Is it that time already? I believe so! Boy, oh boy, do we have a special treat today! We're doing things a wee bit different today, and I am so excited about it! Normally on Ask An Author, I get to pester an author about a story, but not today. This time, I got to pester one of our beloved Administrators about THREE stories! That's right, we got ourselves three amazing questions about a series! I hope y'all are ready, because we're diving right in. Here we go! 

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Carthera Takeover Tales
Cia

The Carthera are a violent race, never failing to respond to battle, they nevertheless are a proud and honorable people. Except for the ferals. Battles for territory, fighting persecution from the humans, for the right to rule, have echoed down through the ages. In these modern times things are different, easier. Laws are made--and enforced--and peace, of a sorts, is possible. Some seek to end that.

My favorite pairing is Dav and Ellis, don't know why, but do you have a favorite pairing between Natham & Velaku, Bashta & Cavel, and Dav & Ellis? If so, who and why?

Dav and Ellis as well! Probably because I put a lot of myself in Ellis. Oddly enough, while I loved writing Dav as a character, I absolutely hate snakes in real life. My teen daughter has a 2 year old ball python that's somewhere close to 3 1/2 feet, and it's all... ewwwww. She wears it like a necklace and watching it move around her head creeps me out. Somehow, though, the idea of all that sinuous movement in a man? 😊 Totally works!

How did you come up with the specifics of the plague that spread through the jaguar clans?

⚠️ This will have a spoiler, FYI to readers who haven't read Book 2 in the trilogy! ⚠️ Carthera have only been "accepted" in "human society" for about 50 years in this trilogy. So the medical knowledge isn't quite up to date. I treated the plague much like Ebola. Exposure from contaminated surfaces (the statue) then person-to-person among the vulnerable and least 'clean' (aka children who don't tend to wash up well). Antiserum from survivors was the most effective treatment for ebola for a long time. FYI, I used to work in the medical field, so that's one of my areas I try to be very exact and make sure is realistic, even when I'm writing a scifi, paranormal, or fantasy story.

The Carthera are incredibly interesting to me. What made you detour away from the typical shifters and instead create the Carthera?

I'm never one for writing 'run-of-the-mill stories' where I follow along with conventional mythos. I love to create twists. Either in the idea behind the original mythos I'm basing my storyline on or morphing the character types or as I'm going along in the plot events. Okay, okay, sometimes I'm greedy and do all three. I like shifter societies who have all sorts of animals (OMG, why limit myself to a single species when I could play with so MANY?) who carry their animalistic traits into their human form, and I do like it when they're integrated instead of being hidden society alongside humans.

So with my Carthera, I decided to create "shifters" with mixed animal/human characteristics who were integrated into society, but I figured by timing it to recent 'coming out' as a species to humans I could also incorporate a lot of different societal dynamics in the storylines. One of these days I want to come back to the world; I have some ideas with ocean shifters, since they are some of my favorite animals. 

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Unlike Cia, I love snakes! Let me tell you, if I ever got my hands on a man like Dav, I might be tempted to kick my husband to the curb (sorry, Noah...)! The second I got the request to go bother Cia, I screamed like a little girl! I dropped everything and wrote the fastest PM in my life! This series is one of the very few reasons I made an attempt at writing, and I come back to these stories often frequently regularly a lot when I want to get away from everyday life. Make sure to check out Cia's other amazing stories through the link in her name under the series title! If you have read a riveting story and want to ask the author about it, send your questions to me and I'll happily knock on their inbox for you! Until next month, buh-bye!