Okay everyone! Got a few questions in the Tumblr ask box, and luckily a couple of you asked multiple questions so we have a decent sized list. I'm ignoring a couple because they risk spoilering things, but I hope you enjoy and if you have anymore feel free to ask them in the comments here:

  What are your influences on this series?

  Obviously there's a lot of influence taken from different urban fantasy media, but I think if I had to pick the biggest influence on my writing style it'd be southern gothic in general. It's the sort of genre I've been around all my life, though it wasn't until I got into VC Andrews that it started coming out a lot in my writing. With urban fantasy especially there's usually a big focus on the characters present, how those around them effect them, how they change the place they call home, and I like to bring in some of those more southern gothic influences into it. It's nice to see a setting where someone genuinely feels like they live in a complicated world that existed before them, and has its conflicts and issues they can't even begin to understand.

  If you make me pick a couple big names that I feel like were the main influences, than it's going to make me sound really basic. Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, VC Andrews, they're all some of my favorite authors and I can't really escape their influence.

  What are some of your favorite werewolf media?

  I don't think there's ever been a piece of werewolf media I didn't enjoy in some way, as silly as it's going to sound, and I think a big part of that is the fact that werewolves are really hard to get wrong, and I have an easily pleased taste in media. You make me pick a few favorites though? American Werewolf in London is a classic movie, Trick R Treat's werewolf story has lived rent free in my brain for years. One of the earliest werewolf books I ever read was called Blood and Chocolate, it's a YA romance novel, and while it doesn't hold up perfectly at all it's one of those things you read in Middle School 5 times and still like in the modern day despite its problems. I've also done some World of Darkness, Werewolf the Apocalypse especially, and have done a tiny bit of writing for the TTRPG line and was in a stream for the 20th anniversary edition.

  Why Richmond?

  Born and raised just about there, Richmond was a place I always spent a lot of time in and enjoyed for what it was, and I think it fits really well for stories exploring generational trauma and the idea of this stagnation in life. It's a black hole of culture where no one escapes that has only managed to produce human suffering, Gwar, and Dave Matthew's Band, which might be all the same depending on your opinion on Gwar and Dave Matthew's Band.

  Jokes aside, I fucking love Richmond. I had to move away recently because of financial reasons, but it was always a nice place to be. I mean, it had its problems. Was really expensive, kudzu, humidity, I used to live near a woods so wood roaches, public transport sucked, the supposed capital city of the state had less to do than any other city, the summers sucked, spring sucked, winters were fake, fall was decent at least. Great place, love to go back again sometime, and honestly writing this helps me feel like I still have a nice connection to it.

  Best Werecreatures besides werewolves:

  Probably wereraven or werespider, because who wouldn't want to be a bird flying around on command, and who wouldn't want to occasionally turn into a giant crime against nature spider monster for fun? Also I bet I could gather up webbing and turn it into yarn to do fiber arts projects if I was a werespider, and that would be fun.

  How do you make characters?

  I like to write characters as people, as generic an answer that's going to sound, but I think it's important to my style with how much I like to consider my work southern gothic adjacent at least. There are very few people in this world who think they're the bad guy as often as it feels like there's people who exist to prove that point wrong. Everyone is defined by their past, their personal sense of morality, and how they've reacted to what's happened to them in the past. Often a character trait, relationship, etc will just appear while I'm writing them because it's something that feels natural for that person to have, and that will lead to even more things farther down the line as I expand on that.

  Usually a character will start as being a purpose to the narrative, a vague personality, a few basic traits, and as I think of what I want I start to wonder what sort of person actually ends up like that. Every person ever born started their life being born, no one came into this world a fully formed being with their drives and morals hard coded into them, and I think it's more interesting when you write characters as people who might struggle with that. My cruelest characters have their moments of humanity and small joys, and my nicest characters still have their darker moments or mistakes and have been effected by their pasts.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  If I'm allowed to give a slightly related answer, which what are you going to do, stop me? I think this also plays heavily into how I try to look at the morality of my characters and how characters are effected by their choices and pasts. Because, and I've joked about this with friends, Mary's main issue is the fact that she's living in the aftermath of an Urban Fantasy novel series that had a really sudden and kinda bittersweet ending, and random side character Knives is the only one who ever went to therapy before or after. Martin, Misha, Samuel, they all tend to fit the generic Urban Fantasy protagonist mold better than Mary, and she's basically coming into a sequel to a series that never existed.

  There's layers to the trauma everyone has had, and how it made them who they are, because it doesn't just stop with Mary, and it's something I'm wanting to explore as we go on with the writing. Not just peeling lines farther back as the story of what created the current world is revealed, but seeing how Mary's effected others as well and how she reacts to being confronted with that fact. After all, she is living in the world created by someone else's story, and she too has helped in the creation of the worlds others will live in as well, and I think it's that cycle that helps me with writing these characters.

  Does Mary actually hear animals as talking, or does she just understand them? What does the animal here?

  Mary's ability to understand animals is pretty obviously more detailed than you'd expect for how an animal acts, but I don't think it necessarily translates to spoken English in her head either. I've always pictured it more as she is understanding the animal's language, and it lets her words get translated to the animal, but there's also something about her powers that can make these conversations deeper with animals who have a stronger grasp of English. Average dog hears a lot of conversation around it but maybe doesn't get directly talked to for long, while I picture Lord as the sort of cat who was used to getting talked to like a person whenever Annabelle was bored or relaxing. Some are able to speak relatively well, but don't understand deep concepts or complicated ideas, and others understand internet discourse.

  Which, yeah, is probably a way too long way to say "it's probably a weird middle ground where there's some mental translation for each side, but they're not necessarily hearing it as anything in particular.

  Why is Lord like that? What was your inspiration there?

  Lord is a character based purely on a joke between friends of "cats are actually hyper intelligent, they just pretend to be goofy and silly". Not stealing food but just increasingly begging because they understand the concept of crime, coming in while you're watching a movie and sitting with you because they're actually invested in Breaking Bad, my friend had a cat that every time you walked past him in a skirt he'd try pulling it down. From there the joke kinda evolved into "what if a cat was raised on second hand 90s girl and Tumblr memes" and Lord became the cat we know today.

  It probably doesn't help that, as early as the first chapters involving Lord I ever wrote, my beta readers and I all agree he just sounds like Bruce Campbell in our heads and that influences a lot of how he gets written in certain places.

  FMK: Misha, Hunter, Andrew

  See this is cruel, because all three of these men were made to be my type in different ways, as much as that says about us, and I hate putting them against each other.

  That said, easy choice in current states: Misha's a mess mentally but safe and knows what he's doing, so F. Andrew's pretty much just all around nice and healthy, doesn't need a ton of work, M. Hunter's still in the Purists, I'm a human IRL, 89% chance I will die and I'm doing decent on the mental health front despite current events, so don't feel like risking it: K.

  Given the implication The Lady is Mircalla Karnstein, and knowing Urban Legends and Fairytales can become real, what's the implication for characters from novels such as Carmilla or Dracula being real?

  OH, an actual lore question

  While it's not an exact science, stories in general need to be something believed to be real by a large portion of the relative population with the modern day making them even harder to form at times. Something like a fairy tale becomes real by virtue of the fact most children will believe they're real at some point in their life. In the modern day, Urban Legends spread either by strong word of mouth or online stories and end up becoming real by virtue of people not realizing their fictitious nature. As well, a lot of stories being combinations of a few similar ones, a generic form of an old one, or just somehow able to replicate a single story vividly enough they never fade.

  Which, is to say most novels or fictional media couldn't become real because not enough people would genuinely believe it was real for long enough for one to form. Now, are Dracula and Carmilla real? Well... that's complicated.

  Do you ship Mary with anyone uncanonly?

  ending on a light question

  Not a 100% sure what op meant, but assuming it means "outside who I think she'll end up with in story"....yeah. I have thought she'd be cute or have an interesting dynamic with so many characters. I like shipping, and its a fun exercise sometimes to explore what would lead to a couple or how they'd be.