where the writers are

Josh Aterovis Author of the Killian Kendall Mystery Series

Interview at Reviews by Jessewave


bibliomaniac

My addiction to Killian Kendall is confirmed. This series keeps on getting better and better.

Amazon.com

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Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

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Barnes & Noble

Powell's Books

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Powell's Books
More booksellers coming soon!

November 4, 2009, 11:08 am

I was recently interviewed on the excellent review site, Reviews by Jessewave. Here's a brief except followed by a link to read the full interview:

Josh Aterovis, popular award-winning author who currently writes what is classified as Young Adult books, and a feature writer for AfterElton.com, is my interview subject today. What many people don’t know is that Josh is also a brilliant artist! You will see some of his pictures on the site and get to know this talented author/artist a little better.

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Hi Josh. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Why don’t you start by telling the readers something about Josh personally and as a writer?

Hmm… You like to start with the tough ones, don’t you? Personally, I just celebrated my one year anniversary of moving to Baltimore. It’s been an interesting experience for me, growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which is very rural, but I’d say it’s been a very positive experience over all.

Something about me as a writer? I’m a bit of a lazy writer. [laughs] I’m not one of those disciplined writers who force themselves to write so much every day. I write when I’m inspired, or as my aunt says, when the word fairy visits. I work on other things on days when the word fairy refuses to show up.

Kris, one of the guest reviewers on the site wanted to know the answers to these questions -

What made you decide to write a series that featured a young, psychic sleuth?  Were you a fan of the Hardy Boys when you were a teenager?

Actually, I was a fan of Nancy Drew. [laughs] I read some Hardy Boys, but I loved Nancy and Bess and George. Then I fell in love with Agatha Christie. This was all when I was still in elementary school. I read a lot as a kid. When I started Bleeding Hearts I didn’t plan on making it a murder mystery. It was going to be more of a romance, and then all of a sudden…I had a body on my hands, and it went from there. The psychic stuff just fell into place. I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal and it just naturally worked its way into my work.

You currently have 3 books published. We first met Killian, your main protagonist in Bleeding Hearts published in 2001.  Did you intend at that time to write a series?

When I started writing Bleeding Hearts, I didn’t even intend to publish it. It started as a web series, posted one chapter at a time online. It was so well-received that I decided to see what a publisher thought. The first publisher I queried wanted it, and the rest is history. By that time, I knew I wanted it to be a series.

 Kris has a few other questions for you -Bleeding Hearts is by no means an ‘easy’ read and deals with such issues as parental abuse, coming out, hate crime, murder, grief, first love, the paranormal and mental instability.  Why would you want to tackle such themes in this first book in the series and, quite frankly, put Killian through hell?  Or did you, as some authors have said here before, write the story that wanted to be told?

 I didn’t even outline Bleeding Hearts. I just sat down and started writing. I had no idea where the story was going before my fingers hit the keys. Much of it was almost like being in a trance while the words came from somewhere else. I’d finish a section and read back over it as if I was seeing it for the first time. I definitely felt like I was telling Killian’s story as he was telling it to me.

I didn’t really have an agenda except that I felt like this story hadn’t been told at that point. A lot of the issues you mentioned were either things I was afraid of at that time — following right on the heels of Matthew Shepard’s murder, and coming from a very religious family — or I’d heard from friends online, so why not tackle those themes? It’s stuff real kids were (and are) dealing with and nobody likes to be talked down to. I dealt with them as realistically and honestly as I could.

 Read the Full Interview HERE