Kate Daniels Event: Q&A with Ilona Andrews

[Moderators of NBRC, Challenger-in-Chief]

It's Kate Daniels month and at NBRC we're celebrating it with a Q&A with the author thread

The publisher asked if we could send the questions in advance, so, here are the rules:

RULES & HOW TO
1. Post your questions on this thread till September 25th .
2. If your question is spoilerish, please add a spoiler tag
3. On Monday (Sep.26th) we'll send the publisher your questions and we'll let you know the next step.
4. Yes, the big release is Magic Binds, but questions about the other series will be allowed - they're all great after all

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.)

Gordon and Ilona currently reside in Texas with their two children and many dogs and cats.

They have co-authored three NYT and USAT bestselling series, the urban fantasy of Kate Daniels, rustic fantasy of the Edge, and paranormal romance of Hidden Legacy. They are also working on USAT bestselling series Innkeeper Chronicles, which they post as a free weekly serial. For complete list of their books, fun extras, and Innkeeper installments, please visit their website











TBP: 2017

[Moderators of NBRC, Challenger-in-Chief]

Reserved

[Midu]

No questions, I just wanted to thank the duo for writing because their books help keep my spirits up when I need a pick-me-up the most.

Thanks NBRC!

[✩Tiffany✩]

Do you have any plans on visiting Sydney, Australia?

[Dragana]

Kate Daniels is my favorite urban fantasy series.So this is the most important question for me: Do you plan to write sequels as long as there is interest in them, or you have a definite ending/conclusion planned for the future?

[Sam]

Knowing that Kate Daniels #10 is the final book in the series, do you have plans to extend your current on-going series or start a new long term series? Or do you plan to keep at the 3-4 book long series? Do you have a new world brewing in your head, or do you plan to take some time for yourselves and your family before possibly broaching into new series?

[Gillian]

Ilona and Gordon I'm interested to know more about your working relationship on the books.
1.Do you ever fight over how the story line will go?
2.How many years have the two of you been working together?
3.How did you come to work on the same book in the first place or did you both start on seperate books?
4.Are all your books written together or do you have books you write on your own under a different name?

[Lexi]

Thank you for answering question. Others have asked some of my questions on Kate, so I wanted to ask about your Innkeeper chronicles.

1. What made you decide to write a serial?
2. What is the hardest part of not having the entire script released at once? The most fun?

[Chava]

Hi,
My question is two-fold:
What is the best thing and what's the hardest thing of being a husband-and-wife author team?

[BarbaraAnn]

Hi,

Thank you for answering questions about your work. I'm a fan of all your books, but thought I'd ask about the Edge series and Innkeeper series. I really enjoyed the Edge series and loved the cameo appearance in Clean Sweep. Will there continue to be appearances (or perhaps a book featuring one of the Edge children all grown up?)

[Sonia]

Thank you to all that participated.. I'm sending this later today to the publisher, so... if any last minute question arises, now is the time to post it!

[Samantha]

I just know that I would like your books. I've personally never read one because they are kinda hard to find where I'm located at

[Sonia]

Just heard back from the publisher, will post answers shortly

[Sonia]

Midu wrote: "No questions, I just wanted to thank the duo for writing because their books help keep my spirits up when I need a pick-me-up the most.

Thanks NBRC!"

Gordon) You’re very welcome, thanks for being a reader of our nonsense.

[Sonia]

✩Tiffany✩ wrote: "Do you have any plans on visiting Sydney, Australia?"

Gordon) We’d love to. When I was a younger man, my greatest ambition in life was to drive an ice-cream truck in Australia. I don’t know why but I still want to, it’s #1 on my bucket list.

Ilona: If we go to Australia, we might not leave.

[Sonia]

Dragana wrote: "Kate Daniels is my favorite urban fantasy series.So this is the most important question for me: Do you plan to write sequels as long as there is interest in them, or you have a definite ending/conc..."

Gordon: As we grow older we are less given to declarative statements but for now Kate 10 is the last one. We do have a definite end in mind. Really, it’s been nearly a decade and Kate and Curran deserve their happily ever after. If they show up in later books, it will only be as side characters.

[Sonia]

Sam wrote: "Knowing that Kate Daniels #10 is the final book in the series, do you have plans to extend your current on-going series or start a new long term series? Or do you plan to keep at the 3-4 book long ..."

Gordon: Yes, once Kate and Curran’s story is done, we’re planning to take some time and in the future self-publish stories set in that world. First will probably the Hugh book. We want to put that out before Magic Triumphs, or Kate 10. We’d like to do a Julie & Derek series but we have no idea how many books it will be. If we traditionally publish a Kate world story it would most likely be with Roman as the main character. We both really like him and feel like it’s time for him to find a nice witch and settle down.

Ilona: Roman would be fun. We found that we work better if we can switch gears and right now we’ve been living and breathing KD for seems like forever. We’d like a change of pace to keep our work fresh.

[Sonia]

Aishwarya wrote: "Kate Daniels is an amazing series....magic binds was a really satisfying and enjoyable book(as it didn't have any cliff hanger's in it)
But with the next book being the last in the series I have qu..."

Gordon: Thank you, we’re glad the book turned out. There was a point when we were both convinced it was made of suck. We have no idea when the last book comes out; we haven’t even plotted it out yet. We know how it starts and end but the devil is in the middle bit. Not sure how much I can say about the ultimate fate of Roland, because they can’t kill him outright, given the connection between Kate and her dad, they will have to find a way to contain him. Yeah, I can say that. Julie will play a big part in the last book … Gods, this is so spoilery, she’s going to kill me. (He is right, I totally deleted that part – Ilona)

Ilona: You will have to wait until the final book comes out.

Gordon: Not sure yet, I wanted to kill off Mahon but Ilona convinced me that we shouldn’t. A little later my Uncle, who raised me and on whom Mahon is heavily based, passed away and I was very glad we didn’t off him in the final battle. It’s very hard for us to kill a character we love. Maybe Saiman? I hate that guy. Julie is the logical choice for a continuation, maybe with a tiny Curran baby in tow as sidekick. I like the Dragon guy but it will probably be Derek. As far as swords and knives, we watch a lot of cheesy martial arts movies and read books written by experts on the subject. We both want the fights and weapons used in them to be realistic and believable.

[Sonia]

Gillian wrote: "Ilona and Gordon I'm interested to know more about your working relationship on the books.
1.Do you ever fight over how the story line will go?
2.How many years have the two of you been working tog..."

Gordon: Very rarely do we have an actual row over them. As Ilona says, the worst was a “discussion” of Aunt Bea’s fate as we loaded the dishwasher, no blows were thrown but the plates were put in with a bit of force. I won that one and she ended up being right about Mahon. I can safely say that whatever ends up in the book is what we agree on.

Well, wet met back in 1994 and started collaborating on our college courses. She is a math and science whiz and I am better at English and History, we figured out quickly that we made a good team when we wrote papers. (He is being modest. He is very good at English and History. The kids keep trying to stump him with historical questions and so far they haven’t managed it. - Ilona) We married in 95 so we’ve been working together for over twenty years, only the last 10 or so have been on books.

Ilona started what would become Magic Bites while we were an Army family. I read what she had and helped a bit. I think that is probably still the case.

No, we work together on everything, she even helps me with the Curran POVs.

[Sonia]

Xelly wrote: "Thank you for answering question. Others have asked some of my questions on Kate, so I wanted to ask about your Innkeeper chronicles.

1. What made you decide to write a serial?
2. What is the har..."

Gordon: It seemed like fun and a nice thing to put out for the fans. Being more sci fi it seemed fitting to release it as a serial like the old Buck Rodgers or Flash Gordon stories. The hardest part is that in trying to put it out every week, it may not be as polished as we like. We get to clean it up a bit before it’s released in its entirety. It’s fun though because the story changes as we write it, it’s not as set in stone as a traditionally published story that has a beginning, middle and end.

Ilona: The hardest part are the changing demographics. We were about 1/3 into the latest Innkeeper when we started getting nice emails from kids. Apparently a lot of teenagers read Innkeeper. So now that we’ve learned that, we had to adjust it a little bit. For that reason, in an online version OFS doesn’t push the envelope quite as fas as KD does.

[Sonia]

Chava wrote: "Hi,
My question is two-fold:
What is the best thing and what's the hardest thing of being a husband-and-wife author team?"

Gordon: The best is that we get to hang out together all day, make up stuff from the comfort of our messy house, and we make a decent living from it. The worst, probably deadlines and travel. When we leave, the girls, our daughters, are home alone. It’s less of an issue now that they’re grown but they still don’t like when we’re required travel for business. We once had to spend a week in California very close to Thanksgiving and got no end of grief for it.

Ilona: The travel is the worst. People think book tours are glamorous, but in reality, you get up at 5:00 am to make it to the airport, you get off the plane, you get to the hotel, if you are lucky, you get something to eat (or not), you try to clean up to look somewhat decent, then you have the event, after which you drag yourself back to hotel praying there is a restaurant there, eat something and fall on your face in bed. Next morning, rinse and repeat.

[Sonia]

BarbaraAnn wrote: "Hi,

Thank you for answering questions about your work. I'm a fan of all your books, but thought I'd ask about the Edge series and Innkeeper series. I really enjoyed the Edge series and loved the c..."

Gordon: Thank you. Not everybody got the first one in Clean Sweep. We both really liked writing the Edge series and we do hope to come back to it someday. If and when we do it will be self-published. Ilona love heist movies like Ocean’s Eleven and it would be so much fun to write a book where the whole Edge crew has to pull off a job like that.

[Sonia]

And that's all.

Hope you like the answers... I was all awwwww when I first read them.

[Midu]

Sonia wrote: "Midu wrote: "No questions, I just wanted to thank the duo for writing because their books help keep my spirits up when I need a pick-me-up the most.

Thanks NBRC!"

Gordon) You’re very welcome, th..."

Eep! Thanks NBRC & the Andrews :D