When I read Cat Adams Blood Song, I went into instant fangirl slobbering all over the place mode. Blood Song has been at the top of my 2010 reads all year & that’s a mean feat.I am so excited to have one half of the Cat Adams writing duo here today, please welcome Cathy Clamp!

WLP: Thanks for joining in on the fun with 13 Wicked Days of Christmas, great to have you here.

CC: Thanks for letting me drop by!

WLP: Can you give my readers a brief on the Blood Singer series?

CC: Absolutely! Celia Graves is the protagonist of the series. She lives in an alternate Los Angeles where the paranormal is normal, but highly regulated (gosh…just like the real world!) Witches are licensed and required to take continuing education to profit from their magic. They carry “A&C” cards, meaning “Assist and Control” that’s just like the kind paramedics carry that requires them to aid the police to capture rogue magic users. Cops can use memory enhancement spells to help investigations. Trauma victims can have the bad parts of their memories wiped and werewolves and vampires are dangerous animals often tainted with the demonic. No warm and fuzzy (or sparkly!) vampires in Celia’s world.

So when she’s attacked by a master vampire, who fully intends to bring her over, it’s a real shock when she wakes up…alive. Well, mostly anyway. She’s got fangs and can’t eat food anymore. But she also refuses to drink blood—because, well, YUK! Oh, and there’s that “maybe I won’t be alive anymore if I risk it” thing, too. She winds up an Abomination, part human, part vampire and neither side trusts her, and both think she deserves to die.

WLP: How does your writing process work, is it different as a duo?

CC: Not as much as you think. How we work is that we’ll talk out a plot and then sort of flip a coin to see who starts the book. That person will write the WHOLE book. They then turn it over to the other author who adds and subtracts text, characters . . . even whole chapters and gives it back again. No red pen, no track changes. Just wholesale rewriting. It, um, doesn’t work for everyone. Results will vary wildly.

WLP: What’s next in the Blood Singer series?

CC: DEMON SONG hits the shelves in March, 2011 and concludes the first plot arc that BLOOD SONG and SIREN SONG started. The whole trilogy is only about two weeks of Celia’s life, so it’s a really fast and furious plot. I just turned in MORTEM SONG, which is, in a way, a stand alone, without a world arc. Cie is working on book 5 now and I’m simultaneously working on book 6. I know, it’s weird!

WLP: What does 2011 look like for Cat Adams?

CC: See above. It’s sort of nuts. The Cat of Cat Adams (which is Cathy Clamp) is working on some short stories for anthologies and also a Young Adult series that began with the free Tor.com story, FARE THEE WELL . Here’s a link if readers want to take a look: http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/07/fare-thee-well

WLP: Since it’s the 13 Wicked Days of Christmas….what is the worst gift you’ve bought for someone?

CC: Boy, that’s a tricky question because I have a kind of weird intuition about gifts for people. I always manage to pick the exact right gift. I guess the worst gift I’ve ever bought someone is something they already owned (but I didn’t know it.)

WLP: What is the worst gift you have received?

CC: A haircut when I was nine. Worst. Gift. Ever! Actually, it should have been the BEST gift I received. I’d wanted it for a whole year, had done extra chores, struggled to raise my grades—the whole nine yards. It was in the 70s and I wanted one of those “gypsy shag” cuts. It had multiple layers that wrapped around your face and were curled individually to be fluffy. I have thin, straight hair, but there’s lots of it, so I though it would be perfect. My Mom finally agreed and we went to the salon she always used. I even brought a PICTURE of the cut. When I was turned around to the mirror, I burst into tears. I not only didn’t have a gypsy shag, I had a bob, with a few little fringes down my neck. And only a few. It was hideous. Truly. Even today, I shudder. My hair grows abnormally slow and it took until I was past ten to grow it out. <shudders again>

WLP: Best holiday food? Drink?

CC: Best holiday food is Christmas cookies. Love them in all their many forms. I make probably a dozen different kinds to hand out to neighbors and people who don’t get thanked often enough, like the mail carrier and the fire department and the guy who sits in the little shack at the landfill. I mean, who ever thanks those guys for putting up with the crap people bring to a dump? Favorite Drink is probably that punch that shows up at parties. Hawaiian punch, ginger ale and sherbet, whether or not alcoholic. Nobody serves it except at holiday parties so it’s worth showing up at the party just for that. LOL!

WLP: What Christmas song do you absolutely hate?

CC: Can’t think of a one. I’m a Christmas song addict. I own probably two dozen CDs, cassettes and albums. Religious, instrumental, Celtic, Country, Rock, and even the cheesy fad songs. I play them ad naseum during December. Just ask my husband. Heh…

WLP? Real Tree or Fake Tree?

CC: Prefer real and used to cut my own. Have fake now just because I live in a small place and it’s hard to find decent pine trees in Texas. But would rather have fresh real.

WLP: Finally, your favorite Christmas smell?

CC: Cinnamon and pine. Not those weird combination’s like apple pie spice or candied red hots or mulled cranberry but pure, strong cinnamon and fresh pine boughs. Yum!

WLP: Thanks for stopping by Cathy & Happy Holidays!

CC: Thank you and have a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you prefer.)

Cassie the most awesome chica over at TOR/Forge has provided today’s giveaway. One lucky winner will win Blood Song, Siren Song & the galley of Demon Song (which was awesome).

To Enter: Tell us what your favorite holiday food is!

All Contests for the 13 Wicked Days of Christmas end on Wednesday December 29^th, Winners Announced On Thursday December 30^th. US/Canada ONLY.