Author Chat & Giveaway: Eighth Grave after Dark – Darynda Jones

I got to take part in a very special author chat last week to talk about one of my favorite series.  Below is a transcript for the chat with Darynda Jones.  She shares some insight into the series, her characters and what’s coming in the future.  Enjoy!

Eighth Grave after Dark Author Chat with Darynda Jones

Moderator: Darynda Jones, author of the Charley Davidson series, is with us today.

Darynda, do you want to give us a quick hello and background on the series and the new release? And then we will go down the line and let everyone ask a question of you.

Darynda Jones: Okay.

Thank you so much for being here. I write the Charley Davidson series. It's about a female private investigator who was born the Grim Reaper. She solves cases for both the living and the dead.

The new book, Eighth Grave after Dark, comes out May 19th. It is, obviously, the eighth in the series and we're really excited about it.

Moderator: Awesome. Okay.

And now let's go to Shannon from Cocktails and Books.

Shannon: Hi, Darynda. My question is going to kind of throw out that I have read Eighth Grave. So, Charley's not quite as funny in this book as she has been previously in the series. Is that impending motherhood? Is it just she's growing more comfortable with her marriage to Reyes? What brought all that about?

Darynda Jones: Those all sound wonderful. I'm going to go with those explanations because I like them better than mine. But, I will give you an explanation if you would like it.

Shannon: That would be perfect. Thank you.

Darynda Jones: Okay.

Basically, I'm a plotter and I plot every book down to every last moment before I start writing it. I could not get this book figured out. I had the hardest time with Eighth Grave. Basically it was due and I was still working on the outline.

I'm hoping that my editor doesn't actually hear this, or my agent. I just had the hardest time figuring this book out because I knew all the stuff that was going to happen, and I felt like this is kind of the end of a period of time, and Ninth Grave is going to be like a new beginning in a way.

So I wanted to bring in everybody I possibly could and to revisit these characters that we hadn't seen in a while. I flat could not figure out how I was going to do that. I was sitting there talking to one of my assistants, and she happened to mention—If this is too much of a spoiler, we'll edit it out. But she said, you know, Uncle Bob and Cookie need to get married, and this light bulb, oh, my God. Why did I not think of that?

So that's how I started the book, opened with their wedding, and that way I could bring everybody in. I don't know why that didn't even occur to me. So then I'm figuring that part out and then trying to figure out how I'm going to stall everything else that I had planned for this book.

That's honestly what it was, is that it took me so long to figure the book out, and I didn’t have as long to write it as I normally do. When you have to rush a book, you're not as clever, you're just getting the facts down.

So I feel that the book suffers for that, and I do apologize. But, I like your explanations better.

Shannon: Well, because her tone totally works. I--just with everything that happened in the book, you would expect the tone to take--I was like, oh, I hope she doesn't lose that little sarcastic wit that she always had with everything else that happens. And I thought it would [unintelligible].

Darynda Jones: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm glad.

Moderator: Thanks, Shannon. All right.

Moderator: All right. Awesome. And then last but most certainly not least, we are going to go to Shannon with Cocktails and Books.

Shannon: You always make great--such great secondary characters in this series. I mean they almost have sometimes more of a center stage than Charley or Reyes do. Do you think if you didn't have those strong secondary characters the series would be like it is today?

Darynda Jones: Oh, absolutely not.

I think secondary characters are so important. It's interesting that you mention that because, you know, writers can get in trouble when they fall more in love with their secondary characters than their main ones. Their secondary ones kind of overshadow and take over the story.

So there's kind of this line that you have to keep there, this balance that you have to keep in the story to make sure that they don't take over.

I mean Charley and Reyes, as wonderful and awesome and hot as they are, I just think the series wouldn't be nearly what it is without Cookie and Uncle Bob and Garrett and Mr. Wong and Amber and all of them.

They all make this incredible force, they all play off each other so well, and I just love writing them. I love figuring out what they're going to do next. So, I would say definitely not. They’re very important.

Shannon: I would agree.

Darynda Jones: Well, thank you.

EIGHTH GRAVE AFTER DARK

by Darynda Jones

In stores May 19^th

NO REST FOR THE DEAD prize pack

One (1) winner receives:

• A branded coffee mug;
• plus the complete Charley Davidson series!

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway open to US addresses only.

Prizing and samples provided by St. Martin’s Press.

EIGHTH GRAVE AFTER DARK

Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my life
is to serve as a cautionary tale to others.
–T-shirt

Charley Davidson has enough going on without having to worry about twelve hellhounds hot on her trail. She is, after all, incredibly pregnant and feeling like she could pop at any moment. But, just her luck, twelve deadly beasts from hell have chosen this time to escape onto our plane, and they’ve made Charley their target. And so she takes refuge at the only place she thinks they can’t get to her: the grounds of an abandoned convent. Of course, if hellhounds aren’t enough, Charley also has a new case to hold her attention: the decades-old murder of a newly-vowed nun she keeps seeing in the shadows of the convent.

Add to that the still unsolved murder of her father, the strange behavior of her husband, and Charley’s tendency to attract the, shall we say, undead, and she has her hands full…but also tied. While the angry hellhounds can’t traverse the consecrated soil, they can lurk just beyond its borders like evil sentries, so Charley has been forbidden from leaving the sacred grounds. Luckily, she has her loyal team with her, and they’re a scrappy bunch who won’t let a few thirsty hellhounds deter them.

While the team scours the prophesies, searching for clues on the Twelve, for a way to kill them or at least send them back to hell, Charley just wants answers and is powerless to get them. But the mass of friends they’ve accrued helps. They convince her even more that everyone in her recent life has somehow been drawn to her, as though they were a part of a bigger picture all along. Their presence is comforting. But the good feelings don’t last for long because Charley is about to get the surprise of her crazy, mixed-up, supernatural life….

CHARLEY DAVIDSON SERIES

Introduction to the series:

First Grave on the Right is the smashing, award-winning debut novel that introduces Charley Davidson: part-time private investigator and full-time Grim Reaper..

Charley sees dead people. That’s right, she sees dead people. And it’s her job to convince them to “go into the light.” But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e., murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice. Complicating matters are the intensely hot dreams she’s been having about an Entity who has been following her all her life…and it turns out he might not be dead after all. In fact, he might be something else entirely.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author DARYNDA JONES won a RITA Award for best first novel for First Grave On The Right. As a born storyteller, she grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by, annoying man and beast alike. Jones lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys.

READ AN EXCERPT

http://www.bighonchomedia.com/assets/StMartinsPress/EighthGraveAssets/Excerpt_EightGraveChp1.pdf

LEARN MORE

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