INTERVIEW and Giveaway: ELLEN L. EKSTROM

February 13, 2013 By 1 Comment

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Ellen L. Ekstrom, whose newest release Scarborough is now available. Scarborough was originally designed to be a stand-alone volume, but the more Ellen wrote, the more it became obvious that the story was far from over.

“Quinn Radcliffe got under my skin,” she admitted. “Right before its release we decided it would be part of series, which is called Midwinter Sonata. The title for the series came to me during a lunch hour back-and-forth exchange with the editor in e-mails. ‘How about this?’ ‘What about this?’ sort of thing. I thought, everything happens to these people in the winter – good and bad. We wanted something to do with music and it hit me. Also, the story is based on fact, even though it is a romantic fantasy and I use the structure of a sequence of dreams – events happen out of sequence but they all connect, just like in dreams. The operative word is ‘based.’ It came after a memorable night with friends that I hadn’t seen in a long while. I went to sleep full of good wine, conversation, memories, and I thought, what if we were given the chance to start over? To say I love you when the opportunity is there and not be afraid to say it? To forgive? It’s my take on It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol.”

Leave a comment for a chance to win a signed digital copy in the format of the winner’s choosing.

Ellen used to sit and watch her older sister, Kathy, write. It didn’t matter if it was homework, greeting cards, or whatever—Ellen found it fascinating.

“She had amazing penmanship and I wanted to imitate her. She also wrote stories about girls like us – poor but full of hope and promise – and after reading something to me from the Lang Fairy Tale Books she’d share her own work,” Ellen remembered. “By the time she was 13 she stopped writing because she discovered boys and I picked up where she left off. When it was my turn to discover boys it only fueled the writing. My stories were five page novels complete with illustrations and construction paper covers. My epic was ten pages and that was about the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, in which a faery godmother helps a girl find her family when her house in North Beach is destroyed.”

Ellen got serious about writing as a career when she was in her early twenties.

“It may sound trite or like a cliché to state that I went through struggle, doubt, disappointment before (and after) publication, but I did. It’s not uncommon for writers,” she told me. “I was found by an independent press in 2004, when my first book, The Legacy was published, and then in 2009, I signed on with Central Avenue Publishing after receiving a tweet from its founder/creative director. I wrote a short story about the Resurrection from Jesus’ point of view and put it up on my writing blog. She saw it and here we are, almost four years later.”

She admitted to me that sometimes she will have bouts of writer’s block…and when she can’t write, she does research.

“For example, this last Sunday I spent three hours learning about single malt scotch for a character in my new book – given the intelligence of many readers today, I wanted to be sure he was drinking the right Glenfiddich for the time. No, I didn’t taste test. This is a better plan for me than my old cure for ‘The Boulder in the Middle of the Road,’ as I call The Block. For the longest time I pulled up to the refrigerator and tried to invoke the muse with pecan praline ice cream or macaroni and cheese but that proved unhealthy. Now I take rides on my bike or knit. I either get some exercise or someone gets something soft, warm and woolly by the time I’m ready to write again. When I was writing Armor of Light, my protagonist George, earl of Grasmere was stuck on a road somewhere in northern England for several months before I figured out what to do with him. If you want to know, I had him kill a dragon of sorts.”

Ellen is currently working on the next book in the Midwinter Sonata series and when she’s not working on that, she’s editing one of her first titles from her backlist– The Legacy, an adventure/romance set in 14th century Florence and Tuscany.

“Like Tolkien and The Hobbit, I’ve never been happy with it,” she confessed. “It’s my first novel, the first written and published, and needs a bit of attention and tweaking. I’m also working on the prequel to Armor of Light, my retelling of the St. George and the Dragon Legend. My readers will get to find out why George Ascalon, earl of Grasmere is such a strange man.”

The hardest part of writing for Ellen is finding enough time during the day, but she’s managed to get into a routine that works for her: an hour in the morning and one in the evening during the commute and as much as she can on days off.

“I started doing this when my children were toddlers. I learned to work the writing around their schedules, now it just works, period,” she said. “I don’t buy into the belief that if I was a ‘real writer’ I would find the time and write all the time. If I did, I don’t know how good the writing would or wouldn’t be. Most likely it wouldn’t be good. The biggest impact of doing that would be on my family – we wouldn’t have a place to live or food to eat. Life and making a living necessarily get in the way and I’ve learned to make the two compatible. Fortunately, I preach once a month, so I get to write for my vocation, too. Writing sermons has improved my technique in that I’ve learned to say more with less.”
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“What did you want to be when you grew up?” I asked.

“What year are we talking about? I used to play church when I was a girl – I wanted to be behind the altar in the sanctuary saying the magic words and doing the magic hands. I wanted to be a clergy person. I used to marry and baptize my stuffed animals and the occasional doll. I’m at home in a church more than anywhere else. I also wanted to be a drummer in a rock band. Seriously. I did. I’ve always been a writer. For a short time I wanted to be a doctor because my mother wanted me to be a doctor, but being a clergy person is close, since it allows me to help heal souls and hearts.”

About the Author: 2_12 INTERVIEW EllenI’m a work in progress, but that process started a while ago. I’ve been fascinated by the Middle Ages since seeing Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” when it was first run. This started a flood of drawings about castles and princesses – the usual stuff of six year olds – but it’s lasted longer than my mother had hoped. I stopped listening to the Tchaikowsky music about age nine and she was grateful for that, too. Now that I am in my own middle ages, the love of all things medieval is stronger than ever. To support the family, I work as a legal secretary. My real vocation is writing. And while I’m on vocations, I am a clergywoman in the Episcopal Church, the parish deacon at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Berkeley, but that’s a story for another day.

 

Find Ellen online at:

http://centralavenuepublishing.com/Books/Scarborough/
http://ladyelogos.com/
https://twitter.com/Reverendella
http://www.facebook.com/#!/LadyeLogos
Amazon
Barnes&Noble”
Kobo
Apple

2_12 BOOK COVER 9781926760933med When Quinn Radcliffe shows up in a village somewhere in the Cotswolds or Dorset, he knows he’s been there before. It’s a place out of a Thomas Hardy novel – or the imagination. There’s the Curiosity Shop with The Proprietress and her famous guests, the church at the end of the lane, and unbelievable but necessary journeys that test and affirm. Now the conductor of a world-renowned orchestra, Quinn isn’t surprised by his surroundings – the love of his life, Alice Martin, told him all about the village but he has always and secretly thought it was the best part of a dream she shared after her life-threatening illness.

Until now.

There are two sides to every love story. This is the other side of the haunting and poignant romance that began with “Tallis’ Third Tune.”

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INTERVIEW: Zoe Brooks

February 4, 2013 By 13 Comments

2_4 NBtM Love of Shadows Banner
This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Zoe will be awarding a $25 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Click on the banner to see the other stops on the tour.

We welcome Zoe Brooks to our website.

Tell us something about yourself

I am a British writer who spends approximately half her life in a semi-restored farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where I write my books. I have three novels out – Mother of Wolves (a fantasy adventure), Girl in the Glass (magic realism fantasy) and Love of Shadows, my new book and sequel to Girl in the Glass. All three books have strong if very different heroines. I like to write popular books that get under the skin of the reader. A number of reviewers have said that the books and the central characters have stayed with them after they finished reading, which is just what I want.

Do you have a regular/day job?

I have my own business – a travel company offering tours and holidays in the Czech Republic. This means I am very busy in the summer, but have time in the winter to write.

Did you always want to be a writer?

I have always known that I was a poet. I was first published when I was thirteen and was regarded as one of the bright young things of British poetry, but poetry doesn’t pay the bills and I had to focus on my career. It was only a few years ago that I decided to try my hand at writing novels. I had always made up stories but up until then they were for my enjoyment only.

Who are your influences?

I was blessed by being taught by two incredible women. The first was my creative English teacher at junior school who spotted the poet in me. The second was my very dear friend Hannah Kodicek. Hannah was a successful story editor in the film industry, (she worked on the Oscar winning The Counterfeiters). When I started to write novels she looked at them for me. I learned so much from her about how to tell stories which excite the reader.

In terms of writers – I am an admirer of Ursula Le Guin, who not only writes wonderful stories but also some of the best books on how to write. Hilary Mantel is another favourite of mine, she is able to turn her hand to so many genres. I have recently discovered Alice Hoffman.

What inspired you to write Love of Shadows?

My writing is very character driven. That is not to say the books don’t have strong stories; thanks to Hannah they definitely do, but what inspires me to write are questions like: How would someone deal with this? What makes this sort of person tick? Judith, the central character of both Love of Shadows and Girl in the Glass, is a loveable, complex and at times frustrating young woman. In this book we see her choose to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a healer, even though traditional women healers are being persecuted. I was fascinated to read about the persecution of women healers in the 14th to 17th centuries; we don’t know how many thousands were burned or hung as witches. What would you risk to follow your calling? The other theme in the book is Judith’s relationships with others. She has been badly damaged emotionally, first by her upbringing and then by a particularly nasty relationship. As a result she is naturally scared of emotional attachment. What sort of man could get past her barriers?

How do you come up with your characters? Do you model them after someone in particular?

No, I don’t model them on specific people (it would be rather dangerous for my relationships, don’t you think?), but I do use aspects of different people. Until a few years ago I worked with disadvantaged people – homeless, refugees, abused women – and was honoured to hear their stories of courage and survival in the face of adversity. Judith is like them a survivor and like them has to live with the scars of her past. Bruno I must confess is to some extent influenced by my father. He has my father’s charm and strong gentleness.

Have you ever experienced writer’s block and how do/did you deal with it?

I have the usual writer’s block which always happen about fifty pages in on the first draft of every novel. I start full of ideas and excited but by page fifty it’s not exciting any more and I realise any plotting problems I’ve got. My usual answer is to take a break. It may just be that I take a basket and go mushroom hunting in the forest or it may mean several days off, doing something mindless, which frees up my imagination to work. I was very pleased to watch a BBC programme about Ian Rankin – he has the same block only his starts at page sixty-five.

This drug will help you to get purchase levitra my review here an erection in about 30 minutes that will last for around 4 hours, provided you are sexually active. Therefore you can avail this solution whenever you want to make love, purchase cheap cialis pop a pill and experience rock hard erections. As men with erection problems looks for help online cialis australia as soon as possible. When this happens then the person is thrown off due to the impact during which his, or her, head can hit on any surface like the window, windshield, levitra samples roof of the car, the steering wheel or even the dashboard. Can you give us an idea of how your normal day is like?

I don’t really have a normal day. The nature of my business is that in the summer I may be leading a tour or organising hotels or researching another tour. In the autumn/winter I spend a month or two in my Czech home intensively writing. I find I can only write the first draft there and not in the UK. When writing I get up and make a mug of tea, sit down and check my emails and then launch into writing. I aim to get 2000 words done a day; that usually takes me all day and sometimes into the evening. I write seven days a week. If it’s going really well I can keep writing into the night.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

As a indie writer I soon realised that if I wanted people to know about and read my books I had to publicise them. That takes as much of my time as writing the books. I have several blogs – my author’s blog http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com, another reviewing magic realism books http://www.magic-realism.net, and my oldest blog which is about my adventures in the Czech Republic http://czechproperty.blogspot.com. I also produce a weekly online newspaper on the best articles about fiction by and for women http://www.womens-fiction.net. These together with my business keep me very busy.

What would you do with a million dollars?

The Czech farmhouse has a derelict barn with lovely brick vaulting, which I would love to convert into writers’ retreats, but haven’t the money. I would invest some in paying people to help me with publicity for the books. And I would set up a charitable trust, so I can support projects with disadvantaged people.

If you could have any super powers, what would it be and why?

I would love to be able to speak and read all languages. The school I went to was in Cheltenham which is where the British Government has its listening centre so I was surrounded by the children of linguists – it was a nightmare, I felt really stupid and slow. Czech is an extremely difficult language (it has seven declensions for each word) and I just can’t get to grips with it. It would also mean of course that I could write my books in all sorts of languages and reach a much wider readership.

Any messages for your readers?

I hope you enjoy the book and fall in love with Judith the way I did.

About the Author:2_4 AuthorPic2Zoe Brooks is a British writer and poet, who spends half her life in a partly restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where she writes all her novels and poetry. She aims to write popular books, which have complex characters and themes that get under the reader’s skin.

Zoe was a successful published poet in her teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). Girl In The Glass – the first novel in a trilogy about the woman and healer Anya was published on Amazon in March 2012, followed by Mother of Wolves and Love of Shadows. In May 2012 she published her long poem for voices Fool’s Paradise as an ebook on Amazon.

Blog: http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com
Twitter http://twitter.com/ZoeBrooks2
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZoeBrooksAuthor
Amazon author page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0034P3TDS
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5772880

2_4 Cover_loveofshadows2“I had always felt most alive, when I was healing. Without healing I was a tin top spinning out of kilter soon to catch the ground. It took all my energy to hold myself from skidding into chaos.”

But in the city of Pharsis traditional women healers are banned from practising and the penalty for breaking the law is death by hanging. After being arrested and interrogated twice Judith is careful to avoid suspicion, but then scarlet fever breaks over the city like a poisonous wave, leaving in its wake the small corpses of children. What will the young healer do?

Love of Shadows is the second novel in The Healer’s Shadow trilogy, which began with Girl in the Glass, and follows the lives of Judith and her Shadow, Sarah. It is a study in grief, love and defiance.

Filed Under: Interviews, Romance Tagged With: , , ,

INTERVIEW: MAGGI ANDERSEN

March 9, 2012 By 3 Comments

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Maggi Andersen, whose latest book Murder in Devon was released in February. She saw a news article on the evening news and it set off the idea for the book. She had to do a lot of research for it, however, including two trips to England.

She has another book coming out this month, The Reluctant Marquess, and she will be having a Virtual Book Tour next week to promote the release. I asked her to tell us about it.

Charity Barlow wished to marry for love. The rakish Lord Robert wishes only to tuck her away in the country once an heir is produced.

A country-bred girl, Charity Barlow suddenly finds herself married to a marquess, an aloof stranger determined to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. She and Lord Robert have been forced by circumstances to marry, and she feels sure she is not the woman he would have selected given a choice.

The Marquess of St. Malin makes it plain to her that their marriage is merely for the procreation of an heir, and once that is achieved, he intends to continue living the life he enjoyed before he met her.

While he takes up his life in London once more, Charity is left to wander the echoing corridors of St. Malin House, when she isn’t thrown into the midst of the mocking Haute Ton. Charity is not at all sure she likes her new social equals, as they live by their own rules, which seem rather shocking. She’s not at all sure she likes her new husband either, except for his striking appearance and the dark desire in his eyes when he looks at her, which sends her pulses racing.

Lord Robert is a rake and does not deserve her love, but neither does she wish to live alone. Might he be suffering from a sad past? Seeking to uncover it, Charity attempts to heal the wound to his heart, only to make things worse between them. Will he ever love her?

Maggi has been writing more of her life, but she didn’t seek publication until quite late. She’s been published since 2008.

She writes the first draft pretty quickly; then, in the second draft, she strengthens themes and builds the characters now that she’s more familiar with them. The second draft might also include a structural edit. The third draft requires a copy edit, checking language, dialogue, facts, words, and punctuation.

Maggi’s currently working on the second book of a Regency romance trilogy: Mayfair Spies Taming a Gentleman Spy. The first book in the trilogy, A Baron in Her Bed comes out in September with the third book, What a Rake Wants being released next year.

She loves hearing from her readers and they often tell her what they want to read, she told me.

“It’s helpful, and it’s the reason I’m writing about Regency spies,” she said.

She’s also reading Joanna Bourne’s spy books and said, “They are great!”
Maggi lives in a historical Australian country town.

“It’s a charming little village with pretty gardens opened to the public in Spring. We get lots of tourists visiting the antique shops and cafes, particularly in tulip time. Very English really,” she said. “My writing space is a small study off the kitchen, too near the fridge, as it turns out. I can look out the window on the pretty garden with a stream and ducks.”

She doesn’t often suffer from writer’s block, but when she does she just begins to write anything—even if it seems like it’s rubbish, she can always go back and improve it.

Finally, I asked her what she would do if she could do her journey to getting published all over again.

“I’d try harder to get an agent, which would have structured my career better, but I’m not sure it’s so relevant now. I’ve had an Amazon Regency bestseller without one. My husband is a lawyer and reads the contracts. I do all my own promotion. Some writers would certainly benefit from one though.”
About the Author:

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Andersen always felt she was meant to be a writer, but raising three children and studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing degree came first. Georgette Heyer has strongly influenced her historical romances. Her love of romantic suspense came from Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt.

Her current favorite writers are Elizabeth George and Sue Grafton. In her spare time, Maggi enjoys reading and watching movies. She swims and goes to the gym to keep fit. Her novel, Murder in Devon, was released by Black Opal Books on February 25.

Find the author online at:

http://www.MaggieAndersenAuthor.com

http://www.maggiandersen.blogspot.com

FB Maggi Andersen Author

Twitter: @maggiandersen

An ex-patriot American reporter living in England, Casey Rowan wakes to find one best friend murdered and another seriously injured. Casey is determined to find the killer, despite running afoul of the detective in charge of the case—a blue-eyed Scot named Rod Carlisle, who considers her a prime suspect. As Casey gets closer to the truth, losing her heart to the sexy cop isn’t the only thing she risks. Now her life is danger, too.

Rod has no patience with civilians who interfere in police matters, even hot little numbers like Casey. Though he tries to keep things professional between, Casey’s beauty and spunk are hard to resist. Rod warns her that what she’s doing is dangerous, but she refuses to listen. Can he find the killer before Casey becomes the next victim?

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Author Interview with Leah Marie Brown

November 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment


The Long and the Short of It is pleased to welcome Leah Marie Brown, whose latest book Silence in the Mist was released in July.

Leah Marie said she’s always known she wanted to be a writer.

“When I graduated from high school, I was full of bravado and wistful dreams. I imagined traveling the world, working for the Associated Press, and one day writing a blockbuster novel. College did not figure in those plans,” she told me. “The funny thing about youthful dreams, they usually get smacked around by the mature hand of reality before they’re actualized. While my friends were writing term papers and going to frat parties, I was working as a preschool teacher, a receptionist at a brokerage firm, and a salesgirl at a shockingly unfashionable clothing store. At night, I wrote poems, articles, and short stories. A year after graduation, I sold my first piece to Seventeen Magazine and got hired as an editorial assistant at The Arizona Republic. I wrote my first article for The Arizona Republic two months after being hired. Hard-hitting articles followed. If you lived in Arizona in the 80s, perhaps you read my articles about pet safety belts or the Stressball (an irritating gadget that sounded like shattering glass when thrown).

“I sailed from The Arizona Republic in search of new journalistic worlds to conquer and landed at a very small newspaper in North Carolina, where I wrote investigative pieces about the local piano teacher who was a closet poet and the dangers of cow tipping (joking).

“Realizing I would not achieve my dreams without a college degree, I enlisted in the Air Force as a Radio and Television Broadcaster and was stationed in Zaragoza, Spain. I was a drive-time radio jock, spinning records at the un-godly hour of 6AM while most of Espana still slept. I then anchored the nightly news, covering stories related to Desert Storm.

“After separating from the Air Force, I worked as a freelance reporter and stringer for CBS news. I started writing novels ten years ago.”

The most difficult part of writing Silence in the Mist for Leah Marie came after she completed the first draft. She entered it in Seattle RWA’s Emerald City Opener and won. She was still fairly new at the novel writing game, was passionate about the story, and very excited about the contest win, so she sent the manuscript to editors and agents from revising or editing it.

However, reality crashed into her dreams.

“Most of the editors who read it said they loved the story but didn’t think a romance novel set in the French Revolution would appeal to readers. Some also said it needed polishing,” she explained. “Unfortunately, I practiced selective listening – hearing only that they did not like my setting. It took me years to realize that if I wanted editors to make the big leap over the French Revolution hurdle, I needed to remove all of the other hurdles in the manuscript. In other words, I needed to edit and revise it.”

I asked her to tell us a little bit about Silence in the Mist.

After bloodthirsty revolutionaries murder her family, Françoise Despres vows to avenge their deaths and fight the violent mob destroying her beloved France. Usually the impotency in men is of many kinds, but two most popular are:* A condition where male gentile do not get order cialis online http://cute-n-tiny.com/page/40/ erected and neither person feels sensuality.* A condition in which person is Sildamax aroused, but his gentile do erect for completing physical relation.Besides, the male impotency problem, there is also issue related to female sexual dysfunction. You must not drink cialis canada generic cold water along with the medicine. Its effect starts to get and maintain strong erection can be improved. buy cialis online http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/sleepy-cats/ Lupus Symptoms Every lupus case generally differs from other cases, but the most commonly observed indications include: fatigue, facial rash (butterfly in shape that covers the cheeks and the nose simultaneously. best buy on cialis Becoming a spy for the counter-revolutionary cause, she knows great success, silently slipping between the shadows to carry secret messages that thwart her foes. But she never expected to come up against Sebastien de Brézé, a daring, clever cavalry officer in the revolutionary army and master spy hunter.

When Sebastien discovers the spy he has captured is actually a wily young woman cloaked in men’’s garb, he finds himself intrigued and titillated. But the elusive woman slips through his grasp, leading him on a chase through France. Undaunted, he makes it his mission to recapture Françoise Despres, body and soul.
Leah Marie shared that she’s had many serendipitous moments in her life and wonders sometimes whether they were ordained by some higher power or merely coincidental.

“I’ve made so many fortunate discoveries by accident – while plotting my novels – that I can’t believe life is completely random. For instance, after writing Silence in the Mist, which is based on the real counter-revolutionary spy, Françoise Després, I took a trip to France with one of my best friends. While driving through the Loire, we got lost and ended up on some back road. We saw a sign for an old castle and decided to take a look. As we were coming down the stairs of the castle, I stumbled and reached for the wall to steady myself. I looked at my hand and there, carved into the stone wall, was the name Françoise Després. I made a few inquiries and discovered the castle had been used as a prison during the French Revolution and that the names on the walls had been carved by prisoners! None of the books I had read about Françoise Després mentioned her being imprisoned in that particular castle. Furthermore, I had never heard of that castle. I don’t know if the name on the wall was the same Francoise Després I wrote about in Silence in the Mist, but I believe it is certainly possible. The real Françoise was captured and imprisoned several times.”

To read about more of the other strange and serendipitous happenings in Leah Marie’s life, check out her blog On Life, Love and Accidental Adventures.

Leah Marie’s maternal grandmother was born in France and met Leah’s grandfather several months after he’d stormed the beach at Normandy.

“For years, my grandpa, an American of Irish descent, liked to tease my grandmother by saying her French ancestry made her inferior,” she told me. “Recently, I discovered my grandfather had ancestors from the Dordogne region in France. So, I am proud to say I have a lot of French blood running through my veins.”

Her French background comes out in several phrases that have become a part of her everyday speech:

Quel tragique! (As in, “Someone ate the last pain au chocolat! Quel tragique!”)

J’adore (As in, “J’adore Prince Harry!”).

“I also use the words covet and fabulous a lot. I pronounce the latter, fob-oo-liss because that’s the way my French-born grandmother pronounced it when she spoke English, which always made me giggle.”

When Leah Marie is working on a novel, or an article for a magazine, she becomes hyper-focused and obsessive.

“I stop going to the gym, answering the phone, practicing good hygiene – I literally pad around the house in my sweats with my lucky pink pencil sticking out of the hair piled atop my head,” she said. “When I get this way, my friends jokingly refer to me as ‘Bubble Girl’ (A pun on the movie Bubble Boy, a comedy about a man who is born without an immune system and has to live in a plastic bubble, away from people). I usually get up at 4 in the morning, write a few hours, get my kids out the door for school and then go back to writing until they come home. After they’ve gone to bed, I will often go back to writing until my eyes droop and my forehead hits the desktop.”
You can keep up with Leah Marie on her blog, On Life, Love and Accidental Adventures.

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Author Interview: Diane Davis White

August 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment



The Long and the Short of It is very pleased to welcome Diane Davis White, author of the Lakota Moon series and the Tartan Cowboy series.

Diane grew up in southern California, but told me that her spirit draws her back to the wide open plains.

“I was born writing, and have been doing so since I could put pen to paper. When I compose a scene, I see the images so clearly, it’s as though I’m there,” she said. “I create stories for pleasure and when someone tells me they like my work, I am content.”

She writes mainly western historical with Native American heroes, the occasional contemporary romance, and also a bit of whimsical fantasy.

“My heroes are always modeled after my late husband, whose Chickasaw heritage inspires me,” she explained.

Unlike a lot of authors, for Diane she usually comes up with the title first, then builds the story around it.

“For instance, I was chatting with another writer friend and I said, ‘I’d like to do something Scottish, but not historical…maybe something where the cowboy wears a tartan sash.’ Then, viola! The Tartan Cowboy Series popped into my head. From there, I did a family history page and started writing.”

Diane told me that she’s literally been writing all her life, since she was old enough to hold a pencil and her favorite book is always the book she’s writing at the moment.

“Each book has its own place in my heart, and I cannot choose one over the other. However, I will have to say, there is a book ‘under my bed’ that has my heart totally and it’s not complete,” she said. “It’s called The Heart of Wild Horse, and it’s hero is my husband, whose Chickasaw name was–you guessed it–Wild Horse. If I can ever finish the book, it will be my favorite, for sure.”

Diane doesn’t develop her characters; they develop themselves.

“I just put my hands on the keyboard, type a few lines and they take over the story, hook line and sinker. I’m just along for the ride and to type what they dictate.”

Her plot is also very loose, as a rule. No matter how she starts off, the story goes another way sooner or later.

“I think my characters sort of take me there,” she explained.

The next book in the Lakota Moon Series, Moon of Hard Winter, has just been published, and she has started the 4th book in the series, Moon of Tender Grass. She needs to find the time to finish is and hopes it will be in print before fall. She’s also currently working on the next book in the Tartan Cowboy series.

“It’s going to be a little hotter than the first one, but the main character, Parlan, is a wild child kind of guy and so is his love interest, Brina,” she said.

“Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?” I asked. “If so, what do you do about it?”

“Writer’s block is common to most authors. I just walk away and work on another project or get caught up on my dusting…whichever happens to be the most urgent. Sooner or later it comes back. If I’m on a deadline, of course, I try to stick it out and sometimes if I keep writing, the block will disappear.”

Only a single pill is recommended within the time period secretworldchronicle.com order levitra online of 24 hours. It is usually caused when ligaments, muscles, discs and joints become strained. buy cialis in usa However, still many people are cautious about changing to the generic versions because the branded companies generally promote their drugs in the market with attractive marketing buy cheap cialis view these guys now strategies as though there is no alternative to their drug. When erection cialis tadalafil 20mg issues start to occur at frequent intervals, it is best advisable to visit your doctor.
When she’s not writing, she stays busy reading, because she reviews for Amazon.

“I just finished a great book from guaranteed-good-read, Debbie Macomber, Family Affair, and received a new one today titled The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney,” she said. “It looks to be a good read.”

On a personal note, Diane told me that she doesn’t hate how she looks in pictures, at least “not after I’ve put them through Photo Shop and removed all the flaws, age spots, wrinkles, that sort of thing.”

She also shared with me her strangest habit.

“I tear the tiniest bit of paper from the corner of a page when I’m reading. My husband used to laugh. He’d say he knew where I’d been because of the trial of book page corners. And yes, I know it’s sacrilege to mutilate a book, but I call my little torn corners ‘love bites’. If you see a book on my shelf with no torn corners you know I either haven’t read it or didn’t like it. eBooks, sadly, have no paper corners to tear….”

However, she does think scientists should invent eBooks with paper covers for her to tear as she reads.

“You can erase any horrible experience from your past,” I told her. “What will it be?”

“Only one? I can’t pick one over another…there are so many! Okay, there was this one time when the seat my pants caught fire in front of the plate glass window of a bar with a whole bunch of people watching…that’s not an event I would like to repeat.”

“When you looked in the mirror this morning, what was the first thing you thought?”

“OMG! I’m turning into my father! Then I plucked out the chin whisker and relaxed.”

I asked her about a saying she uses a lot, but she told me that she didn’t think it was fit for public consumption, however she admitted that it can be read about in a lot of erotica books.

“Have you ever eaten a crayon?” I wondered.

“No, but I’ve smoked a few…oh wait…maybe not!”

As far as her heritage goes, she’s been told mostly Irish and Welsh, with some Scots and English thrown in.

“I dunno, though,” she mused. “I’m leaning toward alien, truth be known.”

Finally, I asked her, “What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?”

“Write what you know; edit, edit, edit, and edit again; research which publishers are accepting our genre; have someone who isn’t your family or friend, and can be impartial, read your work—AFTER you edit, and edit, and edit, of course; and try to find a good critique partner. You can do this by joining one of the many writers groups online, or check your local library for a list of groups in your area.”

You can keep up with Diane on her blog, http://dianedaviswhite.blogspot.com.

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Author Interview: Kathryn Meyer Griffith

August 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment


The Long and the Short of It is very pleased to welcome Kathryn Meyer Griffith, author of Vampire Blood, which was just released from Damnation Books. Vampire Blood is a revised and re-issued edition of Kathryn’s 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel.

She had some exciting news to share with us. Her April 2011 re-release (also originally a Zebra paperback) Witches won the CoffeeTimes Recommended Read Award and Before the End: A Time of Demons won the She Never Slept 2010 Nightmare Award.

Kathryn started writing after her only child, James, was born in late 1971. She was staying at home with him, not working, and was bored out of her skin. She read a horrible historical romance one day and thought I can do better than that!.

“I got out my old typewriter with a few keys that stuck, my White-Out, carbon paper for copies, and started clicking away. And so it began. That was 40 years ago,” she remembered. “Took me 12 years to get my first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, and having to get a real job. Life got in the way.”

In the meantime, she wrote another book, Evil Stalks the Night. Her first book, The Heart of the Rose, and the second were both sold to Leisure Books.

Her first published stories, however, were short stories. Her first short story, written in 1978, was about her fifteen-year-old brother who had been murdered by one of his friends, who was high on bad drugs, in 1971. She also illustrated the story and it won a newspaper contest that had more than 200 submissions. Later, the same newspaper bought two more of Kathryn’s childhood stories of her large family growing up in the 1950s and 60s.

“I’ve never stopped though my writing career has been a roller coaster of joy, despair and frustration. I’ve had publishers go bankrupt on me, had editors dump my books right before publication after the covers and final editing were all done, had books take years in the to-get-published queue,” she told me. “Being a writer isn’t easy. Staying a writer year after year, with all the setbacks that seem to come with it, is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But when I get really old I want to be able to look back and say: I tried…doing what I loved. Wildly successful or not. Making little money. I tried and the journey made me happy.”

Kathryn actually didn’t want to be a writer, when she grew up—even though an early teacher said she was a natural storyteller and predicted Kathryn would be a writer one day—she wanted to be an artist. Even though she’s always loved to read, at the age of nine she began drawing everything in sight. If she saw it, she could copy it.

“I was a graphic artist in the corporate world for 23 years, and I still draw or paint whenever I can, when I’m not too busy writing my books,” she said. “Then at 14 (the Beatles and all that English music) I wanted to sing. And I did, with my brother, when we were very young. Some benefits of purchase generic levitra include firm and long lasting results and so, millions of worldwide satisfied customers recommend it. When you feel like craving for smoke you should sit and relax and try to order tadalafil no prescription keep your sex alive. However, the problems of sleep related angina and coronary artery disease go in those who have a heart problem Those who have hereditary eye problems Those who have a history of heart problems, stroke, uncontrolled blood pressure and diabetes, then he buying tadalafil should avoid the use of this tablet. If they reacted with a feeling of hope and an attitude of “I can beat this,” their loved this levitra generika immunity was strengthened. Folk music, at first, and then I was in a pop rock band with him until I was 19. Those were the days. The writing started at 21. I consider it as my butterfly stage, though I still draw once and a while and jam (for fun only) with my brother, Jim. That’s me singing with him on the book trailer I made for BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons. I’m not a great singer but I wanted it to mimic the two main characters and my brother obliged me. He wrote the song and he let me sing it with him. He grew up to be a singer/song writer and hold down a full-time computer job.”

Kathryn’s books are very much character driven. She told me she usually begins with a character (her/his goals and problems, outlook on life with a past that made him/her that way) or characters and then the plot forms around them as the book grows.

“The books often take me where they want to go and sometimes the ending is a surprise even to me,” she explained. “The plots and characters just come to me though I base a lot on my life and past experiences. People, places and things that I’ve seen, read about, heard or known and then I write a ‘real’ story around them and add a ‘touch’ of the supernatural or a murder mystery, a little romance, to spice them up.”

“How do you come up with the titles to your books?” I asked.

“In the early days with Leisure Books and Zebra Books I had no choice in the titles…I could suggest a few ideas but my editors always seemed to pull the strangest titles out of thin air and they had the last say. I hated Blood Forge (Leisure Books 1989) and begged them not to call it that, but my editor named it that anyway. At least Blood Forged would have made more sense. The Heart of the Rose I’d wanted to call King’s Witch. Then there was the misadventure of my 1994 book about a dinosaur in Crater Lake that I wanted to call The American Loch Ness Monster that Zebra, when I lost my editor and the new editor took over, foolishly titled Predator (I begged him not to call it that because there’d been a movie with that title and it didn’t describe the contents of the novel at all) that they eventually dropped completely six weeks before it was to go to the book shelves because…they said…the book sellers hated the title and the cover and didn’t think they could sell it. Sheesh. So my book died because of that. People still ask me where Predator is, and I have to laugh. ‘It never came out, but it’s still in the computers as having been released in 1994.’ Maybe someday I’ll take it out of the drawer and rewrite it, too, and try to sell it. Again, back in those Zebra and Leisure days I had to let the editor/publisher decide. But since Avalon Books did my two murder mysteries Scraps of Paper (2003) and All Things Slip Away (2006), and with my publishers now, I actually get to pick my own titles. Thank goodness. Because a cover and a title can really make the difference with a book.”

Kathryn has found that it’s often her earlier books, like Evil Stalks the Night or Witches that get the most comments from readers, so she’s very excited that all of her revised versions of her old books will be re-released by July 2012.

“I think my fans will really like them better than the old versions that were done when I was working full time or written on a typewriter. The computer has made it so much easier to rewrite and edit,” she said. “And so far almost every reviewer (or comments left on Amazon, social websites, etc.) that’s reviewed any of my short stories or novels has given me 4-5 stars out of five. Hey, they’re fans, too.”
You can keep up with Kathryn on her Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019954486

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Author Interview: Barbara Hannay

August 30, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Author Interview:
Barbara Hannay

The Long and the Short of It recently had the pleasure of talking with Australian author, Barbara Hannay. Be sure to check out her website for some strikingly beautiful pictures of the lovely “Down Under” land she lives in. She says she splits her time between “an inner city apartment and a cabin in the Misty Mountains on the Atherton Tablelands.” I’ve seen pictures of the Misty Mountains and would be hard pressed to ever leave them to come back to the real world. She tells me that she “loves life in the north where the dangers of cyclones, crocodiles and sea stingers are offset by a relaxed lifestyle, glorious winters, World Heritage rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef.” And, it’s easy to see why she does!

She is Australian born and bred, but she’s been researching her heritage recently and has discovered her ancestors are English, Scottish, Irish, and German. Hmm… we may be related.

All of us are interested in knowing how our favorite authors got their start, so I asked Barbara what first got her interested in writing. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “It feels as if I’ve been making up stories and writing since I was very small. As a child I spent hours writing poetry, short stories, comics (complete with illustrations), magazine stories. I guess it’s the way I’m wired.”

She had good advice for those of us who sometimes get writer’s block and this is something I’m going to try the next time it happens to me. She said, “One of my best tips is to put on a CD of your favorite music (preferably music without words) and don’t allow yourself out of the chair until the CD stops. Most CDs last for at least an hour and usually, some time during that hour, the music will relax you and you’ll get an idea for a sentence, which will start to grow into a paragraph and before you know it, you’re unblocked.”

Barbara is definitely a multi-tasker. In her office, along with the two walls covered in bookshelves and the floor-to-ceiling built-in wardrobe stuffed with books, she also has a printout from her latest manuscript on the floor beside her AND a collage for her latest book. She also has good luck charms, cards from friends, and notes to herself all over her desk. She says she’s looking for a place to put her RITA, which she won this year for Best Traditional Romance.

I asked her what she considered the hardest part to writing a book. “There is never one thing that is the hardest part because each book is different and each story presents different problems,” she said. She does admit, however, that she worries a lot about the ending. “Because everyone knows that a romance will end with ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too’, there’s huge pressure to make that happen in a new and exciting way. It’s a big challenge, but one I always enjoy.” She went on to say, “And then, of course, there’s the journey to that happy ending and the need to make the characters likeable and their conflict believable and the need for sensual tension and falling in love. None of it’s easy.”

Her wish? “To write stories that make people laugh and cry and remember what’s good about being alive.” Barbara, with the twenty-six (at last count) novels you have out with Harlequin Mills and Boon, I think you can say your wish has come true.

I, for one, am very grateful she decided to give up her career as a high school English teacher in 1999 and devote herself to writing romances. Thank you, not only for the interview, but for giving us such a wonderful gift in your writing.

Visit Barbara at her website.

Filed Under: Interviews, Romance
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