Photo Content from C.C. Hunter
C.C. Hunter is a pseudonym. Her real name is Christie Craig and she also writes humorous romantic suspense romance novels. www.christie-craig.com
C.C. would love to hear from you. Because of deadlines, it may take some time to get back with you, but she will reply. cc@cchunterbooks.com
Was there a defining moment during your youth when you realized you wanted to be a writer?
Can I say no and yes? Being dyslexic, I didn’t even consider being a writer when I was young. I didn’t read for pleasure until I was over twenty. But being southern, storytelling was a part of my life. Even at the dinner table when we were telling about our day, you had to make it good. And I was pretty good at it. I practiced a lot. You see, if I hadn’t been dyslexic, I’m sure I would have been a book nerd because I loved getting lost in a different world. So, instead of reading, I retreated alone to a spot in the woods, or I’d go to a small creek about a mile from my house, and I told myself stories about cute boys and adventures. A story went on in my head for months. So in a way, even though I didn’t really know it, I was writing books in my head. I was twenty-three before I even considered trying to actually write. I had so much to learn, because while storytelling was in my blood, writing a story is different. I had to learn how to write and how to deal with the dyslexia.
In your new book; MIDNIGHT HOUR, can you tell my Book Nerd community a little about it and why they should read your novel?
It’s a story about discovering your self-confidence. About a dyslexic witch (I wonder where I got that from?) learning to not let her disability define her, but instead to embrace what the disability can teach her. It’s about young love, forgiveness, and how far you would go to save someone you love. It’s about friendship, laughter and learning to fight for things you believe in. But it’s also about saying goodbye to Shadow Falls. Midnight Hour is the last book in the series. In it, we watch Miranda, Della, and Kylie graduate.
For those who are unfamiliar with Miranda, how would you introduce her?
Miranda is a dyslexic witch and dyslexia is hard for anyone, but for a witch, it can mess up your spells and make you a real screw up in the eyes of other witches. In spite of feeling inadequate and insecure, Miranda is part sassy and part sweet. Like most teens, she struggles with the relationship with her parents, whom she recently discovered has kept secrets from her all her life. She’s never felt courageous, but when someone she loves is kidnapped and the only way to save them is to take their place, she finds a streak of courage she didn’t know she had. While she’s a girl on the brink of becoming a woman, she struggles with her emotions for a boy who she loved but has already left her twice.
What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating Miranda?
When I started writing Shadow Falls, it was in Kylie Galen’s POV. But her two roommates, Miranda and Della, were such great characters, I knew they had tremendous depth and would make great protagonists themselves. In Awake at Dawn, the second book in the series, I had Miranda catch a fellow competitor in her magic competitions spying on her at Shadow Falls. At the time, other than her being concerned that Miranda might best her in the competition, we didn’t understand why this girl, Tabitha, was spying on her. When I started writing Spellbinder a novella about Miranda, I was surprised to learn that this girl was Miranda’s half-sister. I love it when secrets and surprises about the characters start coming out and I’m as shocked as the reader. Miranda was full of surprises. The tattoo she gets after visiting a fortune telling witch, and how it starts growing, came to me out of left field. I didn’t know what it meant until the story got going.
Why do you feel you had to tell this story?
I wrote Kylie’s story. I wrote Della’s story. I couldn’t leave Miranda out. When she first came into being, and I gave her my own disability of dyslexia, I felt compelled to write her story so I could watch her really overcome the self-esteem issues that so often come with dyslexia. I also really wanted to go into Perry Gomez’s story. And Perry gets his own point of view in Midnight Hour as he reconnects with his parents who abandoned him at three years of age. It’s a heart-tugging story.
Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
Depends on what kind of a bad day it is? My hubby is good for some bad-day issues. But you know there are some things only a girlfriend can really help you solve. So I run to Susan Muller, Lori Wilde, Diane Kelly, or my assistant Kathleen Adey. They are all writers.
What’s your most missed memory?
I would say all my memories of my grandmother. She was a woman born before her time. She was a genius. And the society views on women of her time held her back from accomplishing so much more. Born in 1913, most women didn’t go to college. She went and graduated with two degrees. English and Education. She wanted to be a writer. Even had a job offer at a newspaper, but her older brother refused to let her accept the position. You see, ladies didn’t do that kind of work. So she taught school instead. She was my biggest supporter. She was alive when my first book was published. She was so proud of me. And I was proud of her. While she never started writing, she was an awesome teacher.
What decade during the last century would you have chosen to be a teenager?
I hated being a teen. I think that’s why I can write the angst in my young adult novels. But I think it might have been easier being a teen in the 1980s. Before social media and during a time when women felt less pressure to have a career and still be the perfect housewife.
What is the one, single food that you would never give up?
Pizza, ice cream, chocolate. Oh, you said just one. Sorry, but I’m not sure I could live without any of them.
MIDNIGHT HOUR TEASERS
When you lose your sister, you lose a part of yourself.
Love can make you do crazy things—like go on the lam with a guy wanted by the FRU.
Sometimes doing the right thing can hurt, but it’s still right.
If you can be anything, sometimes the hardest thing to be—is yourself.
Who knew that becoming a pink polka dotted elephant could save people you love?
Crawling under a dark, damp house with spiders and rodents is unpleasant, even when you’re a snake.
Being stuck between two guys is like being the white filling of an Oreo. And when you pull it apart, you’ll stick to only one wafer.
Some families have the occasional skeleton in the closet, other families have a warehouse full.
Sometimes the truth is sharp and jagged and can cut you.
Belief in yourself not only changes how you see yourself, but also how others see you.
Change can be both exhilarating and scare the crap out of you—all at the same time.
Some of us are born fighters and others need a little training.
Breaking up is hard to do!
There is a girlfriend code of ethics that shouldn’t be broken.
Parents makes mistakes, some of them are forgivable. Others should have never become parents to start with.
Sometimes when someone says they are there to help you, it’s hard to believe—especially if it’s an armadillo.
Becoming who you need to be is sometimes more about accepting who you are.
Our decisions, the paths we think we should take are often paths that our parents guided us to follow. Sometimes we need to stop and listen to our own hearts to know which road to take.
Sometimes the irritating tension between two people can end up to be a different kind of tension--one that involves the heart.
Sometimes the hardest thing to forgive someone is when someone you love puts themselves in a dangerous situation. But sometimes when we do put ourselves in danger, we’re doing to save the same person who will likely never forgive us.
Even in the supernatural world, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We will never quite see things the same way, but it’s a lot of fun trying.
No matter terrible or horrific things stem from family linage, you don’t have to follow that path. The sins of our fathers are not our sins to bear. Our destinies are our own.
There is almost nothing that can’t be solved at a round-table-diet-coke discussion.
Graduation means saying goodbye. Graduation means leaving pieces and parts of our past behind. But it is a passage that we must take in one of the first steps into adulthood.
FIGHTING BACK TEASERS
Relationships are alive, they need to be fed, watered and given TLC to continue to flourish.
When you have to fart, make sure you sit next to a dog you can blame.
Sometimes a thing can start out feeling like a curse, but end up feeling like a gift.
A relationship is never fifty-fifty. Sometimes you end up giving more and sometimes you end up getting more, but watching that balance is essential to keeping love alive.
There is such thing as the perfect apology.
Sometimes the people you respect don’t deserve it. Sometime people use their status and power for their own good, or for the good of evil.
The past is meant to be overcome. Holding on to hatred and grievances will keep you from finding the best future.
When one window is locked, use another. But be prepared to face a pissed off vampire protecting her friend who purposely locked that window.
Ghost are a real B with an itch to deal with, but most of the time, they are there to save the day.
Sometimes it’s the most unlikely friends who can help save you.
Even when someone you love dies, you don’t give up. You never, ever give up!
Being a dyslexic witch is a curse in itself, but Miranda Kane’s time at Shadow Falls has helped her harness her magical powers. Now, just as she’s finally mastered them and is preparing to graduate with her friends, a near-death experience threatens to ruin it all.
Miranda awakens in the hospital with a mysterious tattoo that no one can explain. As she struggles to make sense of it – and questions her feelings for a certain irresistible shape-shifter and a hot new guy – the strange markings begin to spread all over her body, leaving her desperate to find answers. But before she can solve that problem, a new one arises: her sister is missing.
Has her sister been kidnapped? Miranda will risk her life to find out. Will she live to share the day she’s worked so hard for with her friends? When the clock strikes midnight, will Miranda make it to her graduation at Shadow Falls?
C.C. Hunter brings The Shadow Falls saga to a spectacular conclusion in this thrilling finale: Midnight Hour!
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