Next Big Thing Blog Hop

A Day Late and A Dollar Short

As usual Gwynn and I are up to our ears in a ziggy-dillion projects and busy-ness but after committing to doing this I do feel obligated. Or we do .

First thanks to Lyndi Lamont, http://www.lyndilamont.com/blog. my good friend and fellow Amber Quill author for the invite. I know I am supposed to invite some other folks and will but no telling if they will come through or not…. But I can hope. It’s one of those chain letter things, almost, but I assure all it is legal! No money will change hands unless someone is moved to buy a book—but you have to go elsewhere to do that, like maybe www.amgerquill.com/ and check out all the great offerings there.

So let’s play Q&A for a minute here:

What is your working title of your book? Hmm, which one? I always have more than one project ongoing and so does Gwynn. For Deirdre, the next one is Epona’s Favored.  And for Gwynn Jessie’s Legacy.

Where did the idea come from for the book? Since both titles are part of ongoing series, the ideas have been perking along for some time. Epona will tell the story of the origin of my horse shifter clan (Nellie’s Rogue Stallion and Colette’s Savage Stallion released so far) back in the dim distance of pre-history when a young woman of the Scythian people on the Asian steppes saves a mare and foal from wolves and is rewarded by the horse goddess Epona for this service. It will be longer than my regular Amber Heat and Amber Allure work, probably about 40-50K.

Legacy is the third of a long delayed trilogy (Copper Stars of Cochise—Penny’s Luck and Mollie’s McGuire currently OOP) centered around the law enforcement community in Cochise County, AZ where Gwynn used to live. Since her late hubby and now middle son were in that line of work, it came naturally to write about it.

What genre does your book fall under? Epona is of course fantasy but will be a ‘straight’ erotic romance also (not gay!) and Legacy is contemporary romance with police procedural setting.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Oh, that’s hard! I don’t watch a lot of current movies so most of my choices are now too old to play the roles! And in Legacy the hero is ethnically mixed with Latino and African American family while the heroine is a BBW and her father was probably part African American also! That makes it harder but I’m open to suggestions!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Epona: An unusual young woman of prehistoric central Asia saves a mare and foal from wolves, gains a magical power from the horse goddess in reward and uses it to unite her people with a clan they consider enemies.

Legacy: Jessie comes to Bisbee, Arizona to claim her heritage and stumbles into the middle of a hushed up murder, joining forces with a rookie Bisbee officer to delve into the cold case.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? Both are still WIPs but I anticipate having them finished in 2013 and ready to market. I may self-publish Legacy along with the two prior books of the trilogy which are currently off the market but were released earlier by Awe-Struck E-Books. Epona will be an Amber Heat title.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Epona has a slight kinship to Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series and Legacy shares a setting with J.A. Jance’s Joanna Brady tales but my work is always just a bit out of the usual box so I really can’t make a comparison.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? What inspires any writer? I’ve always been a story teller and have written since I scribed ‘ranch romances’ (recycled Zane Grey and Louis LAmour) in steno notebooks as a teenager! Life is my inspiration along with the thousands of books I have read over the many decades since I started reading at about age four. Mostly I write to let these noisy folks out of my head when they shove to the fore and demand I tell their story!

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? One question I get at times is: How do I keep Gwynn and Deirdre straight since they both live in the same head? That’s easier than you might think. Deirdre is a bit bolder and has totally shed the Victorian inhibitions that Gwynn still clings to in part but we both tell the most vivid and realistic stories we can, even if they may have fantastic settings or out-of-this-world characters. Deirdre’s have more explicit sex but both of us write love stories—always about love in its many forms and colors and guarantee a happy ending because that is what we truly believe in! However there is always more than boy meets girl, or sometimes boy meets boy or girl meets girl—in that love does not happen in a vacuum and life throws a lot of junk our way even when we are falling madly in love! Every story has two plots, the external one about events and the internal one about two people who stumble into love.

Sooner than either Epona or Legacy, I expect Deirdre will have other shorter tales coming—four PAX stories at least in 2013—and a print collection of four tales, previously only electronic releases, in January called Duty and Daring. That’s four gay romance stories centered around demanding work environments and the men who fall in love despite those constraints. So long as I/we have the capability to do so and readers keep enjoying, Deirdre and Gwynn will both be writing until their last breath!

Brightest blessings to our friends and fans who make it all worthwhile! Go in peace and beauty/harmony all the days of your lives.