Magical Words

Faith Hunter writes dark urban fantasy. Her Skinwalker series features Jane Yellowrock, a full blooded Cherokee and hunter of rogue-vampires in Skinwalker, Blood Cross, and Mercy Blade. Raven Cursed, Death's Rival, and Blood Trade in 2013. Jane Yellowrock is a shape changer, ( shapeshifter ) in a world with werewolves, werecats and vampires.

Her Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, and Host—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

Faith writes full-time, works full-time in a hospital, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay – that’s a joke. She does still make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally, she remembers to sleep or use the vacuum cleaner!

Faith researches in great detail, and tries everything her characters do. Research led to her life’s passions – jewelry making, orchids, bones, travel, white-water kayaking, and writing.

Jewelry-making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix, the Rogue Mage, and the main character of BloodStone, written by her pen name, Gwen Hunter, and fell in love with it! Faith makes, wears, and gives away her jewelry as promo items to fans who come to signings, as prizes in contests. See her FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter for pics. She works with stones, pearls, crystal, and glass, wire wrapping her larger, undrilled, focal stones. Labradorite, Amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are her favorite stones. She spends too much money on supplies and needs larger storage for stones, beads, and gems.

Faith owns upwards of 20 orchids. Her favorite time of year is when several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at her FaceBook page. And yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of her orchid pics are juxtaposed with bones and skulls —a fox, cat, dog, goat skull, (that is, unfortunately, falling apart) and the jawbone of an ass. She just received a cow skull, and would love to have skull of a lion (that died of old age in the savannahs of Africa!)

She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their rescued Pomeranians, Tommy and Tuffy, to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast. (The poms don’t whitewater. The pampered dogs stay in the RV in air-conditioned comfort!) Tommy and Tuffy love to travel in the RV, take long walks, and get groomed. Seriously. They love their groomer!

And that leads Faith to kayaking – her very favorite sport. Faith discovered whitewater paddling when she was researching her (Gwen Hunter) mystery book, Rapid Descent. She took a lesson and—after a bout of panic attacks from fear of drowning—discovered she loved the sport. She is also a voracious reader.

Under other pen names, notably, Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. As Faith, Mercy Blade debuted at 24 on the New York Times Bestseller list in Feb 2011. Under all her pen names, she has 22 books in print in 27 countries.

For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net , www.gwenhunter.com, and www.magicalwords.net. To keep with her, join her fan pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter

Fave saying: I am old enough to know better, but young enough to run the river anyway.