Author Hadena James and Cotillion

Hi all!

Please help me welcome Author Hadena James to my blog today!

Dark Cotillion

By Hadena James

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BLURB:

Brenna Strachan is half-Demon, half-Witch and it’s the eve of her 30th birthday. This means that she will stop aging and come into all her Demon powers. But there are forces at work hoping to keep her from Maturing. They must kill her in the short time that she is mortal. If they fail, she will take her place among the most powerful beings on Earth. What will it cost her to survive?

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EXCERPT:

  

“I have silverware; there are at least a dozen boxes of assorted disposable utensils in the drawer.”

“Metal utensils?”

“Uh, yeah, my mom gave me a box of old silver when she gave me the china dishes.”

“China dishes?” He rolled his eyes as Gabriel snickered. “Do you have anything except antique Bone China place settings?”

“Ewww, they are made of bone? One more reason to use paper plates. Stop setting those things on my damn table.” I looked pointedly at Gabriel.

“No, Ani, she has almost nothing in her kitchen, except disposable and fine antiques that should be used only on very special occasions.” Gabriel looked back at me and stuck out his tongue.

“I tried to give the fine stuff back to mom, but she refused to take it. She said some nonsense about every homeowner needing a good set of dishes.”

“Let me get this straight,” Anubis shook his head again, “you have no food and even if you did, we couldn’t cook it unless it was microwavable, and then we would have to eat it on plates that are probably a couple hundred years old, with silverware that is probably older?”

“Sounds accurate,” I lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry; I’m just not very domestic.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

I’ve been writing for over two decades and before that, I was creating my own bedtime stories to tell myself.  I penned my first short story at the ripe old age of 8.  It was a fable about how the raccoon got its eye-mask and was roughly three pages of handwritten, 8 year old scrawl.  My mother still has it and occasionally, I still dig it out and admire it.

When I got my first computer, I took all my handwritten stories and typed them in.  Afterwards, I tossed the originals.  In my early twenties, I had a bit of a writer’s meltdown and deleted everything.  So, with the exception of the story about the raccoon, I actually have none of my writings from before I was 23.  Which is sad, because I had a half dozen other novels and well over two hundred short stories.  It has all been offered up to the computer and writing gods as a sacrifice and show of humility or some such nonsense that makes me feel less like an idiot about it.

I have been offered contracts with publishing houses in the past and always turned them down.  Now that I have experimented with being an Indie Author, I really like it and I’m really glad I turned them down.  However, if you had asked me this in the early years of 2000, I would have told you that I was an idiot (and it was a huge contributing factor to my deleting all my work). 

When I’m not writing, I play in a steel-tip dart league and enjoy going to dart tournaments.  I enjoy renaissance festivals and sanitized pirates who sing sea shanties.  My appetite for reading is ferocious and I consume two to three books a week as well as writing my own.  Aside from introducing me to darts, my SO has introduced me to camping, which I, surprisingly, enjoy.  We can often be found in the summer at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri, where his parents own a campground. 

I am a native of Columbia, Missouri, which I will probably call home for the rest of my life, but I love to travel.  Day trips, week trips, vacations on other continents, wherever the path takes me is where I want to be and I’m hoping to be able to travel more in the future.

What is your name? Do you use a pen name (if so, why?)? 

Hadena James – yes, I do use a pen name.  I’m not very good about talking about myself or in front of others, severe stage freight, using a pen name, allows me to be a “character” just like from one of my books.  It doesn’t matter that the bio is mine, because the name offers me the chance to wear a mask.

Tell me a bit about yourself:

What type of genre do you write?

I write fantasy, thriller, and mystery, but I’m hoping to branch out into horror soon.

What genre to you personally read?

It is easier to say what I don’t like to read, I’m not a fan of romance novels.  I can read the classics, like Pride & Prejudice, but I just can’t into modern romance and I have a history degree, so I really can’t get into historical romance.  As a writer, I understand fictional liberties (and take them myself), but as a reader, I have more trouble making that distinction. 

Tell me about your latest?

Dark Cotillion started as an experiment.  I had never written a fantasy novel and wanted to try my hand at it.  I made several attempts before coming up with a story line that was good enough to be made a novel.  I decided to draw on my knowledge of history to create it and so there are lots of myths and legends interspersed into the story.  Some of them, I left pretty standard, others I changed completely, leaving only a few pieces recognizable. 

What sparked your passion for books and the art of a good story?

I always loved to read.  I loved books long before I could read them all by myself.  Combine that with growing up in a family rich in oral history and the ability to spin a good tale and the two just sort of collided when I was young.  Both of my parents are great storytellers.  By the time I could write, I knew I wanted to do the same, only I wanted to write down the stories just as much as I wanted to tell them.

Is there a particular book that changed or affected your life in a big way?

As much as I hate to admit it, Anna Karenina.  Admittedly, I was in my twenties by then, but it was the first book I ever hated, and I do mean hated, from cover to cover.  However, that immense dislike, gave me a different perspective on literature as both a reader and a writer.  It makes it a lot easier to understand when someone hates one of my own books.

Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp?

There is an underlying message to the series, you don’t pick it up in book one, you have to look at them as a whole.  I specifically made my main character, Brenna Strachan, who is thirty years old at the time of Dark Cotillion, seem much younger (she’s immature) to show that even as an adult, we are still capable of personal growth.

What challenges have you faced in your writing career?

My biggest challenge has been me.  My friends (and some of my readers) would say that I’m afraid of success and there might be some truth to that.  In the past, I have been offered contracts with publishing companies and always found a reason to not accept them.  Now that I’m an indie, I find myself failing to do the marketing needing along with making myself known in my home town.  Which is surprising because there is a huge book market in my home town and yet, I hide from them.

What has been your best moment as a writer?

When I first published Dark Cotillion, I posted it on my personal Facebook page.  A few seconds later, someone that I was just an acquaintance of, said she’d bought the book.  The following day, she told me how much she was loving it.  We quickly became friends as she slid deeper into my writing.  However, the moment was great because she only knew me from one niche (I throw in a steel-tip dart league and we had knew each other from tournaments) and we became friends because of my writing.  That sounds strange, but it meant a lot to me, personally and professional.

Who is your author idol?

I have to pick just one?!  How does one do that?  How about a classic and a modern idol?  Classically speaking, H P Lovecraft.  His works affected me like few others and I inspire to write horror as well as him one day.  As far as modern writers, Clive Barker.  His novels are always so intricate and detail oriented, that I love them.  It creates a whole new world in my head in which characters that I create can live in.

Do you see yourself in any of your characters?

I see a little bit of myself in each of the characters I create.  Possibly because I put a lot of effort into their creation before I ever write a story with them.  Creating a new character can take me months, which is longer than it takes me to write the novel I’m putting them in. 

Do you feel like your dream has come true or is there much more to do?

My dream has come true, I’m published and I’m published on my own terms.  Now, I’m working towards a new dream, to become a novelist who lives off their craft.

What does your workspace look like?

My living room couch is my most common workspace.  I write best at night, after my husband has gone to sleep or when he isn’t here.  This means that I can have the comfiest spot in the house when I work.  I have an office, but it isn’t really me.  I keep thinking I need to decorate it, I just haven’t yet.

Have you ever had a day when you just wanted to quit?

I think every writer has these days.  They happen most often to me right after I finish writing a novel.  For a couple of days, I get in kind of a funk.  Those are the days I want to quit the most, which is strange because I have just produced my latest piece of work and suddenly I don’t want to write anymore.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I read… a lot… a whole lot.  I go through several books a week.  I love to travel, cook, hang out with friends.  I’m a co-founder of a group in my home town that assist aspiring novelists.  My husband and I enjoy camping and throwing steel-tip darts (we are both members of a league and travel to dart tournaments as much as possible).

What are the most important attributes to remaining sane as a writer?

Knowing when to stop.  I don’t mean writing completely, but for a specific block of time.  We’ve all been in front of a keyboard, trying to figure out what to write next, what word should go next, and that kind of stuff will make you crazy.  Sometimes, you just gotta stop and step away. 

Did you have a moment when you realized you were meant to be a writer?

Nope.  I started writing as soon as I could make letters into words.  I wrote my first short story at 8 years old.  I never realized I was meant to write.  It just happened and one day, someone said “indie publishing is becoming a huge thing, you should check it out.”  So I did and now, I do this full time. 

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Never back down from a critique.  I’ve seen it often, an aspiring author gets a bad critique and they decide they just aren’t good enough.  This is rarely the case.  All writers have bad critiques.  We all have crappy books waiting to see the light of day, I’ve been working on a historical romance for seven years and no one has ever been able to make it past the first three chapters.  This doesn’t mean I’m a terrible writer, it just means it is a terrible book.  With some help, it might be a great book, but if I give up, it will never be anything more than a plot line in my head.

After this book, what is next?

I’ve finished the Strachan series, but I continue to work on my thriller series and I’m planning to start a new fantasy series this summer. 

Your website?

One of my failings… I don’t have one.  I can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn though.

Your blog?

http://hadenajames.wordpress.com

Other websites?

http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

@hadenajames

Where can your book be found?

Ebooks can be found at most major retailers: Amazon, BN, Apple, Scribd, Smashwords, etc… now, my entire collection is not available on Kobo.  I still haven’t figured out why. 

Print books are available on Amazon, BN and CreateSpace.  

http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

hadenajames.wordpress.com

@hadenajames

Newsletter:  http://forms.aweber.com/form/77/48212477.htm

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Cotillion-Book-Strachan-Brenna-ebook/dp/B0093UKS82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395661931&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+cotillion

Barnes & Noble Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-cotillion-hadena-james/1113959473?ean=2940045115919

Barnes & Noble Print: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-cotillion-hadena-james/1112797339?ean=9781479212279

Please thank Hadena for joining us today. Check out all the links and book.

Keep Writing!

Jodie Pierce