I am happy to welcome author Heather S. Ingemar for a guest appearance and interview for my blog.  Heather is a dark fantasy author for teens and adults.  Her “Requiem” was voted among the top ten young adult books for 2009.

What would you like your readers to know about you?

I'm multi-faceted. Some have even called me a Jill-of-all-trades.

What do you enjoy most about writing fantasy?

I enjoy the escapist nature of it. I love being able to 'disappear' into a whole new world for a few hours at the end of every day.

What inspires the dark/horror twist in your stories?

I'm not sure. I've always had a fascination with myth, legend, and the occult. I love poring over things science can't explain. I also sometimes wonder if it came from having so many nightmares as a child. When you get used to looking at fear in the face, it doesn't seem so mysterious – and that shows up in my fiction. These vampires and were-creatures and zombies… are they really so bad when you can look at them in broad daylight and shake hands? Or is it just the shadows around them that frighten us?

What, in your view, is different about writing for teens and adults?

I see the big difference when writing about topics that are still sensitive to our society – sex, suicide, drug abuse. With adults you can be blunt, and YA writing tends to be a little gentler in its depictions… but then again, that is changing and changing fast. My day-job is being a librarian, and I'm seeing more and more YA books that could really go in the adult section. 

What is the next project you are working on?

I'm working on an as-of-yet untitled flash fiction piece I hope to submit to a few literary magazines, and after that, I'm going to tackle some more stories in my "demonic" universe. The first piece in that series, "Crown of Thorns," has been contracted by Drollerie Press and should be out sometime by 2011.

Heather’s Bio:

The woman known as Heather S. Ingemar is a bestselling author of dark short stories for teens and adults and an accomplished folk musician. She loves coffee, tea, intravenous Mountain Dew, cats, and motorcycles. She is currently at work on her next tale, or maybe avoiding work by shooting around canyon corners on her Suzuki Savage LS650.

To learn more about Heather, visit her blog at http://ingemarwrites.wordpress.com/  

Join Heather once again for the next 'Spooky Times' tour stop at Karen Syed's blog at http://klsyed.com/ on October 25th