Interview and Giveaway: Heather Kinnane

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Heather Kinnane who is visiting with us today to celebrate the recent release of Truckie Needed. Ask Heather a question or leave a comment for her for a chance to win a copy of Erotic Writer Seeks Men, the first book in her Seeking Satisfaction series.

Heather told me that she’s been writing as long as she can remember and that it was always a childhood dream of hers to be published. Once she received her first contract, she started really considering herself an author.

“That was so exciting, and really confirmed for me that I could do this,” she said.

Truckie Needed was inspired by Kelly, a writing friend of Heather’s.

“I really wanted to write something new in my Seeking Satisfaction series, (which are all standalone books), but I was struggling to come up with any ideas, until Kelly made a suggestion, and here it is!” she exclaimed with a smile.

Heather has mostly been a pantser, writing by the seat of her pants with no plan in mind.

“In the past, this meant lots of editing as a re-read discovered huge plot holes and various issues with characters. Recently I’ve started plotting, just a little,” she explained, “and I find this gives me a good indication where there are plot holes that need to be filled, and how characters might need to be fleshed out a little.”

I asked her, “Who is your favorite author and why?”

“I don’t have one favorite author, and I’m not entirely sure how I would narrow it down to one either. Stories that I have absolutely loved include The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, as well as The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. One of my favourite romances is Skipping out on Henry by C L Ogilvie. I fully intend to read more novels by these authors (and all the others on my shelf), but there are so many good books out there, I find I flit from one to the other without much consideration as to who it’s been written by, and more focus on what the story’s about and whether it sounds like something I would read.”

Story is, in her opinion, the most important element of good writing.

“I think story ties everything together, the characters, the plot,” she told me. “If you can tell a good story you can get away with most things – often even grammar mistakes! (But not spelling, if a book is full of spelling mistakes I just can’t read it).”

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

“Titles are always tricky for me! Mostly my titles come from my writers group lol! On saying that, the title of Truckie Needed was easy, because of the series it’s part of. All the books in my Seeking Satisfaction series have something about seeking or wanting or needing in the title.”
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The hardest part about writing for her is editing – she told me that it’s definitely the area she struggles with the most.

“It’s so much easier to write when the words are flowing, and so much harder to go back and beat it into shape,” she assured me.

I wondered, “What is the most surprising thing you discovered while writing your book?”

“Hmm… tricky. I think perhaps it was while I was writing this book. It’s a bit gruesome too, so for those who don’t want to read anything like that, feel free to skip this! I was following the road where my characters travel, looking for interesting tid-bits to include in the story, when I came upon the story of a series of murders in a town called ‘Snowtown’ in South Australia. The poor victims bodies were stuffed into barrels and left in an abandoned bank vault.”

“Could you ever co author a book with someone?” I asked. “If so, who would you choose, and what would you write?”

“If you’d asked me this twelve months ago I would’ve said no way, but I’ve been thinking about this recently actually. I don’t know whether I could or not, but it would be interesting to try! As to what I’d write… hmmm. I don’t know that either. But I’ve read that some of the easiest ways to co-author is to have one person write in the POV of one character, and the other person write from the POV of another character, so that maybe a romance where I write one character and another writer writes the love interest might be a good way to start.”

Finally I asked, “What are the best and worst pieces of writing advice you ever received?”

“Best: Just keep writing! Worst: You must never do XYZ. In this case XYZ covers a whole bunch of different things I’ve been told I shouldn’t do, only to have a different person tell me ‘make sure you do XYZ’. (Actually, now I say all that, I think the best advice is, there are no rules.)”

Mattie has bought a tiny house, intending to drive it across the country to land she’s bought interstate. But Mattie doesn’t take into
account the fact that the tiny house is on the back of a truck, and she doesn’t have her truck license.

What to do? An ad in the local pub brings Ned and Jack into her life — two very eager and sexy young men who’ve been travelling around Australia and are more than happy to drive Mattie and her tiny house across the continent.

They might be leaving Western Australia’s deserts behind and heading to the chilly island state of Tasmania, where even in spring there is still snow on the mountains, but inside the tiny house, things are only heating up.

About the Author: I am the author of the romantic fantasy series, ‘A Faery Dream’, and the steamy menage series ‘Seeking Satisfaction’. I also write short stories, the shortest of which have been published at The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette (many of which you can find in my flash-fiction collection – ‘The Pittsburgh Collection’). I live in the Australian bush with my husband, children and pets. When I’m not writing I’m usually avoiding the housework by reading, gardening, or soaking up the natural world.