudice against vampires and didn’t accept herself. So, when I wrote the book, I had Bones in my head from the start. But, I found out other things about him along the way. You can have an idea in your head, but until the characters show you who they are through the pages, all you have is an idea. In writing, these characters stand up, at least metaphorically speaking, and surprise you with things about themselves. I had a basic idea of who Bones was, in a very preliminary sense, and then, as I started writing about him, I learned more along the way.

MediaBlvd> When did you know that you were writing the start of a series?

Jeaniene> I didn’t think I was writing a series at all. When I started writing, I thought I was going to write one book, and that was it. That was my only motivation and my only goal. But, the problem was that the story kept growing in my mind. I knew it was going to have to be two books when I was about 120,000 words into Halfway to the Grave, and I wasn’t even half done with the story. That’s how I decided it was going to be a series. And then, when I was about halfway through the second book, I started getting ideas for a third one. I was impatient to put those ideas on paper, so as soon as I was done with the second one, I started writing the third one.

MediaBlvd> Do you know the ending of the series then, or are you figuring that out as you go along?

Jeaniene> I’m planning to end Cat and Bones’s story at book seven, but I can’t promise it will end there, because Cat and Bones might demand another novel to wrap things up in. There are also two Night Huntress World books coming out next year, which are spin-offs of the series featuring side characters as main characters. I’m very excited about expanding the Night Huntress world with spin-off books and I’d like to do several more of those.

MediaBlvd> With so many vampire stories, what made you think that you had something different to say?

Jeaniene> When I wrote it, I wasn’t writing it with the thought that it would ever see the light of day, so I had no thought of market saturation or how I would make it different from everything else. I wrote the story I had in my head, the way I wanted to tell it. I didn’t think I was ever going to sell it, so I wasn’t worried about where it would fit on the shelves and how it would hold up next to other vampire novels. It wasn’t really a marketing thing. It was just how my take on vampires. What’s fun about vampire mythology is that there are a thousand different takes on it, so none of us are wrong and none of us are right. Until a real vampire stands up and says, “You’ve got it wrong!,” it’s right for anyone, however they want to create it.

MediaBlvd> What was your first exposure to the vampire mythology, and what is it about vampires that you find so appealing?

Jeaniene> My parents tell me that, when I first went to Sunday school, the minister pointed to the cross on the wall and said, “Do you know what that’s for?” and I said, “Yes, that’s what keeps the vampires away.” I don’t remember that happening, but it’s a story my parents have told since I was a kid. My love of vampires could probably be traced back to horror movies. When I would watch Dracula movies, I always found myself sympathizing more with the villain than the hero. Dracula seemed like the more noble character who just wanted to be with his girl and had to eat, every once in awhile. Why I felt that way, I have no idea. It’s just always how vampires struck me.  

MediaBlvd> Do you see any similarities between you and Cat?

Jeaniene> There are not a lot of similarities between us. I know some authors write characters who closely mirror themselves, but Cat is not like me. She’s a damn sight more go-getting, aggressive and tough than I am. She loves to fly, which should be enough said, right there. I didn’t pull pieces of myself out to write her, but something that I could relate to was growing up in a small town. I spent my first five years in a small town in Illinois, and the other five years were in an itty-bitty small town in Ohio, so I used that because I could understand the environment that Cat would have grown up in. I can understand her feelings of not quite fitting in. Those are pretty much the only similarities between me and my heroine. She kicks ass. I sit at my desk and kick keyboard.           

MediaBlvd> Was there something specific that prompted you to jump ahead in years, when setting up Book 2?

Jeaniene> I always knew there was a long time separation between Cat and Bones, right from my very first inspiration of their story. That initial dream I had consisted of a half-vampire female, arguing with a full-vampire male about the reasons why she’d left him, years ago, and he was pissed and telling her she’d made a mistake. That was the whole dream. From that, I brain-stormed how those two people had gotten to that point, and that story became Halfway to the Grave. But, the fact that she’d left him had been the entire starting point for the story, so it was always what was going to happen. In One Foot in the Grave, Cat is in a different place in her life. She’s a lot more assured. She’s come to accept herself, on a lot of different levels that she hadn’t, in the first book. On the flipside of that, the problems that she encounters in the second book are a lot bigger than they were in the first novel. There are a lot of new people around her that weren’t in the first book. She has a lot more responsibility in the second book than she had in the first one. She has a lot of people depending on her and, while she’s more secure in who she is, as a person, her problems and obstacles are bigger, as far as being a threat to herself and the people around her, and to her emotions, when people from her past resurface.

MediaBlvd> Are any of these characters particularly fun or easy for you to write, and are any of them particularly difficult?

Jeaniene> I have a lot of fun writing Justina, Cat’s mother. I have fun writing Bones. I hear Bones the clearest, in my head. This is a first-person narrative, so you would think I’d hear Cat the clearest, but as far as motivations or back-story, I hear Bones loud and clear above any of the character. Cat can be a pain in the ass to write because I’ll want her to do something and sometimes she just won’t, and then I have to change my plot to accommodate that.

MediaBlvd> When you write books like this, how do you find the right balance between the story and the romance, so that one doesn’t overshadow the other?

Jeaniene> In my head, if you had this paranormal world, and Cat is someone who feels that she has to go out looking for trouble and risking her life, you’re going to have action and danger. If you don’t, then it doesn’t make sense, as far as the world you say your characters live in. So, to have less of that, just for the sake of making it more romantic, would have been untrue to the story. And yet, on the flipside of the same coin, if you’re going to have someone with these strong feelings, who’s going to meet someone that eventually becomes the person she falls in love with, you can’t just have the whole story say, “Okay, we’re not going to take any time for any emotional or physical reaction, or any type of bonding, just because we’ve got all this action going on.” It made sense to me that both would be equal.

MediaBlvd> The scenes between Cat and Bones are very sexy. Was that something that came naturally for you, or did it take time for you to get comfortable with that?

Jeaniene> You can’t write sex scenes thinking that anyone is going to read them. That will affect you in all kinds of ways you don’t need. If I would have written any of the scenes in my book with the thought that, one day, my mother was going to read them, they wouldn’t have happened. Literally, I remember thinking, “Who cares? No one’s gonna read this, so I can just spell it out the way I see it.” And, that’s what I did. The violence in the book is graphic. Some of the scenes where Cat is killing people are graphic, so it seemed unfair and untrue to the character to, all of a sudden, put on my modest face, when I was writing a sex scene. That would have been opposite from everything else I did in the book. I just write it how I see it and, if my editor has a problem with it, she’ll censor it, which curiously she does not. She actually wanted me to put another sex scene in the book and I said no.                                   

MediaBlvd> How have Cat and Bones grown over the series so far, and how do you expect them to grow in future books?

Jeaniene> Cat has grown the most, as a character. When readers meet her at the start of the series, she’s been raised to believe all vampires are evil, so she goes through a huge growth process, just on that issue alone. Then, Cat has to reconcile the two parts of herself: vampire and human. All of this happens while her life’s constantly in danger. Bones, being centuries old, long ago came to terms with himself and the type of world he lives in. Still, areas where he’s had to grow involve dealing with jealousy for the first time, and being in love -- another first for Bones -- with a woman who will not stay out of harm’s way. Cat’s a fighter, so she refuses to sit on the sidelines while Bones takes on all the danger. Bones respects that about Cat, but it also drives him crazy and thus it strains their relationship.

MediaBlvd> What has surprised you most, in writing Cat and Bones, and telling their story?

Jeaniene> Probably all the things I’ve learned about them along the way, plus how the side characters in the story really blossomed for me. The vampire and ghoul world was also much richer than I thought it was, when I first had the idea for the series. It’s one of the joys of writing for me. The deeper I delve into the series, the more I learn about the characters and the world. Cat and Bones still manage to surprise me, too. Just when I think I know everything about them, they manage to pull something new out of their hats.

MediaBlvd> How far ahead do you know what’s going to happen with the story?

Jeaniene> I know how I intend to end Cat and Bones’s storyline, and as I said earlier, I plan to end it in book seven. Cat and Bones may still surprise me, though. I have a plan for the series, but I still try to be flexible enough that I don’t lose those “eureka!” moments when it comes to plots and ideas.          

MediaBlvd> How many books are you currently contracted for, in the Night Huntress series?

Jeaniene> Right now I am contracted for seven Cat and Bones books, as well as two Night Huntress World spin-off novels. Again, I hope to do more Night Huntress World novels featuring side characters from the Night Huntress series as the main characters of their own books.

MediaBlvd> Do you have any specific writing habits, like a particular location or time of day that you prefer to write in? Do you write every day, for specified amounts of time?

Jeaniene> I don’t have any particular time that’s better than others. I will set my alarm to wake up in the morning. It usually takes about half an hour before the coffee hits my bloodstream and I’m fully functional, but I will write morning, noon or night. I fit it in wherever I can, while still paying attention to my friends and family. When you get a contract, there are all the other things you don’t think about. People think that all you have to do to be an author is write a book. That’s the most important thing you have to do, without a doubt, but that is, by no means, all you have to do. When everybody starts out writing, very few of us start with a check in hand. It’s something you’re doing on your own time, squeezing it in wherever you can and not knowing if you’ll ever see anything from it, aside from your own personal gratification. If you don’t love writing, if you don’t love spending your time at that keyboard, it’s only going to make you miserable, because it’s not an easy or necessarily high-paying job. Also, when your book hits the shelves, some people will like it while some people will hate it. When you read a bad review, if you can’t fall back on, “This is something that I love,” it’s going to hurt a lot more.

MediaBlvd> How do you work past the moments when you’re just not inspired to write anything?

MediaBlvd> After working so hard to get an agent and get your novel sold, how does it feel now to have such tremendous support for your work?

Jeaniene> It’s amazing, because first it was my publishing house that a chance on me by investing their time, money and effort into trying to see this become a success. Then it was the reviewers, book sellers, and readers that took the baton and ran with it. There just aren’t enough nice things I can say about all the people who’ve made my series as successful as it has been. “Thank you” really doesn’t begin to cover it.                                                                   

MediaBlvd> Do you enjoy getting feedback from fans? What do you hear from them, most often?

Jeaniene> I love hearing from readers. What do I hear from them most often? “Write faster!” Ha ha, I’m trying!

MediaBlvd> What is your story, “Happily Never After,” in the Weddings from Hell anthology?

Jeaniene> The theme of the anthology is weddings with a paranormal twist to them, which means that the weddings won’t all be happy, joyous occasions. The story that I wrote for it features a young female owner of an Italian restaurant that inadvertently catches the eye of a local crime boss who’s very partial to her meatballs. She gets herself into trouble, trying to discourage his advances. For people involved in organized crime, no doesn’t mean much to them. Her grandmother is an actual old friend of Bones, so she asks her old vampire friend to help out and he sends someone down there to try to clear up the situation. And, the vampire he sends down there has a sense of humor and thinks it might be a lot more fun to play with the local crime boss than to just fix the situation and send him nicely on his way. It’s got a humorous tone to it. It doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s a lot lighter than Halfway to the Grave. It’s light comedic paranormal. There is a lot of poking fun at cliches in it. It’s meant more to amuse than to be a hardcore, gritty look at the underside of meatballs and mafia.

MediaBlvd> Do you still work a day job, or are you solely focused on your writing now?

Jeaniene> I write full-time now, but that doesn’t mean I have loads of free time. I was able to quit my day job because I signed a new contract with my publisher for several more books, so I’m just as busy as I was before. I might not have the extra free time I thought I’d have when I dreamed about being a full-time writer, but the wonderful thing is that now I’m working hard doing what I love. So, I still average working seven days a week, but I’m much happier versus when I was working seven days a week split between my day job and writing.

MediaBlvd> What advice can you offer to aspiring writers who would like to make a career out of writing?

Jeaniene> First, write what you love. Don’t trend chase. It’s hard enough to get your foot in the door, with all the rejection that is part of the process, so if you don’t feel a strong connection to what you’ve written, it would be that much easier to give up. So, love what you write because, if you don’t love it, how can you expect anyone else to? And when rejection comes, don’t get discouraged. Most of the time, you don’t get an agent and a contract overnight. Most of the time, you climb through a pile of rejection letters to get there, and you have to look at it as it’s not you that they’re rejecting, it’s what you’ve written. Also, don’t be afraid to revise. As much as you love what you write, as soon as you assume it’s perfect and everyone who thinks it needs to be changed is wrong, you really should reconsider. Nothing is perfect. Everything can be improved upon. Serious writers probably spend as much time revising as they do writing new novels.

MediaBlvd> Do you have any idea what’s next for you? Is there something you’d like to write in the future, that you haven’t had the chance to write yet?

Jeaniene> Aside from wanting to write more spin-off books from my series, I also have two Young Adult projects I’ve been tinkering with for the past year. One day, I’d like to flesh them out more and attempt to sell one or both of them. Plus, I have another idea for an adult paranormal series that’s completely unrelated to the Night Huntress series, and I’d like to write that, too. Chances are, if it’s strange, dark, sexy and paranormal, I want to write about it.

MediaBlvd> Do you have anything scheduled to come out next that you’d like readers to know about?

Jeaniene> It’s a busy release year for me. Destined for an Early Grave, Book 4 in the Night Huntress series, comes out on July 28^th. I also have three anthology stories coming out this year. The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance anthology comes out March 13^th. My short story, “Pack,” is the first non-Night Huntress story I’ve published. It’s about modern-day werewolves in the Northern Rockies. Then, the Four Dukes and a Devil anthology comes out June 30^th. It should surprise no one that I’m writing the “devil” contribution to that anthology. My short story, “Devil To Pay,” features a demon-possessed hero whose only chance at survival is a jaded vampiress living in a train tunnel. Finally, Unbound is a dark fantasy anthology that comes out August 25^th. My short story is “Reckoning,” and it’s a prequel to the Night Huntress series, told in Bones’s point of view, before he meets Cat. This anthology is special to me because it started when Melissa Marr, Vicki Pettersson and I were saying, “Wouldn’t it be neat to be in a book together?” We pitched the idea to the EOS division of Harper Collins, and Kim Harrison and Jocelynn Drake signed on, and now Melissa’s original “Wouldn’t it be neat?” idea hits the shelves later this year.

**You can follow Jeaniene Frost’s upcoming releases through her newsletter at  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jeaniene_frost/ and her blogs at http://frost-light.livejournal.com/  and www.myspace.com/jeanienefrost .