KMM talks about ICED & BURNED!

Q: When does ICED come out in paperback?
A: February 25th, 2014

Q: Why the change in cover art between the hardcover and paperback?
A: Cover art and marketing is a mystery to me. I leave it in my publisher’s hands. I know two things for certain: It’s hot and folks will undoubtedly write me both love and hate-email for it. After 15 books, I’m rather used to that. 

Q: Why did you make Dani so young in ICED? Why didn’t you age her and give the reader a protagonist with whom we could better identify, one who could have sex? 
A: Writers make choices every day, every page, every scene, in an effort to accomplish their goals and showcase their themes. My goal is not to craft a formulaic story that pushes all the right buttons and sells the most copies but to capture the story I want to tell. I prefer having passion for what I do to chasing commercial gain. 

I think most of us who stick around on the publishing scene for a few decades or more tend to write the same themes over and over, kind of like living our life, trying to get it right, make it the most impactful, memorable, beautiful, poignant, raw, ferocious, emotional. 

My underlying theme has always been transformation and the redemptive power of love. If I begin with the finished product, there’s nothing to transform. The more base the initial material, the more dramatic the change. Dani is raw, elemental, rough around the edges in the beginning. She grew up by herself, shut away from the world except for TV. In ICED she has few social graces. As smart as she is, when she acquires them, it’s something to see. 

I began young with Dani because there’s an innocence and magic in childhood—the loss of which is a story in itself—and when you’ve shared that time with a beloved character, watched her lose it, then get to see some part of it restored after a period of suffering, it’s immensely fulfilling. 

A small segue…when I stopped writing my HIGHLANDER romance novels and began working on the FEVER series, I encountered enormous obstacles. Change is a demanding bitch. Yet gratifying. I went from writing successful, stand-alone, third-person POV romance novels with happy-ever-after endings, to writing first-person POV urban fantasy novels with none (initially) of the hot-sex-and-guaranteed-culmination in each installment that I normally delivered. To further inflame the situation, I spread the story over five novels and gave them cliffhanger endings (ending DREAMFEVER on a figurative and literal cliff.) As if that wasn’t enough, I proceeded to take an average of 15 months to write each book, stringing the reader along. (Speaking of which—to those original Moning Maniacs who suffered through the wait for each installment, it was great fun and thank you! The SHADOWFEVER launch party was one of the more memorable weeks of my life, spending time with you in NOLA, answering long unanswered questions.)

When DARKFEVER was published, I lost readers, I lost ranking on the bestseller lists, I lost placement in bookstores, and I lost money. There it is. Bottom line. (The FEVER books have since drastically outsold my HIGHLANDER novels, it ended up being a very successful move at a time when historical romance novels were soon to become a dying breed. I count my blessings I jumped when I did.) 

I got sliced and diced by fans who told me in no uncertain terms that I didn’t have what it took to write anything but romance, that I needed to return to my roots, pull my head out of that un-sunshiney place I’d been foolish enough to cram it, and give up the writing the FEVER series.

I didn’t listen. I rarely do. Oh, I heard it. It just didn’t change anything. I’ve got this tunnel-vision muse that isn’t after the money or the fame and frankly prefers a little less attention so she can work in peace. All she wants to do is tell stories without a moment’s thought to how they might be received. And that cantankerous wench holds the reins. 

When ICED was published, I received some of the finest critical reviews of my career and the largest number of positive reader reviews I’ve had on any book I’ve written. 

However, as happens any time a writer begins a new series—spin off or not—I lost sales, ranking and money. Again. And managed to incite a vocal minority who disliked my protagonist’s age.

Q: So, will you stop writing this trilogy? 
A: No. I understand a simple fact. Any new series I begin will initially suffer a similar drop off. We all have our comfort zones. We like to revisit the same world, sink down on the same comfy Chestefield in front of the gas fireplace in Barrons Books & Baubles beneath a mural I still haven’t revealed, and be assured a cataclysmic force of nature will walk through the door at some point and rock our world. When Harry Potter ended, I wouldn’t have wanted to read about Hermione’s adventures. At first. Eventually, I would have loved it just as much because JK Rowling is a wonderfully imaginative writer, I adore the universe she created and am hungry for alternate viewpoints of her world.

But writers can get trapped in their own never-ending series that sputter and fizzle long before they stop taking up space on the bookshelves. 

It’s not confortable (in fact it’s damned unnerving) to go from being number 1 on the NYT (thank you fans for putting SHADOWFEVER there) making a predictable income to saying—this is what I’m going to do next for love of the story, believing it will ultimately be more satisfying for the readers, knowing I’ll take a hit, financially and via reader enthusiasm.

The simple fact is the most profitable, assured-of-success book I could have written after SF would have been a re-telling of Mac’s story from JZB’s point of view. I was offered a great deal of money for it. 

The second most profitable, safe thing to do would have been to say simply: I’ve decided to keep telling Mac’s story and we will next publish Fever # 6, 7, 8, 9, 99 ad nauseum, oh, wait, ad infinitum. Those were safe bets. Those were nice hits for my bank account. They were guaranteed to sell. A new trilogy? Risk compounded by obstacle multiplied by uncertain success.

Yet there I’d be: trapped in my own never-ending series, bored, with my reader growing increasingly bored, watching myself lose passion for what I do. Life is short and complicated and then you die. The only thing you really own is what you do while you’re headed that way. 

Many of the readers that didn’t want to take a risk on the new series emailed to tell me why:

1. They felt reading ICED was tantamount to admitting the ‘real’ FEVER series was over. They weren’t ready to say goodbye yet. 

2. They didn’t want to read about Dani. They wanted to read about Mac. Or Barrons. Or Christian. Or the boring, celibate old woman in Galway that sits home and crochets by the fire. Anyone but Dani. 

3. They had no interest in a young protagonist. They didn’t want to read about someone their daughter’s age. They wanted a mature heroine with a lot of mature sex. I understand that. There’s plenty of it out there. Unfortunately, I didn’t write it. Or fortunately, depending on how you view it.

4. They prefer I write individual romance novels for each of the Nine. I can put this to rest. Sorry. The Nine just don’t work that way.

That being said: passion, sex, love infuse pretty much everything all of us do. It makes us excited to wake up, exhilarated to hit the sheets, or floor, or stepladder in the stacks of the library where trying to keep quiet becomes a fun and forbidden sport. It’s not merely the icing on the cake, some days—those are the best—it’s the cake, the plate and the table under it, hell the whole floor we walk on. There will always be a firestorm of lust and love at the core of every story I tell. Did I deliver with Mac and Barrons? I hope you think so. Will I with Dani? As good or better.

Q. Is there sex in BURNED? 

A. I’ve pulled no punches in BURNED—after all, there is that title to live up to. The sex is hotter, more primal, there’s more of it happening, and there are enormous consequences for some of it that does. I adore exploring consequences for sex that shouldn’t have been. 

Q: OMG, does that mean Dani—
A: I’m not talking about consequences for a 14 year old. Please park the “pedo” wagon around someone else’s campfire. There isn’t any in ICED. Or BURNED. Or FLAYED. I would never write about, condone, romanticize something so awful, and those of you who’ve been reading me for years know that. 

Is there sexuality and sensuality in ICED that takes place in the vicinity of a protagonist who is young and mostly oblivious? Yes. Does the moment that Ryodan goes hunting for her because she’s late for work, finds her bunked down on a ship and wakes her have any sexual purpose in it? Not a drop. Does anyone get hot over the skull and crossbones on her bra and panties? No. Someone is ‘charmed.’ Does Ryodan lust after Dani in ICED? Absolutely not. There are three very different males who see the woman she will one day be and are invested in that future woman in many ways, sex being the least of them. One of them has lived so long that, like the Fae, a few centuries are nothing to him, a decade a mere blink of an eye. As he says in BURNED: “You hunt for the best, the brightest, the strongest…and when you find one that shines like the sun, you do everything in your power to make certain that light never goes out.” Are they grooming her? No. They’re trying to make sure she does one thing: survive. Dani can’t be ‘groomed.” She doesn’t have the temperament. Simply protecting her—something many are actually trying to do—won’t work. She’s unpredictable, rash as any teen and gifted in just about everything. Mac is a wild card. Dani is a wild card on steriods. A far bigger concern is that Rowena turned her into an assassin at the age of nine. Was Ryodan hard on her in ICED? Yes. Ryodan knows things about Dani you don’t know yet and there are reasons for all of it.

Q: Whose POV is BURNED told from?
A: Multiple first person points of view. Mac. Dani. Christian. Someone you haven’t met yet. A few others you have. Lor. Yes, I did say Lor and since you’ve been so terrific, waiting while I tell the story the way I need to, check back tomorrow for an excerpt from his POV on my FB page!

Q: How old is Dani in BURNED?
A: 19

Q: Was this a concession for the irritated reader?
A: The only one I made. I’ll likely compensate by finding other ways to irritate the reader.  (I’d planned for her to be 17.)

Q: Does Dani have sex, sex, sex? Is it with Ryodan who we aren’t even sure we like or Christian who you screwed up by turning Unseelie Prince or Dancer who’s now going to be too young? Argh! You’re ruining my story!
A: You’ll have to read it to find out how I ruin it this time. 

Q: Is Dublin still iced in BURNED?
A: No. The Dublin we all know and love comes back to life in BURNED. 

Q: How many more FEVER books do you have planned? 
A: Originally I was going to write three books in this trilogy followed by two more Mac & Barrons books, but after deliberation, I decided to combine all five into this trilogy. So, two more FEVER books right now: BURNED and FLAYED, merging the original five-book story-arc.

Q: When will BURNED be released?
A: January 2015. I’m sorry about that. I’d hoped to get it done sooner but couldn’t. My heart and soul are in it, and I think you’ll see that. I love it more than anything I’ve ever written and can’t wait for you to read it.