Jennifer R. Povey is another member of Broad Universe, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting, encouraging, honoring, and celebrating women writers and editors in science fiction, fantasy, horror and other speculative genres.

Born in Nottingham, England, Jennifer now lives in Northern Virginia, where she writes everything from heroic fantasy to stories for Analog. She is currently working on an urban fantasy series of which the most recent volume, Fallen Dark, was released in the summer of 2017. She is a regular writer and designer of tabletop RPG supplements for a number of companies. Her interests include horseback riding, Doctor Who, and attempting to out-weird her various friends and professional colleagues.

Falling Dusk is the first volume of her Lost Guardians series:

Anna McKenzie just wants her life back. She wants the brutal murder of her brother never to have happened. She certainly doesn’t want magic, power, and to deal with a certain vigilante named Victor Prince… …but once the world of magic has claimed her, there is no escape.

Did something in the real world inspire Falling Dusk?

Yes and no. I’ll be honest and say this book was written as a response to the vampire romance craze. I wanted to portray a (reasonably) healthy relationship with a supernatural boyfriend.

What is your favorite scene in the book?

That’s a favorite child question! It has to be the scene right at the end where the cat comes to the rescue. Anything else would be spoilers, but there’s a reason I have a plush cat with my convention stuff.

What was your writing process like as you wrote the book?

I’m mostly a pantser/discovery writer. This was book one of the series, and I thought I knew how the series ended. Thought. Heck, it wasn’t meant to be as romantic as it was. The characters, especially Anna and Victor, tended to take over. With the later books, I spent a lot of time with the book on one side of my screen and Google Earth on the other. This let me “move” through the locations with the characters. I highly recommend it, if you’re writing in the real world but not in the location you live in.

What was the best thing that happened during your promotion of the book?

Honestly, the one thing I can think of is walking past registration at a con and seeing the volunteer reading it. There’s nothing like seeing your own book “in the wild.”

What do you have planned next?

I just finished and released book four in the series (Risen Day). My next release is with my editor right now: it’s a standalone urban fantasy currently titled Paths. I might be changing the title. After that, I’m going to go back to one of my science fiction universes and write a “parallel” book to my first novel, Transpecial. A sidequel, maybe?

Pick up a copy of Falling Dusk at https://amzn.to/2Qmqyyu.