Beth Daniels has worn many genre hats and pseudonyms over her 34 years in publishing. She has a short attention span (changed jobs frequently, and men, too). When she discovered urban fantasy, she dragged along romantic banter, mystery, and added magic to the mix and is quite happy she did!

About the Workshop

Beth is presenting, “Honey, There is something Not Exactly Human at the Door,” which starts June 3 and ends June 28. The workshop is asynchronous and via groups.io. There is still time to join!!

What’s your workshop about?

“Honey, There’s Something Not Quite Human At The Door” is about creating characters that are, well, not quite human. Sometimes not even attempting to look human. Beings that come from the paranormal, supernatural, legendary, and alien realms. They might snag the role of main characters, or they might not. But the more off the human scale you tweak them, the more interesting and memorable they could be for your reading audience.

Whose your workshop for?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re new to writing fiction, have tales told but still in the prepublished pile, are a midlist author, or award-winning/bestseller writer, if you’re interested in diving into a new to you fantasy genre niche, this workshop’s goal is to toss together a new (or merely altered) character creation recipe and run with it!

What do you hope attendees will gain from your workshop?
A realization that not all things that go bump (or burp) in the night need to follow the same paths to creation that characters in other stories have followed. We’re “people-ing” our cast nearly from scratch, even if some familiar elements stay in place. For instance, I have a hero who is a 170-year-old werewolf, but when he shifts, he simply looks like a large wolf, but one who curls up in dog form at the foot of the heroine’s bed. I’ve also invented beings that exist nowhere but in my own urban fantasy stories. Because I really enjoy changing things up and around and upside down, I want to share the fun of being these characters’ creator with other writers!

About You

Please tell our readers a bit about yourself within two to three sentences.
I’m a native Baby Boomer from Ohio who spent 22 years in the desert southwest. Both ex-husbands heard me complain about the heat 9 months of the year. But, dreams do come true, just not as quickly as I’d hoped, and the goal to be a published novelist I had in 7th grade, finally came true after dawdling for three long decades!

Do you have a trunk novel(s)?
Not so much a trunk as a bookcase loaded with all the published novels, and some collections of shorter tales that I’ve written. However, in the file drawers, there are nations of story ideas that were started and abandoned.

What genres do you write?
Currently I’ve been more focused on urban fantasy mystery romantic comedy mixes, but my writing life began with romantic suspense, moved to historical mystery standalone titles, skipped into YA romantic comedy, shed it for the alternative worlds of Weird West Steampunk, 1920s Dieselpunk, and dipped a toe in Gaslamp fantasy. My muse likes variety in what we cook up.

Are you traditional, hybrid, or indie published? Why did you go this route?
My first novel was published before self-publishing was able to shed the connotation of being “vanity” press, so it found a home at a small traditional publisher. Flip the calendar over to the 21st century when eBooks and Indie Publishing arrived, and you’ll find I did join the revolution, first in rereleasing titles where the rights had reverted to me, then adding new novels and short stories. Still kept my hand in the traditional world though, so I’m a hybrid author.

What does success mean for you?
Success is frequently an elusive sprite. My writing career has required resuscitation more than once because the demands of the market changed or life interfered. It’s a rollercoaster. “Success” swirls in when a reader not only gushes about how much they loved the story but confesses they’ve reread it more than once just to hang out with the characters again. Heck, I reread my own titles when I get a hankering to spend time with the children of my imagination, too!

Do you have any odd/strange/fascinating rejection stories to share?
Odd or strange rejection letters? Not really. The ones I recall best were those collected when still unpublished where the rejection letter suggested changes to improve the tale and asked to see it again if I rewrote it. My first historical ended up with three total rebuilds from the ground up, but it landed me my first agent and a contract from a publisher who’d rejected it the year before. If I hadn’t received those encouraging and helpful rejection letters, I probably would have given up on my dream of being a published author.

What is your writing routine like?
Some might call it hit or miss. It’s either Procrastination City or pounding out thousands of words in marathon sessions. The only whip used to get production going is usually a contracted deadline.

Who first introduced you to the love of writing?
My mother introduced me to her love of reading, but she confessed to having no idea about how I came up with stories of my own. The first original tale I wrote was because I’d run out of Nancy Drew books to read and wrote, what I thought was a really long story—5 handwritten pages, about a teenaged girl sleuth. I have no idea what was in the story other than the word foliage, and that’s because one of my friends who read it, asked me what the word meant. I still love to play with words, even invent some of my own. If Shakespeare could do it, so can I!

What living or dead author would you have over for dinner and why?
That would have to be the late Elizabeth Peters (Dr. Barbara Mertz). I loved her characters and the way danger and comedy mixed with romance in them. However, while I love hearing about archaeological finds, mummies give me the creeps so I would not have accepted an invite to go mummy hunting. She was an Egyptologist, after all. I leaned more toward trailing after her Vicky Bliss more than Amelia Peabody characters.

What do you see ahead in your career?
More urban fantasy, more alternative mystery adventure, but likely in reduced word counts—short story, novella—rather than nearly 100K long novels. Well, unless an idea takes me in its grip and keeps me up nights pounding the keyboard.

What encouraging words do you have with struggling or first-time authors?
Read voraciously! When I began writing in earnest, the Internet was still a pipe dream and the only classes or workshops available were those at universities and colleges, and they weren’t interested in genre fiction. So, everything I learned about writing my first books came from studying what made my favorite novels keep me turning pages. Every time I decide to dabble in a new to me genre niche, that’s still how I find the cornerstones that make it a specialized niche. After that, I start the movie in my head, and let the characters write their own story. I’m just the one at the keyboard.

Team Edward or team Jacob from Twilight and why?
Neither. While scores of readers inhaled them, neither the characters nor the writing style appealed to me. I didn’t get very far into the first book before heading toward something I enjoyed more.

How can readers find you online? (Include social media links if you like)
The best way to find me is through Facebook and Twitter/X, but my current To Do List has “redo Amazon author pages” on it, and possibly kill some of my Pinterest boards to build new ones under my various pseudonyms.

Website | Twitter (JB Dane) | Twitter (Beth Henderson) | Facebook

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