Hi Everyone! Kota here with some fantastic news! We’ve been working a lot behind the scenes and are proud to welcome a new author to the Inked Family!
Are you a fan of vampires? Maybe with a side of crime thriller? Jules’s story is an excellent twist of both. I had a moment to talk to Jules and ask her some questions about herself and Carnelian.
What inspired you to write Carnelian?
I’ve loved vampires since I was a child, but vampire stories can be a hard sell, and “dark but sometimes funny” is really hard to pull off. After I accidentally wrote a political drama set during a pandemic in 2015, and then sat on it until 2020 “when things would be better,” I decided to just write the book my heart wanted to write, without judgment, and without worrying if it would sell. It was the easiest book I’ve ever written because I had fun with it every moment.
Without any spoilers, is there a character who holds a special place in your heart?
A: Ciceline, because she swears so creatively. It was fun to write her dialogue.
I love a good, well-phrased swear word. It just catches people off guard sometimes. If the book had a soundtrack or theme song, what would it be?
Oh wow, I actually do have a Spotify playlist! Going back to the first question, one of the things that inspired Carnelian was a song called Possum Kingdom by The Toadies.
Check out the playlist! I’m always after new music to catch my ears onto. Another thing I love to do is ask authors what they’re reading. I often find new works to pick up. There are so many good books through both indie and traditional avenues, that it’s hard to keep up. My TBR list is so long I’m going to have to come back as a ghost just to finish.
Right now I am reading Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, and the manuscript of one of my critique partners, which is honestly blowing me away, it’s so good.
What is your favorite trope?
I love tropes so much, it’s hard to pick a favorite. But I’m a sucker for found families, especially ones that don’t fall directly in line with typical family structures.
I love those too! Those stories for me are just so relatable to my own life, and something we may see a little of in Carnelian. Speaking of, what other works have you published?
A few novels that I’ve been sitting on, loads of fanfic, and a few short stories and a poem called “What If I Want To Be Eaten?” published by HitRECord a while back, in a book called “Little Red Riding Hood: Redux.” (There’s a video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing a dramatic reading of it; it’s on youtube.)
Oh awesome! Those sound so much fun. And we love fan fiction here at Inked. It’s so much fun. Thank you so much for reading! If you’d like to learn more about Jules, you can check out her bio below and find her on Twitter!
About Jules Devito
Jules has a BA in English, and an unironic love for the classics. Her focus was Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies. Her paid publishing credits include a story in “The Tiny Book Of Tiny Stories 2010” published by HitRECord, (“Tiny Stories” was later picked up by HarperCollins,) a poem and a short story in “Little Red Riding Hood: REDUX”, a feminist retelling of the fairy tale. Her work has been featured on Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s television series “HitRECord On TV.” Her love for the funky, bizarre side of physics led her down the road of SciFi, but she loves a little fantasy in her science and a little science in her fantasy. She lives on Long Island with her young son—single Mom by choice!– her Mom, two big rescue dogs, and a goldfish named “The Doctor.” She’s a massage therapist, a dancer, a lapsed martial artist, an occasional avian rehabber, and a beach goth. Oh, and she writes books!
You can find Jules on Twitter, Insta, and TikTok. Click here for links to her work. Look out for Carnelian coming to bookshelves 2024!
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