What’s In Store For Stacia Kane’s Downside Ghosts Series?

Since I’m dying to know anything and EVERYTHING about Terrible and the Downside Ghosts series, I figured I’d scour the internet for the good stuff – so this will be my own personal “Downside Ghosts Tidbits Page” that I will update and share with you.

And what better way to get some info, than directly from the author herself?

Stacia hosted an awesome “question and answer” session on her website a few weeks ago when I was, unfortunately, still Downside-ignorant and didn’t know enough to participate. However, in my search, I have had many questions answered, because many diehards knew what to ask. So thank you!

Here is a quick summary, but make sure to check out her page, cause it’s not all Downside related, and you really get a good glimpse of Stacia’s personality and how fun she seems.

• We may get more bits of info in regards to Terrible’s past (perhaps a glimpse into his rough childhood).
• She mentions how nervous she was (and still is) about people “getting” the Downside-speak
• About Lex: In regards to the next book in the series, she says: “Lex-heavy–the plot will demand it–and Lex certainly isn’t going anywhere.” And whether he’s “in love” with Chess or not, she will not say…
• This one is definitely worth reading for yourselves…who’s better ummm…you know 😉 Lex or Terrible? tee hee!!! In short form, here is what I gathered: They both know what they’re doing. Lex is about the act, Terrible is about the passion.
• Stacia even mentions Chess’s personal “grooming” preferences, which unfortunately, do not really coincide with Terrible’s vision of a woman (although Lex is fine with it). Hrmmm..I’m wondering if this is a conversation we will be privy to in the next book? I certainly hope this isn’t going to be a conversation to be had with all three in the same room – eeeek! Awkward!
• Oooh I love this tidbit. I have a feeling Stacia is as hooked as we are to this series. She said after she wrote the final scene of “City of Ghosts” (the lastest book in the series), she wandered around her house sobbing for half an hour. Stacia, join the support group – it helps. While I didn’t sob (could have…but restrained myself), I wandered through life in general for two days, with a glazed expression and a hazy mind….perhaps I should have just sobbed instead. Might have sped my recovery along, a bit.
• Elder Griffin is important in future books.
• Stacia says: “I love romance and I love romance readers, but these books are not romances, and that was deliberate.”
• She explains that it was upsetting that some didn’t perceive Chess as an appropriate heroine due to her addictions and weaknesses, and why she feels differently. I agree with Ms. Kane. Chess was a facinating multi-faceted character to whom we could relate (perhaps not directly, but in tems of her thought process, her personal fears, her mistakes…)
• Stacia also lists the “actual” names of the drugs that plague Chess’s life. Quite an interesting list.

Here are Stacia Kane’s latest book related tweets. Perhaps we can piece them all together and make some sense out of what’s in store for us (or how she relates to these fascinating characters)…

Tweeted 09/01/10:

Page 16 of Downside 4: Terrible’s first scene.

Tweeted Aug 30th

Downside 4: Page 10. First death. Muahahaha!

A couple hundred more words and I’m off to bed. Would be nice if I could finish Chapter One this evening.

Esp. Since Chapter One is currently one of the longest chapters I’ve ever written, sigh.

Okay. 1700 words. Not enough, but more than before. I’ll take it. G’night.

Tweeted Aug 29th (sidenote – I heart’s LEX too!):

Hee. I do love Lex. 🙂

I was actually kind of disappointed/surprised there weren’t more Lex girls out there.

I know! He’s so…jaunty, lol. And almost arrogant, but not quite, because he’s too focused on having fun to be arrogant.

Tweeted Aug 15th:

I just realized what today’s date is. My deadline for Downside 4 is exactly three months away.

Lots of great Twitter posts from back in July (answering questions about her series for #UFCHAT – they meet every Saturday at 3pm PST on Twitter). I missed it, so I’m happy to have found it now 🙂

July 24th highlights from the chat:

🙂 There is a Downside short story coming out, yes, but I don’t have a release date for the antho yet

Dogs are psychopomps. They have been in legends for centuries, the ancient Greeks etc. In this world dogs r literally used to take ghosts back to the City of Etrnity under the earth. Chruch employees summon them from dog skulls during ritual.

 I got to use a bunch of British Traditional Witchcraft research I’d done & more!

Yes. I did a ton of research; there are actually millions of functioning addicts in the world, people you’d never know

 Some of it I did, yeah. Some of it just happened & I realized it later. I planned control/addiction, but not truth/lies

Chess reads lots of fiction. Mostly literary, really. & mysteries etc. Terrible reads non-fiction, military histories & stuff.

But Chess has loaned him some books & made him read them too. 🙂

Oh here we go! Neat tidbits I found in older interviews/question and answer sessions:

On Bittenbybooks.com (here’s a link to the interview and another one here and check out lower in the answer section too). Good stuff on her other books, and about her too, like her extensive collection of Tarot cards, her writing process and that her favorite superpower would be teleportation. Hey that’s my choice too! I loved “Jumpers” for that very reason):

The Downside Ghost series had not yet been released but she mentions her characters and says Chess is one of her favorites but she’s exceptionally proud of her secondary character (ahhh our first intro to Terrible).

…but it’s one of the supporting characters who I’m especially proud of. But I don’t want to spoil anything by saying who.

She says she has some similarities with Chess – same taste in men and music, and some personality stuff (but is more like Megan from her Demon series), and tells us how she named Chess:

Chess’ (full name Cesaria) last name, Putnam, was assigned to her by the Church. Ann Putnam was one of the major players in the Salem Witch Trials; I’ve used other surnames from the Trials in the next book.

Even before she started the series she knew Chess’s character:

Chess had a character before I had a plot or anything for Unholy Ghosts–I knew I wanted to do something different, and write about a drug-addicted heroine; everything in that book was a challenge and I loved that.

The witchcraft in the series is based on “British Traditional Witchcraft” (which she has studied for years).

As per an interview with TheLiteraryProject she says that she came up with the idea for Unholy Ghosts as she was writing her Demon series, and immediately started writing it the same night she finished her book “Demon Inside”. She wrote it in seven weeks and it got picked up really quickly.

Lot’s of good tidbits on an indepth Vampirebookclub.net question and answer session with Stacia  like:

• How her mom is a nurse and helped her with the drug information. She has also known different addicts in her life and that experience helped her with “Chess”.
• How they came up with the “Book of Truth” and magazine quotes that start each chapter. She says that it’s getting harder to come up with them now.
• Oooh and some GREAT info on how she came up with Downside-speak: to summarize, she mentions that she bought a book called “The World Museum” and thought the “Georgian Slang” sounded cool, and she goes on to mention how she managed each Downside character to have his own version that “slang”.
• There already two more books scheduled, and if they do well, she will continue the series further. Depending on how far she get’s to go with the series, there *may* be a twist in book#6!! Eeeek! To me, twist=cliffhanger!!!

An EXCELLENT tidbit on an interview Stacia had with Falcatimes

• She is very similar to Chess (personality wise) struggling with self-destructive and depressive behaviors. Personally, I found Chess was so well written, so REAL and raw, that I wondered how close she was to the author…

And BookChickCity knows what we wanna hear! She gets right down to the subject of “Terrible and Chess”, and of course tons more info – these are my favorite highlights of the interview (below), but again, the interview as a whole is really fun!

• Stacia tells us how she came up with their names and how to pronounce “Cesaria” (Chez-air-ea) – her boss’s son’s name was cool, she feminized it, and there you go. Terrible, well…fit him perfectly considering where he was from and “who” he was in terms of his job.
• She explains why she took on the challenge of making her hero “ugly”. I love her perspective – and boy it worked!! Stacia admits she is very surprised at how we all took to him so well.
• Chess’s addictions are also explained. Love it! The author details how well she relates to a flawed character, and how and why she created Chess this way. Trapped yet free. Functional, yet has an extreme weakness.
• And more on the next book: “growing pains” for Chess and Terrible, but this one will be mostly Lex’s book  – “Huge changes for him”, which complicates life for everyone. YES!! STRIFE!! hahahaha love it.

To be continued…I’m still scouring 😉

Hey and while I scour, who do the characters look like to you? Any ideas?

Series Reading Order:

1. Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts, Book 1)
2. Unholy Magic (Downside Ghosts, Book 2)
3. City of Ghosts (Downside Ghosts, Book 3)