Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: Shawna Reppert, an award-winning author of fantasy and steampunk, is proud of keeping readers up all night and making them miss work deadlines. Her fiction asks questions for which there are no easy answers, while at the same time taking the reader on a fine adventure that grips them heart and soul and keeps them turning pages until the very end.
She shares her home with a tri-color Corgi named Mr Darcy who is so cute that he has his own social media.
In the past, she had occasionally been found in medieval garb on a caparisoned horse, throwing javelins into innocent hay bales that never did anything to her. More recently, she has been known to attend Victorian teas in her steampunk regalia.
She grew up in Pennsylvania, and now lives in the beautiful wine country of Oregon. Each has colored her writing in different ways.
Thanks so much, Shawna, for joining me!
J. Scott Coatsworth: When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
Shawna Reppert: I can’t really remember not wanting to be a writer. Like, as soon as soon as I was old enough to understand that people wrote the stories in my little picture books, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. As early as the seventh grade, I had teachers praising my writing skills and encouraging me to develop my talent. In my junior and senior years in high school, I won a regional and then a national essay competition, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
But then I graduated college and wasn’t able to get my books or stories published, and depression set in. I thought maybe I just peaked in high school. I actually gave up writing for a number of years. This was back before ebooks and print-on-demand, when indie publishing wasn’t a thing.
But then I started going to SFF cons and writing conventions and rubbing shoulders with authors and editors, and I found out that the sort of rejection letters I was getting, personally signed by the editor and including encouragement to submit my next work, meant that I was really, really close to acceptance. I started writing and submitting again. I sold my first short story to a ‘zine in 2011 and released my first novel with a traditional publisher in 2012.
I later switched to indie publishing because I wanted more control over my career and better quality control over the final product.
But the fear never really leaves you, especially if your sales are not where you want them. Although my confidence did take a huge boost when I got a very favorable review from World Fantasy Author Charles de Lint. He said that my most recent novel, The Enemy of My Enemy, “
Reppert . . .might be one of my favourite urban fantasies to date. All the Celtic music references might have helped, but I just really liked the characters, story and Reppert’s prose.”
JSC: How would you describe your writing style/genre?
SW: Mostly, I write both urban fantasy and steampunk/Gaslamp fantasy Victorian detective novels.
JSC: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done in the name of research?
SW: I asked a friend in the medical field how long someone can stay conscious after being stabbed through the heart and then read my proposed dialogue against a stopwatch to make sure that it was feasible that the stabbed character could utter them before dying.
JSC: What is your writing Kryptonite?
SW: Anxiety and depression. It’s hard to write when you can’t find the will to get out of bed. A lot of writers have mental health struggles, and I think it’s important that we talk about it. Depression and anxiety may not be completely curable in many cases, but it can be managed. Not only will your writing not suffer, but it will probably improve.
JSC: What do you do when you get writer’s block?
SW: I search within myself to figure out what else is going on with me. It’s almost always more about my head space than the writing.
JSC: Do you reward yourself for writing, or punish yourself for failing to do so? How?
SW: The only place in the house I keep chocolate is in the study. If I can get myself into the study, I’m usually good for at least a couple of hours of writing. Punishing yourself for not writing doesn’t work. You just build up a negative association with the whole idea. Animals always respond most strongly to positive stimuli, and humans are just another kind of animal.
JSC: Where do you like to write?
SW: I used to be able to write literally anywhere. Pre-COVID, I would take my laptop to pubs when an Irish music session was happening and type in time to the music. But one of the changes in my brain post my last major depressive episode is that I really need a dedicated writing space, and one that I feel comfortable in, so I don’t make more excuses not to be there. I have those stick-on stained glass window clings to block the uninspiring view and I have pretty tea cups and decorative plates with English cottages to create a cottage-in-the-woods feel. If I can’t afford to live where I want, I can pretend.
I even hung fairy lights all down the hall to the study to make it feel a little magic and entice me into my writing room.
JSC: What are your favorite parts of publishing?
SW: Talking to readers who love my work. I once had a reader message me to ask when the next book was out and, when I gave her the date, said she would put it on her calendar because she needed something to look forward to. I was floating for a week.
JSC: How do you approach covers for your indie stories?
I learned the hard way that the cover matters. A lot. Maybe more than it should, but it is what it is. Readers aren’t going to read your blurb, let alone your book, if your cover isn’t professional and genre-appropriate. I’m currently using a company called 100 Covers that offer custom covers with unlimited revisions at a very reasonable price.
JSC: How did you choose the topic for this book?
SW: Okay, this sounds pretty cliché, but I had a dream (which, with a few changes, is something like Chapter 2 or 3 of the book. I woke up and thought, wow, if I wanted to write something commercially successful, that’s the tropiest trope to ever trope. As it happened, I had a webinar with Donald Maass the next day. Somehow, we got on the subject of dreams. I told him about the dream, laughed, and said, if I wanted to sell out, that was the idea to do it on. He said that I could start with a trope and, as long as I approach it with sincerity and integrity, I will end up with a book that matters.
Well, that sounded like a challenge, so I started writing the novel. When I really examined the trope, I discovered an issue often overlooked in the treatment. Suddenly, I was writing something that was not only not shallow, but had issues with depth and breadth that frankly intimidated me. Of course, that made me even more determined.
JSC: What are you working on now, and what’s coming out next? Tell us about it!
Blood of the Covenant, the sequel to The Enemy of My Enemy. The title comes from the oft-misquotes saying “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
And now for Shawna Reppert’s new book: The Enemy of My Enemy:
As a hunter, Constance Jaeger grew up believing that all vampires were evil. But now the Accords say they are citizens with rights. Constance is dubious. Especially when a vampire who scoffed at the Accords murders a neighborhood cop. This was one of the good guys who looked out for the homeless, the sort of cop even the street kids trusted. Constance wants revenge.
Her strongest ally against the rogue bloodsucker is the charming, fiddle-playing Valentine McBain. He’s seeking vengeance for a beloved servant and friend killed by the same vampire. The only problem? Valentine is a vampire too.
She doesn’t want to trust him, but she may not have a choice. Simple revenge rapidly turns into a tangled web of corruption, trafficking, and sorcery, until Constance and Valentine are the only ones who can stop the summoning of a demon powerful enough to destroy an entire city.
Assuming they can work together long enough to do it.
Get It On Amazon
Excerpt
I took advantage of the following lull to glance at my phone for the local news. Nothing in the headlines. But then the news tended to steer clear of anything that looked like para-on-para violence, and they tended to lump hunters in with that even though we’re technically human.
Not surprising that none of my escapades last night made the papers. Generally, I was more than happy for the shadow world to stay in the shadows. But today, a thought nagged at me—if Valentine didn’t make it home safe, I might never know for sure.
Just because we’d had a temporary alliance, that wasn’t any reason to worry about a vamp.
It was just that he’d risked himself for me, beyond the letter or even the spirit of our bargain.
The whole thing about vampires going instantly poof into dust when you staked them was another bit of made-for-TV mythology. In reality, it depended on how old the vamp was when he met his end. One that had been around since the stone age, yeah, they were going to pretty much crumble into dust. At that point, whatever the force is that keeps a vamp to their version of aliveness is the only thing holding their body together. A new-made vamp’s corpse will fall apart faster than a true mortal’s, but there will be enough left for an autopsy if the coroner gets to it within a week or so. A vamp that’s somewhere in between, like Valentine, will be down to dust and bones pretty quick.
But now that the rest of the world knew about paras, someone was bound to call the cops if they stumbled over fragile bits of what looked like a human skeleton. Forensics would know what they were looking at, and word of a dead vamp under suspicious circumstances surely would show up in the paper somewhere. Probably not under top headlines unless it was a slow news day, but I’d combed The Oregonian online pretty thoroughly on my last break.
I went into the back and started prepping the dough for tomorrow’s bagels.
Either Valentine had made it home safe, or Charlotte’s pets had cleaned up after themselves.
The bell on the door jangled. I looked up from the dough long enough to see that Lupa had the front counter and went back to my kneading.
“Constance, someone’s asking for you.”
Huh. Interesting. It’s not like I have a huge fan base. I mean, I’m good enough with the customers. Service with a smile, and all that. But I don’t go out of my way to form connections. I have yet to master the art of cute little designs in the foam, though not for lack of trying. And my looks could best be described as cleans up well. I may have an athletic build from the years of gymnastics, but I’m nowhere near a size 0, nor do I aspire to be. I never wear makeup at work—no point when the heat from the ovens and the espresso machine means I’m sweating in torrents. And I wear my hair in the same tight, practical bun that I learned for gymnastics and now use when I’m out hunting.
I wiped my hands on my apron and came out. This time of year 5:30 is pretty close to full dark, and so the older, stronger vamps could be out and about. Vamps like Valentine, who stood at the counter, looking at the specials board.
“Does caffeine even affect you?” I asked, letting snark color my voice to hide the utterly unreasonable relief at seeing him as alive as he had been since before the country was founded.
He smiled broadly, showing slightly elongated canines. “No, sweet Constance, at least not in any quantity a mortal could safely consume. But I enjoy the taste.”
The ‘sweet Constance’ was meant to push my buttons. I returned his smile to show that he wasn’t getting to me. Much.
“Can I help you, Valentine?”
He chuckled, as though our verbal sparring was mere flirtation. Hell, maybe it was. For him. “A grande peppermint mocha with whipped cream, please. Do you have those pink sprinkles?”
He was talking about the generic peppermint bits almost every coffee shop carried this time of year. “We most certainly do not.” After a moment I broke. “We do, however, have something much better. Is this for here or to go?” I wanted to use paper to-go cup without asking, to underline how little vampires were welcome at the Moonlit Bakery and Coffee Shop, but we used ceramic cups where we could. Doing our part for the environment, and all that.
“For here, please.”
I poured the milk into the pitcher to steam—premixed with chocolate, but our own proprietary recipe—and pulled the shots. I poured the shots into one of our trademark mugs, which were purple and emblazoned with a blue wolf howling at a blue moon. I added the peppermint syrup and the steamed chocolate mix, topped it with an artistic swirl of real whipped cream from the pressurized dispenser and sprinkled generously with the red-and-white bits we made in-house by throwing broken candy canes into the blender.
I slid the drink over to him and took the proffered debit card. As I rang up his order, I watched out of the corner of my eye as he reached his tongue out to cautiously lap up a bit of the candy-adorned whipped cream, then sip with a bit more confidence at the drink itself.
“This,” he said, “may be the best mocha I have ever tasted. Seriously.”
I couldn’t help the flush of pleasure. Moonlit may only be a side job, but still I took pride in all my work.
“Do you have a minute?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m at work.” I turned to go back to my dough.
“Oh, go on,” Lupa said from the archway. “You have a break coming up.”
I didn’t, in fact, have a break coming up and we both knew it. Lupa was matchmaking. Didn’t her werewolf senses tell her what he was?
I turned to her so Valentine couldn’t see, and mouthed the word vamp. She mouthed back I know. So?
We were going to have a long talk later.
I sighed. “Give me a second while I make myself a drink, all right?”