Six Questions for Guest Author Stacia D. Kelly

In 2013, I was grateful to publish the first fantasy book I’d ever written alongside the amazing, lovely and talented Stacia D. Kelly. (Yes, I’m biased.) The story is “Ichi”, the first book in the Urban Samurai series. The protagonist is a 1,000 year old samurai who hunts and kills all sorts of supernatural things that go bump in the night. My character is the D.C. homicide cop who closes cases alongside her, but doesn’t see any of the supernatural stuff…at least he hadn’t in the past. I had a chance to ask Stacia about how the characters came about. Read on!

nK: Tell us about how you decided on the Urban Samurai series. What was it about the characters that made you want to bring them to life?

SDK: The idea of an Urban Samurai started when Deidre Knight (author/agent/publisher) mentioned at an RWA Conference that she’d love to read about a contemporary female samurai. (I think she actually started my thoughts on the Goddess Chronicles too now that I’m writing this.) I thought, hmmm, I can write a strong female lead who was a fighter. I started researching the history of the samurai and found Tomoe Gozen, a female samurai during the time of the Genpei War (1180–1185). I learned she was a strong archer, horse woman, and swordswoman. From this, Zenshi (Shia) Jin Ronin was born. It was the name I would have thought Tomoe would have chosen after her first death. It means Tender Buddhist Warrior without a Home (now you know something that has not yet shown up in the books).

She seemed to fit perfectly, but then the challenge was, how to get her to a more modern day environment and what she was doing there. I toyed with several ideas and eventually settled on something similar to the Highlander series…she’d been killed and resurrected, but her purpose was different, she was a demon hunter….her first kill after that was a three-headed demon dog randomly killing people in the countryside. No more killing other humans, now she could see more than one realm.

Then, as she survived the years, she ended up with sisters who followed her path, and she was called to help them as they resurrected. Most of them are tied to a historical date as well (another tidbit you have to pay attention to – I challenge people to figure out who Raisa is based on). Once I’d figured out her, I had to do the same for most of the elder sisters. Originally, the idea was to do a book per sister, somehow, Shia and Ryan took over. Go figure 😉

nK: I enjoyed the chance to work on an actual project with you (rather than just a scene here or there like we’ve done in the past.) Can you share with our readers some of what worked (or didn’t) in the writing process?

SDK: It was definitely a learning process, more so about figuring out what tools would help us co-write the most. We’ve always worked well together in real life jobs…we just had to translate it to tech and online. Once we landed in Google Docs, the flow seemed to go much more smoothly. Ichi was written with me on the Mac and Scrivener, you on the PC with Scrivener and lots of IM chats…and I had to resurrect the files what, three times because of brownouts? At that time, if you had the file open on the PC and the power so much as flickered, it would kill our file. I had to go back through several layers on the Mac to retrieve the files. Now, I’m so glad we’re both working from Macs AND when we co-write, it’s in Google Drive. Much more streamlined. I learned I have to make sure we’re not head hopping even with co-writing, but realized I learned how to NOT do so because of our writing together. I’ve also realized we plot well in the hot tub!

nK: Did you feel that you needed to set the book in the Washington, D.C. area out of familiarity or was there another reason?

SDK: Actually, I did set the book in DC on purpose. I wanted to be able to make things as real as possible. However, I did learn with Ichi, that I can research the heck out of a place and write a killer scene without having been there. I think the Tiger Monastery ended up being over 4,000 words and that was all research on Google and YouTube. However, that being said, I wanted to be able to get out, research in person, show the scents, the little things that made DC, well… DC. I wanted to be able to post up pics on Instagram to tie in things. I was trying to figure out how to make the series more all encompassing. Besides, it gives us a fun prospect of running into JT Bock’s characters in the near future.

nK: The enemies in this book are both human and supernatural. What qualities or quirks do you look for in a villain?

SDK: Evil comes in many forms, human, demon….other. I’m not biased. In Ichi, our villain was human with paranormal ties (spoiler). I believe in Ni (upcoming Book 2), we have a demon using a human and in San (Book 3), it’s pure demon. Maybe we’re evolving! Actually, I’m sure we’ll be all over the place for each story because we brain storm such unique challenges. They all have their strengths and their flaws. Sometimes, they might be redeemable. But no spoilers there. And, I’m pretty sure the people sitting next to us in the outdoor cafe last Spring who thought we really were plotting how to traffic humans for a serial killer. We need to come with warning labels when we’re out and about.

nK: As for the demons, what type of research do you do to design the inhuman army of your villains?

SDK: I created a demonic flea army for the Bubonic plague (not sure which book that shows up in)…..I think it just came to me when I was creating the timeline for the sister’s births and deaths.

The demons…I’m not sure exactly where they come from. The Rissu was an image that formed in the darkness while I was writing the scene, and the race evolved as we wrote. Even more so when one of our friends created an image of one (he’s on the cover too). For some of the others, I scoured the Internet. I’ve researched Djinn, succubi, witches and more. I’m sure I’m on an NSA watchlist somewhere too for the types of research I end up doing.

nK: What can our readers expect from you in 2014 and beyond?

SDK: Well, if I get out of my own way, Gaian will be coming out in April for Earth Day. Ni is also in the editing process as our joint project, and FitYou will be the non-fiction out by the end of the year. In between all that is regular writing for several publications on the healthcare front. And blogging, I’m making sure I’m blogging more. Oh, and we’ve been asked to do some short stories for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. That will be a very interesting project!

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Stacia D. Kelly, Ph.D., is the author of the fiction works, “Phyxe: Goddess of Fire”, “Ichi”, and the upcoming “Gaian.” Her non-fiction work includes “Reduce You”, “Muse”, and “Nine Months In, Nine Months Out.” Read more at www.staciakelly.com.