The ebook version of A Courtroom of Ashes is on sale today and tomorrow!
Love. Epic battles. And a lawyer with shady morals.
Santana Jones never thought she’d fall in love with a ghost, but that was before she met John Braver, the incredibly charming and incredibly dead politician on the other side of her brand new mirror. Who knew the damned thing was a window to Purgatory?
But John isn’t alone on the other side. Vicious spirits roam free in the land of the dead.
When an evil ghost drags Santana’s soul through the mirror and into Purgatory, she’ll need all the help she can get to return to her body.With John by her side, nothing can go wrong. But Purgatory is a dangerous place for a lawyer with a pitch-black past.
Santana has always wondered if she’d go to Hell for defending murderers. Now she’ll know.
I interviewed C.S. Wilde about the background of her book and her adventures in publication!
Tell us about the main character in A Courtroom of Ashes! Most lawyer romance heroines have hearts of gold, so what inspired you to write about a defense lawyer instead?
Santana lives in a world of gray areas and writing about someone like that was really interesting. People say hell is full of lawyers (though I fully disagree), but to send Santana there, I needed her to be flawed and tormented. You can’t send a perfect, goodhearted heroine to hell.
Other than Santana Jones, what sets your novel apart from other paranormal romances?
It’s not often that you find rich, complex characters in a paranormal romance. They usually follow the same formula: Girl meets swoon-worthy guy, guy is a ghost/werewolf/vampire, they fall in love, forces outside try to separate them, and in the end, love prevails. There’s nothing wrong with this formula, actually. It’s a good one, and I have used it in some of my other books.
But A Courtroom of Ashes is not like that. It focuses a lot on Santana and her own journey. John is a really important part of that and he helps her find closure in a really crazy way, but he’s not in the spotlight and he’s not everything in Santana’s story.
I’m always interested in hearing about an author’s journey to publication. What have been the best and worst parts of being a self-published author?
The worst part, by far, is marketing. I’m not particularly good at creating awareness, so word of mouth is my BFF. The best part is actually writing books and putting them out there.
Based on that, what advice would you give to anyone considering self-publication?
You need to have a strong will, and you need to want this like crazy, because you’ll need to take care of stuff that’s not related to writing. Like pricing, promoting, marketing, solving technical aspects, researching best practices, etc. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
What other projects are you working on currently?
From the Stars, a series of sci-fi romance novellas!
C.S. Wilde wrote her first fantasy novel when she was eight. That book was absolutely terrible, but her mother told her it was awesome, so she kept writing.
Now a grown-up (though many will beg to differ), C.S. Wilde writes about fantastic worlds, love stories larger than life and epic battles. She also, quite obviously, sucks at writing an author bio. She finds it awkward that she must write this in the third person and hopes you won’t notice.