Broken Soul by Faith Hunter (upcoming release, with Q&A)

I am thrilled to have a few questions and answers from author Faith Hunter about the heroine of her 'Skinwalker' series...



                            

Alpha Kick-Ass 

1. How many times has Jane kicked your ass?

Every. Single. Book. She is willful and destructive and protective of her friends and those she claims as family. She thinks violence is always the first method of choice in dealing with problems. She has no taste in clothes. Her taste in men is suspect. (Until BROKEN SOUL.) And will not cuss, even when something should be said. Just … Drives me nuts.

2. We all know Jane is powerful—but I think being an Alpha and a kickass UF hero is more than physical strength. How has she out-smarted her opponents in the past?

Jane is always learning, watching her opponents, deducing their weaknesses and updating her weapons. In Broken Soul, Jane gets to … uh … has to … start learning how to use a sword. She pretty much hates it, but Beast pretty much loves it. Of course, Beast loves anything that kills prey, and the flying claws (Jane’s throwing knives) and her long claws (swords) are favorites! But Jane also uses her brain when it comes to turning the weaknesses of her opponents against them, especially Leo Pellissier, the master of the city. Leo believes he has a vamp-version of the Devine Right of Kings. Jane and her new best pal Adelaide are forcing Leo into the modern world with a mixture of brains, moxie, and snark.

Jane also protects her family—not pack. Jane is two-souled, and her second soul is a mountain lion she calls Beast. Mountain lions don’t do pack, except for their female kits, which sometimes hang around for years. Of course, now, Jane has family. The Everharts, the Truebloods, and her newest family—the Younger brothers—and the people she loves have changed her perspective on how to protect and how to be protected.

3. Is there anything Jane wouldn't do to protect those she considers 'hers'?

Jane has a lot of problems. 

With possession. Her Beast is possessive of everyone she claims as family, and of any man Beast wants to mate with. Her favorite word is “Mine.”

With morals and ethics. As a child Jane was in training to be a Cherokee War Woman, with all the violence and judgment that once sometimes required. Then came the Trail of Tears and her grandmother forced her into her wesa form (bobcat form) and put her out into the snow in a faint  hope to keep her alive. Grandmother succeeded, but not the way she intended, and Jane did black magic by accident to stay alive. One hundred-plus years later, Jane was raised in a Christian children’s home, where she was expected to put violence away and solve personal problems with forgiveness and kindness when she would rather kick butt and as questions later. So she has always been in a moral and ethical limbo, not sure which parts of her previous life to draw upon.

Recently Jane was absolutely certain she would never use black magic items or commit murder for any reason. But then people she loved got into trouble, and she was being pulled in many different directions. Her magical compass stopped pointing north and started pointing to expediency—meaning she began to believe that the end often justified the means.

4. Would Jane ever back down from a fight? What if she knew she would lose?

Of course she’d back down. Jane has walked away from fights in the past, fights where winning and losing both meant making worse problems. The fight she would never back down from, is one where walking away meant that other people would be hurt. Jane would fight to the death to save others. And it’s worse now with new people in her life, people she loves like family. She would give her life to save them, but … sometimes even death isn’t enough to give to protect those she loves.

5. What is one quality Jane has that makes Jane a top alpha predator?
 

Jane has her Beast, the mountain lion soul that shares her own power and strength and abilities with Jane, to help her defeat evil. Beast sets Jane apart, making her the Apex Alpha, the Maximum Menace. LOL

New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter writes dark urban fantasy and paranormal urban thrillers.

Her long-running, bestselling, Skinwalker series features Jane Yellowrock, a hunter of rogue-vampires. Her Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series features Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality. She has a new paranormal crime solving series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram, who can siphon away the magic of others, to be released in late 2015.

Under the pen name Gwen Hunter, she has written action adventure, mysteries, thrillers, women’s fiction, a medical thriller series, and even historical religious fiction. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. Under all her pen names, she has over 30 books in print in 29 countries.

Faith Hunter writes full-time, and is a workaholic with a passion for jewelry making, white-water kayaking, travel, all which appear in and are used in her novels. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven stayed turned off for so long that it refused to come back on and had to be replaced, but she is having a hankering for homemade bread, and is considering getting back to baking in her remodeled kitchen. Occasionally, she remembers to sleep. The jewelry she makes and wears is often given as promo items to fans who come to her signings, and is used as prizes in contests. She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their rescued Pomeranians to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast. (The poms don’t whitewater. The pampered dogs stay in the RV in lazy, air-conditioned comfort!)

Faith is a founding member of MagicalWords, a writing forum at www.magicalwords.net geared to helping writers of fantasy and other genres.

For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net , www.gwenhunter.com  and www.magicalwords.net. To keep with her, join her fan pages at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter



New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter writes dark urban fantasy and paranormal thrillers, including the Skinwalker series, featuring rogue-vampire hunter Jane Yellowrock, and the Rogue Mage series, a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality series, featuring Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage. She has a new series under wraps.


A few of the Jane Yellowrock series include:
                    


The Thorn St. Croix series includes: