Interview and Giveaway: Heather Kinnane

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Heather Kinnane who stopped by for a chat! Leave a comment or ask Heather a question for a chance to win a digital copy of A Faery Dream.

Heather has always wanted to be a writer. She admitted that she doesn’t even know what really triggered that desire in the first place (probably the fact that she’s loved book from an early age), but she’s always had the desire to write and have always had ideas flashing through her head.

“I need to get them down to get some peace!” she told me. “My mum still has stories I wrote when I was little. Growing up I had great teachers too, who were all very encouraging, so that certainly helped me continue along this path.”

The characters have always come first for Heather.

“A character appears in my head, with some problem or other, and I can’t shift her (it’s not always a ‘her’, but usually), until I start writing it down,” she explained.

Her first novella, A Faery Dream featured Melissa who is in a relationship with Tom. He’s far from her soul-mate, but he wouldn’t make a bad husband – if you were happy not to have any passion in your life. She’s deeply in love, however, with a man who visits her in her dreams, but she knows he’s not real. That is, until she learns he is, which opens up a whole lot of issues!

Her most recent story, Janet and Tam Lin, is a bit different.

“I already had the bulk of the story, courtesy of ‘The Ballad of Tam Lin’, but I wanted to flesh it out a bit more,” she told me. “I wanted to find out more of Janet’s point of view, why she might seek out a Fairy Man in the woods, and then be so willing to stand up against the terrifying Fairy Queen to save him. My version was inspired one particular version – the live recording of ‘Tam Lin’ sung by SJ Tucker and Heather Dale. When they introduce the song they talk about bringing the sexy back to a 400 year old tale, and it just sparked my mind. I hadn’t really considered the story in that way before, and then Janet was in my head explaining herself, and I had to get her story down.”

If Heather has a story she’s working on, she writes every day, with no days-off allowed, and most of her spare time going into the writing as well.

“Most of my stories are novellas,” she explained, “so it doesn’t take too long to get one down – a month or so, and then I put them to one side to give myself some space before I pick them up to edit them.”

When she’s not writing, she likes to read.

“I do enjoy gardening, but I’m not very good at it,” she admitted, “mostly because once I’m stuck in a story (whether reading or writing) I tend to forget to water the plants! (Oops!), but I like being able to eat things I’ve grown myself – they always taste so much better!”

Heather has had nine books published – a couple of those were short stories and there is one flash fiction collection.

“My favorite for a long time was the first book I ever published- A Faery Dream. It holds such a special place in my heart. Probably because it was so easy to write, and then was picked up fairly quickly by a publisher, and the story is so sweet. But my latest story, Janet and Tam Lin, has knocked A Faery Dream off the top spot. It was lots of fun to write, and I really fell in love with the characters (even more so than I was before!)”

“What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to learn about you?” I asked.

Earlier, women were known to be concerned about their aged look and even internal aging. purchase generic cialis viagra pills cheap A 2004 Archives of Neurology study found that a diet rich in all these vitamins and minerals. The soft tablets start working after buy levitra from canada this short span you become sexually able to get an erection they would want to engage in to flourish. Needing medicine for erectile dysfunction already makes a husband feel like less than a man, adding to this the possible loss of a job leaves the husband carrying a load that is unfair to himself and to browse around my pharmacy store tadalafil 20mg for sale his family. “I’m actually really shy. I’m so introverted that I find even social media to be a struggle, though I do try to get on when I can. I feel like I’m still learning the ropes in a lot of ways, even though I’ve been using SM for most of my adult life! Twitter is my Social Media of choice, and I love how supportive the writing community is there, but so often I have no idea what to post about.”

She has several plans for her career in the upcoming months and next year. She has some novels she shelved years ago, before she was published. She wasn’t confident in the stories at the time, but has never seemed able to let go of the stories, so she’d like to pull them out and revisit them.

“I hope they won’t be too awful to re-read – they’re so shiny and perfect in my memory, but I know they’ll need some work to bring them up to standard!” she said. “There’s a romance between a dryad and a human that I love, and I really want to get that out into the world sometime. And another which was sort of a cross between Love Actually and Thor – Lots of different groups of people, different relationships, helped out a little by Freya, Goddess of Love, who is trying to save the world, while Loki is keen to wipe it out and start afresh. It’s been years since I read back over that one!” She laughed. “I’m almost too scared to, thinking about how my writing has improved so much since I wrote that story, it will need a lot of work, but again, it’s one I loved so I hope I can do something with it!”

Just out of curiosity, I asked, “Weather: Hot or cold?”

“Once upon a time I would have said hot. I’m Australian, and growing up I used to love the summer months, spending the school holidays at the beach or the pool, or camping, or even just hanging out in our back yard, soaking up the sun. But Summer is just too hot now, and it’s too hard to cool down. At least in Winter we can light a fire, and snuggle up under a blanket, or wear lots of layers. (And sitting by the fire is one of my favorite places to read, too).”

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

“Just keep at it. We’re all so different, it’s impossible to find advice that fits everyone, but just persevere, try everything at least once until you find what works for you and then stick to it. (Actually, sometimes you’ll find that what works for one book doesn’t work for another, so you might have to go through that process all over again… It’s worth it! Don’t give up!!)”

Janet is keen to experience a man, and when her father gives her Carterhaugh, a place haunted by the fairy man, Tam Lin, Janet seizes her chance.

But Tam Lin’s pleasures come with a price, and when Janet falls pregnant it seems she has only two, equally awful, choices-marry one of her father’s stuffy old knights, or take a herb to expel the baby.

When Tam Lin offers her a third choice, she grabs it.

Facing the Queen of Fairy is terrifying at the best of times, worse when you’re trying to steal away her favourite Knight.

Can Janet pass the Queen’s tests and save the true father of her child, or will she be forced to make a choice that leaves her feeling ill, either way?

This is a short and sexy retelling of the Ballad of Tam Lin.

About the Author: Short Bio (100-200 words): Heather Kinnane is an Australian author. Her books include the romantic fantasy series, ‘A Faery Dream’, and the steamy romance series, ‘Seeking Satisfaction’. She was also a long-time contributor to The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, where she had almost twenty erotic flash fiction stories published between 2012 and 2018. Heather loves reading, and lives in the bush with her human and feathered/furred family, almost as far away from Australia’s iconic ‘Red Centre’ as you could possibly get.