A warm welcome to Kristin Noone, who has subjected herself to my interview questions this week!
Firstly, what prompted you to let me ask you nosy questions?!
A recent release and a re-release (or two)! My first F/F romance, The Ninepenny Element, just came out from JMS Books, and JMS is also re-releasing my former Less Than Three Press stories – the first M/M shapeshifter story, Port in a Storm, is out now, and the sequel, Fire and Ink, will be available again September 4… followed by the M/M/M polyamory superheroes of Sundown, Holiday, Beacon, also in September. Which I have to say contains some of my favorite characters of mine ever.
What started you writing?
I’ve been writing for ages – in kindergarten I wrote a five-page short story about a girl who loses a tooth – and the Tooth Fairy brings her a baby unicorn, instead of money! (I was a strange and apparently very hopeful child.) More seriously, I started writing in grad school – fanfiction first, as an escape and as a way to play with characters and universes that I loved. And eventually that built into my own original characters and world-building, and I sold a couple of short stories, and then I thought, oh, maybe I can do this! (I do still write fanfic, though! But much less than I used to.)
Where do you write?
If it’s just me home, mostly in the family room with my laptop and music! Otherwise, sometimes upstairs where the actual desk is. Or in a Starbucks, if I’ve got a break from teaching and want to leave campus for a couple of hours!
What do you like to read?
Lots of things! Quite a lot of romance – a lot of M/M, a lot of paranormal, a lot of historical, mostly Regency or Victorian – but also a lot of fantasy and historical fiction, and quite a lot of nonfiction, both for the professor day-job and for pleasure. That’s usually somehow related to scholarly studies of fantasy, romance, monstrosity, comics, gender, and medievalism, though I’ve most recently been reading Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet for fascinating linguistic explorations of internet grammar, just for fun!
What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?
Only three? Oh dear! Hmm…Patricia A. McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe, KJ Charles’ The Magpie Lord (can I have the whole trilogy count as one book?), and…some sort of three-way toss-up between Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, Neil Gaiman’s collected Sandman graphic novels, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in a single edition.
The McKillip is beautiful – lush, lapidary, fantastic prose, full of magic and redemption and also kitchen magic and so many words for both food and love. KJ Charles writes such fabulous romance, with a gorgeous and detailed and diverse magical England and also crackling chemistry. Every time I read Pratchett I find him more profound – that rage, that love, that humor, that fierce compassion – and Night Watch is my favorite Discworld novel. Gaiman’s Sandman is sprawling and epic and weaves together mythology and heroism and grief and loss and family, plus the art is spectacular. And Tolkien because there’s so much to savor and linger over (and occasionally critique!) and have long mental conversations with.
Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?
I belong to a few facebook groups for authors – romance, M/M, LGBTQ – and also a few for professors and grad students, plus my academic association memberships in popular culture and romance fields! They can be helpful for motivation, advice, and also sometimes just sympathy.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Reading, probably! And working on the next scholarly book, which at the moment is about Star Trek tie-in fiction. But other than that…
Awesome Husband and I are sci-fi geeks and watch a lot of that genre of television and movies, but we’re also beer geeks and can be found wandering local craft breweries. Or playing some good tabletop games, along the lines of Pandemic or Ascension, or doing jigsaw puzzles.
Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?
For The Ninepenny Element, the idea was a combination of about three things: wanting to write something for the “nine” theme for the JMS Books ninth anniversary, and a sequel/spin-off for Elemental starring the older sister of Sterling from that book, and wanting to have some fun with medievalist folklore trivia about ninepence and magic! Unusually for me, the title came pretty early on – this one just knew what it was about. And it felt like it flowed easily; I already knew a lot about the world and Verity’s family (and annoying but adorable clairvoyant younger brother), so that part was easy. The trickiest part was figuring out the “villain” – he’s not really evil, just awful, but I always have a hard time writing characters I dislike! It did give me an idea for a third story, though…
And you can keep up with Kristin in lots of different places!
Website – Twitter – Instagram – Goodreads
Thanks for coming to chat, Kristin!
Read about some of Kristin’s books:
Port in a Storm and the new re-release Fire and Ink
Port in a Storm 
Fire and Ink
Port in a Storm: A M/M paranormal series, with a runaway kitten shapeshifter and the kind neighborhood witch who rescues him in the rain.
Fire and Ink: Three months ago David Stanton rescued a runaway kitten in the rain. Now he’s got an infamous — and infamously powerful — feline shapeshifter living in his house, helping with his white-witch business, and making him smile. David’s falling in love fast, but there’s still the problem of Colin’s past … and the secrets he’s obviously keeping.
Elemental and The Ninepenny Element
Elemental is a M/M paranormal romance with a blocked writer, a novice witch and a surprise exorcism.
The sequel, the recently released The Ninepenny Element is a F/F paranormal, with a witch, a lawyer, a hexed earring, and a ghost puppy.
(A ghost puppy, people!)
The Extraordinary Series, out soon!
Sundown, Holiday, Beacon & sequel Homecomings
Three superheroes in love! Or one superhero, one former sidekick, and one redeemed supervillain, at least.
Ryan, John, and Holiday have been partners — in every sense of the word — for two years. They’ve saved the world, fallen in love, and remodeled the secret base to include bookshelves and a bigger bed.
But Ryan and John have always been the public face of the team. The world still believes Holiday’s a villain. And he’s been using that reputation to stay undercover and share information. Tonight, though, Holiday comes home injured, and his partners aren’t sure the mission’s worth his life.
As you may have noticed, I’m trying to be a bit more of a community animal recently. That has included blogging more frequently, more interacting, generally spending a bit more time interacting with both readers and writers. I’m enjoying it- I thought it might be awful, I’m a real recluse, generally speaking- but because it’s mostly online, if I get too overwhelmed I can run away and put a paper bag on my head and take deep breaths for a while if necessary.
As you know, I self-id as a complete and utter history nerd and I regularly get sucked down research rabbit holes. I find that I get stuck on how something would work so fixedly that I can’t move on with the story until I’ve worked it out in my own head. A lot of this doesn’t make it in to the book, because it’s simply not necessary for the plot for everyone else to know how corn was harvested in 1920, or what precise underwear working women wore in the mid-eighteenth century, or, in this particular case, what lanterns someone would have used to explore a cave system in the Himalayas in 1780.
After watching that, I made myself a little lamp with olive oil and a bit of cotton string supported out of it with some wire, in a glass jar. It gave enough light to hang out and chat, but not really enough to read by unless you were right next to it. I guess more wicks in the jar would make a difference.