MediaBlvd> What hints can you give about Book 9, Living with the Dead (due out in October)?

Kelley> One advantage to changing narrators is that I have a lot of room to stretch. My readers have learned to expect changes. With Book 9, I’m again treading new ground, in a few ways. Most of the characters are new and the narrative style is new. It’s done in 3^rd person, from various viewpoints. The main protagonist is a human friend of Hope (the narrator of Personal Demon), who gets caught up in a supernatural crime. To tell this story, I needed to have her point of view and Hope’s, as Hope tries to help her friend, while keeping her own supernatural nature a secret. And, I needed the POV of the homicide detective on the case, who happens to be a necromancer, that sometimes sees the ghosts of victims.

MediaBlvd> Do you know who the narrator will be yet for Book 10? If so, what can you say about that?

Kelley> I do (I’m writing it), but I’ve stopped revealing narrators until the books are done!

MediaBlvd> Is the Women of the Otherworld series still as enjoyable for you to write, as it was when you started the series?

Kelley> Yep. Book 10 is as much fun as the first

MediaBlvd> When you decided to write Bitten, which was Book 1 for your series, where did that initial idea come from and how did Elena come about?

Kelley> I wrote more horror as a child, but I had gotten away from it and was doing more fantasy and thrillers. The impetus for Bitten came from when I was in a writer’s group and I hadn’t been writing anything new for awhile. So, I agreed that, at the next meeting, I would definitely bring in a new story. Therefore, I had committed and would actually have to write something. It was getting a little bit down to the wire and I still hadn’t come up with an idea. Then, I saw The X-Files. In the first season, they had one episode on a werewolf, and it was your very typical man who goes around slaughtering people. I was watching it thinking, “I wouldn’t do werewolves like that.” I just didn’t like that portrayal of werewolves, so I thought, “There’s my story idea. I’m going to do a short story about the kind of werewolves that I’d like to see.” So, I wrote a short story about a female werewolf, named Elena, and that was how it started. I really liked the character, but wasn’t sure that I wanted to get back into paranormals yet. But, I sent out this story, with several others, to small presses, to try to get them published, and I actually got a call from an editor on that one, telling me how much she liked the story and the character. That was the bump I needed to then start a book on it.

MediaBlvd> Now that you have a schedule that you have to abide by, how long does it generally take you to write one of your novels, from start to finish?

Kelley> Now that I’m actually doing it full-time, I’m expected to deliver, or else I don’t eat. I write a novel in 4-5 months, for the first draft. Then, of course, there’s the editing. When I was young -- an early teenager -- I had this dream that, some day, I’d write a novel. At that time, just looking at the length of a full-length adult novel, I thought it would be a huge accomplishment to write one. Now, I can laugh at that because I write more than one a year. When you first look at how long that is, and think of how many words that is, you just hope that, some day, you will write one novel.

MediaBlvd> Why were you initially hesitant to turn Bitten into a series, and what ended up changing your mind?

Kelley> I hesitated because, as someone who reads a lot, I see it happen a lot where, as a reader, I will totally love the first few novels of a series, and then, usually at about book 6 or so, either I’m losing interest, or I can see that the writer seems to be losing interest and is just recycling things. I didn’t want to do that. You want to write a series because you love the characters, so of course you want to bring them back. I was pulled between, “I don’t want to write book 10 of Elena and the werewolves, but on the other hand, I really do love these characters, and I don’t really want to let them go, after one book.” So, the solution was the multiple narrators. I said, “Okay, after Book 2 (Stolen), I’m going to branch out into another narrator. I can bring Elena back later, but I want to revolve through different narrators, different supernatural types, and even different story types.” That would avoid having to write Book 10 of the werewolves, where I’d be saying, “If I ever have to write another sex-in-the-woods scene again, I’m going to kill myself.”

MediaBlvd> How do you choose who will be the narrator for each book? Do you have a process for deciding that?

Kelley> It’s evolved. With Stolen, my idea was that I wanted to possibly do a witch. I wanted her younger than Elena, different than Elena, and a witch because, if you say werewolf, you’ll get a lot of readers who shy away. They aren’t interested. Witches, they can get their heads around more, so I thought that would be a good launching point. At that point, I just had a basic type that I wanted for Paige. After that, it was just wondering, “Which woman am I interested in?” Because the series is called Women of the Otherworld, I’m stuck with the women, so it’s about who I’m most interested in telling the story of next. I’m at the point now where I have more narrators than time to write their stories.

MediaBlvd> Because you’re using different narrators, is it difficult to go back and revisit one of them, after you’ve written from the point-of-view of someone else, or does it come back to you fairly quickly?

Kelley> It actually comes back fairly quickly. I was surprised. When I returned to Elena with Broken (Book 6), I had really worried that I would go back and just not be able to find her voice. In the interim, I’d written a novella that was dueling Elena and Clay viewpoints, but it was set in the past. Therefore, her voice had, obviously, changed, so I didn’t know if I could go back and write another Elena book, set in the present. But, it actually came back very quickly. It just took me a couple of chapters to get into it, and I found it again, so that was good.

MediaBlvd> Have you ever gotten any of the narrators mixed up?

Kelley> I have used catch phrases for the wrong character. I find the toughest thing is if I’m editing one narrator and writing another, and going back and forth. I might use a phrase, or just some way of saying or seeing something, and go, “Wait a minute, that’s not the right character.” I don’t like the process of working on one narrator for edits while I’m writing another narrator because that can get a bit confusing.

MediaBlvd> Do you have a favorite character to write, or one that’s easiest for you?

Kelley> I wouldn’t say favorite, but Elena is very easy for me to write for, just because I’ve written the most from her point-of-view, and I’ve spent the most time with her. I spent 6-7 years writing her first book. She’s the one that’s most vivid for me, so she’s very easy for me to go back to and pick up her voice. Whereas Eve, I can certainly write, but she’s not as easy because I’ve only written one novel, specifically from her point-of-view.

MediaBlvd> Is it easier for you to use a female narrator, as opposed to a male one?

Kelley> I was really hesitant to ever write one from a male point-of-view because there’s always that criticism that a woman writing first-person for a man, sounds like a woman writing a man’s point-of-view, and vice versa, with a man writing for a woman. They say things that men would never say. So, I’d always been very cautious of that. But, with my online fiction, I mainly did the male points of view. Because I couldn’t do them in my series, I did them online. And, it was a great place for me to experiment and try something out to see how it works and get reader feedback, rather than taking the risk on a published novel. So, I enjoyed that, and I actually found that it wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be, to get into the point-of-view of the male characters.

MediaBlvd> When you develop your narrator, how soon after do the secondary characters tend to follow?

Kelley> Pretty quickly. I usually develop them all together. For example, when I wrote Elena, I was developing her character, but I was also developing her, in relationship to the people in her life, and to her backstory. So, Elena, Clay, Jeremy and Phillip came along very quickly. They all ended up evolving together. I was bouncing them off, saying, “Elena is this way, and her relationship with Clay is this way because he’s that way.” I just evolve the characters from how they influence one another. The main character comes first, but I very quickly start launching into the secondaries.

MediaBlvd> You have had some very sexy book covers. Whose idea are the covers, and do you get any input on that?

Kelley> I have different publishers in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Canada and the U.S. tend to share covers, except Stolen has a different cover in Canada, for some odd reason. The U.K. covers are very different. They go for fantasy covers, without the half-naked women on the cover. It’s all marketing. It’s all about what sells for their territory. Those covers sell very well in North America. My other covers sell very well in the U.K. How much input I have depends on who it is. In the U.S., I don’t have very much input. I switched publishers in the U.S., between Stolen and Dime Store Magic, so that’s why the covers got sexy with Dime Store Magic. The first couple of covers I didn’t see until someone said, “Hey, Kelley, I saw your new cover on Amazon,” so I had no input. Now, I get a little more, although I tend to not say much. A few years ago, someone put me in contact with the artist who does all my U.K. covers, and we go back and forth. He’ll ask me for some ideas on iconic images, and he’ll give me samples and ask which one I prefer, and that kind of thing.

MediaBlvd> Have you actually been to the places that are the settings for your stories? Do you see that as necessary research?

Kelley> It depends. I’d love to make sure that I went to all of the places I write about. For Broken, Toronto was very easy for me. It’s under two hours away. I can take the train or drive there, so I was there several times, researching, just to make sure I had it right. I have visited Syracuse, where the pack lives, just to do some scouting there. I went to the Boston area, where Paige originally lived, and scouted out all of that. I’ve been to Miami, but not since writing the novels. I’ve never been to Portland, where Paige lives now. Eve was easy because Eve’s story was set in the afterlife. I haven’t been there, but I haven’t heard from anyone else who has either.

MediaBlvd> Whatever happened with the fact that you sold the film rights for Bitten?

Kelley> It’s dead. It was just the typical Hollywood thing. The rights to Bitten sold before the book came out. At the same time I sold book rights, I sold movie rights. Angelina Jolie read it and came on fairly quickly. Warner Bros. then came on, and it was going very well. They had two screenplays done that they were really happy with, and then, for various reasons, it just cooled. It reverted back to the company it was with, in the first place, and then their rights ran out. The good thing was that I got paid quite well for them to just hold the actual rights to it. Only 5-10% of the number of books they actually buy rights to, ever get made. Bitten did get quite far. They were talking about budgets and looking for directors. And then, there were some problems with female-centered action movies at Warner, and they said, “No go.”

MediaBlvd> Why do you think stories about vampires and werewolves are so popular? Do you think people need that fantasy to escape from the reality that we’re all living in now?

Kelley> I hear a lot of that. I sold Bitten in ‘99, and they weren’t sure how to market it. Laurell K. Hamilton had a few books out, but hadn’t hit the New York Times list yet. They said, “Okay, we like this book, but we aren’t sure how to market it.” And, they originally tried marketing it as mainstream fiction. It took until Dime Store Magic before paranormals were taking off, and then they clearly marketed them as fantasy/paranormal. They probably became so popular because of something to do with wanting that fantasy escape, or that idea of having superpowers to protect yourself and your family, especially women. These novels are often written by women. They usually have female main characters, who often have families, and they’re protecting everyone in their life with their superpowers.

MediaBlvd> Had you been a fan of these kinds of stories prior to writing them, or did you do research when you decided that that was what you wanted to write about?

Kelley> I’ve read paranormal stuff since childhood. I blame Scooby Doo, but I read every myth, legend, novel, everything on werewolves, vampires and everything like that, from early childhood. So, even when I wasn’t writing it, I was still always going to horror movies and buying horror books, and just immersing myself. I absolutely loved Anne Rice. That was a real revelation for me -- the idea that you could take the monster and make it the main character. That was huge for me. I was always reading those kinds of novels, and I was always really interested in that, so being able to actually write them was a bonus for me. When I started joining writing groups, I would still have paranormal elements in my novels, and the reaction that I got from instructors and writing group members was, “Oh, God, Kelley, please write something more serious. Get away from that.” When I was writing Bitten, I stopped telling people because their response was, “Kelley, if you have to write about this kind of stuff, at least write about vampires. You can sell vampires. Nobody reads about werewolves.”

MediaBlvd> When you started writing the sex scenes, did that come harder or easier for you, than you expected it would?

Kelley> It was a mix. In some ways, it was easier. In other ways, tougher. With Bitten, that’s what I wanted for that novel, so that came a little easier because that’s what I imagined for the character. In this genre, people do expect at least some sex in there, so I had to come up with different ways of handling it, if I don’t feel that I want the character to have an explicit sex scene. I often say that sex scenes are as difficult to write as action scenes because you’ve got to coordinate them, make them fresh and choreograph everything. For me, I always look at the characters and say, “Are they going to be that open about their sex lives? Are they going to bring down the curtain for fade-to-black fairly quickly?,” rather than thinking about what the audience that’s reading it, expects from them.

MediaBlvd> Your books have a definite humor and sarcasm to them. Does that come from you, personally, or is that just how the characters are?

Kelley> It probably comes from me. I try not to write all of my characters as snarky or sarcastic. But, certainly, some of that comes from me. I would have a very hard time writing a character who is straight up and completely serious, who never cracked a joke and was never sarcastic, or anything like that. It would be very hard. When I’ve contributed to something, I’ve had them say, “Kelley, write us something sexy,” or “Write us something funny,” and I freeze up. I can put it in, if it comes naturally. But, to actually have someone say, “We want to see this in the story,” makes it very tough for me.

MediaBlvd> Are there characters that you definitely want to revisit, at some point, or are there some that you know you won’t be going back to?

Kelley> There are none that I have ruled out completely. I like to leave them all open, so that wherever they are in their life, nobody’s retiring to the white picket fence and getting totally out of the life, where they’ll never be threatened again. Paige, with her supernatural investigations, leaves me tons of room. Leaving Eve as an angel leaves me lots of room to go back for her angel adventures. The werewolves are always having threats, so they’re left open. There’s nobody yet that I’ve closed off and said, “I would never want to write about this person again, therefore, they’re going to retire to a small community somewhere and be safe, forever and ever.”

MediaBlvd> What inspired Exit Strategy, since it’s so much different from your Women of the Otherworld series?

Kelley> Exit Strategy goes back to me, making sure that I’m not getting bored because I know that I have the personality that will get bored quickly, with the same thing. So, this was me doing something different -- a straight thriller, straight crime story, with no supernatural elements. It’s about an ex-cop turned ethical hit woman, named Nadia. She has to ban together with some other hit men to go after a serial killer that police believe is a hit man, therefore putting pressure on the others. Right now, I’m contracted to two books, the second of which is called Made to Be Broken. We’ll see how the series goes from there.

MediaBlvd> What made you want to do a second potential series, and what was the interest in doing a thriller?

Kelley> It came about because I switched publishers, between Stolen and Dime Store Magic, and I had a rough time there. Paranormals weren’t really catching on yet. Bitten hadn’t come out in the U.S. in mass market yet, and they had no plans for it to. Same with Stolen. And, I was panicking, going, “This is not going well. Are they even going to want to buy a third book?” So, that’s when I started looking into the idea of getting a different publisher, and not staying with the one I had. There was that whole panic of, “Does this mean my career is over?” Probably just to calm me down, my agent said, “Is there any other genre you would like to write in, Kelley?,” and I said it was thrillers because I read a lot of crime. I’m a big thriller reader. So, she said, “Okay, well, start a book on that.” I had done Dime Store Magic and was waiting for things to pick up, so I had no reason to start Book 4 (Industrial Magic) yet. So, I got half-way through that, and then, when Dime Store Magic switched to a different publisher, things really took off, so I stopped writing that book because I now had contracts for others. Later on, my agent said, “About that half-finished crime thriller, would you like me to see if I can sell it?” So, I said, “Sure, go ahead.” And, she ended up selling it to my three regular publishers.

MediaBlvd> Without giving anything away, what can you say about the next Nadia Stafford book? Does it have a title and release date?

Kelley> The working title is Made to Be Broken, due for release in Spring 2009. It was supposed to be Fall of 2008, but when they switched the Otherworld to a fall schedule, they had to put that one in my usual Otherworld Spring slot.

MediaBlvd> Your books tend to be very character driven. Are any of the characters like you, in any way? Do you feel like any of them are more similar to you than others?

Kelley> They’re really a mix. All of my characters have a characteristic or two in common with me because that’s just easier. My first big narrator, Elena, was my age, has my socio-economic background, the same educational area and lives in the same rough area. It was that comfort zone. Her actual personality is nothing like mine, though. Then, when I branched off into doing Paige, and went with someone younger, who lived somewhere else, I made her a web programmer, so that she also had a background that was similar to mine. She probably has a few more personality characteristics of mine. Eve is probably the least like me, except for the whole maternal drive, which I could fully understand, having three kids. I wanted a character who was very different from me, but who had a basic motivation that I could understand.

MediaBlvd> What made you decide to start doing online novellas, and give your fans a say in what you wrote them about?

Kelley> When I sold Bitten, I was pregnant with my second child. By the time Bitten came out, I’d had my third and he was six months old. They are 14 months apart. So, I had two kids under the age of two, my maternity was ending and it was time to go back to a full-time job. I said, “This isn’t going to work,” so I ended up quitting the job. I had quit my job, finished writing Stolen, things were not going that well, it was a really bad time for it and I really just needed to be writing something. So, in addition to working on that thriller, I decided I would try some online fiction. I went to my site, which I had just created, and polled people who were actually visiting it, asking, “Would you be interested in an online novella, if I wrote one?” I had a grand total of 37 responses. At the time, I was lucky to get 100 hits a month. And, yes, they were interested. So, I launched with the first one, going back to a prequel. When Dime Store Magic came out, they said, “So, you’re going to do another one, right?,” and I said, “Actually, I really do enjoy them, so why not?” I then decided, as long as I was going to do it, I might as well give them some say in it. The say that I gave them, because I needed my own space, as a writer, was to let them come up with some very basic ideas, of who the character is and a basic concept, and then I would pick from all of their ideas, five or so that I could actually write and that I could come up with a good story for. Then, I would post the five choices, poll them and the winning one became the novella.

MediaBlvd> Why did you decide to release them in print, and will you be doing any changes or edits for them?

Kelley> My publisher made an offer for them and I decided to do it as a charity project, with all my proceeds going to World Literacy. They will be edited and a new story will be added to each book. Currently, the revised plan is to split it into two books. The first is due out in February 2009.                     

MediaBlvd> Can you talk about the Jaime Vegas story that you have coming out in the Blood Lite anthology?

Kelley> It’s an anthology put together by the Horror Writers of America. They asked for “light horror,” so I did a fun story with my celebrity necromancer Jaime, who is bullied by a ghost that wants her to open his cousin’s coffin. You know that can’t be good!

MediaBlvd> Can you talk about The Summoning (due out in July)? What is that about, and who is that main character?

Kelley> It’s a Young Adult novel set in the Otherworld universe, but with all new characters. Fifteen-year-old Chloe Saunders finally gets her period and starts seeing ghosts everywhere. She’s shipped off to a group home, where she quickly discovers that the home isn’t what it seems. The Summoning is the first book in a trilogy.

MediaBlvd> What made you want to branch the Women of the Otherworld series out to the Young Adult market? Did the fact that you have a teenager yourself influence that decision at all?

Kelley> I had an idea that wouldn’t work in my adult books. It was for a group of supernaturals just coming into their powers. And, my youngest series character is now 18, so I needed new ones, and it made sense to make it into a YA book. Having a daughter that age helped!       

MediaBlvd> Will you be alternating main characters for the Young Adult books, like you do with the adult series?

Kelley> I don’t plan to. Right now, it’s set as a trilogy rather than a series, and it’ll be the same narrator for all three books.

MediaBlvd> Do you ever go back and read anything that you wrote when you were younger?

Kelley> I have read things. If I wrote it when I was much younger and it’s unpublished, then I don’t have a problem with it because I can just see it as, “Oh, this part was actually fairly good. This part was horrible, and thank God, I’ve improved.” You just get that mix of things that you’re actually pleasantly surprised and horrified by, and you say, “Thank God, it’s not published.” I’ve got the got the full-length audio version of Bitten, and one method of torture would be to tie me down and force me to listen to the unabridged version because I’m sure I would go nuts and think, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I wrote that!”

MediaBlvd> How do you manage to balance being a full-time writer with being a full-time mother?

Kelley> It’s getting easier as the kids get older. I cannot write with the kids at home. I know lots of women who can, but I need complete concentration to actually write. When they are home, I can do the editing, the correspondence and the business stuff, and all the other stuff that goes along with the writing.

MediaBlvd> Have you allowed your kids to read any of your books?

Kelley> When my daughter was 13, she wanted to read my books, so I said, “Okay, you can read Dime Store Magic,” because, of my books, that’s the tamest of the lot. She had friends who had read all of the books, and so, while I would have rather had her wait a couple more years, I was thinking, “Do I put her in the position of just grabbing one off the shelf and reading it?” There’s nothing to stop her. They’re all over the house. There are stacks of them for giveaways, so there’s nothing to stop her from just picking one up. So, I thought it was better to pick out which one to have her read.

MediaBlvd> What kind of feedback did she give you, after reading it?

Kelley> She didn’t talk much about it. She said she liked it and wanted to read another one, which I suppose meant that she enjoyed it. I told her, “If there’s anything in there that concerns you, or anything you want to talk about, then just tell me.” And, she said, “Nope, I’m okay.” Apparently, it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with mom.

MediaBlvd> Do you enjoy doing book signing and communicating with your fans, in person, as well as through your website?

Kelley> I do, yeah. I find that with writing, you spend so much time locked up in your basement writing the books, that you tend to forget there are actually people out there, reading them. It’s great to go out. The Internet’s fine, but it’s great to actually go out and see your readers in person and talk to them, whether it’s at a signing or some other kind of event, convention, conference or whatever. You can actually put faces to readers and say, “This is what my readers are like.”

MediaBlvd> Do you ever find them influencing storylines at all, or do you just block out all of their opinions when you’re writing?

Kelley> I will, certainly, take suggestions from my readers. If they come back to me and say, “I can’t stand this character,” they’re welcome to do that. If enough of them all said, “I can’t stand this character,” then I would definitely be influenced into not writing that character because I’m writing for the readers. If it seems like most of them don’t like a certain character, then there’s no reason for me to continue writing that character, unless I was going to greatly change that character. They’ll also try to give me plot line ideas, but I will typically say, “That’s a great idea. Maybe you can try that in your own novel.”

MediaBlvd> Has there ever been a particular character that your readers just didn’t like?

Kelley> No, there actually hasn’t been. Although, after Stolen came out and people found out that the next book was on Paige, I got tons of, “Oh, my God, what are you doing? I cannot stand Paige!,” emails. But, it was too late because Dime Store Magic was already written, so I just said, “Wait and see.” And, I would say that, of those who said that, 95% of them said, “Oh, okay, yeah. This was fine. I actually liked the character. I didn’t see where you were going with that. It was different enough, once you got put into her point-of-view.” Very few readers have told me, “I didn’t want to read about Paige and, after I did, I still didn’t want to read about her.”

MediaBlvd> The fantasy/paranormal genre tends to attract some very passionate, obsessive fans. Have you ever had any strange fan experiences?

Kelley> Not a lot. Because I’m up in Canada and I don’t go to a lot of conventions, my signing tours are around my actual area. They don’t send me very far. So, I don’t get a lot of that. I hear stories from others. The oddest things that I’ve gotten would be the emails from the person who says that they are a werewolf or a vampire, or whatever else. I just say, “Yes, that’s very interesting.” I’ve certainly heard stories, but have had nothing too strange myself.

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

Kelley> At this point, it just ends up being when the kids are in school. If I had a preference, it would certainly be morning. I’m the most creative in the morning, so if I had an ideal situation, I would write in the morning and then do business stuff in the afternoon because it doesn’t require the same kind of creativity.

MediaBlvd> Do you ever find that you need to do something to feel inspired, or does the writing just come naturally for you?

Kelley> It comes pretty naturally, as long as I’ve got a plot in mind and I know what happens next. I find that, if I get blocked, it’s because I’m not really sure what happens next, or whatever I have planned to happen next, I’m just not interested in, which means it’s time to change my plot. But, I do like a change in location, now and then. Because I am out in the country and kind of stuck at home, I will take advantage of the chance to go into the city and just go to a cage and write for an hour. It’s really cool, writing in a café. You can’t do that out here. I enjoy that change of pace to go and write someplace different, and write long-hand.

MediaBlvd> Are you the type of writer who lets the characters speak to you and guide you to where they’re going, or do you try to steer them in a specific direction?

Kelley> It’s a mix of both. I do tend to outline now. I never used to. But, when you’ve got deadlines, you have to know where you’re going. You don’t have time to stop and spend a couple of days, thinking about it. But, it does depend on the character. I can’t ever make them do something they don’t want to do. Sometimes, as I’m writing, I might have something outlined, but after I hit that point, I’ll realize that, whatever mood my character is in, by that time in the novel, they wouldn’t make the choice that I had them make in the outline. Therefore, it has to change.

MediaBlvd> Are you ever surprised with the direction that something ends up taking?

Kelley> I’m often surprised. I do outline, but I never actually stick to an outline because, as the story picks up, you just suddenly start going, “That wouldn’t make sense,” or “This is a much better idea.” I often find that a minor character who, in the outline, was just a little walk-on character, becomes a whole lot more interesting once I write that character, so I will bring them on for a much larger role.

MediaBlvd> What’s it like to be under contract with three different publishers? Does that create a lot of pressure for you?

Kelley> For me, it’s more job security. That was one of the big things that I found scary, when I first quit my job and was writing full-time. I was a programmer and, if you’re a programmer, then you’re pretty much guaranteed you’re going to stick in your job, as long as you can do the job. And, if you ever had to leave, there would be plenty more jobs out there for you. Whereas, with something like writing, if the next book doesn’t sell and you’ve lost it, you’re going back to your corporate cubical programming job. So, having a couple of books contracted is that security of knowing that they at least want a couple more from me. I’m guaranteed that, unless I freeze up or something goes horribly wrong, I’ve got a job for three more years.

MediaBlvd> Do you still think about the possibility of failure, or do you feel pretty confident in yourself as a writer now?

Kelley> I still worry about it. I hope that, by this point, I would no longer worry about it, but I do. It’s gotten to the point now where, if I wrote a couple of books that really weren’t up to par, I could get through that, as long as I then produced something good after that. I’ve guild up that little bit of a grace period, where they would let me have a couple of semi-failures. But, if I could no longer come up with good ideas, or if the market completely seized up, then I would have to think of something else to do. I’m sure paranormals aren’t going to be this strong forever, so there’s always that feeling of, “Okay, I’ve got to be managing the career and make sure that I continue in it,” because that’s what I want.

MediaBlvd> Do you ever get any time to read for pleasure?

Kelley> One thing I’ve found about writing full-time is that I don’t read nearly as much as I used to. I used to be a fairly avid reader. Now, it’ll take me a month to finish reading a novel. I mainly read crime novels because I don’t like to read very much in my own genre. I’m always concerned about being influenced by that. I tend to read all of the books by Karin Slaughter, Giles Blunt and Dennis Lehane.

MediaBlvd> Were there any authors that influenced you, when you started writing?

Kelley> The two big influences on me are probably the two most obvious. I don’t have any really obscure influences. Stephen King was hugely influential on me, in high school. I read everything by Stephen King. Not that I wanted to copy his voice, but I loved the idea of a writer having a voice that was very clearly their own, and I loved his way of making something that was supernatural seem very ordinary. The fact that it could take place in a very contemporary world was a big influence. And then, of course, there was Anne Rice, while I was at university. I loved the idea of making the monster into the protagonist, and seeing things from their point-of-view.

MediaBlvd> What accomplishment are you most proud of, in your life?

Kelley> Professionally, getting my first book published because that was something that I honestly didn’t foresee happening. I probably thought I had about a 10% shot at it. Even though I was working very hard at it, I figured my shot at it was pretty low. And, personally, my kids.

MediaBlvd> Do you know what’s next for you? Is there something that you’re hoping you’ll get the chance to do, that you haven’t been able to do yet?

Kelley> Right now, my plate is very full, so I’m not looking for anything new. Or, at least, I’m trying hard not to!