Kindle And Me...: Indie-Credible Authors: Author Spotlight Susan Kaye Quinn

This is an amazing tour with some amazing indie authors! Today I get to spotlight Susan Kaye Quinn. I read her Young Adult series - The Mindjack Trilogy. It is wonderful and what I loved most about that series is that all the loose ends were tied up at the end. I had no questions and I felt happy. I haven't started the Debt Collector yet, but I have it! So, I will be reading it soon. Check out the interview with her. Below you will also find a trailer, a cute bonus scene that never happened, and her playlist for the Mindjack Trilogy. Okay, I think I have everything covered! Enough that you should check out her books!! She is also having a giveaway of the audio versions of the first 6 volumes of the Debt Collector HERE.
Below the rafflecopter is the full tour. Go check it out and don't forget to enter the tourwide giveaway too!
Tell us about yourself
Susan Kaye Quinn, speculative fiction writer. In a past life, I was an engineer – worked for NASA, got a Ph.D., studied global warming (lots of cool stuff). I started writing fiction for kids and young adults when I fell in love with the stories my boys were reading – Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl, Leviathan, and Hunger Games. Once I put pen to paper, I never looked back. Now I write full-time while my kids are in school and love every minute of it.

Tell us about your writings
My Mindjack Trilogy is a YA science fiction series about a girl who can’t read minds in a world filled with telepaths – and who finds out she can control them instead. My adult works include a future-noir serial called Debt Collector about a world where your debts are “cashed out” by collectors who take your life energy and transfer it to someone more “deserving.” As you can see I have a thing about mind powers! Actually, I have a thing about the mind in general – anything that deals with the power of human consciousness fascinates me. But I got into writing because I liked middle grade stories, so I also have a few of those that I’ve written but not published (yet). My middle grade fantasy Faery Swap is ready, but seeking publication. Right now I’m revising my east-Indian steampunk fantasy romance – Third Daughter – which I hope to have out before 2014.

Tell us one Funny Thing about you
I have two cats who like to harass me while I write. I’m sure they deem it affection, or at least a harmless neurosis, when they climb into my workstation and chew on my paper files, but they seriously distract me from my writing. I blame any and all lack of progress on my fur beasts. And a shortage of tea.

Too cute!

Tell us one Serious Thing about you
I blog and talk a lot about indie publishing, but I think it’s absolutely the best thing I could have done to move my author career forward. As a friend recently told me, “You’re living the dream! Don’t forget it!” I get to write stories I love, and my work pays the bills. It seriously doesn’t get any better than that, and I’m grateful for every day of it.

What other works do you have planned?
As soon as Third Daughter is done (steampunk romance), I’ll be venturing into my new young adult science fiction series, Singularity, about the time when computers become more intelligent than humans. It will be told from the POV of a post-Singularity, legacy human boy. It’s a reverse Pinocchio story about a boy who wants to be a machine, and will explore all kinds of cool very-near-future ideas about the intersection of mind-body-soul-and-machine in determining what truly makes us human. I seriously can’t wait to get started on it – there will be at least a few books in the series and possibly some short stories as well. Beyond Singularity, I have more seasons of my Debt Collector serial to write, and who knows what else I’ll dream up in 2014. The future is ever bright.

Listen to the Playlist for Mindjack HERE
And a bonus “scene” that never happened….
In Closed Hearts (Mindjack #2), Raf (Kira's boyfriend) and Julian (the revolutionary jacker who wants Kira to join the cause), meet briefly. It's not a pleasant encounter, well, not for Julian in any event. If Raf and Julian were in a room together, I can imagine them discussing which one of them would be better for Kira. Which is an interesting question, given that Kira is completely in love with Raf...

Raf takes a seat on the couch of the mages' (jacker revolutionaries') warehouse and glances nervously at the mindjackers milling around him. Julian takes a chair from the kitchen table, turns it backwards, and sits facing Raf. Julian temples his fingers and taps his lips.

Raf: "What?"
Julian: "I just can't figure it out."
Raf (*shifts uncomfortably*): "Don't hurt yourself trying."
Julian (*smirks*): "I mean, I can't figure out what she sees in you."
Raf: "That's really none of your business, is it?"
Julian: "Why would Kira want to be with someone she can control so utterly?" *waves a hand at Raf* "You're just a mindreader! She could jack into your head and make you do anything. Feel anything. Believe anything."
Raf: "Kira would never do that."
Julian: (*looks skeptical*) "How would you know?"
Raf: "I trust her. Besides, she knows I would do anything for her anyway. All she has to do is ask. I'm not the one trying to drag her into some kind of crazy war with the world! You and your demens ideas about jackers being the" (*makes air quote fingers*) "next evolution of mankind. All you're going to do is get her killed."
Julian: (*narrows his eyes*) "Oh, and I suppose you can keep her safe? With your vast ability to - what is it you do again? Oh right, read minds. You're like a guppy trying to guard a shark. You can't even keep yourself safe."
Raf: "I'll keep her safe by being smart. By helping her hide. And by letting the world figure out its own mess. To me, Kira is the only thing that matters, and I'll do whatever it takes."
Julian: "You don't even know what she's capable of."
Raf: (*stands*) "I know better than you ever will."
Julian: (*looks up from his chair*) "Really? I guess you saw that coming, then? Her performance with the changelings? On the tru-casts?"
Raf: "It doesn't surprise me. That's kind of girl Kira is. Brave. Strong. And she's always looking out for people."
Julian: "Which is precisely why she belongs with me. I mean, with us, leading jackers forward, not hiding out in a diner in the suburbs pretending to be a waitress. Wasting her potential. She could be so much more. Will be, as soon as she stops playing mindreader and joins her kind."
Raf: (*clenches fist*) "You leave her alone!"
Julian: (*stands up from chair*) "Careful, reader. The only reason you're still standing is because Kira cares about you. But don't push it."
Raf: "If you get her hurt, I will kill you."
Julian: "I'm not the one you have to worry about."

Kira: (*strolls from the back*) "Um, what's going on?"
Julian and Raf eye each other. "Nothing," they both say at once.

~~*~~
Ok, that was entirely too much fun to write.
(And also: it never happened. I'm wiping your memory in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...)

Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her stories a couple times.

Susan left writing behind to pursue a bunch of engineering degrees, but she was drawn back to writing by an irresistible urge to share her stories with her niece, her kids, and all the wonderful friends she’s met along the way.

She doesn’t have to sneak her notes anymore, which is too bad.

Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as a much as she can handle.