Name: Ilona Andrews
Books: Kate Daniels seriew (#1-7),The Edge Chronicles (#1-4), Clean Sweep, Silent Blade, Gunmetal Magic, and various short stories and novellas
Where to find their books: Barnes&Noble, Audible, AbeBooks, Book Depository, Kobo, Amazon, Indigo, Half.com, Alibris, Ibooks, Better World Books
where to find the author: Ilona-andrews.com, twitter, facebook, goodreads
Books: Kate Daniels seriew (#1-7),The Edge Chronicles (#1-4), Clean Sweep, Silent Blade, Gunmetal Magic, and various short stories and novellas
Where to find their books: Barnes&Noble, Audible, AbeBooks, Book Depository, Kobo, Amazon, Indigo, Half.com, Alibris, Ibooks, Better World Books
where to find the author: Ilona-andrews.com, twitter, facebook, goodreads
Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. author Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the United States Army.
Gordon and Ilona currently reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs and a cat. They have co-authored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and romantic urban fantasy of The Edge.
Interview:
A: So far, it has worked out fairly well. First we plot it out. Usually floating in the pool while drinking beer. We are very strict with ourselves and will stay in there until we come up with something. Before we sit down to write a book, we know what’s going to happen. It’s more of an outline then a timeline though. We normally have the beginning and the end figured out, the hard bit is getting from point a to c. We make that up as we go along. Our computers are in the same room and we send the rough draft back and forth to each other via dropbox. Ilona is the voice of the female characters, whereas I am responsible for the guys. What they say and how they say it. We also choreograph the fight scenes together to make sure that they make sense. Usually with wooden spoons. If there are a lot of combatants, we will recruit our reluctant teenage children. They don’t like it but it puts food in them and clothes on their backs.
Q: I absolutely love the way the vampires in the Kate Daniels series are written, they are so unlike any other vampires in current fiction. What inspired you to make them like that?
A: Thanks. Those come from Ilona. She chose to make her vampires more traditional. If you think of the first vampire movie, Nosferatu, he ain’t pretty. It was not really until Bela Lugosi that vamps became sexy. At least on film. Stoker’s Dracula was even very different from the original Slavic myths in which they were basically risen corpses. What’s erotic about that? We wanted them to be different from the smooth sexy vamps that were very common in UF of the time. Basically the books we read in high school and college. That said, we are huge fans of Anne Rice and her Vampire Chronicles.
Q: If you could trade places with one person for a month, living or dead, famous or not, fictional or real, who would it be? Why?
A: For me, it would be Flash Gordon, movie version, old cartoon or comics. Why? Because Mongo is awesome. It’s a huge planet with an ethnically diverse population of humans, Hawk men and Lion men, where magic and advanced technology co-exist, and it’s ruled by an immortal, immoral emperor and his hot daughter. For Ilona, Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service. She could fly, do magic, swim in the sea and have fun. The setting of the film is very charming. So there you go, Ilona would be a teenage witch and I would be galactic explorer and as Queen put it “Savior of the Universe.”
Q: When most authors write multiple series, the characters, plot, setting, etc. tend to be extremely similar whether they want them to be or not. All of your books that I have read so far have a few minor similarities, most contain shape shifters of some sort and some names are re-used, yet the only real thing they have in common is how awesome they are. How do you keep your writing from stagnating?
A: Hmmm, I don’t know. It probably helps that there are two of us and we read outside the genre. I tend toward hard boiled mysteries and Heroic Fantasy while Ilona is big on Military Sci Fi as well as romance. I think if we only read Urban Fantasy it would show in what we write, I hope that we bring something from the books we love into our writing. For the Edge, we wanted each book in the series to be able to stand alone with a HEA ending for each couple. In that series, both Jack and George are shape shifters but not like those of the Pack in the Kate books. In the Burn for Me, the first Hidden Legacy book, people are magic, can do magic but the world is very much like ours. No ancient gods wreaking downtown or flying snakes. Just beautiful billionaires with superpowers. We want this series, published by Avon, to have more of a romantic element along with intrigue and Michael Bay explosions. Can I say that?
Q: I have read all the Kate Daniels books that are currently out, and so far Curran and Kate have yet to truly duke it out without being interrupted, so in a no-holds-barred, uninterrupted fight, which one of them would win?
A: Depends. If the magic is up, Kate uses a power word and her blood to incapacitate and then decapitate Curran. To really kill him you would have to cut off his head like in Highlander. If the magic is down, she’s done. He lets her stab him, pulls her close and cracks her skull like an egg shell with his huge cave lion jaws. Physically, he’s just much stronger and faster than a normal human being or even your average shapeshifter.
Q: Lastly, do you have a teaser from either a current work or one of your other books that you would be willing to share?
A: I can give you a chunk of Burn for Me, if that’s cool.
People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.
John Rutger lied because he was a scumbag.
Nothing about his appearance said, Hey, I’m a despicable human being. As he stepped out of the hotel elevator, he seemed like a perfectly pleasant man. Tall and fit, he had brown, slightly wavy hair with just enough grey on his temples to make him look distinguished. His face was the kind of face you would expect a successful, athletic man in his forties to have: masculine, clean-shaven, and confident. He was that handsome, well-dressed dad at the junior football league yelling encouragements at his kid. He was the trusted stockbroker who would never steer his clients wrong. Smart, successful, solid as a rock. And the beautiful redhead holding hands with him was not his wife.
John’s wife was named Liz, and two days ago she hired me to find out if he was cheating on her. She had caught him cheating before, ten months ago, and she’d told him that his next one would be his last.
John and the redhead drifted across the hotel lobby.
I sat in the lobby’s lounge area, half hidden behind a bushy plant, and pretended to be absorbed in my cell phone, while the small digital camera hidden in my black crocheted purse recorded the lovebirds. The purse had been chosen precisely for its decorative holes.
Rutger and his date stopped a few feet away from me. I furiously shot birds at the snide green pigs on my screen. Move along, nothing to see here, just a young blond woman playing with her phone by some shrubbery.
“I love you,” the redhead said.
True. Deluded fool.
The pigs laughed at me. I really sucked at this game.
“I love you too,” he told her, looking into her eyes.
A familiar irritation built inside me, as if an invisible fly was buzzing around my head. My magic clicked. John was lying. Surprise, surprise.