Hello dear readers,
I do hope you’ve missed me! If not, don’t worry, I will just go sulk in my writer’s closet. Today I have a wonderful interview ready for you. My guest is: Elicia Hyder, author of “The Soul Summoner” series, “The Detective“, “To Be Her First” and “The Bed She Made“.
Phew, now with that out of the way, let’s get on with some of the questions.
Q1. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process? Do you have a particular routine you like to stick to?
Elicia: I probably have less “process” than any other author you’ll ever talk to. Ha! I binge write. Inspiration will strike, I think about it for a few months, and then I’ll have a lightbulb moment when I know it’s time to start writing. I won’t do anything else during that time like sleep, eat, or remember to feed my kids. (It’s a good thing I have a super-supportive husband!) I’ll write a novel in 2 weeks (average). Then I’ll spend forever editing it.
May: Two weeks? That’s insane! It takes me about 3-4 months to put together the first draft. I admire your ability to not sleep as well. I can’t do that to save my life.
Q2. Your book: “The Soul Summoner” is a paranormal/mystery/romance, what made you write it?
Elicia: The Soul Summoner started from an inside joke that dates back to high school. My best friend still swears that I have Sloan’s superpower of being able to talk about someone and making them show up. A couple of years ago, I was on vacation with my husband at Disney World. We had a conversation about a mutual friend of ours from childhood. Neither of us had seen or heard from this guy in 20 years. That night, I was telling him about my best friend’s joke that I could summon people, and the very next day as we wandered down Main Street of the Magic Kingdom, I got a Facebook alert. It was a friend request from the guy we had been talking about the day before. My husband’s face went solid white and his eyes nearly fell out of his head. Thus… the idea for the book was born.
May: Maybe you do have a superpower in there somewhere. Use it for the good of humanity and write more great books.
Q3. If you had a choice to go on an evening date with one of your characters, who would you take and where?
Elicia: I would take Warren Parish to anywhere he would have me. Ha!
May: Oh? He did seem like a fun-loving character, so I’m sure it would be a great adventure with him *wink wink*. Personally, I would probably run off with Lucious from my series, but I doubt he’d want to leave Helena behind. Never mind. A writer is forever a third wheel.
Q4. Thinking outside the box here; if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go to write and why?
Elicia: I would move into one of those over-the-water bungalows in Bora Bora.
May: I’m already daydreaming about those.
Q5. Do you have any advice for the budding writers out there?
Elicia: Don’t quit. This business is haaaaard and it has days that will make you want to rock yourself in a corner. But don’t quit. With each novel you write, the better you’ll get. And support other writers. There’s too much competition between authors these days and there’s a tendency to tear each other down rather than build each other up. I want to work with my “competitors” because their readers could also be my readers and vice versa. And I’ve made some incredible like-minded friends along the way. Once I got this concept through my thick skull, I did some cross-promotion with some other writers and guess what happened… ALL of our sales went up.
May: True. Greed can ruin us all if we’re not careful. In a way, it’s a give and take business. The more you give, the more you’ll get back. Just don’t give cake away…you won’t get it back.
Q6. Have you ever encountered a writer’s block? If yes, how did you overcome it?
Elicia: We all have writer’s block from time to time. I deal with it in two ways: I try to power through it. I’ll do some free writing to try and shake some ideas loose. If that doesn’t work, I take a bubble bath. I think better in the tub.
May: Dang, I only got a shower! Overall, it seems like taking your mind off the immediate thing and trying to relax a bit and think of something else may indeed help us. If not, there’s always cake.
Q7. This may be an odd one but bear with me. Do you believe in fairies?
Elicia: I believe in Tinkerbell. She lives right down the road from me. Aside from her, not so much.
May: *laughs* I do wish they were real, but I have yet to encounter one.
Q8. Can you share your feelings with the world about how you felt when you published your first book?
Elicia: I felt sick. Literally. I was in the middle of chemotherapy and I self-published “The Bed She Made” because I was a bit afraid I would die from cancer and never see it in print. To my shock, it became a best seller on Amazon and won a Watty Award.
May: That’s something to celebrate. I’m so glad your stories reached so many people. It’s something that makes every writer happy, knowing that their work is appreciated and loved.
Q9. Cake or cheesecake?
Elicia: That’s like asking me to choose between my kids! But I’ll have to give the edge to cake as long as it has buttercream frosting.
May: It was a difficult question. Even I am struggling because both choices have ‘cake’ in the name. So, I have to go with the original cake as well >.<
Q10. Please tell us a bit about your ongoing projects, books, events.
Elicia: I am wrapping up the final edits on Book Two of The Soul Summoner series. I’m planning to release it in February.
May: Did you hear that everyone? Another book is coming out next month! Hope you’re ready for some more mystery and handsome detectives.
As always, to help you get to know her work better, read the blurb to “The Soul Summoner” below.
Blessed–or cursed–with a connection to the souls of others, Sloan Jordan can see the best in people… and the worst. For twenty-seven years, she’s kept her ability a secret, but eleven young women have been murdered in the mountains of North Carolina, and Sloan may be the only hope of finding their killer. She has just agreed to help Detective Nathan McNamara with the case, when a stranger—who is as alluring as he is terrifying—shows up at her doorstep with a dark past and another puzzling mystery: she can’t see his soul at all. Now Sloan is on the hunt for a deadly psychopath with two irresistible men. One of them would die for her, and the other would kill to keep her safe.
This concludes the interview with the beautiful Elicia Hyder. So, want to check out some more of her works or simply stalk her on social media? You can! Here are the links: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and her website.
Note: Elicia often runs deals on her books, so keep a close eye out on her pages.
Author May Freighter 