[Madhu, After Dark] After reading your story 'Wolf's Wife' I'm sure many of your readers, including me, would love to know more about who you are on the other side of the screen?

[Julie, Featured Author] On the other side of the screen is a cheerful goofball, which might surprise people who have read Wolf's Wife or the sequel. All my rage and darker passions come out in my stories—when I write, it's to bleed out the painful things from my past, and everything comes straight from the heart no matter how weird or raw or vulnerable it might be. But outside of spinning stories about the tenderness of beasts, I'm a simple woman with simple tastes, living with my own beast-man and working from home as a freelance illustrator while trying to build a career as a writer.

I love to cook (and to eat, ha!) and recently got into gardening (growing lemon trees from seeds; MORE things to eat). I live in Northern California but prefer hard liquor to wine.

[M] Ooh! *MAJOR SQUEALS* A fellow eater! I love you already! :P And I totes agree about the hard liquor too! But, what inspired you to write such a dark story, which is mythical, racy and slightly melancholic at the same time?

[J] Yay, a fellow food hound! I swear, the first time I legitimately swooned was when my beau first made a meal for me. Fuck the flowers; cook for me and I'm yours!

As for the inspiration behind Wolf's Wife...well, I wrote it in nineteen blurry days as an act of grief. A howl of rage. I'd been depressed and suicidal for months after coming out of an abusive relationship, and also caught up in a nasty writer's block that had lasted for over a year. I had just scrapped another failed writing project, realizing how much I hated following genre norms in an attempt to build a successful writing career. So there I was, at a point where I had to admit to myself just how many behaviors had been hardwired into me from someone I'd trusted and adored, how my careful career plans were sucking my passion dry, and how rotten my personal foundation had become, and I couldn't even write to get away from it. Dark days, you know?

I don't remember what my snapping point was. I just remember sitting down with all this shit boiling over in my head, and out came Wolf's Wife, a story that had nothing to do with author branding or reaching the widest possible audience. A story that was ugly and feral, vulnerable and raw, and pulled straight out of my heart.

I think the mythic tone came through so strongly because I've always loved the dark, sexual undertones of old-school fairy tales, and I've always been interested in pulling werewolves more toward that. So I wanted to write a story with a monstrous, in-between creature that can love like a man and maul like a wolf, living a life of constant fight or flight, and then he meets a woman who isn't afraid of him. A woman who feels ugly, like the best pieces of herself have been taken away, and finds it a relief to be in the company of someone who is at least honest about savagely mauling people instead of hiding those tendencies behind a mask of affection.

The sexuality bleeds right into that with Alice, the heroine, reveling in giving into her base desires. In becoming unleashed, so to speak. Filth and joy is my personal motto when it comes to writing sex, and I wanted the erotic aspects of the story to be both of those.

So yeah, Wolf's Wife is a story of pure, snarling catharsis, and it helped me start the trudge along a slow, painful path to healing up and learning how to be happier with myself. Because of that, it'll always be a little special to me.

[M] I'd have to agree with the cooking part! :P
It's sad to know that you've had to go through a lot of hardships, but we're glad you're fit and fine today!
As far as your story goes, I'd say that you've gotten down every bit of the essence you've wanted to! It's one of my favourite books now!
Have you always wanted to include mythical elements into your stories? And why werewolf and not vampire?

[J] Well, thank you! It makes me really happy to hear when people read it and love it.

Yes, I've always been very interested in weaving mythical elements into my stuff. I've jumped around in various genres/subgenres, but a mythic vein seems to show up no matter what. When I tried my hand at a science fiction novel, I grew more interested in the creation myths and gods of the aliens than in the plot. When I wrote what I thought would be a straightforward paranormal romance, it unspooled into werewolves worshipping a death goddess. I just really dig the primal, ambiguous atmosphere that it can create.

I like vampires a lot, too, and have a series planned around them, but I think werewolves are my main love because they tap into that struggle between the civilized and the wild. You can play vampires a lot of ways—to me, they're great at exploring the thrill of the forbidden, and they do share that 'dark romance with something that can kill you' quality with werewolves. But vampires can't go back to being human; they're stuck as what they are. Werewolves have no firm nature, and their horror and struggles come from sliding back and forth between human and beast, and that is just SO interesting to me.

[M] You've done a splendid job in Wolf's Wife! What was the hardest part of writing this book?

[J] Thank you! And to be honest, I wrote Wolf's Wife in a haze and don't remember what the hardest part was. Writing in general is hard for me, haha. Sometimes it takes nine drafts to feel satisfied with a story. I always want to do better with everything—prose, pacing, plot, characters—and if I'm not careful, I psych myself out and forget about the heart of the story.

[M] When that happens, what do you do to keep yourself grounded to the main part of the story?

[J] I bitch about it, haha! Usually to a handful of friends who are all writers and therefore can commiserate with me. Also to my boyfriend, who also writes and is patience, itself. I never, ever try to problem-solve by writing an outline or plot skeleton. Everything stays in my head, because if I write it out, that only exacerbates the problem—I get lost in the details. But talking about things often helps me see whether I'm having an artistic tantrum or if there's something really wrong with the story.

From there, I just keep trying until I find out what's wrong. Maybe I'm forcing an idea into too short of a word count. That nine drafts thing I mentioned before? That was for a short story where I had a great idea but tried to restrict it to 2,000 words. It ended up taking 5,000 to tell it without starving it for details or rushing the pacing.

Sometimes, it's got nothing to do with the mechanics and I'm just not good enough to tell the story. I'm still settling into myself as a writer. I've been doing this shit since I was seventeen, but so many of those early years were about tackling the technical aspects of writing and figuring out exactly what I wanted to do with my work. By now I've found my style and voice, but I still learn a lot with every story and sometimes an idea remains too complicated for me to work on at that point.

And sometimes, I'm just teetering on the edge of burnout with a particular story. As much as I hate admitting it, I'm not a writing machine. I need to rest and recharge for a day or two, or write a short story to clear my head. Recently, I set aside editing the sequel to Wolf's Wife to write a rough draft of a new novella idea, and it helped so much in resetting my mental focus to a state where I remembered to let the story unfold on its own rather than trying to be perfect about things.

My last-ditch option is to take a shot of something and open a new document to tackle the problem area afresh. When in doubt, try alcohol, ha!

[M] You are lucky to have friends like that! Mine just shoo me away when I try talking about my story stuff!
Also, I agree with the alcohol helping. I did try that :P
If you could choose one favourite character you've written about so far, who would it be?

[J] Well, as fun as all the sexy wolf guys are, I have to go with Alice from Wolf's Wife and Wolf's Bane. She's not the type of tough, kick-ass heroine that always has a smart comeback and comes out on top. In fact, she makes bad decisions and has a lot of flaws, and certain things in life have hardwired her into being as quiet and overlooked as possible. But I love how she persists despite being ground away by a relationship gone rancid. She endures, which I think takes a silent sort of strength.

A dear friend of mine recently pointed out that Alice is the most vulnerable part of my mind, something that startled me to hear. It does make sense, though - I created her as a way to hope that even someone totally exhausted and miserable to the point of feeling numb about life could still keep going and find happiness again. I just, you know, wrapped that all up in werewolves and filthy sex, haha!

[M] The last part of that sounds pretty swell! :P
Do you believe in writer's block?

[J] Right? I definitely believe in adding some sweetness to the bitter flavors of a story, and what better way than great sex?

I do believe in writer's block because I had a nasty period of it that lasted over a year. I think it's different for every person, you know? That it happens for different reasons and that everyone needs to find their way of getting through it. I just fucking bust through it at this point, mostly out of the fear of sliding into another eighteen-month block of starting and dropping stories. Sometimes that means writing four different versions of a chapter before I hit on something that clicks together, but I'm willing to take that. At this point, I'm aware that writing can be a lot of fun and that it can also be a thankless grind. For me, the important thing is not to stop when it grow frustrating. I don't really follow the advice of stepping away to take a break from the story; that only helps me when I'm feeling burned out, which is totally different from writer's block.

So when I get stuck, I just keep chipping away at things. I'll finish the scene or chapter even if I know it's completely wrong, because at least I figured out what's not working. I'll take conversations down different paths. I'll try changing the settings. I'll rearrange the order of what happens in the chapter. Basically, I just fiddle around until it clears up in my head and I understand where to take the story next.

[M] What period of your life do you find you write about most often?

[J] Pretty much all my stories draw from those messy years in my life that bridged leaving a bad relationship and falling into a great one. It's the catharsis thing, you know? I have so much rage left over from that time and writing is a way to release it. So I like writing about characters who learn how to live again and who realize scars don't kill chances at future happiness. And villains who get their throats torn out. I'm petty; I admit it. *grins*

I definitely find it a lot harder to pull from the earlier years of my life. All that raw emotion and search for self-identity I felt while in high school fueled a lot of my earlier work (Good As Dead is the only novel that ever made it to the finished stage), but I don't know if I can tap into that, now. I still have plenty of raw emotion and am still working on becoming a solid, stable person, but now it's all about rebuilding myself rather than discovering myself, which is what I angsted over as a teenager. So yeah, it's going to make the sequel to GAD really interesting to write.

[M] What is the one thing in Wolfe's Wife that reflects you the most?

[J] I had to sit and think about this one for a few days and I'm still not totally sure of the answer. Maybe the people who know me and have also read Wolf's Wife could respond way more quickly and confidently, but... What my mind circles back to is unexpectedly slipping into a relationship that helped me learn how to love and trust again.

My guy is affable and friendly instead of broody and terse, and he obviously doesn't change into a wolf, but the parallels between him and Colton are strong enough that friends love to tease me about it. Weird thing is, I wrote Wolf's Wife months before we fell into a relationship—we were just friends at that point, good ones who had known each other for about ten years. Maybe my subconscious knew more than the rest of me, ha!

[M] What are the most important magazines for writers to subscribe to?

[J] I don't think there are any that are vital for every writer, just because everyone writes so differently and has different goals with their work. Someone writing for the fun of it will want very different advice than someone who plans to self-publish, and someone who wants to self-publish needs vastly different advice from someone hoping to be traditionally published. Instead, I'd say it's best to find as many magazines, blogs, and sites as you can and stick with the ones that help *you*. There is so much writing advice floating around and a lot of it is contradictory, even unhelpful.

Case in point: for me, writing an outline for a story is the same as strangling it to death. My writing flourished after I ditched outlines. Meanwhile, a close friend of mine started using outlines and her craft and output exploded like crazy. So even advice as basic as "outline the story before starting the first draft" can be a godsend or total bullshit depending upon the individual writer.

I do feel that it's important to find opposing opinions and views on writing just to see how differently people approach it. Creatives are very passionate creatures, always butting heads about what's right and what's wrong, what separates good literature from bad...many of the struggles with being a newer writer boil down to learning the rules and then learning how to break them. Listen to other voices and then find your own, you know?

[M] So, what do you think is the most difficult part to write in any story; the starting, body or the ending?

[J] The opening of a story is definitely the most difficult part for me. Since my writing is usually very atmospheric and dreamy, I tend to go for slow, quiet openings, which means I have to work a hell of a lot harder to get the reader hooked into reading beyond the first paragraph. So I always have to think very hard on what feels like a natural opening (like with Wolf's Wife starting off with Alice arriving at a dusty old cabin).

The body of a story isn't that bad for me ever since I realized that tension, conflict, and pacing are what pull the plot forward. A lot of the time, though, I'll underestimate the size, and what I think will be a 30,000-word novella sprawls into an 80,000-word novel (which is what's happening with the sequel to Wolf's Wife).

As for endings, I LOVE writing them. It's so satisfying to bring the journey to an end and see how the characters have changed from the beginning. It's also the point in the story where I'm the most certain about what I want to do with it.

[M] What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?

[J] Bram Stoker is the first guy who comes to mind. The first time I read Dracula, I grew so irritated with all the plotholes, inconsistencies, and total lack of common sense on most of the characters' part. A few years later, I tried reading it again and was able to put aside those problems and enjoy the repressed yet seething sexuality. It still isn't a favorite book of mine, but I appreciate it a lot more.

Herman Melville is another, simply because his stories are always so dense and require patience to absorb. I actually love his stuff now, and he was amazing at weaving symbolism everywhere you can look, but he's not an easy writer to get into. His prose is also so much better than most people make it out to be! Say his name and people will roll their eyes a lot of the time and say he's super boring and wordy, but his writing has this amazing, flowing quality that a lot of classic lit authors had.

[M] Is there anyone you call your mentor?

[J] Nope! I have favorite authors and I have a great group of friends who have seen me through thick and thin, but I've never had a mentor for my writing. Everything I've learned is the result of fumbling my way through things. I've picked up a lot from reading genres outside of what I like to write in, especially classic lit, where half the authors were drunken, miserable wrecks who bled through their words. Also from discussing the technical aspect of storytelling with other writers. Just bouncing ideas and theories off each other.

And when I first started writing, I'd read how-to books and joined critique groups and even took a few writing workshops. Doing all that was good for learning the general advice and writing rules, but I think the most important point for me was realizing how, once I learned the rules, I next had to learn how to break them and find my own style and voice. And that is something I developed just with sheer fucking practice. Starting a story, finishing it, and moving on. Learning from my mistakes and fixing them in the *next* one.

I discovered the hard way that if you pick at one story, one precious masterpiece of an idea for years without finishing it because you want it to be just perfect, then you're stalling out your craft. Instead of finishing a fucked-up, very imperfect story that shows what you did wrong, you keep yourself in limbo while polishing a few aspects of your writing. What do you think will help more, picking at the same five chapters for three years or writing five entire novels? And I'm a perfectionist, so it took me a long time to even grudgingly admit this, but it's okay to finish a story with flaws. Sometimes, the best you can do will still have rough edges and problem spots, but you learn from it and figure out how to do better next time.

[M] Are there any projects which we can look forward to, from you in the future?

[J] Oh man, so many! Right now I'm finishing up Wolf's Bane, the sequel to Wolf's Wife. After that, I have a third story planned for Alice and Colton—Wolf's Kin. That one will go more into how there are others like Colton. There's also a fourth story for them that I want to write—Wolf's Bite. There may be more books than that, but I'm not totally sure at this point.

I'm also working on two other series that are about werewolves. The Werewolves of Crescent City will be a series of sensual dark fantasy books set in a city ruled by warring packs. I already have a related short story collection called Love Bites on Wattpad, but I hope to get the first actual book up by the end of this year.

The third series is the Skin Witch one, which is radically different. Much more thriller/horror in tone, with a big streak of romance, and the worldbuilding blends science fiction elements with paranormal beasties like werewolves, vampires, etc.

Basically, I'm going to keep writing until I'm dead, so you know...be prepared for a lot more stories from me, haha!

[M] We'll be eagerly waiting for it!
From the After Dark team and the thousands who have read your book and loved it, thank you for taking the time to go through this with us!
We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours and we'll be eagerly waiting for it!

[J] Thank you so much! This was a great interview, and I'm excited and honored to have been part of it. A big thank you to the After Dark team and to the readers who enjoy and support my stories!!