Interview: Deborah Wilde

​Today we have an interview with Deborah Wilde! Here's a bit about her:

A global wanderer, hopeless romantic, and total cynic with a broken edit button, Deborah writes urban fantasy to satisfy her love of smexy romances and tales of chicks who kick ass. This award-winning author is all about the happily-ever-after, with a huge dose of hilarity along the way. 

Deborah writes the Nava Katz series, starting with The Unlikeable Demon Hunter. Naturally, I asked her a whole bunch of questions. Here's what she has to say.

DR: How did you decide to write in your genre? 
DW: I write funny, sexy, urban fantasy which combines my love of magic, action-adventure, and romcom. Before becoming a novelist, I was a screenwriter for 12 years and I was fortunate enough to write for everything from demon hunting shows to takes on the Guinevere story in modern day times. I love putting magic and monsters in the everyday world, especially when I can reflect what the monsters represent in the turmoil and growth issues faced by my characters.

DR: Tell us about something in real life that inspired a character, setting, or plot in one of your books. 
DW: I’m currently finishing up my first UF series, The Unlikeable Demon Hunter. At the time, I’d been reading a lot of articles about how female characters had to be “likeable” and thinking a lot about the double standard that even fictional women face when it comes to owning their sexuality. I wanted to write a complex, messy, “real” woman, who may not have been “likeable” according to some outdated archetype, but was definitely sympathetic and relatable. Things fell into place from there.

DR: What do you do when you’re stuck on a scene? 
DW: Ha! I’m the worst person to ask this question to because my honest answer is “panic!” I am completely unable to write scenes out of order so if I’m stuck, that’s it, I’m not going any further. To be fair, there are degrees of stuck. Most of the time, I just need to walk away and either talk it through with someone or watch or read something else. It’s amazing how often a different form of storytelling with completely unrelated content sparks the answer to my scene. 
However, there are those times when I’m just blank. That’s when I stare at my screen, my panic mounting, and my headphones with my playlist of choice on, until my brain snaps under the pressure and something comes to me. From there I can generally spitball ideas until I find the one that works. But yeah, panic is a great motivator. :P

DR: Is there a common theme or element in your work? 
DW: I’m very interested in people who have sidelined themselves for some reason. So instead of being the hero of their own life when the story begins, they’re barely a supporting player. Then they get magic and go from a position of being powerless to having an extreme power. The interesting question for me becomes how they are going to use that power to find balance and ultimately happiness in their lives?
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DR: Is there a sub-genre in Sci-Fi or Fantasy that you don’t like? Why? 
DW: Short answer: nope. I love the depth of world-building that the various sub-genres allow for, not to mention how each one, whether its space opera or high fantasy provides a unique lens into the exploration of social, political, cultural, and gender issues facing us here in the real world.

DR: Where can we find your books? Which one should a new reader start with? 
DW: My books are exclusive to Amazon and also available in Kindle Unlimited. The series should be read in order so start with The Unlikeable Demon Hunter. It’s a six-book series, and the final book is up for pre-order right now. There will also be a standalone adventure from the POV of the best friend coming out next year.

You can find Deborah Wilde's website here. You can get her first book, The Unlikeable Demon Hunter, here.

​Check back next week to discover another awesome author.