Interview Today on Paranormal Romantic Suspense Blog

http://sjclarke.com/blog-2/

August, 30, 2012

Welcome, Victoria, I want to start with sharing some insights into your general writing style, then delve a little deeper to get your thoughts on the Paranormal Romance genre as a whole.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? My working theory is that, if you watch children carefully, they will show you who they really are by the time they are eight or nine. At that age I had two stacks of legal pads on my bed. One I used to sketch glamorous evening wear. The other I used to write my own BobbseyTwins novels. I did spend a few years as a designer of glam dresses and was copied by the biggest names in the business. I had a big following in the Northeast, South America, and Europe and still see some of my dresses show up in the movies. So I checked that off the list and did it until I was done. Now I’m writing.

You were definitely gifted with the creative gene.  How do you keep track of plot elements or twists? I start with a skeletal outline then copy it to a second document which I call my “extended” outline. That’s the one that gets fleshed out and will eventually become a book. I have to have it because I often wake up in the night with a thought I want to include and need to be able to plug it into a story “timeline”.

Have you ever made big changes in your story because someone – your crit partner, a friend, or beta reader – really didn’t like it? Are you glad you did (or didn’t)? The answer is yes, but the someone was one of the characters. My Familiar Stranger started out to be a different story. My heroine was supposed to end up with the character of my choice. I was about 80% finished when another one of the guys (characters) started insisting it was him! I let him make his case and finally had to agree, but it caused a lot of overhaul.

Have you ever suffered from “writer’s block”? What did you do to get past the “block”? Honestly I don’t know exactly what it is or how it feels, but I suspect it’s just a matter of stepping on the conduit between our minds and the creativity that is always flowing freely and available to everyone – just like stepping on the garden hose. I’m into creativity on several different fronts including art, music, and writing fiction. When I need a dollop of inspiration, it’s always there for me – KNOCK ON WOOD !!!!

My process is that I get completely quiet and completely still, close my eyes, and simply say, “Bring me a melody.” Or plot point or whatever. Fill in the blank. This method is as reliable as my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east with or without me. I should add that a lifetime of “seeking” is a factor in the sense that I have been practicing meditation for twenty years and can achieve a state of concentration fairly quickly. I recommend it for creative pursuits of any kind.

I truly envy you that ability. I’d go so far as to call it jealousy.☺Let’s move on to writing PNR. What’s your paranormal element of choice? If pressed, I guess I would choose to write about magic, but my reading preference is probably earthy, sex-starved, one woman werewolves.

Is there any area or element of this genre you read but will never write about? At various times I have read about ghosts, but it’s unlikely I will write about them.

How do you research the paranormal elements in your story? Spent my life researching. Now I just write. I had formal academic training in parapsychology in the eighties and worked as a professional “metaphysician” and hypnotherapist (including past life regression) in the nineties. It was part of my job to read lots of non-fiction on these subject and to study with masters on the subject. A lot of the scifi and fantasy influence began with preadolescent reading of fiction that had been written for adults.

Many people feel the PNR genre is on the way out. Do you agree? Are there any changes you’d make to stay on the cutting edge of this genre? Will you change genres? I think that will be true if more authors don’t stop the vamp-by-number, more-weres-the-better rehash and try for something different.

Before I started writing I spent two full years reading every PNR that had enjoyed any success to find out what had already been done, then set out to create something new. I get a lot of feedback that starts by saying, “I don’t really know what genre to put this in…” I love comments like, “She explodes stereotypes.”

Also, I’m writing true Paranormal Romance. It’s not paranormal suspense or paranormal mystery or paranormal thriller with a love interest back story. The romance is the main plot for me. And romance is never going to be on the way out.

By |2019-03-25T18:04:52-05:00August 30th, 2012|paranormal romance, Victoria Danann|2 Comments

Guest Post on Creative Writing

Victoria pens a guest blog on the future of creative writing for Ravencrafts’s Realm Blog. August 23, 2012

People ask me about “writers’ block” more often than you might guess. Honestly I don’t know exactly what it is or how it feels. I’m into creativity on several different fronts including art, music, and writing fiction. When I need a dollop of inspiration, it’s always there for me – KNOCK ON WOOD !!!!

My process is that I get completely quiet and completely still, close my eyes, and simply say, “Bring me a melody.” Or plot point or whatever. Fill in the blank. This method is as reliable as my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east with or without me. I should add that a lifetime of “seeking” is a factor in the sense that I have been practicing meditation for twenty years and can achieve a state of concentration fairly quickly.

What do I need to make that happen? Not props or tools or other people or magick words or ritual or any other external thing. EXCEPT silence. Of course those of us who live in or near a city never experience true silence because our nervous systems are under siege by thousands of refrigerators humming and thousands of motor rpm’s grinding on the roads, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the advantages of living in a technological age as much

as the next person and even more than most. Were it not for the internet I would not be sharing these thoughts with you now because my first book wouldn’t have taken off due to Amazon.com and electronic reading.

My problem is not with technology. Truthfully, I do love it and could probably write love

sonnets about movies, TV, recorded music, the convenience of internet research, not to mention electric guitars and fast cars. I would hate giving up all that cool stuff and would fight to keep it.        No. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I feel like my choice is being taken away. Little by little, in a most insidious fashion, I have experienced what I’ll call “noise creep” which finally came to a head at the gas pump. See the thing is that all I need to be creative is to be left the hell alone. Give me a few minutes and I may have a great idea. Whether that idea is a  book or song or painting isn’t important. What’s important is the creative exercise.

There was a time when I could get something else done if I was forced to be on hold. I trained myself to “tune out” elevator music, but there’s just no way I can “tune out” looped commercials. PLEASE, I’M BEGGING YOU, NOT AGAIN!!!

There was a time when I could wait in line at the bank and keep the company of my own thoughts. Now I get CNN on overhead TV monitor.

There was a time when I could wait for a plane in the boarding area with my book or my thoughts. No more. Overhead speakers wired into the fancy flat screens spaced at regular intervals mean I’m held prisoner by whatever is playing.

When I was in Ireland, the pubs that had been a place of gathering and conversation for literally centuries were being retrofitted with big flat screens for football (soccer) and turned into sports bars. Progress? You decide.

For me the tipping point was the new gas pumps with the viewing screen and obnoxiously loud speakers with snippets of news and commercials. I started pushing every button I could see. Eventually I found one that turned the sound off. Thank the gods.

So, with all this encroachment on our “alone” time and by that I mean the time when we get to enjoy the companionship of ourselves sharing communion with ourselves, how are we supposed to be creative? How can we function in this riotous new world that seems to CONSPIRE to keep us from thinking?

Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind that, the more you can distract people and keep them from thinking, the easier they are to lead. Shades of decades-old science fiction. Do I think all these portals that are vying for my attention are interlocked in a conspiracy with that old guy who runs G.E. at the helm? I’m not willing to go that far, but, I will say that merchants are always looking for a bigger, louder megaphone than the vendor in the metaphoric stall next to them.

Can we rise above this? Sure. But only if we’re aware of it.

Why should you care? Because our one true expression of the divine is creativity. All the other mammals eat, work, play, and procreate. This is the only thing that sets us apart. Whether you find that expression in writing fiction or sculpting mud pies with your kids is unimportant. What is important is finding a path to that expression even when it gets harder.

Now I really should say something about my books since I was given the opportunity to guest post.

The second book in my paranormal romance/fantasy/18+ series (heavy on the romance) will be released October 14th on Amazon.com in print and ebook. Being the second book in a series, The Witch’s Dream draws from characters and situation presented in the first book, My Familiar Stranger, available in e-format and in print within a few days. I will be releasing more excerpts between now and mid October and the book trailer will be available October 1st. Visit me on Facebook for up to date news. www.facebook.com/vdanann

By |2019-03-25T18:04:52-05:00August 23rd, 2012|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Author Interview Today on Roxanne's Realm

Roxanne’s Realm Interview Questions

www.roxannesrealm.blogspot.com

 

1. What inspired you to become an author?

          My father was a great orator. He loved books and loved words – how they can be put together to inspire, to persuade, or even used as weapons. After I had exhausted the Bobbsey Twins series and Child Craft, he bought me the set of Scribner classics which was a library of the best literature for young readers. These included Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

          Out of all those stories, I was captivated by the two that featured a young female protagonist who was physically capable and intellectually superior. One of these was a fairy tale called “The Last Dragon”. The other was one of the Arabian Nights.

          I wrote a lot of Bobbsey Twins novels as a preteen and wrote several pages of a paranormal romance in my mid-twenties, but put it down when it failed to impress my spouse. Now it’s excruciatingly obvious that he is not the reader I’m trying to please. Duh.

          Anyway, all this is to say the answer to the question is two words: Kresley Cole. I discovered her books two years ago and remembered how I loved those proactive young women and their adventures. I then set a goal to try and carve out time for writing. Kresley – thank you. You’re the best. 

 

2. Do you have a specific writing style?

I’ve never had a class on writing so I don’t know how to answer this question. I have picked up some of the inner circle writer’s lingo from reviews because I had to look up what POV means. I can tell you that, three months after initial publication, my target audience are right brained, meaning women who want to become emotionally engaged by a story, leave reality behind for a few hours, and come to the end of the book wishing they could experience it all over again. If you nodded and laughed when, in the movie “Dead Poets’ Society”, the Robin Williams character told the class to tear out the page that attempted to graph poetry, high fives all around. In my opinion, if you’re not a rebel, you’re probably not a writer.

 

3. How did you come up with the title for your latest book?

          Right up until release, the working title was Familiar Stranger  taken from the song, “Stranger” by Jefferson Starship. At the last minute I searched Amazon and discovered that there were several other books by that name. So I added the “My” to get a unique title.

4. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

Yes and I use it in promotional material all the time. The message is that true love can find you when you least expect it, in the strangest places, even when you’re far, far from home.

5. Is the book, characters, or any scenes based on a true life experience, someone you know, or events in your own life?

We are all defined by our experiences. Certainly that includes writers. Characters and events in my books are a little like a house of mirrors. They may be based on something real, but expanded, elongated, distorted, or otherwise manipulated into what serves the story best. They may just as easily be based on an idea gleaned from another book or a movie. Once I digest media through my own filter, it’s also a true life experience.  

6. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

          Kresley Cole. I have never interacted with her by any means. If I were she, I would think it strange to be considered a mentor by someone I didn’t know existed. But there it is. As I say in my books – often – life is strange.

7. What is your current “work in progress” or upcoming projects?

          The third book in The Order of the Black Swan series entitled “The Summoner’s Tale” expected to release February 14, 2013.

8. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

I am locked in a life/death battle with time and, although I fight the good fight, I suspect I’m predestined to lose. If I had four clones, I would still not have enough time to pursue every interest or project I’d like.

          I still publish Seasons of the Witch  every year and oversee the operations at 7th House. The only way I could find time for writing was to back off music. My Classic Rock band broke up a few months ago. I can say I had the full rock and roll experience. I got to play Warrior Dash to 35,000 people and I got to play late night biker bars to fifteen people. It ended with slamming doors, lots of f u’s, and “I wouldn’t play with you again if you were the last bass player on earth!” type proclamations. Sigh.   

          So, rather than get with another band, I took that time and applied it to improving my guitar (my first instrument is keys). And started writing.

10. Who designed the cover of your latest book?

          I do the covers and the book trailers personally. It’s not that I’m controlling. Okay. Well. Maybe it is.

11. Do you have a song or playlist (book soundtrack) that you think represents this book?

The song that backs the book trailer for My Familiar Stranger is “At Last”, the classic love song originally recorded by Etta James. The version on the book trailer is done by Alicia Brass who is lead singer for a popular Houston variety band that I manage and, I might add, she is better than the late, great Etta James.

          The song that backs the book trailer for The Witch’s Dream is actually an integral part of the story. I found a real life (or close enough) Rammel Hawking who backs the book trailer with an acoustic version of the mystery song – used with his permission, of course. I plan to release the book trailer on October 1st, two weeks before the book in available for download.

 

By |2019-03-25T18:04:52-05:00August 20th, 2012|Uncategorized|1 Comment

Guest Blog on Grave Tells

http://gravetells.com/2012/08/09/book-tour-what-do-women-really-want-romance-or-action/

MY GUEST BLOG FOR GRAVE TELLS:

For me, there are two basic categories of fiction. Is it fiction set in reality as we experience it or is it fiction that takes place in a world that exists only in someone’s imagination?

I’ve never understood why someone would opt for the first if they could have the second. I mean, have you been here? To contemporary life on Earth? Why would you want to spend your precious leisure hours reading about that when you could be transported to a world that has been tweaked and debugged?

Taking that a step further, I write paranormal ROMANCE, heavy on the romance, because I think it holds the key to the answer to the giveaway question I love to ask which is: what do women really want? I love men, but I write for women. We want different things. Again, what’s in my imagination is better than what’s actually outside the door.

I mention that my books are heavy on romance because there is a lot of confusion between paranormal romance and paranormal suspense. A book can be classified as a romance when unless the love interest is the main plot and not the subplot. An action/thriller with paranormal elements and romantic elements is paranormal suspense.

One of the most satisfying things about reactions to the first book of the PNR series The Order of the Black Swan, entitled My Familiar Stranger, is that different readers fall in love with each of her three suitors and then write to tell me they wanted her to end up with this one or that. Someday I’m going to take a poll: Were you rooting for bachelor #1, 2, or 3?

Don’t worry. Each of them gets a story. In fact the next book, The Witch’s Dream, to be released in electronic format on October 14th, is one of those. Whereas My Familiar Stranger could be read and enjoyed as a stand alone novel, the second book picks up where the first ends which means readers will benefit greatly by reading the first book first. That’s why I have insisted the cost of My Familiar Stranger be kept to $.99 so that everyone who is so inclined has a chance to get in on the beginning of the series.

By |2019-03-25T18:04:52-05:00August 15th, 2012|Uncategorized|0 Comments

What I'm reading?

Product DetailsProduct DetailsProduct DetailsProduct Details

Something Different This Way Comes

When I was in L.A. at the Romance Writers of America conference a couple of weeks ago, I met with Tara Gavin of Harlequin Nocturne. Last year she put together a concept project and asked if I had read it. I was excited about the idea because it’s so innovative. Gavin assembled four PNR authors to collaborate on a “Royal House of Shadows” series of fairytales retold.

Each book begins with…

Once upon a time…the Blood Sorcerer vanquished the kingdom of Elden. To save their children, the queen scattered them to safety and the king filled them with vengeance. Only a magical timepiece connects the four royal heirs. Now they must return and save Elden…and time is running out….

Book One is Lord of the Vampires, by Gena Showalter. (Alice in Wonderland)

Book Two is Lord of the Rage & Primal Instincts, by Jill Monroe (Goldilocks and the Three Bears)

Book Three is Lord of the Wolfyn, by Jessica Anderson (Little Red Riding Hood)

Book Four is Lord of the Abyss, by Nalini Singh (Beauty and the Beast) REALLY ENJOYING THIS ONE SO FAR… 25% through.

I have just finished Lord of the Vampires and started on Lord of Rage. It’s a really fresh approach to read each of the books in the series written in a different voice. I wish I had all this information when I started reading because I think it would have added to my enjoyment to be watching for the parallels. I kept wondering why they were referring to the “big bad” as the Queen of Hearts.

I’m told the series is best read in order as the story interweaves and is interdependent.

Barrons Books and Baubles

I don’t make any secret of the fact that my two favorite series are Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark and Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series. This post is about a central feature of the latter.

This picture was poached from a Facebook fan site because I just had to share. http://www.facebook.com/victoria.danann.9?ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/B-B-B/318302944881239

You know I LOVE my e-reader. With the new backlighting (thank you, been salivating for it for many years now) I can read in the middle of the night, under the covers, without disturbing my spouse. I can take 20 books on vacation and it doesn’t weigh me down any more than does my wallet which is stuffed with stuff I don’t need.

All that said, let me add a big HOWEVER!!! When I saw this picture, I fell in love with books all over again. I remembered the days when I used to get two kid-free hours a week and would use them browsing (translation: prowling) the bookstore aisles. I can’t remember seeing anything more magical. 

Like Moning’s heroine, Mac, I would want to live there and take care of it, too. I could just put a mattress down and be happy. Nothing could be better unless, of course, it was shared by Barrons.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful.

By |2019-03-25T18:04:52-05:00August 8th, 2012|Uncategorized|5 Comments

Sneak Preview: The Witch's Dream

The Witch’s Dream excerpt #1

When Kay’s bunch arrived it suddenly seemed as if the one hundred seventy five room palace on twelve thousand acres would not be nearly big enough. His family had migrated to South Texas in the nineteenth century and found it agreeably inhospitable. Berserkers enjoy a good challenge. So they founded an organization to clean up the mess, taking on rowdy itinerants who heartily embraced a get-it-done, no-rules philosophy and called it the Texas Rangers. Were it not for berserkers it seems unlikely that the frontier mix of Comanche, desperados, and javelina could have been subdued so relatively quickly and by so few.

Chaos Caelian, named such by his maternal grandmother as was her privilege in berserker society, was affectionately known as Kay. It was the nickname bestowed upon him by his teammate Rammel Hawking soon after they’d met. Ram had thought a knight named Kay – like the foster brother of King Arthur from Arthurian legend – was amusing. So Chaos became Sir Kay and it stuck. Even his own parents eventually began calling him Kay.

Yes. Everybody knew the near giant knight as Kay except for his three older sisters who refused to give up calling him Bubba, never letting him forget for a minute that he was the “baby” of the family. The four youngest Caelian children were close in age, only a year apart, and in familial ties. There was a much older brother, but he and their parents almost seemed to comprise a second family. The three preschool girls started out calling him “brother”, but the nickname quickly degenerated into Bubba and would not go away.

Their grandmother, sometimes called Evil Gran by those she had named, gave the girls similar hardships to bear. Having inherited the “sight” from her own grandmother, Evil Gran claimed she knew three girls were coming and set out to name them after the Norns; the three keepers of time according to Norse myth. Hence, they were named in order of linear time – past, present, and future: Urda, Verdandia, and Skulda. In a triumph of sibling camaraderie and conspiracy over custom, their names had morphed into something more suitable before they entered kindergarten. Urda became known as “Urz”, Verdandia as “Dandie” and Skulda did a triple twist into “Squoozie” which, odd as it was, seemed like a custom fit.

Elora had once heard Kay say that opening the door to his boyhood home was like going through the wardrobe to the land of “Nornia”.

The entire family resembled the popular perception of Vikings: tall, fair haired, fair skinned, with blue eyes, an abundance of athletic ability, and an indomitable desire to know where to plunder the best jewelry. Fortunately the family had accumulated multigenerational wealth in land, cattle, and oil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century so the quest for jewelry did not require going a’viking as it was known in the old days. Kay’s sisters were content with the occasional plunder of Gump’s, Tiffany, and Cartier.

highlight book title to see on Amazon

PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FANTASY

Not Too Late 1. Midlife Magic

Not Too Late 2. Midlife Blues

Not Too Late. 3. Midlife Mojo

Not Too Late 4. Midlife at Midnight

Not Too Late 5. Midlife at Midsummer

Not Too Late 6. Trials of Tregeagle

Not Too Late 7.  Hallow Hill at Halloween – Part One 

Not Too Late 8. Hallow Hill at Halloween – Part Two

KNIGHTS OF BLACK SWAN PARANORMAL ROMANCE

Knights of Black Swan 1. My Familiar Stranger

Knights of Black Swan 2. The Witch’s Dream

Knights of Black Swan 3. A Summoner’s Tale

Knights of Black Swan 4. Moonlight

Knights of Black Swan 5. Gathering Storm

Knights of Black Swan 6. A Tale of Two Kingdoms

Knights of Black Swan 7. Solomon’s Sieve

Knights of Black Swan 8. Vampire Hunter

***Be sure to pause the series and read  Exiled 1. CARNAL before going on to Journey Man.

Knights of Black Swan 9. Journey Man

Knights of Black Swan 10. Falcon

Knights of Black Swan 11. Jax

Knights of Black Swan 12. Trespass

Knights of Black Swan 13. Irish War Cry

Knights of Black Swan 14.  Deliverance

Knights of Black Swan 15. Black Dog

Knights of Black Swan 16. The Music Demon

Order of the Black Swan Novels

Black Swan Novel Prince of Demons

WITCHES & WARLOCKS

Witches of Wimberley 1-3

Warlock Coven 1.QUEST

THE HYBRIDS

Exiled 1. CARNAL

Exiled 2. CRAVE

Exiled 3. CHARMING

THE WEREWOLVES

New Scotia Pack 1, Shield Wolf

New Scotia Pack 2. Wolf Lover

New Scotia Pack 3. Fire Wolf

Hotblooded 1. Stalk

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

SSMC Austin, TX, Book 1. Two Princes

SSMC Austin, TX, Book 2. The Biker’s Brother

SSMC Austin, TX, Book 3. Nomad

SSMC Austin, TX, Book 4. Devil’s Marker

SSMC Austin, TX, Book 5. Roadhouse

CDMC Lafayette, LA Book 1. Batiste