INTERVIEW and giveaway: E.L. ESCH

May 16, 2013 By 8 Comments

 Long and Short Reviews welcomes E. L. Esch whose debut novel Beauty in the Breakdown was released in October. Leave a comment for a chance to win an ebook copy of it.

E.L. has recently signed the contract for her second book. I asked her to tell us about it.

“It’s a contemporary adult romance about a man named Red who’s recently been released from prison. Unspeakable things happened to him there, and now he finds himself free but without a job, money, and family. His sister hates him, and he’s not too keen on her either given past issues. Red thus finds himself alone and miserable. He feels the eyes of strangers on him wherever he goes, silently judging him for a crime that should never have been labeled as such. Desperate for any sort of solace, he find himself in a shady bar one night downing the driest cocktails on the menu. There he meets Silo, a fellow ex-con who understands him a lot better than Red thinks.”

She’s been writing since the fourth grade, but didn’t start to look at it as something she would like to pursue until her sophomore year in high school–and she wrote what would become her debut novel when she was seventeen to eighteen years old.  She’s now nineteen.

“I am for sure still learning the ropes of the genre and the writing world as a whole, but don’t underestimate the young ones,” she told me with a smile.

“Are you a plotter or a pantser?” I asked.

“Definitely a pantser. I’ll put together extremely vague notes about the overall story plot, but when it comes to the details I just stand up and run with the words. Some might think this makes a story difficult to start, but I don’t think so. I will admit I usually go back and rewrite the beginnings of my stories several times though, probably because of this. Still, I like when the story comes to me as I’m writing it. It keeps the stories fresh to me, instead of already knowing what’s going to happen next.”

E.L. always starts with her characters’ overall personalities as opposed to physical traits when she writes.

“Are they outwardly cold with a hidden soft center? A player who hides behind smiles because he/she is afraid of commitment? After figuring this out I usually try to figure out if they have any special or unique physical traits related to their lives like a scar from a fall off a bike or a burn mark from an accident…stuff like that. Then I’ll focus on hair, skin, and eye color and the more basic traits,” she told me.

“If you were on the staff to have a book adapted to movie, what would you pick?” I wondered.

“I think I’d be happy to see almost ANY erotic romance book adapted into a movie, especially a M/M or F/F one. Society can handle it. We’re big boy and girls, right? So why not? I think it’d be a breakthrough in the movie industry. There’s plenty of awesome erotic romance stories out there with great characters and romantic plotlines.”

There india sildenafil are two types of spinal cord injury; complete and incomplete SCI. Hence, it is always advised to seek order levitra online thought about that medical advice as soon as possible. Let alone, it features a cumulative effect generic levitra http://deeprootsmag.org/category/departments/sing-we-now-of-christmas-2013/ does not: Taken every day, ambrina seems to result in continued enhanced sexual performance. The spine functions as a whole, so if we have mechanical disturbances in order cheap levitra one part of the spine, even as far away from the low back as the neck, it can also strike other areas of the spine, called “vertebra.” It is made of cartilage-like tissue and consists of an outer portion, called the annulus, and an inner portion, called the nucleus. “How do you personally distinguish between pornography, erotica, and erotic romance?”

“To me, pornography is a blatant display of sexual activities to titillate an audience. Erotica deals primarily with sexual subject matter but encompasses a wide array of mediums such as art, writing, etc. Erotic ROMANCE is a story or idea that deals largely with sexual subject matter but has an ever bigger romantic base to it. It’s primary focus is not the sex, but rather the romance behind it. In my opinion, anyway.”

 

About the Author: 5_16 author_picI can mostly be found staring into the screen of my PC or laptop into all hours of the night, hyped on caffeinated soda and likely procrastinating something important by losing at Internet Checkers or browsing the web (The day I win a game of Internet Checkers is the day I can write more than a few pages at once without procrastinating). When I’m not doing that, I’m either out being my nerdy self or, of course, writing. I’ve been writing since the fourth grade, and have no plans to stop. To me, one of the greatest pleasures in life is being able to create worlds and characters whose lives I can share with others.

 

Website: http://www.e-l-esch.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorE.L.Esch
DeviantArt: http://nagathia1.deviantart.com
GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6545783.E_L_Esch

 

5_16 ELE_BeautyInTheBreakdown_coverinLuke Martin Cleary isn’t out of the closet to his brother, and that’s always been okay since he isn’t involved. Then he meets Rowan, a fragile man with a dark past and one hot body. But Rowan’s heart and body are broken and guarded, and it’s going to take a lot of love to touch someone so completely untouchable. Literally.

Rowan Wilheim Nails is a man in pain. Ever since an abusive falling out with his ex-boyfriend, he’s developed a phobia of being touched by another person–a phobia of being hurt again. So when Luke and Rowan meet at a bar and end up at Luke’s apartment later on, Rowan is skeptical of spending the night in Luke’s bed. There’s only one thing he can do to make touching Luke’s skin bearable–get drunk.

Luke hates Rowan’s coping method, but how can he help change it when he doesn’t understand Rowan’s situation? By getting involved, he decides, even if that means divulging his secret to his brother. And so Luke begins breaking Rowan and his walls down, slowly and tenderly and maybe a little more roughly in the bedroom, but definitely without hurting him again. No matter how long it takes or how untouchable Rowan claims to be, Luke is determined to heal Rowan so that one day there’ll be nothing between their hearts but each other’s skin.

Filed Under: Erotic Romance, Interviews Tagged With: ,

INTERVIEW and giveaway: LEXI POST

May 2, 2013 By 12 Comments

5_2 bronze cLong and Short Reviews welcomes Lexi Post whose newest book Masque was recently released by Ellora’s Cave.   Leave a comment on this interview for a chance to win this lovely Venetian mask made it Italy.

Lexi starts with the characters and, because she writes erotic romance inspired by classic literature, she also re-reads the orginal story. Masque was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” Then she decides who, or whose ancestor, would be the focal point of her story. She also pulls the characters’ backgrounds and emotional baggage from the original story.

I asked her to tell us something about Masque that’s not in the blurb.

“Oh, but there is so much to tell! There is a villainous ghost who will do anything to keep from crossing over because where he is headed is not as fun as staying in the Abbey.  I also have ghosts that become more solid as the moon turns full and they disappear completely when it is a new moon. And of course, I kept the 7 colored rooms that Poe had in his story, but instead of entertainment rooms, I made them Pleasure Rooms. After all, this is erotic romance,” she said with a wink.

Lexi has just sent her editor To Bea Rappaccini, which was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”  Lexi’s Bea is as poisonous as Hawthorne made his, but she can expel those poisons through intercourse.

“Unfortunately, this makes long-term relationships a bit difficult since she causes the men to become ill,” Lexi explained. “In fact, she already put one man into a coma! So when she falls for former logger, Zach, things get interesting. I hope my editor likes it. I’m crossing my fingers.”

“Do you use a pen name?” I wondered. “If so, how did you come up with it?”

“Yes, I do.  Lexi is the name I grew up with and my family still calls me that, except my siblings who call me Lex. I wanted to use a name I would actually turn around to when called. All my names have changed throughout my life for various reasons, so picking any one of them would have worked, but Lexi sounded sexy, you know?  Then came the hard part… what last name to pick.  Like I said, I had many to choose from, but I finally decided upon my biological father’s last name. I had a wonderful father growing up, but I thought it fitting to use my biological father’s last name for my erotic books.  After all, as my mom will tell anyone, it was a hot, torrid love affair that produced me!”

Lexi joined  the Valley of the Sun Romance Writers in 2007.  She had left her full-time job and decided she wanted to write full-time and only work part-time.  From that time on, whenever she met someone new, she always introduced herself as a romance writer.

“It was empowering and a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she told me. “Of course. I was armed with the wonderful statistics the Romance Writers of America always provided for when I encountered those who would put down our genre. Back then, I would boil it down to ‘If it wasn’t for romance, your bookstore couldn’t afford to remain open.’ Now I take a different tack.  ‘Why is good winning over evil and love overcoming obstacles a bad thing? We have the news reminding us the opposite can be true every night. Why is that better?'”

I asked Lexi to describe her writing space for us.

“I am very lucky. The only one I have to share my writing space with is my cat Giz. My husband bought me a warm, L-shaped oak desk for my birthday one year. On one side, it rises to six feet, all bookshelves. The shorter end of the L fits below the window, which gives me a beautiful view of the Caribbean ocean. I’m not kidding. We decided it was too cold for us in Phoenix, so we sold everything and now rent a small house on the beach here in the Virgin Islands.  And I mean ON the beach. There is only 50 feet of sand separating us from the ocean! Actually, the beach is my second writing space. I have discovered that sitting in the sun with my eyes closed lets me see scenes in my head without people thinking I’m strange. Simply sitting on the couch with the television off will garner strange looks from family and friends. Trust me, I know.”

The hardest part of writing for Lexi is The Black Moment.

“I hate torturing my characters, but I make myself do it. Take my hero in Masque. Even before the story opens, Synn has claimed the guilt for killing 73 people by bringing the Red Death into the Abbey (Pleasure Palace). Then to make matters worse, when the constable opens the gates and finds Synn alone and 73 graves, he shoots him.  But a higher power has placed Synn in stasis as long as he stays within the Abbey walls. This is where he has been for 150 years, trying to help the 73 ghosts of the people he killed cross over.

“Imagine the hope that grows inside him when Rena Mills buys the Abbey to turn it into a haunted bed-and-breakfast. He is so engrossed in moving her through the Pleasure Rooms to complete the Masque and free his friends, that when she discovers his betrayal, he is unprepared for the devastation of losing her. I hated writing that moment. He’d already been through so much and for so long. Even writing about it makes me squirm.”

When Lexi writes her first draft, she writes for two months straight every day.

“My best time of day is 10:00pm until 2:00am. That is when I am most creative. I also like it completely silent, so it’s a good thing I like that time of night. All I can hear then is the waves. After finishing that very rough draft, I leave the work alone for a month before starting revisions.  I do revisions during the day, along with incorporating feedback from critique partners, and polishing. I like to have multiple stories in different stages so that I always have something to work on depending on the time of day.”

“What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?” I asked.

“I’m not sure that I have one beyond finding inspiration in classic literature for erotic romance. That is somewhat . . . unusual.  I’ve always loved reading and was introduced to the classics long before romance came along. Okay, let’s strike the ‘long before.’ I loved literature, but what always disappointed me was the sad or ambiguous endings. I wanted the stories to end well. However, I don’t rewrite the classics in an erotic romance way, mainly because the classics are classified as such because they are amazing stories as they are. I prefer to be inspired by them. With Masque, it was the thought of how would the person (if it was a person) in Poe’s story feel to have been the one to kill everyone in the Abbey? And those seven entertainment rooms of Poe’s, well they would have to be Pleasure Rooms with a different experience in each one if it was going to be erotic. With To Bea Rappaccini, it was how would a woman, who was as poisonous as she was beautiful, survive today if she could only release her poisons by having sex with men, yet keep from killing them. Then of course, she would fall in love with one man and that would get very complicated.”

“How did you do the research for these books?” I wondered.
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“First, I re-read the story I want to be inspired by. Then I research the time period and figure out how it will relate to my story. That is usually a lot of internet search. And, of course, there are the names which I generally find in my reference books (Synn came from there), though sometimes the names come from strange places. For Rena’s ex-fiancé, I couldn’t decide on a last name. Then I was grading a paper on Fredrick Douglass’ autobiography and it hit me. Since Rena’s ex lived in Maryland and was not one of the ‘good’ characters, I decided he should have the name of the family who owned Frederick Douglass, which was Lloyd. Then there is my characters’ motivation. I have a colleague who teaches psychology and I run my hero’s and heroine’s motivations by her. In fact, just this week I was chatting with her about a work I will be starting to write next month. Unfortunately, he told me I needed more to the hero’s background. So more sitting in the sun time for me. Well, someone has to do it. There are the wonderful loops and chapters I belong to as well.  When I get stuck, I throw out my question on those and there always seems to be someone who has an answer or a place I can find the answer.”

I asked Lexi to share the scariest moment of her life with us–riding out a microburst while on her houseboat in Arizona.

“You never really know how you will react when confronted with a fearful event. It was 12:30am and I was just shutting down my computer. I was in my office, which was on the lower level, where part of the room is actually under the water. The winds came out of nowhere. No forecast of this weather phenomenon.  People describe microbursts as upside down tornados. I didn’t know that was what it was, but the boat started rocking really badly because the waves, even inside the marina, grew huge. Fast. My husband woke up and came into the living room. I was still in my office, holding up this six-foot bookshelf above my desk. Having the tallest boat on the lake also meant we had the heaviest, and within minutes  a couple of the ropes holding us to the dock broke, but we had ten on her, so we were still safe . . . sort of.  My husband grabbed some life vests and threw one to me. He couldn’t reach me because some furniture had toppled over.  It was the first time I ever put a life vest on because I thought I needed it.

In no time, two more ropes broke and the waves started picking our houseboat up and slamming her down onto the dock.  Each time cabinets would open and dishes would come flying out and crash against the opposite walls. Statues toppled, plants crashed, the pocket doors slammed with each hit. I lost count after 70. We had 80mph sustained winds for 90 minutes. For an hour I stood in the doorway of my office, one hand braced against the jamb, my other braced against the bookcase, holding it against the wall. If it came down, I wouldn’t escape injury. For that hour, I was afraid. I kept saying ‘Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.’ And then I hit that breaking point. Like I said, you never know how you will react when afraid. Something inside me had reached its limit and anger burned hot. My chant became ‘Stop it. Now!’

“The microburst left as quickly as it had appeared. One houseboat had sunk, another was halfway down before the marina crew got pumps into it and saved it. Ours was considered totaled by the insurance company. When the water had calmed enough, my husband moved a piece of furniture so I could crawl out by going under the spiral staircase to the floor above. Our hull had held, having been built out of airplane aluminum, but the dock, well, let’s just say ‘mangled’ would be putting it mildly. The benefit I got out of that as a writer was what I felt will always be with me, and it is great fodder for that emotion in stories.”

 

 

About the Author: 5_2 Lexi Post photo small (2)Lexi Post spent years in higher education taking and teaching courses about classical literature. From the Medieval work “The Pearl” to the 20th century American epic The Grapes of Wrath, from War and Peace to the Bhagavad Gita, she’s read, studied, and taught great classic literature.

But Lexi’s first love is romance novels. In an effort to marry her two loves, she started writing erotic romance inspired by the classics and found she loved it.  Lexi feels there is no end to the romantic inspiration she can find in great classic literature.

Lexi lives with her husband and cat in the Caribbean where gorgeous sunsets, warm weather, and driving on the left are the norm.

                               Website                              Blog                                    Twitter                                         Facebook

5_2 masque_msr finalRena Mills plans to turn an abandoned abbey into a haunted bed-and-breakfast to prove she can be successful without her ex-fiancé. What she finds inside is Synn MacAllistair, the distinguished, self-proclaimed Ghost Keeper. Her dreams soon fill with sexual cravings for him. But are they dreams?

Synn, born in 1828, is determined to free the souls of the resident spirits, blaming himself for bringing the Red Death that killed them. When Rena steps into the old Pleasure Palace, he’s sure he can take her through the after-midnight Pleasure Rooms and stoke her passion to complete the Masque so the souls can cross over. Her innocent fire makes him crave more, but it’s far too late for him.

As Rena begins her erotic journey, her heart becomes more involved with every sensual caress until she discovers by completing the Masque she would lose her ghosts. Synn’s betrayal wars with her compassion for her ghostly friends. Torn, she must make a choice between her financial security and freeing seventy-three trapped souls. Either way, she could lose her Synn.

Masque is available at:

 Amazon

Barnes and Noble

 Ellora’s Cave

Filed Under: Erotic Romance, Interviews Tagged With: ,

INTERVIEW and giveaway: JESSICA FREELY

May 1, 2013 By 7 Comments

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Jessica Freely whose latest book Alex in Wonderland was recently released. Leave a comment for a chance to win your choice of one of the books from Jessica’s backlist.

Jessica Freely is a pen name.  She had a publishing career in science fiction and YA before she branched out into m/m romance.

“Not everybody was on board with this new direction in my writing and I needed a way to frewe myself from my own insecurity and the judgements of others,” she told me. “Jessica Freely just came to me.”

Jessica’s lived in the Detroit area her whole life. Except for the time she was in college, she’s never lived more than two miles from Woodward Avenue.

“I love the city in spite of and sometimes because of it’s many, many problems. The people here, who have stayed through everything, are a really determined, energetic and friendly breed. It’s a big small town,” she explained. “You get to know people. I like how deep my roots are here. The city is engraved in me and we’re part of each other. And it’s always fun when you go out of town to announce that you’re from Detroit and see the reactions you get.”

She’s been writing since one Christmas night in 1985 when she sat down and started writing the first story she would eventually submit to publishers. She was 21 and in college studying for a computer science degree.  By the time she  graduated, she knew she wanted to be an author. She worked in her field for six months then quit. She’s been working part-time jobs and writing ever since.

She’s currently revising the next installment in her Freedom Series, which began with Unlawful and is a spinoff from her fall release His Own Devices.

“In this new book, Undaunted, Larke and Droje are on the run from Corporate Security, trying to get to the movement safe house before they’re caught and tried for treason,” she told me.

Jessica has an office in their home; she painted it yellow, so it’s sunny even in the winter. She sits in a recline with her laptop on her lap, even though she admits it’s terrible ergonomically. She has a large bulletin board on the wall in front of her on which she’s pinned images that strike her fancy–like a gigantic collage. She finds it helpful to glance at it when she gets stuck.

“I divide my time between my office and a local coffee shop where the staff and I have an agreement that they won’t give me the password to the wifi,” she told me. “I probably get most of my actual writing done there.”

Jessica gets up in the morning and meditates, then she goes and works out. From the gym, she goes to her local coffeehouse, has breakfast, and chats with friends until about 10:30 am, then she settles down and writes until about 2 pm. She will go home, walk the dog, and answer emails and so on.  Her husband comes home, they eat dinner and watch a little television.  Around 8, she’ll go back to work until 10 or 11 pm.

Her worse habit is that she’s a terrible perfectionist and very detail oriented–she’s always struggling with the urge to tweak what she’s written. She’ll even do this if she doesn’t have a whole draft written yet.

“I get sucked into the details of a scene and rewrite it, spending hours on it only to discover later that it needs to be cut,” she confessed.

“What was the scariest moment of your life?” I wondered.

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About the Author: 5_1 HeadshotJessica Freely can’t resist a wounded hero. As a reader and a writer, her favorite stories are of soul mates finding redemption in each other’s arms. Married to the love of her life in a beautiful relationship based on mutual goofiness, Jessica also warps minds as an instructor in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program. Her dog, Ruthie, doesn’t seem to care that Jessica’s an award-winning and best-selling author in multiple genres. She just wants to play tug of war with Jessica’s pages.

Website & Blog        Amazon Author Page         Newsletter          Facebook            Twitter

 

5_1 AlexinWonderland_JessicaFreely-453x680What can go wrong in a sex club? Plenty.

Fresh out of a sexless relationship with a manipulative, two-timing boyfriend, Alex enters the notorious sex club, Wonderland, looking for action. But between the dungeon of dubious Doms, the malfunctioning steam room, and the “alien” go-go boy with glow-in-the-dark everything, it’s beginning to look like Alex will never get laid again. Then a mysterious masked man gives Alex the dance of his life—and more—only to disappear without a trace.

Try as he might, Alex can’t find the man who swept him off his feet. But when the night is through, and the masks are cast aside, Alex makes a startling discovery. What he’s been looking for all night, and maybe all his life, might be the biggest and best surprise of the night.

Buy the book

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

INTERVIEW and giveaway: Johnny Ray

May 1, 2013 By Leave a Comment


Long and Short Reviews welcomes Johnny Ray whose latest book A War Hero Returns was released earlier this year. Leave a comment on today’s interview for a chance to win one of six downloads of the book.

Johnny told me that when he does research, sometimes he finds things that have changed he wasn’t aware of.

While doing the research for A War Hero Returns, he discovered that one of his favorite restaurants in New York City–The Top of the Sixes– has been replaced by a cigar bar, one of the most exclusive in the world.

“My hero has one vice–smoking cigars with the band of alpha males that work for him,” he said. “In this case, it was a small change to the plot, but gives a deeper look into the hero and makes him more human.”

He’s currently writing about a current-day ultimate female warrior who will one day be queen of her small hidden country in central Europe. She has her own twitter account where she is ladymatalina, and she has already attracted 8500 followers.

He’s written 18 novels, with The Salsa Connection being his favorite for one reason–it was the first novel he won an award with–the Royal Palm Literary Award for best thriller.

“Moments like this are what keeps a writer going,” he told me.

Johnny has always loved to write; he likes the thrill of knowing he has total control of his characters and setting.

“More importantly, I love the ability to plot and keep my readers guessing,” he told me.  “I want to give enough clues along the way that it is totally possible to figure out everything, but I want you the reader to say, oh me, I should have seen that coming–but I didn’t.”

For Johnny, every story starts with a moment of inspiration.

“Then, it has to grow, and develop as the plot thickens, so to speak, or should I say as it is written,” he said. “While the characters should be fully fleshed out before you start, that is not very often the case. They change as the book and plot comes together.  Often times, they can make a writer re-plot the book.”

He’s never had writer’s block, but there have been times he gets tired of writing and needs to get away from work to refresh his soul.

“I think all writers should do that,” he said. “Take a vacation and some time to enjoy life outside writing occasionally.”

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“I have 35 miles of beach with over 400 coffee shops along the way, and I go to a different one every morning,” he said.

One of the hardest parts about writing for him is keeping the plot simple.

“I can get too carried away and make the book too long,” he admitted. “I try to stay around 100,000 words.”

The plot is the most critical part of the story, and it has to keep the story alive.

“I do this by showing a point of view that I think is different,” he said. “I hope to add the twist and turns that others have not considered. I also like to take chances that many will avoid. For example, I will write about a rape in the plot, but hopefully do it right so it is not too much or too little, just enough to move the story forward.”

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

“I love to dance. Well, maybe not too much of a surprise since I have dancing in many of my novels. I love salsa and tango. Yes, many years ago I was a national champion dancer. But that was a long time ago.”

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

“Write! And be prepared to do it over and over, and have it shredded by many people. In fact, ask that it be shown no mercy. And be sure to make many friends along the way. You will need their support often.”

About the Author:   5_1 Author photoJohnny Ray has a passion for life and adventure that he loves to share with his readers. As an avid traveler and professional businessman conducting business worldwide for years he has made many interesting contacts and received numerous awards for top production. He has owned and operated several real estate companies, several insurance companies, and a stock brokerage company. He loves radio and TV talk shows, as well as speaking in front of various audiences. Feel free to contact him if you need a guest speaker.

When it comes time to play, he is very active in many sports including dancing, swimming, tennis, biking, and skiing. While he loves adventures that are new, interesting and challenging, making friends that share his passions is a special gift.

Johnny lives in Clearwater, Florida where he works full time as a writer, and he can be often found in one of the hundreds of coffee shops along the beach working on his next novel. He belongs to the Florida Writer Association where he recently won the Royal Palm Literary Award for best thriller, the Romantic Writers of America, and the Mystery Writers Association. He attends various national writer conventions throughout the year, as well as several local writing groups in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

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 5_1 Book CoverWhile Suzan Mercer’s father promised in his dying words the land he left her would bring her love, she never anticipated the events involved in the process. Now, could she balance her new love life with her hidden CIA commitment? Could she? After serving eight years in the army, Suzan Mercer returns from Afghanistan to Florida as a female war hero–her works as a CIA operative, of course, would always be hidden. She couldn’t believe her mother had used a power of attorney while she was gone to sell the land her father had left her. After learning her mother also has early onset Alzheimer’s and claims to have been taken advantage of by Matt Harris, the billionaire developer involved, Suzan uses her military and CIA training to plot her revenge and to reacquire her land. Entering a world where high heels replace combat boots and deep red lipstick becomes more deadly than a colt 45, Suzan never anticipated the cost to reacquire her land would be losing her heart. Matt also learns his money and power cannot acquire the one asset he has always lacked in his life as he ventures into untested skies without a golden parachute to save him. Also, would the ghost of his playboy image come back to haunt him?

Filed Under: Interviews, Mystery/Suspense Tagged With: ,

INTERVIEW: OLGA GODIM

April 26, 2013 By 1 Comment

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Olga Godim, whose debut novel Lost and Found in Russia was published in February by Eternal Press.

Amanda, the mother in Lost and Found in Russia, is a scholar, a professor of Slavic languages and literature. Sonya, her birth daughter in Russia, is a former character dancer. Not many people know what character dance is, so I asked Olga to tell us about it.

“Character dance is a variation of folk dance, but there is a huge difference. Folk dance is simple. In the past, people danced it in villages during celebrations. Folk dance was more about participation than skills,” she explained. “Character dance is a stage dance, a show, like ballet – think Riverdance, only better. Character dance uses folk tunes and some steps of the genuine folk dances, but it also uses the entire range of ballet pas. Character dance is always choreographed and performed by dancers trained in classical ballet. Sonya trained at the MoscowBalletAcademy before she joined her character dance ensemble. Here is an example of a character dance, performed by the world-famous Russian character dance troupe – Moiseyev Ballet. It’s a Spanish dance called Aragonese Jota: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppiq0N2yQf8”

She did some research for the book, but it mostly came from her daydreams, her personal experience, and people she met.  When Olga was young and poor, she often daydreamed about someone showing up at her door and telling her she had been switched at birth–and her birth family was rich.  What would she do? What would her mother do? And–the tricky question–what would the other mother do?  Would she want and love Olga as much as the mother who had raised her?

“From that daydream sprouted the idea for one half of the book – the story of Amanda, a mother who discovers after 34 years that her daughter was switched at birth, by mistake. Amanda loves the daughter she’s raised but she wants to find her biological daughter too. Her search takes her around the globe, first to Russia, then to Israel,” Olga said. “The second part of this novel is about Amanda’s birth daughter Sonya. Sonya’s story unfolded in my mind after I met Irina in Montreal. An immigrant from Russia, like Sonya, Irina is a fascinating woman. She came to Canada with nothing and accomplished so much. I was inspired by her optimism and determination. She told me about her life and her struggles to find her own place in a new country. Awed by her courage, her indomitable spirit, and her lovely soul, I adopted her as a model for my Sonya. After my meeting with Irina, the novel practically wrote itself.”

Olga is currently working on a novel that’s part of a fantasy series.

“The heroine is a young and very powerful magician. In the story, she finds herself in a foreign kingdom, where female magic is anathema. The acolytes of the local god, all men, confine any witch or sorceress they can find to a ‘nunnery’, where they suck the magic out of the women with a special spell and use that magic for their own purposes,” she told me. “My heroine is in this kingdom in secret, at the request of her queen. She is not in danger from the local god or his monks, but she is very angry at the plight of the local female mages. Should she interfere? Try to help the poor, abused women? Or should she maintain her incognito status, complete her assignment for the queen, and leave. If she interferes, she might cause a diplomatic incident, maybe even a war, between their two kingdoms. If she does nothing, the imprisoned female witches will continue to suffer. The choice she faces isn’t nice or easy.”

She rarely researchs her fantasy novels, which is one reason she enjoys writing fantasy–she can make up everything in her imaginary worlds–her world, she gets to make the rules.

“As long as I’m consistent, and the rules don’t change from chapter to chapter, no research is required,” she explained. “Occasionally, I research specifics. For example, when I wrote about a swordsman, I got books on fencing from the library, checked Wikipedia, learned terminology. I found that for most stories, the research necessary to seem knowledgeable is on the level of middle school books or even elementary school books. I once wrote a story about a Native American girl and her time travels. It was one of my earlier epistolary efforts, not a good story at all, and it has never been published, but I showed it to my writing group. The other members complemented me on my research, but I only got picture books for grade one and two from our local library and used a couple special terms from those books. I fudged it, but it worked.”

Olga became a writer pretty late in life. She was educated as a computer programmer and worked with computers for decades. She’s also a daydreamer and, as long as she can remember, she’s made up stories and played them in her head. However, she never told anyone about her daydreams.

“They were my secret and I didn’t write them down. To tell the truth, I was a bit embarrassed, afraid of ridicule,” she confessed.  “I was a serious professional woman, a single mom with two children. I never thought I could be a writer but I couldn’t get rid of my daydreams. They felt like a vestige from my childhood. And like a child, I loved my dream-world’s heroes and heroines. Sometimes, they felt more alive and precious to me than the living people around me.

“As my children grew up, I grew dissatisfied with my computer job. Then, 10 years ago, I got breast cancer. Obviously, my case was successful, but during the long recovery months, my daydreams became more persistent. They swarmed me, they wanted to be told. So I decided to be brave, stop resisting, and at last let my daydreams out. Cancer has that effect on some people. I started writing a story, the first writing I did since high school.

“Everyone in my family was flabbergasted: they hadn’t known about my daydreams. But I didn’t care. Writing liberated me. I felt like I finally woke up from a long hibernation, free to explore my stories and myself. I felt happy.

“I also discovered that I didn’t know how to write, how to translate my daydreams into the written words, plot, conflict, and characters. It took me years to learn: I read writing textbooks, took classes, enrolled in workshops. I’m still in the process, still learning. I don’t think I’ll ever stop: there is so much to learn.”
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For Olga, the characters always come first, becuase she can’t even think about a plot until she knows who it all happened to.

“I need to know how they look, their names, their families. I have dozens of plot twists in my ‘Ideas’ folder, but they all are just raw material. Until I see my characters in my mind, I can’t write about them. Besides, in any plot situation, different characters react differently,” she said.

I asked Olga what the hardest part of writing was for her and she told me writing the villain.

“Fantasy plots usually require a baddy of some sort, or at least a strong antagonist; and I always have trouble with these guys. I don’t understand their thought process,” she told me. “Villains traditionally hanker for power, or world domination, or some such nonsense. But why would anyone want to rule the world, or even a village, is beyond me. It’s so much hassle.”

Then she admitted, “On a more serious note: I’d say conflict is the hardest for me. I like my heroes. I don’t want them to suffer, but conflict is essential for fiction, so I have to go against my nature to create problems for my characters, pit them against wicked odds. ”

“Do you use a pen name?” I wondered. “If so, how did you come up with it?”

“I use a pen name for fiction – Olga Godim. When I started submitting my first fantasy stories to magazines, I was still working at my computer job and I felt slightly embarrassed by my fantastic tales. Women of my age and profession didn’t entertain themselves with magic and fairy tales. Or so I thought. So I decided to use a pseudonym. Olga is my real name, and Godim was my father’s first name. He died before I published my first piece, before I even started thinking about writing, but I wanted him to be a part of my writing life, so I chose his name as my nom de plume.  Now, he’s always with me, a witness to my successes and failures as a writer. And I think the name sounds good, like a small cheerful bell.”

About the Author:  4_26 Olga3_SmallOlga Godim is a writer and journalist from Vancouver, Canada. Her articles appear regularly in a local newspaper, but her passion is fiction. Her short stories have been published in several internet magazines, including Lorelei Signal, Sorcerous Signals, Aoife’s Kiss, Silver Blade, Perihelion Science Fiction, Gypsy Shadow and other publications. In her free time, she writes novels, collects toy monkeys, and posts book reviews on GoodReads. You can find her there: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6471587.Olga_Godim

 

 

 

Newborn babiesAfter the shocking revelation that her daughter was switched at birth 34 years ago, Canadian scholar Amanda embarks on a trip to Russia and Israel to find her biological daughter. Intertwined with the account of Amanda’s journey is the story of Sonya, a 34-year-old Russian immigrant and a former dancer, currently living in Canada. While Amanda wades through the mires of foreign bureaucracy, Sonya struggles with her daughter’s teenage rebellion. While Amanda rediscovers her femininity, Sonya dreams of dancing. Both mothers are searching: for their daughters and for themselves.

 

Filed Under: Interviews, Mainstream Fiction Tagged With:

INTERVIEW and giveaway: Susan Mac Nicol

April 16, 2013 By 6 Comments

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Susan Mac Nicol, who is offering two copies of the first book of her Starlight trilogy, Cassandra by Starlight, for giveaway. Just leave a comment on this interview along with which format you would like (pdf, epub or mobi format).
Susan has been writing since she was about ten years old and still has some of the material from that time. But she’s been writing seriously for publication since she started writing Cassandra by Starlight in February 2012. She ended up with a trilogy to finish Cassie and Bennett’s story. She has also written five other full-length novels and is waiting for publication dates.

Even though she’s a relative newbie as far as writing goes, she’s a voracious reader and has been reading since she was old enough to hold a book.

“I know what I look for in a good read and I would like that to reflect in my writing as well,” she said. “The elements I’d look for are a well established story line, a realistic and gripping plot, wonderful characters who feel as if they can walk into my living room and simply interact, and a well edited manuscript that has been proof read and polished so that it reads easily on the eyes. There’s nothing worse that constantly picking up grammatical and spelling mistakes as you read. It distracts the reader from the story.”

Susan told me she’s always been able to write the first line of her manuscript, sometimes without even really knowing what she’s writing about, and then letting it flow to a natural conclusion.

“I have no idea when I start what’s going to happen,” she admitted. “I have a basic plot – boy meets girl, they develop the relationship, things happen along the way, characters are drawn in and the finally, there’s an ending which always has to be a happy one. I’m not one for cliff hangers or deep, dark broody endings which may or may not be happy. I’m an incurable romantic.”

“When did you first consider yourself a writer?” I wondered.

“I truly thought I was a writer when I started Cassandra by Starlight. It was a story that I had a passion for, with a story that was very close to my heart. I knew I was a writer when I finished it because I immediately started another one, unable to stop until their story was finished.”

She wrote all three of the Starlight Trilogy books to the music of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album.

“I played it over and over again, put some of the songs in the book and one of them ‘If I Had a Gun’ is Cassie and Bennett’s song. Other than that, when I write I listen ad nauseum to Kasbian, Foo Fighters, Muse, Incubus, The Killers and White Lies. And lots of Eminem.”

Susan has found the internet and Google to be wonderful tools in her research for most of her books, from female on male rape, schizophrenia, celebrity stalkers, serial killers, gay sex, cults, BDSM, sex positions, gay rights and various aspects of psychology.

“I like to search the live forums and get involved in real conversations with real people,” she said. “As all my books are set in London and the surrounding counties, I’m fortunate enough to actually be able to go to the places I quote and make sure that I get it right. So for the Starlight Series, I went to Trafalgar Square, Westminster, and the Dutch pub, De Hems, in Soho, which is a main watering hold for my characters. For my upcoming paranormal series, Double Alchemy I went to Hampstead Heath, which is a large part of where the book is based, Manningtree, Mistley and pats of my home county of Essex. I take photos when I get there so I have a visual record of where I’ve been and these shots can then be used on social networks like Pinterest.

“But I’ve also been fortunate to have friends who have helped too. For my book Saving Alexandria which deals with a woman with some deep seated psychological problems due to sexual abuse in a cult, I was fortunate enough to have an online buddy who is a psychologist. She read my book, sense checked my characters and their reactions and psychologies and pronounced it ‘very believable and realistic.” I have a gay friend, an author, who is currently reading my detective thriller, Born Human to sense check my male sex scenes. He’s my beta reader too. So all of this contributes to my research as I have a passion to ensure that my stories are factually correct.”

The writing of Cassandra by Starlight, and the research she did for it, has led to her involvement in the issue of female on male rape.

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“What is something that you absolutely can’t live without?” I wondered.

“Uhhm, this is going to sound so terribly sad but it’s the truth. I have a Galaxy Note smart phone and it’s my lifeline to the world. I am very seldom off this phone and in fact my husband calls it my boyfriend as he says I’m on it more than I am him. He said if it vibrated too I wouldn’t need him. I haven’t had the heart to tell him there’s an app you can get which does just that. It might destroy him altogether.”

About the Author: 4_16 INTERVIEW SueSue Mac Nicol was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. At the age of eight, her family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa where she stayed for nearly thirty years before arriving back in the UK in December 2000.

Sue works full time in the field of regulatory compliance. But she still finds time to work until the small hours of the night doing what she loves best – writing. Since her first novel, Cassandra by Starlight, was penned, Sue has since written the other two books in her Starlight trilogy, four other novels and two short stories as well as a screen play. Her passion is keeping herself busy creating worlds and characters for her readers to enjoy.

Sue is a member of Romance Writers of America and Romantic Novelists Association in the UK. She lives in the rural village of Bocking, in Essex, with her family.

Her plan is to keep writing as long as her muse sits upon her shoulder. Her dream is to one day get that big old house in the English countryside overlooking a river, where she can write all day and continue to indulge her passion for telling stories.

Find Sue online at

Website
http://www.boroughspublishinggroup.com/books/
Twitter – @SusanMacnicol7
Facebook 
Cassandra by Starlight Facebook page
http://pinterest.com/susiemax777/
Blog 
Book trailer 

4_16 INTERVIEW Cassandra by Starlight CVR_3_resizedA London woman is swept off her feet into the glamorous yet surprisingly dangerous world of an up-and-coming star of stage and screen.

Unconventional though she may be, Cassandra Wallace leads the life of an average Londoner, from blind dates to rush hour traffic. Then, along comes Bennett Saville. Sensitive, charming, erudite, the up-and-coming actor is like the hero of a romantic movie. He counteracts the tragedy that brought them together, and from the tips of his Armani loafers to that scorching hot kiss he seems absolutely perfect. Only, he’s ten years younger and from the upper class, and those emerald eyes beget dangerous secrets. The world is a stage, full of hungry leading ladies, and how long can any fairy tale last before a villain appears? Yet, on Bennett’s arm each new day is an adventure, and a true romance will always find its happy ending.

Filed Under: Interviews, Romance Tagged With: ,

INTERVIEW and giveaway: SARA JAY

April 15, 2013 By 2 Comments

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Sara Jay, whose newest novella The Book Collector is out. Leave a comment on this interview, and you might win a free copy!

Sara is currently working on a novel, Hard as a Rock, to be released this summer. This will be her longest work to date and she told me she’s completely in love with her gargoyle hero, Basalt.

“It’s a love story thousands of years in the making between him and a faery called Canna. It has plenty of tragedy courtesy of a Greek god, but it also has a happily ever after ending,” she assured me.

Sara enjoys word plays when it comes to her titles.

“Hard as a Rock is an AC/DC song that I love,” she explained, “and Nobody Rides for Free is pretty self-explanatory! The Boon Collector is a twist on The Bone Collector. Not all of my titles are like this, but I do have others in store, too.”

When Sara was little, her grandmother was her best friend and started writing books together when Sara was four—tiny things filled with pictures that Sara drew of animals that talked. She hasn’t really ever stopped writing since then. Her first full story in elementary school was about a war between Barbie and GI Joe. She’s had poems, short stories, blog posts and articles published online and offline since she was 13, and Changeling Press published her first novella, Nobody Rides for Free, last year.

For Sara, good characters are the most important thing—if she doesn’t get hooked on a character, she won’t finish the story.

“The worst thing an author can do to me is to give me boring, superficial or otherwise unlikeable characters,” she said. “At least one has to be incredibly interesting. I can forgive you for killing off someone I love–I am a big tragedy fan–but not for boring me to pieces.”

Her own characters pretty much develop themselves, she told me.

“I get a scenario in my head–a faery meets three bikers in the desert, for example–and I sit down to write it and they pretty much tell me their story. It might take a day for a first draft, or it might take weeks. I do take some time with my naming characters, though. Sometimes I give a character pages of dialogue before I find out his or her name, or I actively search for the perfect name.”

Some of her favorite authors include Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, JK Rowling, Amy Tan, and Suzanne Collins.

“Right now I am plowing through Jim Butcher’s Dresden books like they’re a drug,” she admitted. “I am in love with this world and wish I could slow down to enjoy it, but I just can’t.”

When she was younger, she was heavily influenced by Christopher Pike and still is to this day.

“He really gave me something better to read than the recommend book lists I was provided by teachers at my ‘appropriate’ reading level,” she told me.

I asked Sara to describe her writing space for us.

“I have a wonderful office filled with things I love–from South Park, Strawberry Shortcake and Wizard of Oz figures to posters of The Hunger Games. I have a dreamboard, several desks, an altar, and tons of creative instruments and art supplies…and yet I often write in the floor of the living room once everyone is asleep. I think adding carpet to my office would make a huge difference! I have to have my feet level with my waist. I keep a tall footrest under my desk, but writing on the floor at a tiny table or chair is even better. I don’t like my legs to dangle. And I like to write on a sugar high. I’ll write 4,000 words in a single night if I’m on a sugar high. Yeah, they’ll have to be heavily edited later, but they’ll be on paper!”

She writes for work every night from 8 pm to 4 am, except for the days when her husband is off work. She also often work all day Saturday, Wednesday, and sometimes Friday, depending on the week. She might write a few pages throughout the week on her fiction, but Sunday nights she tries to get a full night of writing in. During the day, she’s busy homeschooling her daughter.
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“Getting to that page every day is the hardest part of writing for me,” she told me. “My life is full of full time work, homeschooling, volunteering and participating in several organizations and clubs, so it’s often hard enough just to schedule in sleep. I’m bad at procrastinating, have a full plate and my own blood pressure resents it all sometimes–so yeah, definitely just sticking to my schedule.”

“What do you like to do when you are not writing?” I asked.

“My strongest asset as a writer is my vast array of interests. I think if you want to write, you should be an intensely curious person. I ask why almost as much as my seven-year-old does, and you better believe that I schedule field trips as much for me as for her! All of this stuff goes into my writing sooner or later. I like to explore, travel, create or experience art, play with my daughter, date my husband–and read. I could read sunup to sundown and be one happy camper.”

The name Sara Jay is a pseudonym she uses for her erotic writing—it’s formed by using her own first name and her middle initial spelled out.

“I write many other genres that have not been published yet, so I felt like I should use a pen name for my erotic fiction,” she explained.

“How do you judge what makes a good erotic story when writing your own fiction?”

“If you want to turn someone on, you have to turn yourself on. It’s just like any other genre: to scare someone, scare yourself! To make people cry, you must cry. So I know that if my writing is turning me on–and it does; my husband and I even read it aloud to one another!–it will turn other people on, too.”

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

“Just write! Get to that page every day. Promise yourself you’ll write for at least ten minutes or for one paragraph, then it will escalate from there. And don’t give up. One company’s rejection letter (or dozens of companies’ letters!) is another’s acceptance letter. Trust me; it happens every few months at my house!”

About the Author:

4_15 INTERVIEW authorpicSara Jay is a supernatural erotic romance writer from Missouri. An award-winning poet and full-time freelance writer, she loves Marvel comics, fantasy lit and homeschooling her daughter. Sara has also taught children in Spain, managed a restaurant, served as the editor and producer of a popular youth activism website, and been published in several books both on and offline. She runs the local 4H and homeschool groups and is active with her daughter in several other programs. Sara is married to her high school sweetheart and has four shapeshifting cats.

 

You can find Sara online at:
http://sarajayserotica.wordpress.com/
https://twitter.com/SaraJaysErotica
https://www.facebook.com/sarajayschmidt

4_15 INTERVIEW boon collectorTimid Tisha Sanderson never had much luck in love or life. When a smoking hot demon, Bane, comes to collect a debt from her ex-lover and decides to make her pay up instead, her life suddenly becomes more interesting.

Tisha finds herself on both the giving and receiving ends of torture in Hell as she attempts to escape Bane. As the lines between pleasure and pain blur, Tisha begins to connect with long-forgotten parts of herself. Her completion of the final dark deed grants her freedom.
The question is, does she still want it?

Filed Under: Erotic Romance, Interviews Tagged With: ,

INTERVIEW and giveaway: VOSS FOSTER

April 9, 2013 By 3 Comments

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Voss Foster, whose newest book Tartaros was released in January. Leave a comment for the chance to win a download of Tartaros.

Voss decided to use a pseudonym and I asked his reasons.

“Partly because I share a name with another author, which can end in a lawsuit, and partly because my name sounds rather similar to the name of yet another author that I didn’t want to be associated with (not naming names). Coming up with the name was easy. Voss was my grandma’s name when she died, and my mother’s maiden name, and Foster was my grandma’s maiden name. And, you know, it makes me sound like some character in a crime noir novel.”

When choosing titles, Voss tries to either make a play on words or use the name of something important in the story. For example, Tartaros was chosen because the name of the main character is Daniel Tartaros, but also because it’s a play on Tartarus, the ancient Greek pit of torture for nasty dead souls. Another book Rings of Treachery, which is currently with beta readers, is a play on words. The culture in the book is based on a complex code involving rings, but also like a suspicion, i.e., “Hmmm. This rings of treachery.”

Voss has been writing for a long time and, in fact, still has the first short story he wrote on a typewriter when he was in the first grade.

“Super Duck,” he told me. “I remember he used ‘duck tape’ to tie up the ‘bad guys.’ Then, for a while in middle school, I got into writing poetry. Really bad poetry. Cliches stacked on top of saccharine imagery and held together with teenage angst. But, around my junior year of high school (and I fully attribute this rediscovery of fiction writing to my English teacher at the time) I got back into real writing. My senior year, we all had to do a project–I wrote a novel. Not a good novel, since I wrote it under protest, but a novel. Then, the month after I graduated, I wrote Tartaros— NaNoWriMo that November and I was lost to the world of fiction.”

“What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?” I wondered.

“I’d say, and anyone that’s ever been in the same room with me while I write will back me up, it’s the moving. When I think, I move. I make faces, I copy my characters’ movements, I try to capture what’s going on. It helps me get things straight in my head. I remember once, writing with some other writerly friends, I got up and had to act out an entire battle scene, because I’d lost track of how many chakram my character had left to throw. So I counted while I acted.”

When he is preparing for a project, part of the prep work is putting together a playlist to listen to when he writes—the music ranges from anything from K-Pop Filk, Country to Death Metal, Symphonic Rock to Techno. If it has the right vibe, he throws it into the playlist.

“Of course, sometimes, if I’m really into something, I end up just listening to that instead,” he said. “The last novel I wrote was done half to the playlist I put together and half to K-Pop.”

“What group did you hang out with in high school?” I asked.

“I was a nerd (I know. Shocker). I was a band geek, and I was in Science Olympiad. Yep. I was also later informed that I was committing social suicide. I didn’t care. These were intelligent people with minds just as out there as mine. Plus, you know, when you spend days on end with people, you can’t help but form some bonds. High stress performance situations or competition situations. It happens. And it helped that a number of them all read the same things I did.”

He’s not that far out of high school himself, so keeping up with the YA market is not an issue for Voss. He still has friends in high school and a lot of his own reading is in the YA genre.

“Do you write in multiple genres or just one?” I asked. “If just one, do you ever consider straying outside your genre?”

“I write under the whole blanket of speculative fiction. I can’t honestly be expected to choose just one, can I? Even if that’s what people expect, it’s just not going to happen. I’m very happy to write paranormal, fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. A few times, mostly on shorter works, I’ve strayed into (gasp) mainstream. But, if I was required, forever, to write just one genre, I’d pick YA. It’s the only way to really cheat–I can write in whatever genre I like under YA. I’m sneaky like that.”

tadalafil in canada I discovered this a year later after my marriage. ED or problems with getting aroused is essential because only on mental stimulation will your levitra price brain release chemicals which lead to an erection. There are varieties of dosages and compositions patterns available for Kamagra medicine, for safety and betterment generic levitra heritageihc.com it is advised to take the consultations from doctor. Know these common myths to have safer sex with cialis generic price your partner. When it comes to world building, most of his sci-fi world building comes in the social interactions. What are the conventions of the culture? Why did the culture evolve? How do they flirt or marry? Is there a religion? In fantasy, he does the same things, but he also draws maps, plans magic systems, and finds out where their technology level would fall in comparison to Earth.

“No matter what, I normally just type up and scribble down pages and pages of notes and drawings. And then I attempt to figure out where I put everything when it comes time for me to actually use it,” he admitted.

“Are you a pantser or a plotter?”

“I pantsed my first book. Then, the first time I read it, I figured out that I had to completely cut out half of it because it was completely pointless. So, from then on, I’ve always had at least some idea of what to do. It ranges from book to book. Sometimes, I fill out a form that details every single point you need to touch on in a plot, has it broken down into a formula. Other times, I go to the opposite end of the spectrum, just have a beginning, middle, and end. But, normally, I’m a moderate. I’ll just write out a couple pages of outline, mostly just to get the plot straight in my head. And I do stray from there, almost every time, but it makes the book better, I’ve found.”

I asked Voss what kind of mythical creature he would be interested in owning and he told me without hesitation, “A unicorn. Not even a question in my mind. I want a unicorn. A pretty unicorn with a long horn. And it would be like a giant lap dog. And I would love it pet it and squeeze it and call it George. I’m just not sure where to get unicorn chow. Anyone know what they eat? I’d be happy to find out.”

Voss has one group of friends that can tear him away from writing, editing, marketing, and submitting most of the time; however, apart from them, unless he completely burns out there’s always something going on in his head about his writing. However, when he is burned out, he sits around and plays what he called “stupid online games.” However, when he gets with that one particular group of friends, things can go anyway.

“I just, in about three days, shot a short film with them inspired by ‘Repo! The Genetic Opera’ and ‘The Devil’s Carnival.’ We watch movies, have game nights, sing. And they’re also my Rocky Horror crowd. I’m a part of the local cast for our Rocky Horror showcases,” he said.

“Do you have a favorite quote or saying?”

“I do. I actually keep a list of quotes, constantly growing. And I have two favorites. Why yes, I am cheating. How kind of you to notice. The first is from Walt Whitman: ‘I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.’ I first heard that watching ‘The Dead Poets’ Society’ in Junior English. I eventually looked up the full quote and fell in love. Now, the other one is from Marianne Williamson, but often gets wrongly attributed to Nelson Mandela: ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.’ That’s one I just came across in my meanderings and it teared me up a little. So it’s definitely going to stay as one of my favorites.”

About the Author: 4_9 Voss Foster Author PictureVoss Foster lives in the middle of the Eastern Washington Desert, where he writes speculative fiction from a single wide trailer. When he can be pried away from his keyboard, he can be found belly-dancing, cooking, singing, and practicing photography, though rarely all at the same time.
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4_9 Tartaros Cover ArtA demon hunter, Daniel Tartaros is sworn to slay the denizens of Hell and, for over a decade, he has. He’s kept the world, and his girlfriend, safe. But, one night, the demons cross the threshold to his home. His girlfriend is taken, possessed by a powerful demon. Too powerful for him.

But the horror increases when he finds out the truth: it’s not just a demon. Lilith, the Queen of Hell, has bound herself into a human body to be with him. But broken free and without the restraint of a human life, she still needs him, and plans to use all of her power to keep him. She’ll do what it takes to keep him, even if it means the end of life. With Earth hanging by spider’s silk, the tiniest ripple from either Daniel or Lilith could send it swinging into the fires of destruction.

Filed Under: Interviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: ,

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.”

Filed Under: Interviews, Romance Tagged With: ,

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.

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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.

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