Author Interview: Mary Hughes

Today's interview subject is someone I met when I sent her a gushing fangirl email about how wonderful I thought her debut book was (Biting Nixie! Available in bookstores now!). Turns out, the author is just as wonderful as her novel. I'm thrilled to welcome the marvelous Mary Hughes to the blog today to talk about how she got to be the great big slice of awesome she is.

Welcome, Mary! (Applause!)

When you got The Email offering to publish Bite My Fire, how did you celebrate?

I’m a blackbelt in Taekwondo and one of the first things you learn is board breaking. Bear with me, this does get around to answering the question. In board-breaking, the whole secret is to put your foot or fist through the board. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how many people think it’s about hitting the board, which basically produces a smack and a lot of pain. You have to picture your foot behind the board, envision that point beyond. So The Email? With everything I went through to get there (see question 2), it was less a Yay! and more Thank God, finally.

Oooh, a board-breaking metaphor. Martial artist/authors unite! (I do Yoshukai karate.) And now, back to the interview...

What was your path to publication? Do you have a First Sale story you’d like to share?

Mine was a very crooked path. To lay the ground, let me say I hate rejections. As in hate so much that for every rejection I got I’d write another three novels to comfort myself. So I piled up quite a few for the drawer before I actually made it to print (no, not going to say how many. It embarrasses even me).

About four years ago I had finally gotten an editor from Ellora’s Cave interested enough to request fulls. Still no contract, though, so I sat down to write a follow up—when I was shanghaied by vampires and wrote a 200,000-word science fiction story. The funny thing about this is I swore to myself I’d never-ever write a vampire story. I mean, come on! Evil creatures of the night that suck blood for food? Yuck. And most of the vampire books I read were so fake. Then I had a ding moment and saw a way to fit most of the lore together that was quite real. Those who’ve read Biting Nixie know my vampires drink blood to fill their veins, not their bellies, and there are other ramifications as well (to be revealed in tantalizing dribbles, natch).

Anyway I wrote that mega-novel which, when I finished, I realized would never sell (not as a first sale). So I threw together everything I had gotten positive response with—humor, sex, paranormal romance and action (and the kitchen sink) and the embryonic Bite My Fire (originally titled Sizzling Satin Nights: a Novel of Sex, Guns, and Polkas) was the result. I peddled this to choruses of blank walls but in the meantime I fell across urban slang got the inspiration for Biting Nixie.

The rejections had started coming back for Sizzling Satin Nights and I realized humor, sex, paranormal romance and action (and especially the kitchen sink) was another hard-sell—nobody in their right mind puts all that together.

And then the Samhain Publishing Tickle My Fantasy call for submissions came, looking for just that combination. (Except for the sink.) After I picked up my teeth from the floor I dashed off what would eventually become Biting Me Softly (releasing April 2010). I didn’t make the anthology (Vivi did, with Ghost Shrink!) but when I read the wickedly clever warnings I knew Samhain was the place I wanted to be. So I was thrilled when the anthology editor passed my story on to the amazing Deborah Nemeth. I eventually submitted Biting Nixie and got a contract. And that, after all I had been through, was just the beginning.

Humor, sex, paranormal romance, and action... I think I've found my soulmate. I, for one, am downright giddy that you found a home with Samhain.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? (Note: this does not have to be your day job if you have one; it can be anything from flapper to astronaut to crime-solving paleontologist.)

Composer. In fact I take out my frustrations by writing truly weird book trailer music. Punk rock meets Renaissance dances, Edvard Grieg meets salsa.

I'm so jealous of people who compose! My brother inherited all the composer genes in our family. (For those interested in hearing Mary's Grieg salsa & Renaissance punk - like I had to after this comment - have a listen to her book trailers for Bite My Fire & Biting Nixie.)

What is the best advice you ever got as a writer? The worst? If you could go back in time and give your beginner-writer-self some advice, what would you say?

Best advice: 1) start with something interesting and 2) don’t get upset, it’s just business. Worst advice: well, it’s not advice per se, but “write what you read” never worked for me. If I could go back? I’d tell myself clichés are anything that roll off the tongue without engaging the mind. Writing startles, intrigues, engages—and then resolves.

What drives your books? Is it the hero, the heroine, the conflict?

Definitely the conflict. I love to take a hot-hot hero, a layered heroine, toss ‘em in a mud pit and see what happens! Then toss ‘em in a snake pit and see what happens! Then toss ‘em in bed and…you get the idea.

As an author of humor, how do you integrate comedy into your stories? Do you think of yourself as writing romantic comedy or romances that happen to be funny? Do you ever feel there is pressure to make people laugh?

Great question! My main thrust is to be interesting, to say things in new and unexpected ways. So I don’t really consider myself a humorous writer. I just have a funny outlook on life. Both funny odd and funny ha-ha. I’m extremely fortunate to have three family members who are genuinely funny, and I take my cues from them. But beyond that I like to put characters in situations and see what they do. The most important thing I try to remember is that, while the situations and actions are funny, the underlying emotions must always be real. Don’t know if I make it all the time, but that’s my goal.

That is such a good point. Humor has to have a geniune emotional core beneath it or it just comes across as gratuitous schtick. I love authors who can find that balance of sincerity and wit. (Like you do.)

To date your novels have centered around the vampire community in Meier’s Corners, Illinois. (Have I mentioned how much I love that town?) Do you plan to stay in Meier’s Corners as the Biting Love series continues, or do you have plans to branch out into another series or another town?

It’s less a question of branching out from Meiers Corners and more an issue of the world impinging on MC. The Bite of Silence (Dec 29) opens a few windows on that. Not to give away too much but Meiers Corners may be caught in a wider conflict. Another series? Maybe that 200,000 word science fiction story, some day :) ! I have lots of ideas but it really depends on what people will actually want to read.

What’s next for you?

I’ve got four books contracted and another short to write, and then I want to go back to studying writing. It’s a huge field and for every two things I learn it seems one dribbles back out my ear. I’m in awe of people who can diagram sentences (like Vivi!) and while I may never get to that point I can at least try to be better.

There is always more to learn, isn't there? It's exciting to think your books could possibly get any better. (Hey, I warned you I was a rabid fangirl.) Thank you so much for submitting to my inquisition today, Mary, and best of luck with all your Biting Love books!

And now, Dear Reader, check out the awesomeness that is Mary Hughes:

Bite My Fire
ISBN: 978-1-60504-680-8

At last, the perfect lover. Now what? Stake him, shoot him—or screw him?

Elena O’Rourke lusts for two things—her detective’s shield and a good lay. Sass-Cgal’s “Bad Girl Sex Tips” will win her the man. But keeping the shield hinges on solving a murder.

Warrior-gorgeous Bo Strongwell stands in her way.

Powerful as a Viking warship, Bo would be Elena’s one-stop solution to celibacy—except for his apartment building full of mysteries. Plus, his kisses…and nibbles…and full body tongue-swipes…keep distracting her from the case. As if a caped clown named Dracula, a hooker with a heart of gold (and boobs of steel), and Elena’s own clueless partner aren’t distraction enough.

Bo Strongwell is a master vampire who needs a cop snooping around like he needs a garlic enema. Fighting rogues keeps him busy enough without Elena trying to pin the murder on one of his kind…even if she does taste like heaven.

Two fighters for justice. One incredible attraction. A terrible secret. Drunken women dancing on the bar… It all rides on Elena solving the Case of the Punctured Prick.

Warning: Jammed with hot explicit sex, graphic fanged violence, and acid cop humor. May contain donuts.

Read an Excerpt :: Buy It Now in eBook

Biting Nixie

ISBN: 978-1-60504-437-8

Nitro? Meet glycerin…

Punk musician Nixie Schmeling is a hundred pounds of Attitude who spells authority a-n-c-h-o-r and thinks buying insurance is just one more step toward death. So she really feels played when she’s “volunteered” to run the town’s first annual fundraising festival. Especially when she finds out it’s to pay for a heavy-hitting, suit-wearing lawyer—who’s six-feet-plus of black-haired, blue-eyed sex on a stick.

Attorney Julian Emerson learned centuries ago that the only way to contain his dangerous nature is to stay buttoned up. He’s come from Boston to defend the town from a shady group of suits…and an even shadier gang of vampires. But his biggest problem is Nixie, who shreds his self-control.

Nixie doesn’t get why the faphead shyster doesn’t understand her. Julian wishes Nixie would speak a known language…like Sanskrit. Even if they manage to foil the bloodthirsty gang, what future is there for a tiny punk rocker and a blue-blooded skyscraper?

And that’s before Nixie finds out Julian’s a vampire…

Warning: Contains more eye-popping sex, ear-popping language and gut-popping laughs than can possibly be good for you. And vampires. Not sippy-neck wimps, but burning beacons of raw sexuality—this means passionate blood-heating, violent bloodletting, and fangy bloodsucking. Oh, and cheese balls. Those things are just scary.

Read an Excerpt :: Buy It Now in eBook :: Buy It Now in Print