I Have a Secret...

In my last post, I referred to a writer's group I procrastinated in was involved with from about 1991-96. Anonymous Writers of London were a group of people--mothers, fathers, students, retirees and day-job workers--who gathered on a bi-weekly basis to share and critique their work in progress and learn from one another. There were a few talented 'up-and-comers' in the group. One woman in particular, in my humble opinion, displayed a tremendous work ethic and regularly demonstrated a writing style and voice that proved she was ready to make the leap to the elusive 'next level'. The young lady? Her name was Kelley Armstrong.

For the benefit of those who may not have heard of Ms. Armstrong, she is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nadia Stafford mystery series and the Otherworld series of novels. The 10th book in the series, Frostbitten, is now available. Her second Otherworld anthology for charity, Tales of the Otherworld, will be out in April 2010 and The Reckoning (third book in the Darkest Powers Trilogy, a YA urban fantasy) will be available May 2010. More on Kelley's background and her books can be found at Wikipedia here.

Lori Titus at Flashes in the Dark did a great interview with Kelley Armstrong last Sunday in her regular 'Sunday Special' feature. For those of you who may have missed it I have the link here. I have known of Kelley's success as a writer of horror, fantasy, and crime fiction for years but have never contacted her since our AWOL days...until last week. I emailed her assistant, Alison, who kindly passed along my message to Kelley, who has been in Montreal this past week end as 'Author Guest of Honour' at the Con*Cept convention. She graciously took time out of her busy schedule to get back to me and agreed to a 'Questions and Answers' session here on my blog.

I invite all of my online friends--writers of horror, fantasy, mystery, crime fiction, etc.--to submit questions for Kelley Armstrong to answer. I also ask you to pass on my request to your readers in hopes of getting a great pool of questions. I will collect the questions and pass them on to Kelley. She will return her responses and I will post the questions and answers on my blog in the near future.

Some points that I would like to make about this Q & A session:

• I will send all questions to Kelley but, depending on the number of questions and time constraints, she may not get to them all.


• I will post the questions and answers, but not the names of the people that wrote the question (to protect the 'shy', or in the event that not all are answered or there are duplicates of questions).


• I am confident there will be some creative 'thinking outside the box' sorts of questions. There are some regularly asked Q & A at her website here, so I would advise checking it out to avoid asking her questions she frequently receives. Actually, check out her website anyway as there's a tremendous amount of information to be found there.


• Rather than posting your questions in the comments section, I ask that you please email them to me at awdavidson.nl@gmail.com (I'll give until end of the day Wednesday the 7th).
  
  
  I think that Kelley Armstrong is affording us a unique opportunity to 'pick her brain' about all things horror and fantasy. She is a creator of otherworlds with vampires and werewolves, with witches and demons. Kelley has had experience with online fiction, short stories in anthologies, E-serials and episodic novels with continuing plot lines. She even noted in her email that she has participated in NaNoWriMo and hosts a group on her site to encourage others. I look forward to reading your submitted questions. Thanks!