[Madhu, After Dark] Before we can get underway with the interview, just wanted to make sure whether I call you Sabi? And also, thank you for agreeing!

[Sabine Blackwood, Featured Author] Yes, I do like to be called Sabi.

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone really cares enough to want to hear what a madwoman has to say about anything, but by all means... go ahead!

[M] We're all, all kinds of mad, so that's ok :P
Sabi, I would love to know more about who you are, behind the scenes of all the drafts and edits.

[S] *lol* Well, we'll have to see how far down the rabbit hole you would feel comfortable venturing. What would you like to know, because I could probably write you an essay or two without some direction on your part.

[M] Nobody has called me Alice, yet. But, tomorrow's another day, right? Anything could happen :P
But, I'm sure the readers, along with me would love to know more about the uncut version of Sabi, outside of Wattpad!

[S] Anything is possible with the internet, surely!

I'm a bit of a misanthrope, and I say that without any false modesty. I think it comes across to some degree in my first novel, the sense of alienation Witches (especially the exiled Netta) feels. Or I could be reading too much into what I bring into my writing, who knows. I certainly tend to connect to other people through fiction, narrative, as I suspect other people do as well, to a varying degree. That's an essay I could write in and of itself, so I'll stop that line of thought here!

I'm a Walter Mitty, a consummate dreamer who is more interested in submerging myself into fiction/daydream than I am with making connections to other meat puppets. My best friend also happens to be my S.O, who I've been with since... whoo, 2008.

I have a gallows, dark/bizarre sense of humor that comes from the aforementioned sense of alienation. It might just be some kind of weird, mutant whale song I am calling out to those other rare (non-existent) beings who will answer back.

I think I had a love of cartoons, video games, and probably totally age-inappropriate horror movies, since before I started reading *Harry Potter*. I mark reading the first two books in that series as a marker in my life, when I started focusing all of the love I felt for this fictional, breathing world that was growing inside of me, stimulated my need to write.

I work a menial, low-paying job, but it affords me a chance (typically) to work, alone, on my writing, so I take this position with some degree of gladness.

Um. I have a black cat and his name is Rufio. He's the best cat and I will knife fight anyone who says differently.

[M] Well, to be frank, I'm laughing reading your reply and I have to say that my fellow misanthropes are welcome anywhere! :P
*a bit apprehensive about the gallows you own*
And cat lovers are welcome too! If you're going to start talking about Harry Potter, well, we could go on for days at a stretch!
*inhales deeply* feels like I'm talking to a more better version of myself for the interview, right now!
But, before I go about writing my whole life story here, I would love to know how you get the ideas for your books? And what's your biggest Achilles heel when it comes to penning down your thoughts in your work?

[S] Well, I'm glad I didn't bum you out, I have a propensity to either offend or bum people out, whether sarcastically with my dry sense of humor or inadvertently.

Ooh, careful now, you haven't seen the hell portal on the other side of this screen. Hot mess, hot mess.

If we're talking shop (which is the only thing I could do with actually a great degree of seriousness) I get my ideas when I watch/read/play things and I feel either disappointed with where something refuses to "go", how some element/character is handled, ect, ect, or I get this weird seed in my mind that either grows into a mountain almost immediately (a rarity, but has happened to me), or it gestates, sometimes with the smallest of signs that it's there to begin with. In the most rare of cases (Where "Until Daybreak" came from), it comes from me prodding my brain to think of something erotic that has some tie to Halloween.

That story came from growing up on a diet of "just desserts" horror, most notably from *Tales from the Crypt* and wanting to get away from that. A thought that came, quickly, to mind was the idea of the most reviled class of people in relationship stories, short of out and out rapists/abusers. Cheaters.

They're a special favorite of those moral high-grounding stories, as if cheating on someone is cause for an ironic death. Whether or not I agree with the whole concept, I found the whole thing to be a bit... silly and worn out. So I ended up, as I was writing that out free-form (which I only ever do for shorter work) writing the total opposite of that sort of thing. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to read it, but even I was surprised how I took some of these ideas and twisted them into this rather unusual and surprisingly sweet story that became about redemption and self-sacrifice.

For my longer stuff, it's a mix of an organic gestational period that begins with initial planning and is transformed through months of listening to music and sticking it onto my increasingly evolving mechanisms for planning and structure. Boring, dry, dull - I know, but this is the background of what's going into *Monster's Kiss* and what makes it, to me, superior to its original version.

My Achilles' heel is my obsession with making it work, and making it work, NOW. The easiest reason for every mistake I am making is because I am, by and large, self-taught, which is not unusual for most people writing fiction, really. We get taught grammar and punctuation, but finding the soul of the thing is a constant battle, one that is often, erroneously, neglected by our writing classes. This is my first novel, and as a beginner, I am making all sorts of mistakes left and right, but you have to push through them. I tell my S.O this very thing all the time, when they stress about their writing. Nothing worth stressing over, this is SUPPOSED to be fun/therapeutic!

[M] Brainstorming for eroticas over Halloween! Well, I have to say that that's one of the most unconventional inspirations I've known, but hey! You make the boat float! Well, it's more like the next Dawn Treader! Couldn't help the movie reference :P
So, your book, Monster's Kiss, how did it fare during the starting stages? And was it your Halloween fantasies that gave shape to it?

[S] (Heh) Well, I was a writing based off of a prompt for a profile I am no longer affiliated with, and when the contest went caput, I was left holding the story I had written for it. Oh well! I try to show how multi-faceted I am to readers, so they'll follow me, in the hope that even if this novel is not quite a boat-floater, hopefully whatever I share next will be. Boats. A lot of boat talk right now. Boooaatts.

*Monster's Kiss* is my attempt to write THE Paranomal/Weird romance I have never gotten a chance to read. The fact that I tie human sexuality as a norm and a mirror for a person's psyche is what lead to it having numerous... intimate scenes? You could call them that. I suppose.

As a first novel for me, and as the novel was written in its rough draft period during a turbulent period of my life, it was VERY hit-and-miss, but to me it retained this concept of conquering one's fear of the... monster under the bed. And not in a cutesy, twee manner. The re-writing of it to me is emblematic of who I am as a writer and a reader. Obsession to detail and a lack of fear of going where the story wants me to go, no matter the consequence.

[M] I'm a firm believer in "monsters in my head, not under the bed". Always have and always will. So your book has been an awesome revelation with respect to the fact of how the book is written in an unorthodox genre, which actually made me wish I was Netta, not under her circumstances, though.
But, I'm dying to know if you ever got a writer's block for this book?

[S] Oh, you're FUNNY. I like you.

Monsters are my life, I don't know how it happened, but I bonded to the concepts of liking the dragons more than the knights since I was young. Probably could feel a kinship more with Grendel than I would Beowulf, but I could be just hopeful on that point.

I'm always happy to see that the story seems to be feeding something that's lacking in others, and just for myself. I wish I could pin down what it is and just keep copying success so that I could make some money off of it, but I don't know if that's how it works. I could poison my imagination, if I treated it that way. Who knows!

Whoops, almost missed the actual question you asked entirely! I did get writer's block while writing the rough draft, because I forced the story out mechanically and desperately, out of a need to produce content faster than my imagination was willing to give it to me. I needed this story to live, needed it to exist to give me a reason to keep writing.

Writer's block is surmountable with enough dedication to the sometimes monotonous, but often life-saving/affirming, lulling regularity of a process and a schedule. At least, that's how I've beaten it to death. For me, my creativity is a snarling, vengeful beast that takes to complication and being told that something is impossible, takes it into that little cellar it lives in the dark of, and returns to me, often shockingly sooner than later, with something I can't even recognize as having come from my mind. I gave up asking where the cellar leads to a long time ago, out of fear of poisoning the goose that lays golden eggs.

I use "poison" a lot, I only now notice. I am obsessed with poisons, suckling parasites, and willful hosts. My, my, my.

[M] Thank you! :P
Well, know I see why you interlink almost everything with Halloween.
You need a special kind of power to be able to do that, the question skipping I meant! :P

So why don't I do this? *skips over the next few questions*

You said, "Willful hosts"... Read Stephenie Meyers book "The Host"? What's your opinion on that book? And her other books too!

[S] (I do love Halloween, more than any other holiday. It's pure, in a corrupt kind of way, innocent.)

I was gonna read *The Host*, but I saw a review of the movie adaptation by a YouTuber I am a fan of called Your Movie Sucks (I know, sounds bad!), and the whole thing looked like it wasn't my bag. I mean, I LIKE the idea of love triangles when they're handled appropriately and in an interesting, unique way, and I love gross combinations for my "romance" (I love aliens, I really, really do!), but there's something about the way that woman writes that... Well, I'll stop it there, you get the picture. I am phenomenally picky - Harry Potter sort of ruined me for most stories, let's be honest. I really love my female main characters to be Hermione Grangers or Luna Lovegoods. Independant and strong willed and quirky, but in cool ways.

Not the easiest thing to find in the paranormal genre, I've been frustrated to find out, since I got interested in it.

Again, I apologize in advance if I am a buzzkill!

[M] I love Halloween too! But, not entirely sure if it's what I'd term "innocent"
Well, the buzzkill just got killed, cuz honestly, the book is just meh, for me. And I love Luna Lovegood! I presume it would take a certain kind of courage to be that quirky and completely non-cliche.
But, it truly has been great talking to you and I had a hearty laugh too! I'd like to thank you for the time you've taken to answer the questions on behalf of all your readers who, I'm sure, would love your interview!