In the comfy chair today is Batman.
Sorry, I mean, Lex Chase. (Lex could totally be Batman). All yours, Lex!
1. What are you proudest of in your life?I think for me it was that Ah-Hah Moment of what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve had exactly two of those moments in my time on this planet.
The first time was I was 12 or so and on vacation with my family in my homestate of Maine. I had wandered into a drug store just looking around and I found a rack of comic books. I bought X-Men #11 and Wolverine #57 and in reading those pages it suddenly all made sense of what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to tell these stories about superheroes too! I drew every day for hours honing my craft, developing my talent, creating stories for my characters. As an adult, even went through college and got a degree in Graphic Design and went on to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta to study Sequential Art (which is the study of comics. Yes. I have a degree in Batman.)
Being in SCAD, it made me realize a lot of things a little too late. As in a little too late after I had already racked up 80k in student loan debt. While SCAD taught me good things about work ethic and professionalism, it was also very competitive, cutthroat, and if you were the weakest link teachers and students alike preyed upon it. We had a saying SCAD stood for “Sleep Comes After Death” because literally, you would work yourself to the bone and not sleep for days. We had kids give themselves heart palpitations from downing so many energy drinks. Or kids that nearly sliced their thumbs off with X-Acto knives they were so exhausted. A couple kids had their cars catch fire in the same semester because they didn’t have time to change the oil. Because of the ‘dark side’ of SCAD, my health took a huge dive and something had to give.
Towards the end of my time there, I was having a portfolio review with an editor and he asked “What do you see yourself as?” The correct responses are things like “I’m a penciller.” “I’m an inker.” “I’m a colorist.” My response? “I’m a storyteller.”
It would take me a year after that day to realize that was my Ah-Hah Moment.
2. How has your life been different than what you'd imagined?Let’s be honest. By the year 2000, I was 21, and I was promised flying cars. Where are the damned flying cars!
In all seriousness, I really don’t know what I imagined in the first place. I’ve never really had a five-year plan or a ten-year plan. I’ve hated those assignments in school. “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” they ask. And I say “Uuuuh… Hopefully still breathing?”
I think if I had to think of something, I think maybe married, living in a chrome and glass penthouse in some major metropolis. But instead, I’m a confirmed bachelorette, a thirty-something, living with my parents, still in college, and perpetually twelve years old.
Western society makes a huge deal about how living with your parents after you’re 18 is something to be ashamed of. Admittedly, it earns me some odd questions and cultural jabs, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. My mom is actually my best friend and less my mom even if she gave birth to me. She still has to put on the Mommy Hat once in a while, but really, we’re buddies. Or at times she’s my 61 year old child with how much trouble she gets in to.
My dad is a big kid, can’t be serious to save his life. I get my humor from him. He’s also very quiet and shy. My mom has such a big personality, and his gets diminished a lot. But once you get him talking on his own turf, he’s seriously interesting. Born eight months after WWII ended, saw his first TV at 13 years old, was a DJ in the Navy, is a gigantic NASA nerd and wanted to be an astronaut. He’s also a Harry Potter fanatic.
3. If you could interview anyone from your life living or dead, but not a celebrity, who would it be and why?My Grampy Boo-Boo as he was called. He was my mom’s dad and died when I was six or so. I don’t remember him at all. For years I was kind of bummed I never had any awesome ‘Grandparent War Stories’ that all my friends did because my dad’s father never served in the military, and I had no idea about my mom’s father. Then she tells me one day that Grampy Boo-Boo was totally in WWII and was in the Battle of Coral Sea.
She told me the side stories of how he lost his dog tags in the field, and someone found them and mailed them to him. My mom is also one of six kids, three girls and three boys, two of the boys passed away (to actual weird and strange circumstances) and I’d like to know how that affected him. I’d just like to know more about him period.
4. Tell us about how you got into being an author.It was my Plan B. *laughs* I had always been making up stories since I was little. You know, like small children do anyway. I started putting stories to paper in middle school and trading them with friends. I seem to vaguely recall my longest work was on 75 pages of binder paper and it was something like an original character version of me fell through a portal and ended up in Sherwood Forest and went on an adventure with Robin Hood. Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking either.
As an adult at SCAD, one of my professors told us flat out “I don’t want to crush anyone’s dreams but have a Plan B.” At the time, I was like pfft! Whatever! Of course, I was one of those students that thought I knew everything. Those happen a lot in artistic type schools, and they are possibly the most annoyingly arrogant twerps. And I was one of them.
So after I had to withdraw due to my health, I needed to do something. Because I pretty much decided if I ever drew anything ever again it would be too soon. As I was in recovery, I wrote every day. First I wrote horrible stories not worth lining my cats’ box with, and then my stories started to refine themselves as my skill at the craft grew. First my stories were very dark with deeply flawed heroes that may have been villains. Then they still had heavy material, but they were a little more elegant. Then somehow I had a total breakthrough and wrote something happy and funny. And then I kept writing happy and funny things. Then I thought ‘Hey. People seem to like my happy and funny things. I should submit them and see if anyone wants to publish them!’ And thus, there be Pawn Takes Rook, right there in the wild for public consumption.
5. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up. *laughs* How about Batman. Can I be Batman?
6. What did you want to be when you grew up?An archeologist. Indiana Jones totally worked on me as a kid.
7. What lessons has your work life taught you?Everything’s not going to go the way you want all the time.
When nothing’s working: Coffee Break.
When everything’s working: Coffee Break.
There’s always a better way to do something.
Work Smarter, Not Harder.
Be prepared to work overtime all the time.
Stuck? Take a shower until you use all the hot water in the house. The idea will be there.
8. Do you believe in love at first sight?I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure anymore. My characters seem to believe in it though. *laughs* I’m an old spinster. I never really notice anyone as ‘attractive’ or notice anyone flirting with me until hours later.
9. Tell us about your latest WIP.My latest WIP is the third installment to Pawn Takes Rook subtitled ‘Conventional Love.’ Without giving too much away, Rook and Hogarth make new friends and run into old enemies at a comic convention.
The convention is inspired by Dragon*Con in Atlanta every Labor Day Weekend. Dragon*Con is enormous drawing 50k in attendees or more every year. Fanboys and fangirls of all walks of life.
The con in the story is called Tolkicon—because it’s a horrible name on purpose. Rook, a lifelong superhero whose main fan base is comic geeks, wouldn’t be caught dead at this thing. Hogarth, Rook’s sidekick, is a huge nerd and loves all fandom-ish things.
When they discover the dungeon master of Hogarth’s D&D group is meeting his long-distance boyfriend for the first time at Tolkicon, and said long-distance boyfriend tried to kill Hogarth once upon a time… It’s gunna go dooooown.
10. What's your favourite genre to read and to write?Ironically, I read a majority of memoir. Real people drama is so interesting! And from memoir I pick up an ear for how people talk, word choices, and rhythm of sentences. I also read the occasional webcomic like Teahouse, Red Moon Rising, and Demon of the Underground. I usually don’t check the sites for weeks or months at a time so I have a delicious backlog to read.
As for a genre to write, I’m kind of all over the map. I used to love to write really dark stories but I also realize they affected me emotionally and put me in a dark headspace. I also came to the conclusion in an author interview there would be no possible way I could talk about my oh-so-serious book in a serious fashion when in fact behind the scenes I’m rewriting these stories in LOLCat speak as jokes to my friends.
Writing humorous stories seemed to be the natural progression. Because I’m kind of a clown anyway, why not write stories the way I think of them anyway? I always say it feels like I’m trolling my own story with how the characters will point out how absurd a plot device is or with some of the zingers I come up with. One of them that always makes me laugh is from Pawn Takes Rook #1 where Hogarth says “To say I was an epic speedster is to say Margret Thatcher was a supermodel.”
One of the themes in my work is the characters are always some kind of super powered being. Be it a vampire, a shifter, an enchanted princess, or a superhero. While the setting and content may change, there are always characters with powers.
11. One of my favourite questions to ask and to answer - fantasy casting! You've sold the movie rights to your latest novel and have total creative control on casting. Who do you cast as your leading characters?For Rook it’s a tossup between Lost’s Josh Holloway and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth. Rook is described as a leather clad Viking bad boy but there’s something about Hemsworth that’s too clean cut and ‘pretty.’ That’s where Holloway comes in with his gritty ruggedness and intense stare.
For Hogarth the closest real life approximation that actually ended up working for me was Glee’s Chris Colfer. The hilarious thing about Hogarth is he doesn’t sound like Chris in my head who has that rather high pitched voice. To me he sounds like Bobby Brady of the Brady Bunch. A little gritty, a little squeaky, and his voice cracks a lot like he’s hitting puberty all the time. *laughs* In hindsight I realize Hogarth is actually the spitting image of Superman’s Jimmy Olsen. Red hair, freckles, same unremarkable build, and seriously kind of a dweeb. Which is hilarious on so many levels.
12. Tell us about working as a comic book artist. Which comics did you do art for? Do you have any stories from working in this industry?For me, I never got the chance to go pro. Sure, I had a few folks interested, and made some contacts in the industry, but what I did, and what they do, wasn’t a good fit for the market.
My theme in my work was exploring the Maternal Male and the Paternal Female. I was into it big time. The idea is you only draw males with sharp angular lines, and women with soft curving ones. I decided this was crap. So I had created this male character that I kept the male proportions—he was your typical muscular six and a half foot tall superhero—but I drew him with all curves. The result was disconcerting to many professionals and professors, because he looked like a ‘brawny woman’ he was beautiful, feminized, and uncomfortably masculine. My work was a curiosity to many, but in the end a no-go. I wouldn’t find out until years later through first hand experiences of my friends, there’s actually a lot of homophobia still going on in mainstream comics. Not everyone in the biz is homophobic, there are a few really awesome allies, but they’re few and far between.
I was encouraged by Bob Schreck, an editor at DC Comics, and Chris Staros, the editor in chief of Top Shelf Comics, not to give up on it. Actually, they indeed said there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing webcomics in this day and age. It could actually prove to be quite lucrative.
So, with a couple of friends, we launched a webcomic studio with my website Nomad Chronicle as a hub. I was the CEO, and we all produced our own comics. I gave them webspace to run their stuff, and it was pretty much a really good energy. My contribution was of course exploring more of my Maternal Male theme but I soon drifted away from drawing for writing instead. I can still hold the honor that I was the one to give the humongously popular Red Moon Rising by Rose Loughran its start before she got picked up by the Rampage Network.
13. What are you favourite movies? What's your idea of a perfect movie Friday night? I have a few I dearly love, but my top one I’d have to say is Pixar’s Finding Nemo. If there ever was a movie made just for me that was it. As a disabled individual, I identify with Nemo’s story of his little runty fin and being told he can’t do things when that only makes him all the more determined to do so.
And of course, I can’t watch the first ten minutes without being completely emotionally destroyed. When it was re-released in 3D I dragged everyone I knew to see it because OMG Nemo on the big screen again! That whole opening scene with the barracuda played and I was a hysterical mess. My sister-in-law totally laughed at me. There’s a lot in that movie that will make you have complete leaky face. It’s the perfect storm of Randy Newman’s score and the breathtaking visuals.
My idea of a perfect movie Friday night is going to the first matinee in the morning on Sunday so I can get on with my day.
14. What do you do when you get hit with the dreaded writer's block?I’m a horrible person because I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe there’s a line between a story not working and a story that’s working and how to get the former to be the latter is you have to keep going. People get so petrified at the first draft that their story is utter dog shit and give up. You need to tell yourself “It’s only the first draft. It’s going to suck.” That’s what the magic of editing is for.
Something I always get amused by because I have both acquaintances that are artists and get art block and writers that get writer’s block… is how often they said instead of drawing or writing they sat back and watched the entirety of Supernatural in two days, or they beat a videogame after playing it for three days straight. How is that helping you overcome your block? It’s only reinforcing your idea that you should watch TV or play videogames instead of write.
That’s why you need to actually schedule days off where you’re going to goof off and do nothing. I’m crap at taking a day off. I’m on the go 24/7. I can never not be doing something. I only ever take a day off if I seriously need a mental health day.
15. And finally, the question I ask everyone: if you were to come back in another life as a plant, what would that plant be and why?I’d be a kudzu vine, because I’d be tenacious, unstoppable, and my creeping influence would be all over the world.
Pawn Takes Rook.By Lex Chase.
Blurb: The first time Hogarth Dawson sees superhero Memphis Rook, he comes to Hogarth’s rescue by cracking the heads of two thugs like eggs into a skillet. Hogarth is utterly smitten, but he soon discovers the superhero Power Alliance has ejected Rook for failing to protect a civilian.
Hogarth devises a plan that will reinstate Rook and might even earn Hogarth a place in Power Alliance roster. But what he expects to be a simple few missions rescuing kittens and helping little old ladies cross the street turns into a shocking reality of citywide chases, foiling robberies, and facing his ex. Then Hogarth discovers the beating Rook saved him from wasn’t a chance attack. It’s possible Hogarth is just a pawn in Rook’s game….
Excerpt:
When I first saw Rook, he was cracking the skulls of two goons like eggs into a skillet. I sat there like a freaked out choir boy on my butt between the trash cans lining the alley behind Ted’s TV Tabernacle, gazing in awe and wonder. Rook had hands that could mold steel like Dollar General Play-Doh. He did just that by wadding up Random Thug Number One’s Louisville Slugger into a sadistic snowball and beaned the guy right in the ear. Getting snow in your ear has to be the most excruciating sensation in existence. I can’t imagine getting Kentucky’s finest steel shoved into your noggin.
I don’t remember if I screamed. I likely did. Totally did.
Random Thug Number Two went flying past me in an expert over-the-shoulder throw, his open mouth smacking wetly into the bricks. Broken teeth bounced over the sidewalk. Random Thug Number Three ducked behind the trash cans opposite me. He popped up once in a while, hidden behind the mound of bags and cans. His alligator eyes inched over the unfolding scene from the safe vantage point of the trash bag swamp.
Rook surveyed the alley, making sure he had gotten them all. He snorted a puff of steam with menacing satisfaction at seeing one guy out cold and another on the fast track for full dentures before sixty. Then he came to me. Now, when I say he was smoldering, that’s totally what he was doing. Smoke rose off his tattered trench coat in ethereal coils. Rook’s smoking frame could have been caused by the chill of the oncoming winter and the steam of sweat, but it definitely added to the sexy first impression.
His eyes, oh my Christ on a cracker…. They were not quite blue, not quite green, but like that girl on the National Geographic cover. Those haunting Afghan eyes.
“Are you okay?” Rook rumbled in a perfect antiheroic growl while reaching for my hand. His fingers, broad, callused, and strong, hung there long enough to cue the musical montage in my head. I couldn’t believe it. The one and only Memphis Rook had swaggered into my mugging, ready to bust heads. It was like he planned it, really. Or our universes collided in some awesome poetic way that I can’t think straight at the moment because holy crap, those hands are huge!
That’s when Random Thug Number Three opposite me decided to ruin the amazing moment, popping up like a spring-loaded Halloween skeleton and launched at Rook.
Rook turned in a smooth whoosh of muscle and fabric, and I shrieked as the knife skewered into his gut. He latched onto his killer’s knife hand in surprise.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” I screamed. I knew in that infinitesimally dark moment, I was going to die alongside the guy who fought in vain to save my life.
Confused, the thug glared at him, then to his captured wrist, and back again. “W-what are you?” he stammered as courage ran down his pants leg.
Rook released him. The thug held up the knife with the blade crumpled onto itself like a bullet impacting a Kevlar plate. The thug backpedaled, falling backward over a black plastic trash can after slipping on a greasy Five Guys burger wrapper. He screeched, twisting in an about face, and ran like a kid who had spilled orange juice on his dad’s vintage Playboys.
Then Rook turned those Afghan eyes on me, and the musical montage returned. The sleepy, sultry lyrics to “Dream Weaver” crooned in my head along with the accompanying halo of sparkles. His hand, those powerful, thick fingers, reached for mine….
And then he flat fuck fell over in my lap like a Buick dropped from low earth orbit. Steam rose from his body in the not so sexy eau de parfum of burned rubber and gasoline. He lay there, crushing my pancreas while out cold.
And that’s how Memphis Rook fucked up my life.
By coming into it.
Lex's bio:
Lex Chase is a journalist by day and a writer by night. Either way you slice it, she makes things up for a living. Her style of storytelling is action, adventure, and a dollop of steamy romance. She loves tales of men who kiss as much as they kick ass. She believes it’s never a party until something explodes in a magnificent fashion, be it a rolling fireball of a car or two guys screaming out their love for one another in the freezing rain.
Lex is a pop culture diva, an urbanite trapped in a country bumpkin’s body, and wouldn’t last five minutes without technology in the event of the apocalypse. She has learned that when all else fails, hug the cat.
She is a Damned Yankee hailing from the frozen backwoods of Maine residing in the ‘burbs of Northwest Florida where it could be 80F and she’d have a sweatshirt on because she’s freezing.
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Asta Idonea (aka Nicki J Markus) was born in England but now lives in Adelaide, South Australia. She has loved both reading and writing from a young age and is also a keen linguist, having studied several foreign languages.
Necropolis
Five Ways a Boy Can Break Your Heart. By Cate Ashwood and Skylar M. Cates.
Ironhearted
Joe MacAree had just murdered a woman, and all the things he felt when he killed the other four he was feeling right now. How would he describe it? In his journal, he might call his feelings an “elevation of the senses” or “an ethereal quality bringing the world into sharp focus.”
Dinner at Home -- Pre-order Now! 
Scott King swore off rock stardom after his band, King Phoenix, crashed and burned. Now in his forties, Scott lives a quiet life as a music producer and session guitarist. But in a box hidden in his wardrobe lie the relics of the past he left behind—a past filled with drugs, booze, and broken hearts. For sixteen years, Scott has had no contact with his former bandmates, so when he’s asked to play at a benefit gig for King Phoenix’s old sound man, his world turns upside down. A King Phoenix reunion means a run-in with Scott’s ex, Ash Walker—and sixteen years ago, believing Ash wanted to leave the band, Scott OD’d and almost died. 
Raine O’Tierney is an always-writing, boundlessly enthusiastic, exclamation point addict! (!!!) She is known for declaring every day “the best day EVER!” and everything her “all-time FAVORITE!” Despite this (obnoxious?) exuberance, she still somehow manages to have a wonderfully encouraging husband and writing partner, Siôn, and an amazing group of friends and colleagues who continue to support (read: put up with) her. Raine spends her days working as a library lady, fighting the good fight for intellectual freedom.
Water Waltz Blurb:
Paid Leave coming soon from Dreamspinner Press, May 3rd. 
Sure! At the moment I’m working on two stories, one is my first contemporary novel based on shifters but with a twist (it’s kinds hush hush), and the second is book #2 from my Auspicious Troubles of Love series - Johnnie’s book. I have more of Johnnie’s book written so I’ll share a little about that one. Johnnie first appeared in The Auspicious Troubles of Chance as one of the brats. He was eighteen years old when Chance first met him, loud, foul-mouthed, and incredibly troubled. Now in book two, Johnnie is grown up and still all those things, only now we add Henry to the mix. 
The Only Star (Book #1.5 in the Tea House Tale series)
Excerpt from Night Shift:
