Behind the scenes with Skylar West

Behind the Scenes with Skylar West

We ask her about her:

• What series are we highlighting? Crown and Cross and The Sons of Sicily 
• What’s your favorite book in the series – Skylar discusses her book, His to Learn – Jimmy Falcone – story premise – Optional series name - Favorite female character is Suri from the Crown and Cross series. Description of the Laughlin plot. Description of Suri – she comes from a dark place and created herself anew. Skylar draws parallels between herself and Suri.
• Was there a specific character that you found challenging to write? A&D series, Jax hardest to write obstinate obtuse, dominant pain in the ass. Discusses how Jax and Finn eventually get there HEA
• Did you have an external inspiration for the series like another writer or series you have read? I want to create the perfect sex scenes. The connection between the two mains has to be unique vein of connection, meant to be in someway. Discusses external inspirations, like other authors.
• Where your characters all developed in advance? Discusses the Memory Cathedral based on Leonardo Davinci – her process maps out in her head and develops as she writes. She sees the plot pathways. Process is organic.
• Have any of the characters gone down a path you didn’t anticipate? Yes, book 3 in A&D changed the direction of the series.
• How do you organize your characters for a series? I make notes afterward in notebooks that look like really bad vinn diagrams. Plug for Angels & Demons are really representing the corrupters of the earth and the Angels are the saviors trying to safe the earth and move it forward.
• Characters loosely based off people you know. All the characters have a characteristic of someone I know both the ones I like and the ones I don’t like.
• Skylar offers advice for readers and writers.

Contact Information:

Ann Jensen

AnnJensenWrites@gmail.com
https://annjensenwrites.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Ann-Jensen/e/B08VRMR5SK/
https://www.facebook.com/annjensenbooks
https://www.instagram.com/annjensenbooks/

Skylar West

https://www.authorskylarwest.com/
https://www.amazon.com/author/skylarwest/
https://www.facebook.com/authorskylarwest/
https://www.instagram.com/author_skylarwest/?hl=en

Transcript

Hi, I'm Ann Jensen coming to you from the east coast of New Jersey. Hi, I'm Skyler West coming to you from the west coast of Canada. We are two romance writers using our life experiences to break down and share with you all things romance, how you find your next book boyfriend, discovering genres and tropes and looking at what works and why and what doesn't work and why. Welcome back to coast to coast romance. Today we're doing a behind the scenes of Skylar West series. You've got many series out there, and I'm jealous. You're so funny. But you have the best series, so you know, no jealousy required. Oh. Thanks for inviting me on my podcast as a guest. Yeah, well, you know, it was a tough call. It was between you and my other co host. Wait, that's you. excited to talk a little bit about the few series that I have done under this pen name at least dive in? What series are we going to talk about today? Well, I was thinking of highlighting crown across just because there's not a lot out there on crown and cross. It's it just kind of came and hit and the people that have read it love it. But there's relatively not a lot of even advertising so far that's been done on that set. So let's start there. We could talk about the sons of Sicily, too. If we get there. I have to say I enjoyed both of the series. So we'll have to check them out. But have them what's your favorite? What's your favorite book? So for me to pick a favorite book is really about deciding what I had the most fun writing or creating. Right? Yeah, and by far my favorite all time character is Jimmy Falcone and Jimmy Falcone is from my son's a Sicily series. Yeah, he's hot. And, and a lot of people like Jimmy and it's funny because as I have been doing takeover parties, I get asked a lot for the second book kids to train in that series. And I'm like, Oh, I'm like, but you haven't read book one. Are you sure you want to get back to them? They're like, Yeah, it sounds more interesting. So somewhere I have failed my fans getting up. Yeah, you gotta you gotta work that blurb baby. I can I apparently have to redo a blast to train is. He's hot. Yeah. So Jimmy in his to learn. And the premise of that is, basically I have family that has moved years previous to the United States from Sicily. And although it's listed as mafia, it's not really, it's not your typical dark mafia story. So people that don't like dark would like this story, this series, right? Because reality adjacent, it is both the adjacent let's I love that term. And he is trying to find a way to appease the families that he has to be involved with, because of who he is and where he comes from, but still walk the legitimate business line in Philadelphia where he is, and here's the part that I love. If I could have called this to treehouse series, and not make a litigate to keep with our kids. Because the whole theme in this series is these kids like they these neighbors, these kids that grow up as neighbors, and they have tree houses, and it's where they meet their first love. And then you travel years ahead. And you know, the tree house plays a prominent role in how these relationships carry on or take off again, and it's so romantic. I mean, I just love it. But the reason why Jimmy's my favorite is because he's the absolute epitome of the caring, actually, you could call him a daddy Dom without actually giving him that role. He's never called that by her. His love Teresa. Right, but he's nurturing, but he's very nurturing. And, you know, basically, you know, they don't see each other for a good 10 or 12 years. And so, when they reconnect, he realizes that having pulled himself out of her life, set her up for a series of events and disasters of no fault of her own. Everything that happened to her was because she knew him because they were friends. In fact, they were besties growing up, right. And when he left the hood, so to speak, for grander pastures, it left her in the HUD in a very bad place. And when they reconnect, that's where the story takes off from and he's realizing that all of these characteristics that she now has, that she didn't have before were as a result of him not being there for her. And he sets out to rectify all these ways in which he led her down and to help her grow herself again as a person. And you have this very dominant alpha male who is encouraging and loving and all he wants to do is help her be the best version of herself that she could possibly be. And in amongst all of this, of course, is walking this paradoxical line, rather illegal and legal business and which she ends up getting mixed up in the ultimate kind of you know, If you want, yeah, plot twist, part of what I enjoyed about it was obviously the heat level, but the dynamic of I left your life and I screwed you. And now I'm coming back into your life. Right? And that might screw you too. Yeah. And there's a real almost frenemies kind of vibe to it. Yeah. And then of course, there's Second Chance romance, you know, which is really what it is. And that leads into Book Two. But having said that, about my favorite book was because of my favorite character. And I loved writing Jimmy. Now on the flip side of that my favorite female character I've written is Suri, and Suri is the female star of the crown across series, right. And crown cross series had been a on my back burner for a long time, because under a different pen name, I'd written a series called the Montana series, which is not about westerns, it's not about a place it's about a person. And in that I developed a Scottish character named Declan and I wanted to write an entire series around his character named Declan that took place in Scotland in the highlands. I loosely came up with the idea that I could write a series on an old historical legend about the Knights Templar. I thought if I could take an old history because he's into history, Declan, the character own has owned the Flying Scotsman, which is actually a newspaper in Scotland. He's very much into his heritage. He was a William Wallace fan. He's into all of these things. And I love his character too. He's also a very tortured, so you got this big, huge, you know, redeeming alpha male Scottish guy who always is unclear as to his personal worth. So he's got a lot of interesting character flaws that go along with these amazing characters, fluctuations that he has. But anyway, so while also pulling in the Knights Templar, and subplots, and everything like that, which so I am a historic history buff. I love history. And I loved the Knights Templar stories that I've read while I was homeschooling my kids. And I wrote a suspenseful kind of a mind screw book, I call it as short that it's no longer out there, which should be out there. But it's called pedals of awakening. And I wrote it under nm McGregor, and in there is the transformation is the backstory for Suri. And although she's not called that in that book, and basically, you have this woman who grew up going to college, getting the right grade, doing what her parents said, and all of these things. And then she goes on a two week all inclusive yoga thing in New York City. And that's it, she starts the entire book is about these epiphanies that she has, right and, and how she makes her choices based on all of her baggage and how now she gets this opportunity to step beyond this baggage and move forward with her life. She becomes this Yogi. She leaves everything behind in her life and becomes a shogi. And Suri in the crown cross series is this evolved woman. Book, one Laughlin, Surrey happens to be on a beach in Turkey, meditating under the full moon light, make it of course, because that's her vibe. That's her deal. And she witnesses and almost murder, like someone's getting attacked way up on the other end of the beach, which is otherwise deserted. She sees it happening. And she's like, crap, you know, as a yogi, you know, we're into a Hema, which is non harming, so I better do something about this. So having nothing around her and she throws on her clothes, tucks everything else into a bag and she grabs a rock as she tosses it as far as she can, it hits something and distracts these two assailants long enough that the guy they're about to kill starts to run. Unfortunately for her, he runs in her direction. This is where the story begins. And the entire first story seems like it's going to be about her witnessing this clandestine almost murder, right. And it turns out that the guy that's almost killed is an informant for what we call that the contemporary version of the Knights Templar. You're bringing the story into the, into the now and she runs into the arms of the giant of a man who just happens to be coming around a corner, and it's Laughlin, who just happens to be a lord within the Knights Templar. And so, it all seems very happenstance. But we find out as we read this, that of course, they're coming together. There's nothing happens doubts about it. But what I like about Surrey is she is this she's come from a place of tragedy. her first husband has died. He actually killed himself. She had a very unloving childhood, although she was given everything there was no warmth, and so she's created herself. She's even changed her name. And Suri is actually her given name within the yoga community is right Yogi named so to speak. Now I am a yogi and in real life and so I say how much yeah How much of you are we seeing in theory? So yeah, there's a I channeled a lot I in fact, when I was doing my yoga teacher training, there's a thing called a 200 hour training, which to me is really learning how to teach a one hour yoga class, it gives you enough understanding to be able to turn around, right, a one hour yoga class and teach it by no means does it make you an expert, right? So compared to that 200 hours, I've had 9000 hours of training, yes, in various forums, and I have taught about 20,000 hours in classes, you don't meet a lot of people with that much experience. But while I was doing my teacher training, my second one, I had this experience where I actually levitated during best bhastrika class, which is a type of breathing. And when we were done, and I kind of came out of this translate state, I was like, Oh my god, this is amazing. And I was jumping up and down and Sherry, how excited wasn't the rest of the class is looking at me like I was batshit crazy. I was like, oh, okay, I was the only one. Never mind, never mind. Describe that for me. So, when I wrote my first draft of Laughlin, I channeled all of that levitation experience that I had in the specialty class for experts in two series first experience of sitting on the sand and it literally the entire first chapter was a description of everything she was experiencing while she was sitting on the sand. And then I ended up scrapping part of that I had a few readers that went as just too far out of my league to understand. And I simplified a lot of that into more layman terms, right, but I wanted to get across where she comes from as a person, right because that's where I come from as a person so I really can relate to Siri you know that we look at the world through a completely different shade of glasses than most people and we come from a place of energy instead of matter. Right and so we tend to connect more with vibration than a physical other physical you know, ways of dealing with things like some people the other day we'll grab a cup of tea or a glass of wine I'll go and meditate or shatter tequila in my case but yeah exactly whatever works right we're all different and so I enjoyed writing series because yeah, there was a lot of me in there and there's there was a lot of you know, my desire to be in a constant adventure. And the adventure doesn't have to look a certain way for me like I love figuring things out I love history and so Suri gets drawn into this huge adventure has nothing to do with her. She thinks, right, and this is where I love the twists and turns that probably Laughlin has more twists and turns than any other book that I've written now. Sorry, was obviously one of your easier characters to kind of embody. Who do you think in your series was the hardest character for you to write? Oh, you know what, in my angels and demons series, I created siblings, so there was a sister and two brothers that eventually become the main focus point and in fact of the stories there's six of them are all told from these different viewpoints I would have to say easily hands down the jacks was probably my higher hardest character to write and I had to kind of imbue him with characters of people that I know a lot of but that I will often butt heads with because they look at the world through a yet a different lens. Hey, it's okay. We're like we're all different, right? Wrong. Oh, to be what we are, but it doesn't mean that that lens is my face. So Jax is this obstinate up to not really an alpha, but he's a dominant pain in the ass, to be honest, very different from the Jimmy is to learn. He's the mule rather than the Yeah, but I didn't want him to not win either, right? Because I'm such a everyone deserves a happily ever after. Finn and Jax and Isabel the three main characters from angels and demons all have their happy happily ever after. But Jax and his brother Finn, don't get those right away. You know, they go through some stuff first. And and so that was fun. They hit Yeah, as they should. Right, right. Yeah. When you're coming up with your series, do you have sternal inspiration? Or maybe another series inspires you? Like, where do you get the idea for turning something just into a single story into a series right? Well, there's so there's a couple of answers for this, because it really depends on my mood. First of all, I want to create the perfect sex scenes, meaning that when I write my Steam, I want to draw on something different. Under a different pen name. I just wrote a three-part series and the London Yes, rogue London and rogue has just written a book that will be coming out into September early October called daddy stowaway. And actually, this is a traveling brat series that she's written. There's the stowaway. There's the Castaway and there's the runaway and then each one of those books as there is in her first series, Daddy's brat series, the main heat comes from this really unique scene, and each one of them has one of those. And that's become a real Paramount thing for me as a rogue London writer. Now, if you take that back into your question and my Skyler West books, the connection between two mains, you know, the male, the main female, and you know POV and male, because I tend to write from their point of view versus third POV, there has to be this unique vein of connection. And it's either going to be from the story, which is, you know, that they're meant to be connected in some way, but not faded necessarily. Or just that there's a scene I want to write, write a steamy scene, and who's going to be perfect for that. So that that's one side of how I make up my mind and on the series is it's going to come from a feeling of something that I want to express but often, like, I think Vanessa Brooks said it on one of her interviews with us is she'll watch something. I watched something the other day that springs in me what I'm writing right now, it was just a it was a sentence literally in the show, and it would ping in my brain. And I made notes. And here I am halfway through the second book now. So no angels and demons specifically came to me because I've been reading it Lucas's books, and I loved them. I think I read 40 books. Before I went, I'd really like to write something about paranormal people. And yeah, and so she inspired me to now my series is very different from hers. There's things about her that I like better than mine. And there's things about mine, I like better than hers, not to not to have an apples to apples comparison, because it's not. But that's where I got inspired to write angels and demons and mafia was, you know what, I wanted to have something that was a little bit different than what everyone was used to as far as dark mafia, because mafia is often associated with darkness. It's often associated with men that aren't so nice, but they're nice to the one girl, right? So they'll burn the world down for her. And they'll do some nasty stuff. Now, I don't mind reading it. But I didn't want to write it. Oh, yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to write something that was like, hang on a second. You know, what about what about these guys that don't have a choice? There was a lot of people that don't have choice. Right? And so what do you do in a situation where you, you're smart enough, you have the brains and the education and the experience to navigate two completely different worlds. And that's exactly what the sons of Sicily is. And so for that reason, I just wanted to have a different viewpoint for these guys. Right. Yeah. And crown across. Like I said, I'd always wanted to write something that was based on that historic on the historical thought that when the treasure disappeared from the Middle East, it ended up in Scotland, and there is a lot of evidence to support that it has, and I use a lot of those pieces in Laughlin and Malcolm kind of like, fable or Yes, absolutely. Taking it that far. Yep, for sure. 100%. Do you develop your characters as you go? Or do you usually have them pretty solid when you start? Oh, I love you. You know, I don't? I know. I know. You and I opposites? Yes. Yes. And I am is very, you're so bright. You really are a brilliant woman. And she plots out these perfectly written stories. Like I mean, if you haven't read her MC romance series, dark sons, right? Yes. Yeah, they're brilliant. Because she is brilliant, the writer is brilliant time, this organic nutbar process is very much I start off with two people as as their story grows, those other side characters come in, I rarely ever have an idea for a secondary character. Or I don't know how you can manage while being a pantser you have these interwoven conspiracies and characters and dynamic relationships and everything like that. I mean, we'll get on this master but like, I had to sit down for like a week and plot out all the bits and pieces of my series and what was going to fit where and how it was gonna feed in. And you're you just start with two people. And somehow at the end, we've got angels invading the earth and Templars hiding the treasure and like, I am a definitely an adventure girl. Yeah. And you know, what's funny, too, is I just, I can see it. It's almost like I can see the entire thing mapping out there like brain maps. And I feel like I don't know if you've ever read anything by there was a book called The memory Cathedral. And it was based on Leonardo da Vinci's way of thinking, funny story. I actually read that because I worked with someone and I walked in one day and he was making like hand gestures. And I was like, What are you doing and he's like, I'm walking through my memory Cathedral to try to I remember something. And I was like, What are you talking about? And then he pointed me and I and I read the books. I was fascinated by them. Yes, it's brilliant. Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wish my brain was that clean. But, um, well, now since I've read that I've hit menopause. So I can tell you that things change when you lose a quarter of your brain cells. But my process is very organic, and even ending a chapter. I don't have to count. Like, I always find this fascinating when I when I log on to Facebook as an example, and an author has posted how many words they've written that day. And I'm like, I wonder why they do that. Because in my brain, I know what I've done. I know what I have to do. Literally, I don't have post its I don't have a big board. I don't have to draw the pave the pathways. I just see them. And now when I when I was writing, yesterday, I was writing this daddy's Castaway. And I had to figure out because I knew people like you would say, hey, that's not right. And so I had to figure out if someone was gonna be in Tortola, and they'd gotten there on a yacht is like a math question. I thought of you and they're gone. They're on a yacht that does so many knots per hour. Where could they have come from to be up there in a week? And I literally mapped it right back to a spot in Florida. And I thought it would be so proud of me because this took me an hour. Um, that is the most technical investigation I've done in a long time. Oh, no. I do you have any understanding? I was writing my third book. And I figured out I had done pregnancy math wrong. By like, a month and a half. No way. That's awesome. And I just about had a nervous breakdown. So just saying, Oh, well, and here's the thing is when your processes organic, so again, as an energy person, I find when I'm writing, also, they'll get this Ting. It's like a tick or a, like a red light goes off. And it says no, I'm like, oh, okay, so something I just wrote isn't right. And it could be timeline. It could be like I just said, how long it takes to get from Florida to Tortola. Right, whatever the case may be. And so I'll go and I'll look at it. And I'll think okay, so let me question that. I'll have these points when I'm writing well, stopping our question. Often it comes in draft two. But if it's really pressing me, I will stop in draft one. I'll stop that flow of words and just kind of take a deeper look at what I've just done. But even that is an organic process, right? Yeah. Now, yeah. Alright, so I'm going to change this question a little bit for you. Because the question ends with in your outline, and I know you don't have one. So have any of your characters ever gone down a path where you're like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the way you should go. Yeah. Wait a second, come back. Yes, in my angels and demons’ series. Originally, it was going to be a 12 book series. This was what I had imagined. And in fact, I even wrote an outline for 12 books do you think a single one of those matches what I wrote, not even close, like, whatever, why do I bother? something much better that just popped into my brain. And I'm going to do that instead. Book Three was transitional, because I started to realize that when I was writing these sub characters, I wanted a couple of them to be paramount. Raphe, who is Isabel so the main character Isabel, the love story is with Iver Eriskay and his best friend is Raphe. Now, these guys are Immortals that have been around for 18,000 years, you know, or somewhere in that timeline, and their parents are fallen. And I wanted to be able to have Raphe as a main character because he's so intricately tied into Ivers story. He even lived with him after his father was killed and his father Draco, who was another fallen angel. Long story short, in Book Three, I realized when I killed off a character that was so much fun, by the way, oh, I was so liberated to write a romance Rykiel the character of like, yeah, as victory is mine, that I realized that I wasn't going to be able to have the main characters as I wanted. Because the story was changing. It was starting to go down a path that was really geared around the siblings and their spouses. So although there was other things that could be happening, it really needed to be told from a perspective that affected them directly. And Raphe, ended up becoming a novella, that I give away free to anybody that signs up for my newsletter. It's called firstborn love. And it's his backstory with how he meets Diana, who is the daughter of a fallen angel and the Huntress Diana in the theology. Okay, yeah, that's awesome. Now, do you do you keep like a character Bible series, but like after you've written so that it can be used later because we know we're not planning in advance here. Stats or their relationships or do you Go back. And so for those of you who can't see it, because this is only audio I'm holding up a book in front of and that has scribbles that go in every direction with lines with arrows. And I call that my, my version of the Venn diagram. So yes, I do. I do make notes afterwards. And they look like a Venn diagram. And I even print badly, really big to accentuate my different points that scribble in different directions on my pages, because I find if I write everything really tidy, I don't know what I was thinking. So I can't find it again. It's like, this is terrible, but I recognize my scribble. But I have probably, I was actually answering someone on Facebook, and they were talking about their journals. And I'm like, I probably have like sitting beside me right now. I have five, five journals and a couple of pieces of paper. So yeah, I basically know where to go and look up. I want to know what so and so's, you know, I mean, when I was reading angels and demons that had these crazy names, and it's like, okay, so who's going to be raped mother? Well, let's have some makeup. Because we have Raphe is our African. You know, he was born in Africa. He's, you know, she is Amelia is the African goddess of Earth, right. And she becomes very good friends, or is very good friends with Isabel's mother, who's Gaia. And I had so much fun, I'm just going to do a plug for angels and demons here, because book six was the combination. And I pulled in every single environmental thing that I wanted to talk about, right. And because at the end of the day, these guys are preserving the earth. That's what they're really fighting is the demons aren't really spiritual demons. In fact, they're not spiritual demons at all. The demons of my stories represent the corruption that is destroying our Earth, right? And the angels are just representing the people that are trying to save it and help it evolve. Now, other than being based off fictional mythological creatures, and everything like that, we mentioned that, you know, story has elements, have you in it? Do you think other characters that you've written are loosely based off of people, you know, or? Yeah, I would say that there's, I mean, I think there's an element of my husband in Jimmy's character and in the girl. Yeah. Yeah. He's pretty awesome. And I would also say there's an element of him and ivers character and Jackson's character. And, and so many of the male characters I've written definitely has a piece of his I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm lucky I'm married to one of those kind of dominant alpha guys that everyone reads about. And it's fun. And so yeah, lucky me. Most of the sex scenes are things I've actually done. Hmm, yeah. So that might add some spice. We might have to cut that out. Nope. I have the editing button. Oh, my gosh, that yeah. I mean, I think that, I mean, there isn't a lot in there that I either haven't done, or we haven't talked about doing. Well, I don't know if you can you really say that because you have flying sex? Well, that's true. That's a dream. Like that would take a lot of like wires and, and so is the treehouse also. I mean, that's, in fact, the treehouse is something completely original. I don't even know where that came from. I have no idea where that came from, like that just came out of somewhere that I haven't even realized yet. But there's got to be something there because I've never had to treehouse. And our kids have never had a treehouse. So yeah, that just another one of those precious things. And the sons of Sicily series that I absolutely adore. And of course, who doesn't dream about being with a billionaire who, you know, yeah, yeah, that's, I'm sorry. Today, I'd like to go to Paris and have lunch, then. Can we shop then? Can we stay in a hotel soundproof? And then we'll have fun. Yeah, but really, I mean, other than that, I think all of the characters have a characteristic of someone that I know. Right? And I pulled up once I like, once I don't like that's awesome. All right. Well, we have another question. We have there anything else you would like to share about writing series? I think that if you are a reader, and you're listening to this podcast, that you're going to gravitate towards books that make sense in your mind, you know, whether they're reality adjacent, or too far reality adjacent for you, you know, whatever the case may be, but for those of you out there that are writing or you want to write, maybe you're a reader who would like to write your own book, you don't have to follow rules. Just write your story and figure out the rules when you need to, you know, the take hope in that it there's no right way for your process to occur, and you'll develop it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, and thank you, Skyler. All right, everybody. Join us next week. Thank you for listening to coast to coast drove ads. I'm Ann Jensen, and I'm Skyler West. If you'd like to contact either of us, our links are located in the show notes. Have a great week. Thanks so much for joining us.