Guest Post and Giveaway: Kris DeLake

Please join me in welcoming author, Kris DeLake to Debbie's Book Bag today. Kris is here promoting her novel, A Spy To Die For. The guest post Kris has written tells readers more about her storytelling process and how she comes up with ideas for her books. Check it out and see the end of the post for giveaway details. 

Storytelling
Kris DeLake

My novels all come from short stories. I write a lot of short stories, mostly under my real name Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and every now and then, I finish the story and wonder: What happens to everyone next? When I wonder that, I have a novel.

I wrote a short story called “Drinking Games” for an sf anthology called Love and Rockets, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. I realized right away that I needed to write more about the characters in the story. Misha had shown up in two other stories of mine, “Killer Advice” and “Defect,” but he needed his own novel, and since he was an assassin, he needed a romance. (The stories are all available as standalones.)

Honestly, I have no idea why my mind works the way it does. 

Misha got his novel. It’s called Assassins in Love and it’s the first book in the Assassins Guild series. A Spy To Die For is the second book, and I knew I had a novel when Jack Hunter tried to steal his scene in Assassins in Love. I had a story about Jack already, but who would he fall in love with?

I knew the name of the woman he was interested in, but not who she was. She’s Skylight Jones, but how did she end up working for the Assassin’s Guild and why is she named Skylight?

I had to answer both questions for myself in a short story called, “Skylight,” which just appeared (under the Rusch name) in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Once I knew Skye’s backstory, I could write about her romance with Jack Hunter. And oh, boy, what a romance. They have a lot of lust for each other, but these two wounded souls need someone to love.

They find love in the middle of space battles and assassins. And I got to answer all the questions I asked about these characters.


My life is pretty fun: I pose a question and then write stories to answer it. 

How cool is that?

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

The publisher is sponsoring a giveaway for one copy of A Spy to Die For by Kris DeLake.

~ You must be an email subscriber to participate.
~ US and Canadian addresses only.
~ The deadline to enter this giveaway is Midnight EST,  July 24th.

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