Yasmine Galenorn: Urban Fantasy, Tattoos, & Caffeine

Yo, hey, and hello.

When Jacquelyn asked me to blog, how could I say no? (After all, she’d just agreed to blog at the Witchy Chicks for me—which she did a couple days ago, so you can find her over there still!). All’s fair in love and hitting that old turnabout’s fair-play button on your friends. ~grins~

So, who the hell am I? (hint, that's me in the picture). I’m Yasmine Galenorn, the USA-Today bestselling author of the Sisters of the Moon Series. Actually, I'm the author of umpteen books. Changeling, the one out in June, was my 18th book on the shelves. Besides Witchling & Changeling, I’ve got 8 nonfiction metaphysical books out, 5 paranormal mysteries in one series, and 3 ‘standard’ mysteries from another series. I’m very proud of all of them, but my heart belongs to fantasy, and I love writing urban fantasy, so am only writing the Sisters of the Moon Series now. Which makes me quite happy, and I’m actually edging a bit closer to sanity in my workaholic-ness. I'm also a caffeine junkie. Big time. Iced triple shot grande rice (or soy) milk peppermint mochas are my drink of choice.

My tagline is: Tattoos and Teacups, because I’m covered with tattoos and love collecting daggers and things like elk antlers and skulls, but I’m really quite a gurly gurl and I always wear dresses (don’t even own a pair of trousers) and also collect teacups and beautiful faerie figurines and crystals.

So, last week I just finished Dragon Dreaming, the fourth book in my Sisters of the Moon Series. It hit my editor’s desk yesterday (yay!) and now I’m waiting for her to approve the synopsis for book five—Panther Rising. Panther Rising is due January 15th, so I’m going to have a busy autumn. But I love my work, I love what I’m writing, I love that my readers are loving it. Urban fantasy with hot guys? So my style. I always wanted to write fantasy, but I wanted to write it on a little more ‘adult’ level and now I’m doing just that! (Just like I always wanted to see an R-rated version of Labyrinth come out…WITH David Bowie…oh yeah…~grins~).

Standard Book Plug:

The Sisters of the Moon Series:

Witchling and Changeling are still rocking the stores, yay! And Darkling is available for pre-order—it will be out in January.

Meet the D’Artigo Sisters—three half human, half-Faerie, wild and sexy members of the OIA—the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. Camille, a witch, Delilah, a werecat, and Menolly, an acrobat extraordinaire turned vampire, are sent Earthside to keep them out of trouble by their superiors, who consider the girls nothing but a bunch of bumbling half-breeds. But the girls soon find themselves smack in the middle of Demon-Central when Shadow Wing, the leader of the Subterranean Realms, decides to attempt a coup on both Earth and Otherworld.

Together with Camille’s uber-hot boyfriends--a magic wielding fox demon, a gorgeous hunk of dragon flesh and a shady but charming Fae--Iris the house sprite, Chase Johnson—a human detective with a penchant for wild women and spicy beef tacos, and Maggie—the girls’ baby calico gargoyle, the three sisters are out to save two worlds, one monster at a time.

And no, I never watched an episode of Charmed and the series is NOT based on it. *grins* (can you tell I get that comment a lot). I was a Buffy girl, through and through (and Spike is my answer to that age old Angel/Spike question).

To answer a few questions:

• Yes, the books are first person.
• Yes, they rotate through the different sisters’ POV. I love writing first person—it lets me get into the character’s head in an intimate way. Witchling is from Camille’s POV, Changeling from Delilah’s, Darkling will be from Menolly’s POV, Dragon Dreaming—Camille again, and now with Panther Rising I’m back to writing through Delilah’s eyes. It’s been a challenge and one I feel that I’ve done a great job with—each sister comes through me in such a distinct voice.
• Yes, there are more books than the first three--it's a series, not a trilogy.
• Yes, there are relationships and some explicit sex, but the main focus is saving the world, so they aren't really romances--not in the standard way of thinking. And the girls can get a little bit kinky a times, after all--they're half-Fae, half-human.
• And yes, I have the most marvelous cover artist in the world—Tony Mauro--and I consider myself very lucky (we authors don’t get a say in that, generally). He’s done an excellent job.

This week, I get to take a little time off—a rare occurrence. But what do I mean by time off? Does this mean I get to run off and play all day? In the immortal words of Aerosmith, dream on!

What my time off this week includes:

• Writing up the synopsis for Panther Rising (done).
• I want to get about 20 pages on a short story I’m writing about Camille and Trillian when they met.
• I have two guest blogs to write up—this one and one for next week at another blog.
• Cleaning house and finishing getting the new furniture all in order.
• Finishing the decorations for autumn (yes, we are headed into autumn here—it will be warm today and tomorrow, but we’re talking mid 70’s warm and that’s about it).
• Balance checkbook, pay bills (that’s a weekly thang but it still needs to be done).
• Contact my jeweler and once again ask “Is my ring ready yet?” (I’ve had this ongoing ring crisis for two months because I commissioned him to make a ring that, apparently, is very, very difficult to make and the poor man went through 32 emeralds—as in breaking them—before having to commission it out to someone else to make…I shudder to think how much money he’s losing on it. However, I wouldn’t have let it get quite that far before I would have decided to pass it on to someone who had the skill necessary).
• Pulling together the rest of my Sisters of the Moon site after my husband does the PHP coding—I do all the pages, graphics, and content, he does the harder coding to make it work on site.
• Getting my forums in order—I think I finally found a way to prevent spammers from registering. Seriously! I’m just not going to let anyone register automatically. I haven’t been deluged with members so I figure I’ve got a good year or so of adding people in one at a time before I get so swamped I have to think of something else. I want to use them as a venue to answer all the writing questions I’ve been getting asked lately so I don’t have to repeat myself over and over again.
• Get my tattoo page back up for people who’ve been asking.
• Answer three months of email that backed up. Or delete and plead ignorance. ~grins~
• Write up my September newsletter and get it online.
• Buy two frames for two custom paintings I had done. One is of my office kitty—Tara’s soooo pretty. And here, you can see just what she thinks about helping me with my writing!

So, as you can see, time off is…anything but. On the plus side, I may be able to carve out a little time to play some Sims or Diablo 2 or Dungeon Siege. You see, I figured out long ago how to work and have some semblance of a life. It’s really quite easy:

• You do your work first, get it done, and don’t let it back up.
• Prioritize. Unimportant stuff can go in the round file.
• You spend quality time with your significant other—sex takes precedence over Scrabble, in other words. Or most everything else except eating and bathing.
• And this is the most important—you don’t sleep. Seriously, sleep is over-rated. Good moisturizer helps the face from getting lined, backrubs take out some of the tension, sex is good for the skin, water keeps the digestion flowing, and as long as you have enough caffeine in your system, well…the world is your playpen.

Thanks for joining me on my rambles today, and I hope you enjoyed the morning jaunt!

~the Painted Panther~
~Yasmine Galenorn~

You can find me at my website, on MySpace, or at the Witchy Chicks. And, of course, your local bookstore.