Jaymie Wagner: Interview and her debut release, Orphan’s Cry

Today we welcome debut author Jaymie Wagner to the blog. Jaymie, welcome! Thank you so much for visiting. Do you have any particular reason for popping in today?

I have my first novel, Orphan’s Cry, being published by JMS Books at the end of February! Even better, it’s the first book in a trilogy, so I’m pretty excited about going from 0 published novels to 3 by the end of this year.

More importantly – I’m doing this because I love these characters and their story, and I am hoping that you will too.

What started you writing?

I loved stories as a kid, and my parents taught me to read at a pretty early age so they could share their love of books with me.

I started writing down the stories I came up with as soon as I learned how to, and I’ve never really stopped since.

Where do you write?

I have a beautiful old wooden roll top desk that I inherited from my grandparents, who got it from my great grandfather. It’s nearly 150 years old and I have so many good memories of watching my grandmother using it when she was writing letters, or my grandfather using the computer they eventually kept in it to check his golf league scores.

Every time I sit down with it, I get a big hit of nostalgia and love, and it helps kickstart my writing.

Before I got the desk, I would keep my laptop with me and basically write wherever I was when I felt the inspiration to do so – or write notes to myself on my phone when I didn’t have it with me!

(I think the best story I can tell you was when I got the idea for a short story while hiking in Appalachia, and I literally sat down on a rock and wrote the first ~1000 words on my phone then and there because I didn’t want to lose it!)

What do you like to read?

Fantasy and Sci-fi books were my first love, and will always have a special place in my heart, but I’ve gotten fascinated by non-fiction works that dig into why people do things, and how we are shaped by our communities, environments, and intersectional factors.

I read an amazing book recently called The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramierz that talks about how the things we create and shape also shape us in turn, and it was fascinating!

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

1. An omnibus edition of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. As someone who was born disabled, Miles Vorkosigan was a hero I could see myself in when I started reading the books as a kid, and as I have gotten older they still resonate deeply. When I transitioned, I chose my new middle name (Delia) in honor of Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, who I think is a great role model for the woman I want to be when I grow up.
   
   
2. The Hobbit. When my family took our first “big trip” together that didn’t involve driving to see my grandparents, my dad bought the BBC radio audio drama of the unabridged Hobbit (six tapes!) and we listened to it as we drove from our house in Ohio to a vacation in Virginia. I have a lot of good memories of listening to those tapes, and it was one of the first books I read cover to cover by myself.
   
   
3. Every Tool’s A Hammer, Adam Savage’s biography. I was a huge fan of Mythbusters for both the explosions and the problem solving, and I ended up following Adam on social media and his Tested video channel where he continues to share builds, tools, talks through problem solving and shows off the neat stuff he finds. I love how inspired and energetic he can be about the simplest things, and hey, if I’m stuck on a desert island, I bet he’s got some plans for a duct tape house in there…

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 really enjoy both writing and reading fanfiction, so I’m in a few different discord servers here and there for both authors and fandoms I enjoy. It can be fun to fangirl, vent, or just sit around and bitch / brainstorm there and see what happens!

I’m friends in real life with some wonderfully talented authors (Lucy A. Snyder, Sarah Hans, Gary Braunbeck, and more) and I like getting together physically or virtually to just hang out and have fun too, but I am not part of other groups – yet.

Once the novel is released I will qualify for SFWA and RWA memberships, so I’ll apply for those as well. It never hurts to have more resources at your disposal!

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Oh goodness. So many things!

I paint miniatures as a hobby, particularly Battletech, and love to build Gundam models, hence my collection of tiny giant robots. I live with two cats, Mr. B and Rocket, who are respectively a massive asshole and a ginger himbo. My partners, Dee and Katherine, have their own place which they share with five cats, Dee’s support dog, Timbit, and a hedgehog named Swirl – Timbit has basically adopted me, the hedgehog enjoys climbing up into my hair while Dee’s younger spawn cleans her tank, and the cats have deemed me tolerable, which I will take. 🙂

I love to cook, even though my disability sometimes makes it more difficult than I would like, and I enjoy lots of different shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, and other services. Dee in particular is a big fan of disaster movies, and I love watching her watching them!

As far as learning something new, my parents used to make me do violin lessons when I was a kid, which I eventually stopped as I got older. Early in 2020, a friend bought a new electric violin and I was struck with an urge to play one, so I ended up getting back into the art with a local teacher who could do video call lessons, and I performed a solo piece for a recital last November!

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?

Orphan’s Cry is the tale of Leah, a Royal Mail letter carrier who was bitten by a werewolf a year and a half before the book begins, and has been trying to hide her condition ever since.

To her great surprise, it turns out that she’s nowhere near the only werewolf in London, and that she was hiding so well that she never realized there was a whole community out there able to help her!

I enjoy messing around with tropes and conventions, and it’s fun to tilt things on their head and see what happens from there.

(One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was to create a character that you love, and then figure out what the worst thing you can do to them is. Bang! Instant plot ideas!)

I brainstormed the general shape of the story with a few friends at the end of 2016 and started writing it in 2017. When I finally finished with the stories I wanted to tell at the end of 2019 it was a 200k word monster, and it took another year or so of editing and rewriting to shape it into a trilogy of books. The first one focuses on Leah, another on her friend (and eventual lover) Amélie, and the final book ties all the threads I’ve woven into them together with a focus on their pack leader and girlfriend Amy – and the prophecy that all three have a part in.

(Oops. Did I say too much there…? I guess you’ll have to read and decide what you think!)

I loved writing the dialogue in the story. Leah’s status as a fish out of water means she’s going to need to learn a lot of things over the course of the first book, and I needed to keep that interesting! Thankfully I had a lot of character voices to work with, and more than a bit of good old fashioned smartassery I can rely on in a pinch.

I think the only thing I hated during the course of taking this from an idea to a published book was the inevitable rejections when I started to put it out there. With them came a lot of useful feedback that I was able to use to make the eventual result better, but it’s never fun to pour your heart into something for several years and then be told it’s not what they’re looking for.