Writers' Wednesday: An Interview with J.K. Coi

Welcome to Writers' Wednesday! Today's feature d author is a lovely woman I had the pleasure to meet at the NJRW Conference a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy your peek into the writing world of J.K. Coi!

Nice to see you here in virtual world, J.K.! Can you tell readers a little about your background?

Well, I’m a Canadian who’s not that big on hockey, but don’t shoot me for that. I like soccer and I like skiing and snowboarding. I work full time in a busy law firm looking at patent and trademark applications all day. Which is cool. I get the skinny on all the interesting new inventions that are coming into the market, lol.

Wow, sounds cool. So wen did you first begin writing? Was there an event or moment in your life that triggered your desire to write?

I’ve been writing seriously for about three years now, but I wrote poetry before that. It wasn’t really until my son was old enough to be sleeping through the night that I felt I had some time on my hands and the ideas started flowing.

Tell us about your latest writing project or published title.

My new release is called The Trouble With Destiny. Writing Trouble was quite a departure for me. I started it at a time when I needed to take a break from my current series, so I wrote something a little different. My other books are part of an urban fantasy romance series called The Immortals, and compared to Trouble they are darker and edgier, whereas Trouble is a little bit lighter, with a definitely saucy, sarcastic twist of humour. Sarah is just an average university student right up until the moment she discovers that destiny has other plans for her. She’s forced to learn the hard way that keeping the world safe from daemons may mean she won’t ever make it to calculus on time again, and to top it all off there’s Dorian to deal with—a mysterious, stubborn, dictator of a man with a dark past, who’s sexy as hell and impossible to resist.

Here’s the summary:

Mild-mannered Sarah McInnes just wants to be left alone. She’s looking forward to finishing graduate school and then working a nice, normal nine-to-five job as an accountant. But when fate interferes with her carefully laid plans in the form of the mysterious and sexy Dorian, her life takes an unexpected detour.Dorian is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy. For him, duty comes first. So when he intervenes one night to save Sarah from the murderous hands of a daemon and discovers she has the innate ability to fight them, he of course steps in and offers to train her.

Daemons notwithstanding, the job would be much easier and their relationship less complicated if Dorian didn’t also happen to be the hottest thing this side of hell.Now instead of spending her nights in the library Sarah spends them with Dorian, keeping the city safe from monsters and sending them back where they belong. Whether she wants to or not, Sarah has to face the facts: daemons exist, she possesses the power to kill them, and she may never make it to Calculus on time again.That’s the Trouble with Destiny...

What a fun read! OK, what advice would you give to new writers just starting out?

It’s been said often, but I think that the most important thing is to keep writing. A lot. Also, I'd have to say that some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten was to ignore the rules and write what was in my head. Everything can be fixed afterward, but at first, when you're learning, the process of training yourself to get the work out on the page is way more important. As you go along, the other lessons will start to come more naturally, as long as you’re writing!

What do you find most difficult about writing? What do you find most exciting or rewarding?

I’ve found that the most difficult part of writing, for me, is staying focused. Besides the writing, there’s so much to do, that you can get lost in all the blogging, interviews, and other promotional stuff—which all needs to get done—and if you’re not careful, the writing ends up suffering. So my advice would be to stick to a schedule, if you can.

How do you balance writing with the rest of your life?

A brutal schedule. I work full time (although I have Mondays off), so I write on Mondays and in the evenings during the week. Every evening, without fail. If I’m not frantically trying to meet a deadline, then the weekends I will try and set aside for my family, but sometimes even that has to be compromised, although they understand and I always make it up to them.

It sounds as though you've mastered the art of self-discipline. But do you ever suffer from writer's block? If so, what do you do about it?

I hate writer's block because I'm the kind of person who has to write linearly. I can’t jump around from scene to scene until something starts flowing again. When I’m stuck I just have to stop and take a break until something kick starts in my brain again.

When you write, do you use the computer or compose by hand, oral dictation, or some other method?

I use the computer. I used to write longhand and then type it up later, but that was a LONG time ago. I do, however, keep a notebook handy at all times to jot things down as they come to me when my computer isn’t handy. It bugs my husband to no end when I whip it out at the movie theatre waiting for the show to start, or when we’re out to dinner.

Thanks for sharing your journey with us today, J.K. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here today!

Please visit me at my website for more information about upcoming books, chats, interviews, reviews, and all things Immortal. I’m also on MySpace and I blog at http://www.jkcoi.blogspot.com/.

Books 1 and 2 of the Immortal Series are also available. Get My Immortal and Immortal Kiss from Linden Bay Romance and other major e-retailers online. You can also buy print copies of the books from your local stores.

J.K. Coi

Immortals to Die For
http://www.jkcoi.com/