Escape from Writer's Block Hell

By Jenn Lyons.

I can’t tell you how wonderful today feels (although I’m a writer, so I’m darned well going to try.)

There’s a funny story to this too.

Some time ago, I was stuck in writer's block hell. I had two books that I couldn't finish in spite of personal pacts made with any number of private demons. I was trapped waiting for inspiration to strike, but any muse of mine was going to have a hard time reaching me past that brick wall, reinforced as it was with excuses and denials.

In hindsight, it must have seemed like an odd decision to start a third book.

I certainly couldn't have predicted that Blood Chimera would be the one that forever changed how I approached writing: the last book I started and the first book I finished. Blood Chimera is the book that showed me I could actually do this, which is funny because it’s also the book that everyone told me I shouldn’t write.

"Vampire books are so over," I was told. "After X? Forget about it. Everything's been done." (The identity of X is an ever-changing variable of popular authors, each one’s success proof that the genre is 'finished.')

I didn't listen. I had to write this book. 

But that’s okay: in hindsight this turned out to be a very different kind of vampire book. Blood Chimera owes as much to Raymond Chandler as to Bram Stoker, particularly to Chandler's idea of a man who walks the mean streets who is himself not so mean, who is trying to be a hero, even if he lives in a world which is thoroughly corrupt. I knew from the start there would be a heavy supernatural element, but I also knew it would only be an added texture to classic motives: greed, ambition, lust, and revenge.

Some monsters are human. Some only look that way. And sometimes it’s damn hard to tell the difference.

Much to my surprise, Eileen Wiedbrauk snatched this book up right away, and she never shied from my love of detail and world building. (Also, she reads my mind on occasion. It’s a little unnerving, to be honest.) She’s challenged me in the best ways.

I do know this: If you enjoy this book even a quarter as much as I enjoyed writing it, we’re both going to be very happy.  

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Jenn Lyons lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, three cats and a lot of opinions on anything from Sumerian creation myths to the correct way to make a martini. At various points in her life, she has wanted to be an archaeologist, anthropologist, architect, diamond cutter, fashion illustrator, graphic designer, or Batman. Turning from such obvious trades, she is now a video game producer by day, and spends her evenings writing science fiction and fantasy. When not writing, she can be found debating the Oxford comma and Joss Whedon’s oeuvre at various local coffee shops.

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Her debut novel with WWP, Blood Chimera, chronicles the experiences of a Kidnap & Ransom expert who discovers he is an unwitting member of a race of vampiric shapeshifters who secretly control society. She is currently working on the follow-up, Blood Sin.