Thursday's Interview -= Saphirre Phalen

Today's guest is Sapphire Phalen. We met at EPICon and talked about her doing an interview for me. So here it is.

1. What's your genre or do you write in more than one?
I write erotic and sometimes sweet paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy and science fiction romance. I have also done erotic horror too—“Jack” in Sinister Tales Magazine and the Lovecraftian novella, Unwitting Sacrifice, published as an eBook and in paperback by Under the Moon.


2. Did you choose your genre or did it choose you?
I choose it, though the erotic part choose me.


3. Is there any genre you'd like to try? Or is there one you wouldn't?
Maybe mystery, though my current erotic paranormal romance (male/male) release, Dark Leopard Magic (second novella in the Beast Magic trilogy) from Phaze Books has elements of the mystery in it.


4. What fiction do you read for pleasure?
Erotic and regular paranormal romance, historical romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, Young Adult, romantic suspense, and other romances.


5. Tell me a bit about yourself and how long you've been writing,
I’ve been writing since I was 8-years old. But I first was published (for poetry) in a magazine when I was seventeen and got paid for it, too!


6. Which of your characters is your favorite?
That’s like asking a mother which is her favorite child. I admit a nudge toward Tina and Charun of my erotic urban fantasy, Being Familiar With a Witch. So much that I wrote a sequel that was accepted by Phaze Books, A Familiar Tangle With Hell.


7. Are there villains in your books and how were they created?
Yes, there are. Most of them anyway. In Being Familiar With a Witch, not just a demon army, but the demon leading them, Byleth. The names of most of the demons in this short novel came from a real demonology. In Dark Leopard Magic, there is some bad werewolves. Same goes for any of my writings. Most come out of my head, with some research even.


8. What are you working on now?
At the moment I put aside the third novella in the Beast Magic trilogy, Wolf Magic. But that is the current one—this one will have a werewolf hero, who was introduced in Dark Leopard Magic. Wolf Magic is male/female, like the first novella in the series, Beast Magic.


9. What's your latest release and how did the idea arrive?
When I began to write Dark Leopard Magic, it flowed out of me in first person (a departure from Beast Magic, which is in third person) from both heroes’ POV and as a male/male romance. It just seemed to speak to me that way.


10. Tell me about your latest book and how it came about. Enclose the opening of the book around 400 words.

I said it all about Dark Leopard Magic in Question #9.

In the Beginning
I’d always been different. I had a rough life, too. Well, not for the first part
of it, when my mother was still alive.

I don’t remember my birth, but then what child does? Not much afterwards,
either, not until I was three years old. Mother told me some details, and about my
father. It seemed that he wasn’t like her and me. He wasn’t a shapeshifter, but
human. He also was an American—she originated from India.

Guess you could say that I am a half-breed—half human, half wereleopard. I
took after my mother and was born a leopard, remaining a cub until I turned one
year old, and made my first change to my human body, just like most
shapeshifters.

The only things I inherited from her were my ink-black hair and amber yellow
eyes (wereleopards have these color eyes). Everything else—my pale
skin, height, and muscular shape—came from my father. I even inherited the
darkness that lived in his soul, as I would learn later on.

My father wasn’t in my life, ever. Before I’d been born, Mother had killed
him. He had been beating her as he always did when he came home drunk, and
that last time was the final straw for her. She described with relish the look of
horror in his eyes as she revealed what she really was before she killed him.
Though she never said it to me, I suspected that—like the black widow spider—
she’d feasted on her lover’s remains, too.

We never went back to her country, India. When I asked her why, she would
say, “I had my Dreaming the next night after I had just killed your father and saw
my wereleopard mate was in India, but he had been killed by hunters.” She gave
a sad little smile. “I would have killed myself when the Dreaming let me know,
for when one mate perishes, the other does not want to live. But then, I found I
was pregnant with you. The last time the human raped me before I killed the
bastard, his seed had managed to take root in my womb. You kept me alive, my
darling son.”

I could never get her to tell me anything else. The subject remained closed.


Sapphire Phelan

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