Today I am so pleased to welcome Jaymie Wagner to Joyfully Jay. Jaymie has come to talk to us about her latest release, Herald’s Call. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

herald's call banner

 

Jaymie has written some questions and answers to share with us today! 

What does success mean to you?

Readers telling me “This character was really important to me.” Readers telling me “I loved that part!” Readers telling me that something I wrote made them laugh, cry, or both.

Financial gains to the point where I could pay off my car or my house would be great. Someone wanting to option my characters for a movie or TV show would be mind blowing. That said, I know those both have long odds, though.

Things like that would be nice things, but they’re not required. Heck, if I make enough money in royalties to buy groceries or take my girlfriend to dinner, I’m happy.

Every time someone tells me that the characters I created, the world I built, and the story I told connected with them? That what they read stuck with them?

That’s the best thing, and that’s success.

 

Were you a voracious reader as a child?

Oh, yeah. I grew up with parents who both loved to read, and the walls of our living room, family room, guest room, and my parents’ bedroom were lined with bookshelves.

My mom read with me from the time I was a baby, and I read my first book “on my own” when I was three years old. From there, it didn’t take long before I was devouring my mom and dad’s collection and as much as I could take home from the library, and I really haven’t stopped!

 

Star Trek or Star Wars? Why?

Both!

Star Trek, to me, was always about The Future in big capital letters. The idea of going to the stars and humanity making the collective decision to be better, and to explore a galaxy of strange and wonderful things.

I was six years old when The Next Generation debuted on TV, and my parents had already been watching the original series with me when it ran our local stations. To see a Klingon on the bridge, an Android officer, the massive sweeping grace of the Enterprise-D…it was inspiring, and some of my favorite episodes across the franchise came from the voyages of Captain Picard and his crew.

Star Wars on the other hand, was always an adventure – one that my friends and I growing up loved to imagine ourselves in!

We swung cardboard tubes and flashlights with poster tubes attached to them while we pretended to be Jedi Knights, imagined ourselves flying X-Wings and Y-Wings, dreamed of walking aboard the Millenium Falcon.

Star Trek was a utopia, but some part of our brains latched on to the fact that Star Wars represented the opposite – a dystopian galaxy where rebels, smugglers, and even a few droids chose to hope for a better future, and fought to make it real.

These days, I think the biggest influence on who I am as a writer and a fan was actually Babylon 5, but I’m still first in line for a ticket when a new Star Trek or Star Wars movie drops, and I’ve been streaming Strange New Worlds and The Mandalorian too.

(Still – a lightsaber is just cooler than a phaser. Sorry, Kirk, but you know it’s true!)

 

Tell me about a unique or quirky habit of yours.

Like a lot of writers, I like having some kind of background noise, but I don’t want it to be something that pulls me away from writing or trying to work through the story beats. Music works sometimes, especially on lower volume, but a lot of times I flip through TV channels to find something that will make good white noise.

One day I ran across a classic car auction on cable, and decided to leave it there.

The next time I looked up, it was three hours and almost ten thousand words later.

Something about the cadence of auctioneers, bids, and the comments from the TV crew hit all the right buttons in my brain to let me work and focus without feeling restless or fidgety, so now I try to keep enough on my DVR that I can let it wash over me for a good writing session!

 

Which of your own characters would you Kill? Fuck? Marry? And why?

Kill is absolutely Marcel Charron. He’s a manipulative, oily, and dangerous man. He doesn’t hesitate to harm others if it gets him what he wants, doesn’t care about collateral damage, and incredibly dangerous because he believes that everything he’s done is justified.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, honestly.

Fuck is tough because I have this problem where I can’t stop crushing on my own characters, but I’ll go with Amy Oakley.

Amy’s everything Marcel isn’t. Brave, honest, compassionate, and caring. She would never call herself a hero, but her actions are always motivated by her belief in what is right, and for the sake of helping others. Oh, and she’s got a lovely sense of humor, she’s fun, flirty, and quite sexy. There’s a lot to be said for a woman who knows what she wants, and how to get it!

Plus, I must admit I have an extreme weakness for redheads.

Marry has to be Leah Corbyn.

Another one motivated by kindness and an open heart, she’s quite sweet and domestic at times, but she’s not afraid to put her money where her mouth is, and she’ll go through a brick wall for the people she cares about.

Leah was a bit of an ingenue when it came to the world of were-creatures, but she has seen plenty of the seedier side of humanity because of her job and her history. Despite all that, she refuses to become bitter or cynical, and continues to believe the best in people.

It’s easy to see why her packmates love her so much, and so do I.


Blurb

herald's call coverWoe to the wolf who dares to call

With unworthy hearts lest darkness fall

Dour note this horn will play

The hounds shall rise and wolves shall bay

Through the horn Herne shall command

By blood of the Hunt and a worthy hand!

It is said that long ago Herne, the god of the Hunt, could use his Horn to make wolves obey his commands. A legend that Amy Oakley, Alpha of the Howlers pack, learned as a child and stopped believing in long before her first change beneath the full moon.

After spending three years fighting for her lovers and packmates’ right to live among the werewolves of Londinium, all she wants is a chance to breathe, go back to running her pub, and never see the manipulative Marcel Charron again.

As an ancient prophecy begins to unfold, can Amy and the Howlers find the Horn of Herne and keep it out of Marcel’s hands, or will his web of schemes and plots spell doom for their pack and the rest of London’s werewolves?

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/m2eKzG


Bio

Jaymie Wagner is a queer, trans, polyamorous author who lives in the Twin Cities with her cats and an alarming collection of tiny giant robots.

She has been published in several anthologies, short story collections, and posts her “Fractured Fantasies” twitter micro-stories where she explores different ideas and kinks.


Giveaway

Jaymie is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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