Today’s Pride Month (EXTRA!) interview is with author Jordan L. Hawk:
Hi, Jordan! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during the current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?
Hi, and thanks for having me on the blog!
I’ve tried a few different approaches, but focusing on getting what feels like a “small” amount of work done every day seems to work best. What would have been a small amount before is about all I have the energy left to do, so I do that and refuse to feel guilty about not doing more.
Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: this past year, you announced you are transgender. How has that self-discovery influenced or informed your writing?
I don’t think I’ve had the chance to really notice yet. Certainly it’s shone a light on a lot of the themes present in my work, but I find I’m still drawn to “person with a secret about their identity” stories.
You’ve recently ended your well-regarded Whyborne & Griffin series. Did you always intend for the series to run the number of books it did? I know I’m not the only fan who wishes it were longer!
I’m a big believer in endings, and though I know I could have continued on indefinitely, I felt ending the story would give it weight and meaning. I think we’ve all known series that overstayed their welcome, and I did not want W&G to turn into one of them! I never had a set number of books so much as “here’s a list of what I want for the story, so which part or parts works for the next book.” I’d say by Maelstrom (book 7) I did know it would end with book 11, though.
You’re not done with the city of Widdershins, though. Can you tell us anything about the spin-off series you’re launching?
Rath & Rune follows the adventures of Sebastian Rath, librarian and chief archivist at the Ladysmith Museum’s library, and Vesper Rune, newly hired bookbinder and conservator. There’s murder, evil books, necromancers, and of course romance. Book 1, Unhallowed, will be out July 17.
Since I recently ran a “Series Saturday” post about your Hexworld series, I’d like to focus a few questions there. The world-building is a bit more intricate than in W&G or Spirits – tell us how magic works in Hexworld.
Magic in Hexworld needs three ingredients: a hex (usually a drawing) to hold and shape the magic, a familiar to provide the magic, and a witch to channel the magic from familiar into hex.
Familiars shift between human and animal shapes. They have to form a magical bond with a witch in order for the witch to use their magic, as they can’t charge hexes on their own. Unfortunately this has led to a societal view of familiars more as resources to be exploited than people with their own lives and desires.
The formula for Hexworld so far is that you’ve introduced new witch-familiar combinations in each book and focused on their romantic ups-and-downs. Will there come a point where you’re no longer introducing new couples?
The upcoming Hexworld series, Roaring Twenties, will focus on a single couple.
If I remember correctly, the characters from your novellas “A Christmas Hex” and “Wild Wild Hex” have yet to be tied into the main novels. Is there any plan to see those characters again? (Given where Wild Wild Hex takes place in relation to the novels, that one might be a bit hard.)
Those were both one-offs, and I don’t currently plan to revisit those characters.
What are you working on now? What’s next out of the gate?
I’m currently working on the next SPECTR novella, Harvester of Bones, and doing research for Hexworld: Roaring Twenties.
And finally, where can interested people find you and your work online?
The easiest place to check is my website: http://www.jordanlhawk.com, which has links to all the places my books are sold. You can also find me on FaceBook at http://www.facebook.com/jordanlhawk and Twitter at https://twitter.com/jordanlhawk.
Jordan L. Hawk is a trans author from North Carolina. Childhood tales of mountain ghosts and mysterious creatures gave him a life-long love of things that go bump in the night. When he isn’t writing, he brews his own beer and tries to keep the cats from destroying the house. His best-selling Whyborne & Griffin series (beginning with Widdershins) can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook.