Joevember
Two of my favorite traits in a person are a sharp wit and kind heart. When I met fellow Booktrope author Steven Luna in our super-secret Booktrope Facebook group, that’s exactly what I first noticed about him.
Okay, the first thing I really noticed was the eyebrows. But the second thing was that if my kids were coming over to see what I was giggling about at the computer, it was usually him who’d made me laugh. I also noticed that he was one of the first people to step in with a kind word or encouragement for whoever needed it most.
Steven Luna is just good people. And while his debut novel, Joe Vampire, is not my typical read, Steven’s unparalleled sense of humor made it worth stepping off my beaten path for a change.
He’s such a big deal that the month of November has been retitled Joevember in his honor. I’m pretty excited to have Steven as a guest on my blog today in my first ever interview. After you’re done giggling over his answers, be sure to swing by Amazon between Tuesday, Joevember 13 and Thursday, Joevember 15 to download your free copy of Joe Vampire for your Kindle!
1) Joe makes it pretty clear that he is nothing like Fredward Mullens from Nightfall…so, uh, what do you have against Twilight?
What is this “Twilight” of which you speak? Actually, I had some hopeful communications about a pre-Joe Vampire book with the agent who reps the Twilight author (can I say her name without having to pay royalties? Let’s not chance it…) which fell off after the second book in that series exploded. I’m not ashamed to say it made me a little jaded toward the undead. And also agents. At some point I realized there was enough vampire material on the market to gently mock it – and hey, who doesn’t love gentle mocking, right? That mockery became the kernel of Joe. I saw that he could be an acerbic counterpoint to all the glam-tastic vampire romance, just a regular guy who can’t catch a break, who catches a bite instead and wants the world to know how it really goes down. Actually, I owe the agent and the other author a thank you for setting up the pre-story so I’d have something to riff on. I probably won’t be sending them cookies anytime soon, though…
2) Some of us like sparkles, and since you’ve made it clear Joe isn’t sparkly, why should we like him?
This would be a good opportunity to clarify my views and separate them from Joe’s. My take? Sparkly vampires totally rock. It’s actually a very inventive twist on the vampire-in-the-sun theme…and I’m all about the twists. Joe, however, is the Everyvamp – no sparkling, no sexy brooding. No tribal war with the werewolf clan. He isn’t special in any way; he’s the guy in the next cubicle over, stuck with a condition that makes him self-conscious and uncomfortable, even though most people don’t pay enough attention to him to even notice. Despite making all kinds of mistakes, he’s a good dude in a rough situation, handling it with humor and heart, and trying to make a life without losing his identity in the process. And if you read between the lines a little, you can probably see that Joe doesn’t entirely dislike the sparklers; he’s actually quite jealous of them, and more than a little resentful that they ended up as babe magnets while he shrank and turned the color of kindergarten paste.
3) Joe Vampire took an interesting path to publication – do you mind sharing that with my readers?
Joe began a character blog, which is a term I probably made up to make myself feel like the project wasn’t totally lame. He was originally meant to be an anonymous guy who offered advice and insight about being a real-life vampire. The blog was supposed to grow as a real blog would, organically and—for me as creator—like a multi-media art project. I had plans to add links to his band’s music and flyers and photos for his gigs, and links to vampire support group sites he’d discovered. But after I finished the ninth post, I saw a story forming and found a specific direction for what the actual “getting on with my life” would look like for him. So I plotted the rest of the tale as a novel in blog form and self-published it in February. Through social media marketing as an indie author, I had made some awesome Booktrope friends who read the book and thought there was a place for the dude vampire within their wonderful company. So they brought me into the fold, and here we are today, with Joe Vampire firing up to expand into a series. It’s pretty amazing…I’m grateful every day for how it came about.
4) Joe 2 is coming out soon – can you give us a sneak peek of Joe and Chloe in the sequel? If there aren’t any sparkles, we can at least hope for romance, right?
Ha! Still no sparkles, but there are sparks a-plenty, and quite a few twists along the way. Joe Vampire: The Afterlife picks up a year after the first book ends. Things have gotten extremely happy for Joe: His vampire parts are playing nice, his love life has improved greatly, and his music project is looking up. Even his cruddy job situation has become something better than what it started out as. He picks up the blog again to tell the world that you absolutely can have a great life even if you have to spend it as a real-live vampire…though he really begins to trouble over the “forever” aspect of a condition like this. Of course, the good doesn’t last and things start sliding into the mud on all fronts. It would be an awfully short book otherwise. In order to make it through with everyone intact, Joe has to mature a little and make some difficult decisions and hard sacrifices regarding the people he loves. As the tagline on the cover says: Even if you live forever, you’ll have to grow up sometime.
5) Random question… has anyone ever named a rooster after you?
Only the awesome people (yep…I said “awesome”)
