Please share a little about yourself, your genres,
any other pen names you use.
I’m currently sitting outside on my porch in
Louisiana, where I live until we move back to Texas later this year, and it’s Fall,
the leaves are pummeling, us all into submission, and yet it’s sunny and breezy.
I should be baking my pumpkin pie for the big feast tomorrow, but instead I’m
procrastinating doing anything domestic. My cats are stalking small animals in
the yard. So basically pretty much Heaven.
I like to call my genre “Southern Magic Realism Slipstream.” That kind
of covers everything. I don’t have any pen names at the moment, although I’m
kicking around the idea of publishing a short I wrote that’s very sexy and
supernatural under a pen name. I just haven’t pulled the lever on that one yet.
Are you a mom?
I am! I have twin kiddos, a boy and a girl. They’re
ten, and whew, so much amazingness. I also have two cats, who are so spoiled
they might as well be my kids. Turtle and Maru, who has her own Facebook page
and more fans than I do.
If yes do you find it hard to juggle writing and
parenting?
Sometimes, yes. My daughter asked to be homeschooled
this year, so I’m finding it hard to fit time in to work on my own stuff while
I’m coaching her through her fifth grade curriculum. And my son is autistic, so
when he’s home, there are many, many interruptions. But at the same time, my
daughter is already writing her first full length novel! So she’s chasing me,
and I can’t quit!
What would your readers be surprised to learn about
you?
A lot of times, people are surprised that I am a
professor of American Literature, teach at college. Because it seems like
college professors should be doing “serious things” like writing big books
about epistemology or something instead of having fun. But I am, and it
probably is the reason why I work so many pop culture and/or literary
references into my work.
When you’re not writing what do you do? Do you have
any hobbies or guilty pleasures?
Weirdly enough, I LOVE making cool graphic art, and
doing promotional videos for other authors. I have terrible carpal tunnel
syndrome so I can’t knit or cross stitch, although I used to do cross
stitching. So working on my laptop perusing stock art and then turning it into
a cool promo of some kind is a true guilty pleasure/hobby. I also love
marathons of series on Netflix or VUDU. I can stay in my house for weeks if I
have food, wine, and a good series.
Is there a genre(s) that you’d like to write that
you haven’t tackled yet?
Steampunk!! I
would really like to write a story in that genre, but just haven’t sat down to
sketch something out yet. I have this amazing art I found on Deviantart of a
clockwork dragon that makes me want to figure out the story behind it.
Of all the characters you’ve ever written, who is
your favorite and why?
It’s probably the lame answer of “whichever one I’m
working on right now”… this is because I fall in love, crush, whatever, with
whichever character is in my head at the moment. Now, Meg rises pretty high on
the list because she’s my first, and then Martha, one of the ghosts in the
story, is pretty amazing. Hearing the audio narrator do her voice was a
highlight of my last few weeks. She really brought her to life.
If this book is part of a series…what is the next
book? Any details you can share?
The next story, which is about ¾ done right now, is
a companion book. Not really a sequel—it tells the events of the male
characters while Mariposa was
happening. It’s called Orpheus & the
Butterfly. And yes, I envision this being a series called Children of
Mariposa. I have these super ideas of where the story can go because once you
introduce magic and ghosts, you can kind of write about anything.
What is next for you? Do you have any scheduled
upcoming releases or works in progress?
In addition to finishing up the above, I’m also
working on a tri-story collection related to my Undead Cyborg Assassin Girl.
There’s also a book in progress which is a follow up to my short story Mrs. Johnson’s Blues that’s about ¾
done. I have a short story coming out in Samuel Peralta’s Shapeshifter Chronicles early next year that I need to get
finished, and I am curating the Indie Women Anthology, which will be a charity
anthology. I want to write a story for that one, too. I can’t sit still, so I
flit about sometimes.
What is in your to read pile?
My Kindle is dangerously loaded with about a billion
books. I just bought Carniepunk,
because a reviewer compared it to the UnCommon
Bodies anthology I’m in, so that’s probably next on my to-read pile.
Mariposa
Children of Mariposa
Book One
Kim Wells
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Magic Realism
Publisher: Daydreams Dandelions Publications
Date of Publication: December 24, 2014
ASIN: B00O9DCRDC
Number of pages: 293 pages
Word Count: 106,993
Cover Artist: Lawrence Mann
Book Description:
What if the best night of your life was also your last?
On the eve of a much-anticipated proposal, Meg is happier than she could have ever imagined. The future she sees for herself on that magical night is bright, one that’s full of love and laughter and dreams finally realized.
That is, until one random act of violence changes everything…
Consumed by fate and forces she can’t comprehend, Meg finds herself at the center of a spectral conflict that transcends life and death.
Her very soul is up for grabs in this war, and what’s worse… she’s not the only one.
Now, she’s fighting not just for the love she lost, but the daughter she would have called her own. She must fight the battle of her life, for the sake of her friends and family, and find out for herself if love can indeed be stronger than death.
Intertwined with true-ghost stories, some heart-warming, some heart-breaking, this love-note to San Antonio combines history, myth, and vivid description.
This is the full story of Meg & Amelinda's quest-journey, what author Laura Metzger calls "A beautifully written story with compelling characters that reach between the universe of the living and the dead to embrace their mutual destiny" and author Elena E. Giorgi calls "A beautiful tale of love and redemption."
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/u8wWa70P7ck
Excerpt:
Meg: Vanilla and
Lavender
On the day I
died, I was wearing a great outfit. This is important to know because it turns
out that your default look for eternity as a ghost is what you’re wearing when
you die. I mean, seriously. Who knew? If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have
risked any days in mediocre clothes. In that respect, I was lucky I was on a
date when I was killed, but of course, if I hadn’t been on a date, on that
date, maybe things would have turned out differently.
Not everyone
gets to be a ghost. In fact, some people disappear immediately, and I don’t
know what happens. But they just wink right out of existence, only out of their
bodies for a few seconds. Maybe it has something to do with intent, or their
last actions, or their own belief systems. I hope the good people go somewhere
good, no matter what they did in the last moments of life, that there is a way
for them to make up for those Big Mistakes.
Some people,
people who haven’t Figured Things Out, people like me, linger for a while. We
hang around those we love and sometimes try to influence their choices, trying
to keep loved ones from making Big Mistakes.
My grandmother
had been my ghost–I was not surprised when it came right down to it. Back when
I was alive, I used to smell her perfume in the apartment we shared, vanilla
and lavender. I could never figure out what actual perfume brand she wore to
get that scent, and believe me, I tried. I loved it and wanted that for my
signature perfume. I haunted the local drugstores, especially the old ones, and
vintage stores, looking for an old- fashioned perfume that featured those
fragrance notes, but never found anything that smelled even remotely like hers.
I guess it was
just her individual magic that combined the scents that way. It seemed to
linger in our apartment, long after she had been gone. Especially at certain
important moments. I wouldn’t know those moments were important ‘til later, but
looking back, it’s obvious.
I’m getting
ahead of myself, moving way too fast for normal people. First, you probably
want to know more about me, right? You can’t just start in the middle of the
story; you have to work up to these big deals. I made it 23 years on the planet
before checking out. I guess you’d say I was pretty, although I was never very
stylish or together. I thought that would come with maturity, but I never got
to find that out. When I died, I had shoulder length wavy copper colored hair,
cut in a bob that was always tickling my chin and sometimes made me want to cut
it all off. I certainly never had the patience to grow it all out. It was “in
between” hair, lack of decision hair. My eyes were basic gray, nothing
exciting, although I desperately wanted the “limpid blue” or “decisive green”
eyes of a romance heroine. A light plague of freckles scattered across the
bridge of my nose showed my Irish- Scottish mutt background, and I had fair
redhead’s skin that burned, rather than tanned, which kept me indoors most of
the time or slathered in sunscreen. 5’8’, skinny without being too skinny. I
did have my family’s big butt, which we will not discuss.
Why I have to go
through eternity with that butt is beyond me. I tended to prefer jeans and a comfortable
cotton shirt, paired with flat old- fashioned Converse tennis shoes as my daily
outfit, but I could clean up pretty nice when I had to.
About the Author:
Kim wrote her first critically acclaimed (if you call her fourth grade teacher a critic, and she does) short story when she was 9 years old. It was about Christmas in a Cave, and it featured such topical, ground-breaking subjects as homelessness & cave dwelling. She's been writing ever since. The state of publication depends on who you ask.
She has a Ph.D. in Literature, with specialties in American Lit, Women Writers, Feminism, Sci-Fi/Fantasy & Film Studies but please don't hold any of that against her. She teaches academic writing and how to read literature at a university in her hometown and tries to convince college students that it really is cool to like poetry.
She lives in the South, has twin children (one girl, one boy) and a husband who is the model for all her best romantic heroes. She also has two cats-- one black and sassy, one stripey and fat, and also kinda sassy.
Website: http://www.kimwells.net/
Find her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/kimwellswrites
Twitter here: https://twitter.com/dandeliondreams
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