Author Saturday Spotlight: Jordan Castillo Price *Interview and Giveaway*

It all started when a friend asked me if I read the PsyCop Series by Jordan Castillo Price. I hadn't of course so he told me to buy the first one and go from there... Book after book I never stopped. I didn't read anything else just that series. When I closed the last book I had a book hangover. 

It's a good series when you miss it after you've read the whole thing. It's a great series when you can't wait to do it again! The PsyCop series is by far one of the best sci-fi, thriller I've read in a very VERY long time.

It starts here:

Blurb:
Victor Bayne, the psychic half of a PsyCop team, is a gay medium who’s more concerned with flying under the radar than in making waves.

He hooks up with handsome Jacob Marks, a non-psychic (or “Stiff”) from an adjacent precinct at his ex-partner’s retirement party and it seems like his dubious luck has taken a turn for the better. But then a serial killer surfaces who can change his appearance to match any witness’ idea of the world’s hottest guy.

Solving murders is a snap when you can ask the victims whodunit, but this killer’s not leaving any spirits behind.

I was hooked and there wasn't more I could do then to ride it out. Victor Bayne is outstanding. He's funny, witty, a bit awkward (which makes him even more perfect) Oh yeah, and he can see dead people. Jacob Marks is his other half and pretty much everything Victor needs in his life. I love the two of them and I love how Jordan mixes an amazing plot with a kickass cast of characters!



Mnevermind is another terrifically written series that really hit home for me. Jordan sticks with her amazing ability to write great sci-fi/ paranormal stories, but in this series she has a character on the spectrum. Autism spectrum if you aren't familiar.

Blurb: Book 1
Every day, Daniel Schroeder breaks his father’s heart.

While forgetting your problems won’t solve them, it does seem like it would make life a heck of a lot easier. Daniel thought so once. Now he knows better. He and Big Dan have always been close, which makes it all the more difficult to break the daily news: the last five years were nothing like his father remembers.

They’re both professionals in the memory field—they even run their own memory palace. So shouldn’t they be able to figure out a way to overwrite the persistent false memory that’s wreaking havoc on both of their lives? Daniel thought he was holding it together, but the situation seems to be sliding out of control. Now even his own equipment has turned against him, reminding him he hasn’t had a date in ages by taunting him with flashes of an elusive man in black that only he can see.

Is it some quirk of the circuitry, or is Daniel headed down the same path to fantasy-land as his old man?

Blurb: Book 2

Elijah is on the autism spectrum, so the tasks of day-to-day life most people breeze through are a challenge for him. His career suffered because he never got the hang of schmoozing, and now his talents are being wasted teaching classes at the mall. His social circle is limited to his ex, his therapist, and a structured inclusion group at the Rec Center. The one bright spot in his life is the memory science of Mnemography.

Although he loves nothing better than devouring the latest research and tinkering with all the specialized equipment, he never clicked with any other experts in the field until he met Daniel Schroeder. Daniel runs a memory palace—he even writes his own mnems—and that shared interest alone would make him fascinating. But Daniel and Elijah met under unusual circumstances, where the statement, “I like you, and I think you like me,” held some surprising nuances.

Now Elijah suspects he’s gay, but the few prominent people in his life are less than supportive. Some are downright hostile. Elijah might not be neurotypical, but he’s plenty smart. Surely there’s some way to get people to accept him for who he is. If only he could figure out how

I had zero idea what I was in for with this series. I simply knew I had to read more of her work. As a mother of an autistic child, this series was a beautiful surprise. Jordan explains so much about Aspergers and how it affects a person, as well as those around them. It's remarkable!

I can go on and on about her work. She's written so much. Check out her books on Goodreads to see: 

JCP on Goodreads 


***INTERVIEW***

1. PsyCop is a pretty HUGE deal. It is a favorite of mine, I adore Victor! There are so many books and it's so detailed and tricky. How did you plot this series out and leave no plot holes?

Thank you so much, Meredith! I think I must plot a lot like I’ve heard comic book writers plot. They leave a lot of details hanging, and then later on they can pick up those threads again when they need to. I had an overall plan for Vic to come into his power while revealing his backstory in tantalizing bits, but obviously that’s pretty vague with lots of wiggle room. Rather than introducing someone new as I tell the story, I tend to reach back into the series and find someone who’s been mentioned before, even if it’s just in passing, and then use them to play the roles I need. This way people keep cropping up in Vic’s life and it seems more planned, like I planted them earlier than I really did. Einstein was a good example of this. He appeared in flashbacks first, then I brought him into the current storyline.

The final main PsyCop book will take additional care and scrutiny on my part. I’ll need to poke through the whole series for dangling threads and figure out ways to resolve them so readers feel satisfied.

I’m planning to have eight main PsyCop books total, plus a Crash novel and a collection of PsyCop shorts.

2. Mnevermind (Both books) are near and dear to my heart. One of the characters is autistic. As a mother of an autistic child I first want to commend you for writing him so perfectly as someone on the spectrum. Can you tell us how you researched, and perhaps what you learned about it?

I’m really pleased you think the character reads as a plausible autistic adult. I was feeling rebellious about the love interest being expected to be tall, dark and handsome. So I made him tall, dark and handsome…and autistic. Which trumps everything else, at least for him, because he has mannerisms that others find off putting.

I read quite a few books and watched several films, mostly biographies, but something that helped me very much was YouTube. Many autistic people create videos to give one another advice. I find it riveting. And the types of things they choose to point out to other folks on the spectrum gave me a big clue as to what sorts of snags they regularly contend with.

If I learned anything, it was to not take my empathy for granted. I tend to be overly empathetic, and able to ascribe all kinds of meaning and nuance to a single glance. (Whether it’s accurate or a projection is another story, I’m sure.) After writing an autistic protagonist I could think about what it would be like to be the polar opposite, to never have any gut sense of a situation’s implied subtext.

3. Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

I’ve always liked to make stuff, though it wasn’t always stories. I’ve been in bands (I wrote really catchy songs) and I’ve done both fine art and commercial art, and I love all kinds of crafts. I didn’t start writing fiction seriously until I was almost thirty and I got my first computer.

There’s something really direct about writing and self-publishing today that I haven’t experienced before in any other medium. I can write a piece, produce it myself (I hire editors), and put it up for sale—and my ebook is there on Amazon right next to a Stephen King. Isn’t that amazing? I think it’s like voodoo! I feel phenomenally grateful to be alive in this time.

4. Channeling Morpheus is many characters instead of 1 or 2. In that series do you have one or more of those characters that are your favorite? Can you tell us why or what it is about them that makes it so?

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I think that structuring the series as a number of novelettes makes it easier to follow more side characters, because they are grouped logically in the individual novelettes.

My favorite supporting character in Channeling Morpheus is Dr. Harman, the vampiric cancer researcher. I like him because he’s complicated. It’s hard to tell if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. It’s hard to know if the main characters should go to him for help or run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. It must be weird to be unaging. I liked the idea of this dweeby young doctor from 1950 being a perpetually dweeby young doctor for the rest of his long, long life. Even when he’s a crabby old man inside.

5. Do you think that the cover of a book plays an important part in the buying process?

Totally, I think it’s crucial. The cover needs to convey a lot of information. People should be able to tell at a glance the genre and mood of the story. Thrillers look different from romance novels which look different from literary fiction, even at thumbnail size. But what about m/m? It’s a new genre which can be mystery, or fantasy, or contemporary. Some is romance-based whereas some is more like speculative fiction with a gay relationship subplot, but they’re not structurally a romance novel.

There’s a certain look that m/m seems to have developed which is a couple of naked torsos or floating heads above a title above a cityscape. It’s a cue that tells a reader “this is an m/m romance novel.” I don’t do covers like that because I don’t think of my work as romance. I aim to write in speculative genres (like horror or thriller or paranormal or SF) with a romantic subplot, so I try to structure my covers to look more like movie posters than romance novels or m/m novels to prepare readers for what to expect.

6. What would you say are the main advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing against being published or the other way around?

I’ve done both. Two main advantages to being with a publisher is that they handle all the nuts and bolts of the actual publishing process for you, which includes things like production, distribution and customer service. They also have more resources and opportunities to promote their authors’ work.

Self-publishing carries the advantage of being able to craft the book exactly as you want it, from length to price to cover art to edits. It’s a lot more work, though, and setting up your infrastructure is particularly labor intensive. Bookkeeping is harder too, and projects like translations or audio or even paperbacks are more difficult and expensive when you self-publish.

7. Can you tell us about any future projects you're working on?

I’d like to have Mnevermind III out by the end of the year to finish off that trilogy. I think it’s just about ready to be written. These things need to incubate, otherwise I force them out and they’re all underbaked and weird.

Right now I’m finishing a novel called Meatworks. It’s a standalone story, dark and gritty, in which cell phone and computer technology never caught on. What flourished in its place was robotics. The protagonist lost his arm in an accident and wears a robotic prosthetic, which he despises. When I first started the story, I was at a show and I ran into a friend of a friend who fits prosthetics for a living, so I got to grill him on all things prosthetic. How great is that? I was thinking, “Huh, I wish so-and-so was here,” and mid-set he just appeared and sat down beside me.

Meatworks will come out this summer. Readers can find a sneak peek at JCP's Meatworks 

8. Which famous person, living or dead would you like to meet and why?

I’d love to pick Oprah Winfrey’s brain. She is so successful, so centered, and she seems really authentic as well. She has these frailties too, like everyone can see and comment on her weight—and it shouldn’t matter, if she was a man it wouldn’t matter. But when you think about Oprah, one of the first things that comes to mind is her lifelong weight struggle. And not only did she succeed as a woman in a male-dominated field, but as a black woman in a male-dominated field. No doubt I’d act like a deer in headlights if I ever did get to meet her, but since this is all make-believe, yeah, I’ll say I want to have a big ol’ chat with Oprah.

I’d also like to meet Benjamin Franklin. He just seems like a cool guy. He knew how to get stuff done.

9. You write paranormal, but do you believe in it?

Sort of. I believe in metaphysics and law of attraction, which isn’t quite the same as believing in vampires and werewolves…though probably in some people’s opinion, it’s just as “out there.”

I think my New Thought studies permeate my work, but in a subtle way. I was most overt in my Turbulence series, which has a character who tries to use new age logic to tackle the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. (His grasp on metaphysical principle is pretty flaky…and I’ve met LOTS of new agey people whose metaphysics are pretty flaky.) Some of Victor Bayne’s psychic techniques in PsyCop are common concepts to many new age beliefs, like white light and protective fields. Find out more about metaphysics at http://unity.org, or http://unity.fm if you’re a podcast fan.

10. How can your readers follow you through social media.. FB, Twitter, website? 

I have a few websites-

http://psycop.com 

http://jordancastilloprice.com 

http://channelingmorpheus.com 

http://jcpbooks.com  
(This is JCP's ebook Store)

I’m also on Twitter and Facebook

  JCP on Twitter

JCP on Facebook


And last but not least, I send out great email newsletters, coupons and snippets a few times a month. You can sign up for those at http://psycop.com/newsletter

Thanks again, Jordan

Thank you for having me, Meredith, these were great questions!

As you can see Jordan is pretty awesome! I love when authors answer the questions with such enthusiasm and I love seeing that she is loving her time right now and adoring what she loves. She is so accessible to her fans and that speaks volumes about her!

So, we have a giveaway for you and it's pretty awesome... Listen up!

 It's a READER'S CHOICE GIVEAWAY... B U T the winner must select a book for JCP's Book store... HERE> JCP's ebook store 

The contest runs until Friday May 23rd. The winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to respond or I select another winner at random. When notified you need to specify what book you'd like, the format and the email it is to be delivered to you. Jordan will email it personally.

Be sure to head over to her ebook store on your own time and check out all her books! I haven't been disappointed by any of them and you're sure to love them too!!!

***GIVEAWAY***

 

 

 
 
 


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