Faith Hunter writes dark urban fantasy. Her Skinwalker series features Jane Yellowrock, a hunter of rogue-vampires, in Skinwalker, Blood Cross, Mercy Blade, and Raven Cursed, coming in 2012. Her Rogue Mage novels, a dark urban fantasy trilogy—Bloodring, Seraphs, and Host—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a postapocalyptic alternate reality.
Faith Hunter writes full-time, works full-time in a hospital lab, tries to keep house, and is a self-admitted workaholic. She gave up cooking for Lent one year, and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay—that one is a joke. She does still remember how to make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally she remembers to sleep. And if she stops and thinks, she can remember how to use the vacuum cleaner!
Faith researches everything she writes about in great detail, and make ^had p—
Jewelry making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix of the Rogue Mage series and the main character of Bloodstone, written under Faith’s pen name, Gwen Hunter. She fell in love with it! The jewelry Faith makes and wears is often given as promo items to fans who come to her signings, and is used as prizes in contests. Some can be seen on her Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter. Other pieces she wears to cons and events where she meets fans, or gives to her editor and people in her writing life. She especially likes working with stones and pearls, but does sometimes work in crystal or glass, and she wire-wraps many of her larger undrilled focal stones. Labradorite, amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are some of her favorite stones to wear. She spends way too much money on supplies and now needs a larger place to store the stones and beads and gems.
Faith also likes to work with orchids, and owns upward of twenty of them. Her favorite time of year is anytime several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at the Facebook page above. Oh—and, yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of the orchid pictures show skulls juxtaposed with the blooms in the shots. The bones come from roadkill and are prepared by taxidermists. In her collection are a fox skull, a cat skull, a dog skull, a goat skull (which is, unfortunately, falling apart), and the jawbone of an ass. Faith is lusting after a cow skull and would love to have the thighbone and skull of a lion. (One that died of old age in the savannahs of Africa!)
She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their rescued Pomeranians, Tommy and Tuffy, to white-water rivers all over the Southeast. (The Poms don’t white-water. The pampered dogs stay in the RV in lazy, air-conditioned comfort!) The Poms were the pets of a blind lady and her husband in Louisiana; the owner’s health forced them to relocate the dogs to a private shelter. Sadly, the lady who owned the shelter became ill right after that. While the dogs were vetted, fed, and let out in the sun daily, they spent twenty-three hours a day in pens for nearly two years, so their health was not the best when Faith and her hubby found and adopted them. Now Tommy and Tuffy are in much better health (but missing a lot of teeth). They love to travel in the RV, take long walks, and get groomed. Seriously. They love their groomer!
And that leads Faith to kayaking—her very favorite sport. Faith discovered white-water paddling when she was researching her mystery book Rapid Descent (under her pen name, Gwen Hunter). She took a lesson and discovered that, though she has been on water as a boater and water-skier and swimmer all her life, being turned upside down while strapped into a plastic boat gave her panic attacks. Quite bad ones, actually. Determined to overcome the night terrors about drowning, she used lucid dreaming techniques and meditation to conquer the fear, and six months later took a second class from the same patient teacher, David Crawford, at Rapid Expeditions (www.rapidexpeditions.com) on the Pigeon River in Tennessee. This time she fell in love with the sport, with the adrenaline rush of facing fear, and with playing (in her boat) in icy water. Being out in the wild, alone with rock formations and wild animals and nature in all her seasons, has been the best thing in Faith’s life.