I loved getting to know movie lover, fantasy enthusiast and zombie writer Sara Shrieves last week. This week I’m very happy to be interviewing Juli D. Revezzo, a high fantasy lover who hides away in her writing cave using mythology to help craft her novels.
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Tell us about yourself? Do you write for a living? If not, what’s your day job?
Well, I can’t say I write necessarily for a living, but it does take up my whole day sometimes. I don’t really work outside the house these days.
Favourite food, place, colour and writing zone, please.
Favorite food would be Italian food–spaghetti and sauce, lasagna, pizza. Color: Purple. Writing zone…well, my little office in the back room. Or writing cave as it’s affectionately known.
You write in the fantasy/supernatural genre….who’s been your inspiration?
I like most traditional high fantasy I’ve read: Tolkien, Melanie Rawn, J.V. Jones. I have to say my all around favorite is Michael Moorcock. After them come the classics, LeFanu and Poe other such authors.
Favourite books? Movies? TV Shows?
For books, The Elric Series, is always my top choice, also Moorcock’s Von Bek books, then there are authors like Patty G. Henderson and S.G. Rogers, and, and, and (gosh where do I cut off the list?). For movies, I’m a fan of the Aliens films; Excalibur is also longtime favorite. Also the Lord of the Rings films, the Narnia films, the Underworld series, I could go on and on…
Who’s your favourite all time fictional character?
I have to say Elric, then King Arthur.
Who’s your favourite character in your own work?
The heroine of The Artist’s Inheritance
Let’s talk superpowers….there’s no denying we’d all love one. What would be your choice, and why?
Weather manipulation would be nice. Why? It’d be nice to be able to keep hurricanes away from land. I also wouldn’t mind teleportation. Wouldn’t that just make travel easier?
Inspiration’s a funny thing. Where do you find yours? Is there one particular moment that stands out?
A lot of the time I find it in reading mythology. For instance The Artist’s Inheritance was influenced by the fact that at the time I started writing it I’d just finished the Welsh mythological tome The Mabinogion and a handful of Irish mythological texts. We tend to think of the gods as helpful and loving but they could be meddling when they wanted to be or if a lesson was necessary. So I played on that theme in my novel. How would a wife deal with it if the gods came and smacked her husband upside the head for something?
Writers have very different approaches to completing our works. Are you a heavy plotter? Jump back and forth between scenes? Sit down, start at the beginning and just write?
I definitely tend jump back and forth. I can write a whole section at a good clip. But then the steam will peter out and I’ll jump forward to keep going until I can fill in that hole.
What’s fresh about your books? Quirky and different? Likely to entice readers and keep them coming back for more?
I think if people go into them thinking the ghosts are the bad dudes, they’re in for a shock. My ghosts tend to help out the living more than I think in most ghost stories you might encounter. And when the gods are brought into most novels they’re not treated fairly. I tried to treat them a wee bit better in my own, (though with what they put my heroine, Caitlin, through she’s got a right to be bitter). Also, I try to stay away from the “idyllic retirement home” or beachcomber feel that so many books set here tend to. I try to write it as “at home” as I’ve always felt.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a follow up to The Artist’s Inheritance and *sheepishgrin* will soon be getting started on some revisions on a paranormal romance novel I just sold. It’s a wee bit different than The Artist’s Inheritance, I must admit!
How can readers connect with you?
You can find my books at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. Feel free to visit my homepage, Facebook, Twitter or other social networking links to say hi.
Good Reads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5782712.Juli_D_Revezzo
On G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/111476709039805267272/posts
On Librarything: http://www.librarything.com/profile/julidrevezzo
On Manic Readers: http://www.manicreaders.com/JuliDRevezzo/
On Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1002694572/Juli-D-Revezzo/
it takes the zombie genre and does something completely different. Plus it’s humorous and has a lot of gore, which I loved writing. The second one in the series (which I’m working on right now) will also be gory, but have a completely different plot line from the first book. I don’t want each book to be the same type of thing.
and 
live under the tagline ‘ancient magic meets the Internet’ and that’s a bit different. There’s also an underlying conspiracy which explains why the rich are getting richer while the ordinary man suffers. If readers want a laugh while the world comes to an end… then they should be back for more (I hope).
, my tortured asexual vampire who’s desperate to find love on his own terms. He’s such a divisive character, but I adore him. Writing his story breaks my heart.
– I wrote as a sort of reaction to the books I’d been reading. I love fantasy, and I generally prefer to read books with queer MCs, being gay myself, but I didn’t buy the way m/m romance writers combined the genre with fantasy: the worldbuilding in the books I’d read just fell flat. (I’d like to add that I’ve read some really, really superb m/m fantasy books since then!). Because I couldn’t find the book that I really wanted to read, I wrote it.
, a lot of things suddenly came together in a way I’d never consciously envisioned, but clearly somewhere deep down I’d already got it all worked out.
). Cory was talking to this important person about a job he was about to do. I made a note of this scene, intending to file it for later. The scene was really boring, full of backstory and setting. These scenes never survive in the final product.
, after which I may write a quasi-historical fantasy based on the Dutch VOC, in which the Chinese come to a city that sounds suspiciously like 17th century Amsterdam in steam ships. Watch 17th century Europe & their squabbling royalty fight over steam power and cosying up to the Chinese! Yeah, I love torturing history. MWAHAHAHAHA!
and he just ramped it up to a whole different level. His fight scenes are the most fun to write
. The third book, Fatal Healing, is in the editing process and should be out before the end of the year. I started the fifth book, entitled Blood Monarch, just a couple weeks ago. There is also another part of the series entitled the Chosen of Hecate of which the first novel Heir of Mjolnir, is also being worked on.
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and 
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. This week it’s L.E. Fitzpatrick’s turn, welsh resident and author behind the Dark Waters fantasy series.
books, Egan Wey is my favourite character. He’s a lawless lowlife and is such fun to write, especially alongside my more serious characters. There’s something very liberating about putting yourself in a drunken pirate’s boots and smashing up an inn somewhere.
. If you want to pick up both of the books, Traitors Day, book 2, can be found at 
and 
. They’re only 77p ($1.25) each, so give them a go!
Geoff Wakeling 