Paranormal Romance Author Shannon Butcher
Interview:
Hi, I'm Theresa Bane, and I'm here conducting
an interview for
BuzzyMag.com with very famous Shannon K. Butcher.
Shannon: Hi, I'm Shannon.
I'm not very famous.
TB: How many series are you currently writing,
and what are the names
of them, and can you tell us a little about
each?
Shannon Butcher: Sure, I have two series right
now.
One is a paranormal romance
series called "The Sentinel Wars".
The other is a romantic suspense series
called "The Edge" and the first book from
that comes out in March in 2011.
"The Sentinel Wars" is a paranormal world
where there are these hot,
tattooed sword women warriors, and they're
women that make their lives more
interesting.
And "The Edge" series is set in Texas around
a mercenary
company that's run by a woman, and there is
lots of intrigue and things
like that going on to keep it interesting.
TB: How do you keep your readers guessing
with what the characters
will or will not do, and how important do
you think that is in your series?
Shannon Butcher: I think there are two things
going on with that.
I think it's
important to have characters that people fall
in love with and they can
predict kind of what they are going to do
so when you see the situation
coming, you say, "Oh no, you can't do that
to him because I know what he's
going to do."
That's kind of fun, having the reader seeing
it coming.
But I do think
there needs to be something unexpected and
I think you do that
situationally.
You throw your characters into the situations
that they
would never have conceived ever getting thrown
into and I think that's how
you keep readers guessing.
TB: Oh, that's good.
Your husband is Jim Butcher which most people
know wrote "Codex Alera" and the "Dresden
Files" series.
What is it like
living in a two writer household when you
are both on deadlines.
Is there a
sort of chaos there?
Do you divide up chores?
How does that work?
Shannon Butcher: Well, you know we work separately
very well.
I have the main
floor of the house, that's where I work and
Jim works in the basement, and
I work during the day, he works at night.
We work very hard to keep all of
that separate.
He's a little more chaotic in the way he does
his schedule,
and I'm more regimented so it's one of those
things that kind of naturally
works out.
Other than having to hire a maid service to
come and stuff like
that, things stay pretty well in control.
Our son is grown and off to
college and it's just the two of us and the
dog.
The dog cleans up the
messes off the floor when we drop food, so
it makes it simple.
TB: It's perfect.
Shannon Butcher: Yeah, it's not too bad.
We really enjoy it and really the hardest
part of having two authors in the house is
making sure that not everything
revolves around work.
We have to have time where there is no talk
about
books or stories or characters or any of that,
when it's just us.
TB: I'm sure you write on a schedule.
You're regimented like you
mentioned earlier.
What do you do when the words just won't come
to you?
Shannon Butcher: The only time the words don't
come to me is when I've made a
wrong turn or a mistake.
I don't believe writers block is an issue
or
anything like that.
It's just me needing to pound my head harder
against
the keyboard.
But really, I never let myself stop for more
than a few
minutes.
I'll get up, I'll go take a shower, I'll workout
or I'll do a load
of laundry, something like that but then I
always go right back to the
keyboard.
I don't ever end my day stuck because it's
just like going to bed
mad, you know?
I just don't do that.
Sometimes when I'm at that point where I'm
not really sure what to do next
or I know I've done something wrong and I
have to go back and delete or
whatever, I might still make a wrong turn
and the next day I'll have to
turn around and go through the same process
but I don't let myself say "I'm
not going to write today because I don't know
what I'm doing."
I don't do
that.
TB: Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, what do
you find the most
interesting to write about?
Shannon Butcher: Well, I don't write about
ghosts or wizards too much.
Vampires
are in my books and I love them because [inaudible
03:53] in my books and
they're very much shades of grey.
They're not really good guys, and they're
not really bad guys.
They're interesting.
They have their own agendas and
secrets and things like that.
So they are a little fun to me.
TB: They're a little shifty.
Shannon Butcher: They are.
And they're meant to be.
They're definitely meant to
be.
TB: That's great.
I love that you are into glass blowing as
a hobby
and jewelry making.
How did you get started with that?
Shannon Butcher: I have always done beading
and stuff like that and I got into
doing the embroidery and you buy these [couch
ons] which are flat on the
back and then you bead around them and then
you glue them on, and it's
lot's of fun.
I enjoy the tedious bits of it.
But the glass ones were hard to find and the
ones in the right colors that
I was looking for sometimes I could never
find, so I said I was going to
finish this book and my reward is going to
be a glass kiln.
So I got a
glass kiln and I made stuff like this and
I've had a lot of fun with it.
It's great because I can go to the workshop
for 10 minutes and glue some
pieces together and put them in the kiln to
fire later of whatever.
It's a
great craft for someone who's busy.
TB: That's exciting.
I didn't know you could do that.
That's great.
I assumed a kiln would be this enormous thing.
Shannon Butcher: Nope.
It's only about this big.
TB: Wow.
Shannon Butcher: Yeah, it's just a little
jewelry one.
TB: Who are some of your favorite authors
and even authors from when
you were back in school?
Shannon Butcher: Well, I started reading fantasy
and Sci-FI.
I didn't pick up my
first romance until 1998.
I love David [Eddings] and Robert Jordan.
I
remember reading the [Drews Dordan] Books
and [inaudible 05:28] that did
those.
But currently some of my favorite authors
are [JR Ward], [Suzanne
Brockman] on the suspense side, [Sherlynn
Kenyon].
I love [Laura Lee] it
was fantastic.
Those are some of the people that I really
enjoy reading
right now.
TB: Now if we could just re-cap really quick
this is one in the
series that Shannon has out.
This is the Sentinel series, and if you could
give the release dates of your upcoming projects
and the names of the
books again?
Shannon Butcher: Sure.
My next release is an anthology called "On
The Hunt" and
Gena Showalter, Deidre Knight and Jessica
Anderson all have stories in
there as well as the Sentinel's novella.
That comes out in February 2011.
March of 2011, I have the first book of my
new series which is a romantic
suspense series called "Living On The Edge".
That comes out in March.
In August, the fifth book of this series called
"Blood Hunt" comes out.
That's Logan's story; that's the first [segment]
of our story.
Then in
November the second book of "The Edge" comes
out.
It's called "Razor's
Edge".
So those are the four releases I have this
year in 2011.
TB: Wow.
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for the interview.
TB: What sort of preparation do you do when
you begin the outline for
one of your series?
What comes first, the central character development
or
the role building?
Shannon Butcher: For the paranormal side of
things I always start with the role
building.
I'll do a little bit of role building and
then we'll take it to a
point where I got something to go on then
I start working on the
characters, because I think the two feed off
of each other because in my
paranormal world I want to set it up so that
there's a reason for couples
to be coupled together.
That's part of the role building.
But then why
these people come together or why they're
torn apart is all about the
character side of things.
So they kind of go hand in hand.
On the non-
paranormal side of things I always start with
the characters.
TB: Who is the inspiration for "Ms. [Nabel]"
one of the characters
from "The Sentinel" series?
What (if anything) do you have in store for
her?
Shannon Butcher: I love spunky old people.
I just enjoy them a lot.
I wanted to
have something like that in this story and
I do have some ideas for some
things that I'm going to use her for.
Right now in the world she used to be a teacher.
She was a teacher for
years and years but she got to the point where
her health made it so she
couldn't teach anymore.
But with the help from the Sentinel the arthritis
is better and she [inaudible 08:16].
So now she's able to do the things that she
loves and she's doing it in a
safe environment where the monsters aren't
trying to come eat her face.
But
she's got this antique book collection which
I think is going to end up
playing into the series at some point.
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