Interview with author Elizabeth Einspanier

Today’s guest is independent author Elizabeth Einspanier. She’s here chatting about her new Western novella, Sheep’s Clothing.

Bio:

Elizabeth Einspanier is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and cross-genre fiction, as well as poetry of all types. Her short stories have been published in Down in the Dirt and Dark Fire Fiction, and her poetry has been published in Aphelion, Haiku Journal, and Abandoned Towers Magazine. 

She has been writing as long as she has been able to string words together into an interesting story, so naturally by the time she enrolled in college it was clear that a BA in English was the way to go. Her inspirations are as diverse as Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, C. S. Lewis, Arthur Conan Doyle, Madeleine L’Engle, and Jonathan Coulton, and when she is not writing she works full-time at the St. Louis County Library, where she feeds her hunger for new books. Her other hobbies include playing Dungeons & Dragons and watching strange movies.

She is a native of St. Louis, but frequently visits worlds of her own creation. She is a member of the St. Louis Writer’s Guild and a supporting member of the HWA.

Welcome, Elizabeth. Please tell us about your current release.

Sheep’s Clothing is a Weird Western vampire novella that pits a mild-mannered frontier doctor named Doc Meadows and a half-Sioux gunslinger named Wolf Cowrie against three vampires who want to take over the small frontier town of Salvation. I wanted to get back to the roots of vampire fiction here, so I combined historical research with setting-relevant mythology; the result is more akin to Bram Stoker than Stephenie Meyer.

What inspired you to write this book?

Basically I read Twilight and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I like to get back to the roots of popular monsters, and I wanted to do the same with vampires and make them dangerous again. Taking the Wayback Machine to the old West seemed like the natural way to do that without trying to rewrite Dracula.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m working on a couple of projects right now. One is Hungry as a Wolf, a spinoff from Sheep’s Clothing that centers on Wolf Cowrie, and the other is Silk and Steel, a romance fantasy novel that’s a cross between The Princess Diaries and Red Sonja.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was very young, I read voraciously, and then started writing my own continuations to the books I read.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I write part-time, and work full-time at the St. Louis County Library. I write during breaks at work and in the evenings when I can. You’d be surprised how much you can get done in an hour or two a day.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I occasionally have full-blown conversations with my main characters while I’m driving or trying to get to sleep. Oftentimes they have some pretty good advice about where the story could go.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be everything from an astronaut to a veterinarian before I settled on writer.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Ways to connect with me include:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads Author | Goodreads Book

LibraryThing Profile | LibraryThing Work

Book links:

Paperback | Kindle | CreateSpace              

Thanks, Elizabeth! Happy writing!