GCC Presents Jackie Kessler author of Hotter Than Hell

How apropos to feature a hot, hot book during the hot, hot dog days of summer?

In HELL’S BELLES and THE ROAD TO HELL, Jackie Kessler brought readers into an unforgettable Underworld populated by alluring demons and sexy devils. Now Daunuan, the most irresistible incubus of all, is facing one Hell of a challenge...

So whose soul do you have to damn to get a promotion around here?
Daunuan was never the ambitious type. There's so much to love about his job just the way it is—mind-blowing sexual prowess, the power to seduce any human, excellent dental plan. But now Pan, the King of Lust, has offered to make Daun his right-hand incubus—a position other demons would give their left horn for. All he has to do is entice a soul destined for heaven into a damnable act of lust. Should take, oh, seven minutes, tops.

Then he meets his target, Virginia Reed. She’s cute. Funny. Smart. Unfathomably resistant to his charms. He can’t understand it. But Daun has centuries of seduction to his credit. He’s the best there is. Sooner or later he’ll transform this polar icecap of a female into a pool of molten desire, and every instinct tells him she’ll be worth the effort.

Meanwhile, he has to deal with a plague of rogue demons Hell-bent on taking him down, sent by an unknown enemy with a serious grudge. And one other problem: the dawning realization that he’s falling in love—that unholiest of four-letter words—with the woman he’s about to doom for all eternity...
HOTTER THAN HELL: Book 3 in the Hell on Earth series by Jackie Kessler (Kensington/Zebra Books, August 5, 2008)


What’s the backstory behind your latest novel?

Ever since Jezebel mentioned her buddy, the sexy incubus who could make her sweet spot tingle without even touching her, Daunuan refused to be just a minor character. Originally, he was going to be the one who shot Jezebel in Hell’s Belles and then he was going to get killed by Paul. But the book took a completely different direction from what I’d imagined, and next thing I knew, Daun was (shudder) helping Jezebel instead of hunting her.

And then in The Road to Hell, his feelings for her became quite clear—to me, if not to him and Jesse. Demons don’t love, after all. So what he was feeling must have been nothing more than indigestion. (No one ever said demons were the smartest creatures out there.)

I knew that I wanted to write Daun’s story, but it took a while for me to figure out what sort of story it would be. Daun’s in Hell, and Jesse’s with Paul, which doesn’t do much for a happily ever after for him. Did Daun even deserve a happy ending?

He’s a demon—an Evil creature who has sex on the brain pretty much all the time. What would he know of love? What if he had to find out the hard way? Poor Daun. He never knew what hit him. (Hee hee hee…) And so, HOTTER THAN HELL (August 5, 2008)

What are the three most important pieces of advice you’d give an aspiring writer?

To paraphrase author Cindy Procter-King (Head Over Heels), there are three things you need to get published: talent, persistence, and timing. While it’s difficult to write to the market, you absolutely can hone your craft and develop a thick skin. Write. No matter what, write.

Martha O’Connor (The Bitch Posse) once told me to write like there’s no one watching. This is brilliant—don’t censor yourself, certainly not during that first draft. Get it down. Then worry about getting it right.

Something Joe Konrath (Whiskey Sour) told me really got me to stop thinking of my writing as simply striving to create that Perfect Work of Art. He said, If you want writing to be your business, you have to treat writing like a business. Thanks to him, I studied the market, read agent and editor interviews, and started thinking about what makes people return to a website.

What’s your writing routine?

Usually, I write first thing in the morning, before my day job, and then at night, when my Precious Little Tax Deductions are sleeping. (Yeah, I get very little sleep.)

Have you ever had writers’ block?

How do you deal with it?Whenever I fall prey to writer’s block, it’s almost always because the scene I’m working on isn’t right. Either there’s a plot point that’s gone astray, or the characters are doing something uncharacteristic, or the novel has gone in a direction that doesn’t best serve the story overall. The only thing that works for me is to figure out what went wrong, untangle it, and keep going. Sometimes, I get into arguments with my characters. Seriously.

Like in HOTTER THAN HELL, there was a scene in which Daun was supposed to visit Jesse at the strip club where she works so that he could get some information from her. But Daun insisted on watching Jesse dance first. I didn’t want to bother with that—we’ve already had two books in which Jesse dances, enough with the dancing already. But Daun insisted, and he wouldn’t let me write a damn thing until I agreed to have Jesse dance first. And it wound up being a great scene. Do I sound insane yet?

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on the fourth book in the HELL series, and then on the second book in a dystopian superhero series—the first of which, BLACK & WHITE, will be published by Bantam Spectra in the summer of 2009.