Author Speed Date

The idea of speed dating is that you get 10 minutes to sit down with a prospective date and get to know them. In that spirit, we present Author Speed Date. A quick 10 minutes for you to get to know some of our clients. Today we'd like you to meet Christie Craig.

BookEnds Author Speed Date

Name (the one you’re published under): Christie Craig/C. C. Hunter or “hey you.”

Speed date Bio (one or two lines): When Christie Craig isn’t sipping wine and telling a joke, she writes humorous romantic suspense for Grand Central and young adult paranormal romances for St. Martin’s Griffin as C. C. Hunter. (Is that longer than two lines? Sorry, I’m Southern, and long-winded. Plus, math was never my best subject.)

Web Link: www.christie-craig.com and www.cchunterbooks.com

Next Book, pub date: Born at Midnight, March 29th (C. C. Hunter) and Don’t Mess With Texas, August 23rd (Christie Craig)

Agent: What’s her name . . . Oh, yeah, Kim Lionetti. (Did I spell that right?)

About Me

Real Name or Pseudonym: Christie Craig is my real name. C. C. Hunter is a pseudonym.

Currently Reading: Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Next on Your Reading List: Falling Under by Gwen Hayes

Facebook or Twitter (include account name): ChristieCraigFans and @Christie_Craig, plus CCHunterFans and @CCHunterBooks

Three authors living or dead you would want to have dinner with: Janet Evanovich (because people keep comparing my Christie Craig books to hers), E. B. White (he wrote my favorite children’s book, Charlotte’s Web), and Stephenie Meyer (so I could ask her why Bella chose Edward).

Jet-setter or armchair traveler: Jet-setter, love to travel. I’ve visited China, France, South America and almost all the U.S. And I’m just getting started.

Glass ½ full or ½ empty: The glass is always half full. If you want to make it as a writer, you have to keep going in spite of the hurdles, so having a positive outlook is essential to success.

Tea or Coffee: Coffee with cream, please. I’m waiting . . . where is it?

Live to write or Write to live: Both. Wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, can’t stop.

About My Writing

When (time of day) I write: 7 a.m. – whenever. I’m bad about writing ten or more hours a day, especially when I’m on a deadline.

Writing soundtrack: None. Shh, silence, please. I can’t write with music if it has lyrics.

Character Inspirations: I steal from the world, from my own personal experiences and waitresses who wait on me. All is fair in the author’s world.

Plot Inspirations: What ifs. Anything that makes me stop and think. Imagine me, sipping coffee, looking out my office window. A garbage truck roars down my street. What if the thing that had the garbageman looking so hard into the neighbor’s garbage can was a human head? Did my neighbor kill his wife? You know, I’ve always thought he was a Colombian drug lord. But wait! (Flipping into my paranormal mode of thinking.) What if the garbageman’s not really a garbageman but a rogue vampire? And my Colombian drug lord neighbor is really a werewolf . . . Oh yeah, oh yeah, this is going to work.

Setting Inspirations: Sunsets, sunrises, the moon, the Waffle House. Put me somewhere and I’ll find something in that setting that inspires me to write about it.

Plotter (carefully plot books) or Pantser (write from the seat of my pants): Complete pantser. Even my synopses go to my editors with sentences that read, “I don’t know who the villain is right now, but it will be the least likely person the reader expects.”



Thanks for the interview, guys. Signing off, going to stand by the window and watch the garbagemen a while.