Curious South – Or Five Weird Things About My Writing by Lexi George

Hi, I’m Lexi, and I write fantasy and southern-fried paranormal romance set in Alabama. While there is no right or wrong way to write, here are a few odd things about my so-called process:

Supernatural oddities: In book one of the demon hunting series, Demon Hunting in Dixie, there is a talking dog and a fairy cat. In book two, Demon Hunting in the Deep South, there is a demonically possessed Chihuahua. Book three, Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar, has a vegetarian zombie (a secondary character), and book four has a sentient car. There are six books and a novella in the demon hunting series, and every book has what I call critters, some based on mythology, and others strictly from my imagination. Hannah, the fictional town that is the setting of my books, is a magnet for supernatural creatures.

Hair fetish: I had no idea when I started writing that I apparently have a hair fetish. In book one, Addy, my heroine, gets a supernatural do-over and her hair turns platinum blonde. In Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar, Verbena Skinner, a downtrodden and woefully mistreated secondary character, gets a new “do,” after her hair is ruined, or rurnt, as we say in my neck of the woods, by her evil sisters. Even the pampered debutante heroine in book four, Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb, cannot escape my follicular obsession. Poor Sassy gets fairyfied, and a side effect of her transformation is glittery hair that sparkles whenever she gets upset. Told you. Hair fetish. 

Food: Anyone who reads my books quickly figures out that I like food, and I like to eat. The local watering hole in my imaginary town is The Sweet Shop, and I enjoy describing Southern food in great detail. Fried chicken. Mashed potatoes swimming in butter. Cornbread with a crunchy crust. Ribs. Pies piled high with lightly toasted meringue. Food is important, and my mama never had to call me to supper twicet. 

Crater: The source of the supernatural woo-woo in my small town is a crater created millions of years ago when a meteor smashed into earth. It so happens there’s a similar crater (without the magic, unfortunately) in the small town where I live, and people come from all over to study the impact site. When I was looking for a reason to explain the woo-woo in my fictional town, the crater seemed a feasible explanation. Write what you know, right?

Characters sometimes just “appear”: I’ll be writing along, thinking I know where the story is going and wham! A character will show up with no warning. It happened in the novella The Bride Wore Demon Dust. My heroine finds out on her wedding day that her husband is an immortal demon hunter. To add insult to injury, she also discovers that the “mugging” he’d saved her from hadn’t been a mugging at all. She’d been attacked by a demon (the demons in my books are interdimensional wraiths, not the biblical kind), and she’s no longer human. Understandably rattled by these revelations, she jumps into a Mary Kay car and runs away from her wedding. A few miles down the road, she has a sugar craving and darts into a convenience store, and that’s when the Random Character Distribution Network kicked in, and the woman behind the counter appeared, fully formed and without any conscious thought on my part. Nicole, AKA “Mullet Woman,” turned out to be such a fun character to write that I brought her back in other books. 

This unplanned character manifestation happened again in Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb. Grim, my hero, wakes up in the woods after going on a chocolate bender. Turns out my tough, macho demon hunters are impervious to alcohol and drugs, but they get totally smashed on chocolate. A few M&Ms, and the big guys are toast. Grim wakes up feeling like death warmed over and accidentally sets the woods on fire. Ching! The Random Character Distribution Network does its thing, and Taryn Kirvahni, a female demon hunter, appears. Taryn is supercilious and condescending and generally annoys the stew out of Grim. Sibling rivalry at its finest. I’d been kicking around the idea of introducing female demon hunters for quite some time, but I had no idea Taryn was going to make an appearance...until she did. 

 So, there you have it, a few curious things about my writing!  

Lexi George writes fantasy and sexy, snarky paranormal romance set in Alabama about hunky, immortal demon hunters and the Southern women they love. There are six full-length novels in the series, plus a novella. The latest book in the series is Demon Hunting with a Southern Sheriff. She is currently shopping an urban fantasy about an expatriate elf named Gill who runs security for a casino. The casino caters to humans and supernatural types, and things really go sideways when a Regency vampire appears on Gill’s doorstep one night seeking protection from the Bloodfather. Lexi’s books are available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksaMillion.com, and indieBoßund.org. Demon Hunting in Dixie, the first book in the demon hunting series, and the novella, The Bride Wore Demon Dust, are also available on Audible. Visit Lexi at her website:  www.lexigeorge.com