Getting to know Daisy Harris

Can you tell us a little about how you started writing; was it something you have always wanted to do?

I wanted o be a writer when I was a kid, but English wasn't my best subject so I veered more towards the sciences. Though I was an avid reader, I didn't do much of my own writing as a child. I mostly played pretend by choreographing plays and dance routines, by building forts. So the worlds were in my mind.

It took years and years for me to get up the courage to write fiction. I'd been working as a writer and editor in the sciences for years. But one day I got a bee in my bonnet to try to write a story. Mere Temptation was the result.

What do you consider to be the key elements of a great story?

Um…Sex?

Oh, I dunno. I always want to turn the world on it's ear with my stories. Several of my favorite authors write more what I would consider "traditional" romances. Y'know- virgin heroines, alpha males. But I'm a scifi nerd. To me a story isn't worth writing unless I'm boldly going where no man (or woman) has gone before.

And of course, then I find someone else *has* gone there before. But that's cool. So long as it felt groundbreaking to me at the time, I feel like I'm telling a story that's fresh.

Could you tell us a little about how you develop your characters? Who has been your favorite character to write? The most challenging?

Firstly, I love creating characters. LOVE! Trying to name a favorite is like trying to choose the prettiest flower or the cutest baby. It's a moving target.

I did truly enjoy writing Loki from Mercury Rising. Almost all my stories contain a mad-scientist character, and even though Loki wasn't a scientist, per se, he liked to mess with things just to see what would happen.

Mercury was another favorite. He was a charmer, but also an alpha-male-who-wasn't. I like to lead with flawed men (and women) and drag them over the coals until they become better people. With Mercury, I felt really guilty doing so because he was such a nice guy. A people pleaser. The problem was, in trying to make everyone happy he pissed folks off a lot more than he would have just being honest.

Probably my toughest character to write was my zombie bride, Josie, from my upcoming book, Lust After Death. She's a newborn frankenstein-type creature and her mind works in very loopy ways. It took a lot of work, and many rewrites to make her unbalanced, innocent, seductive, curious, victimized, and not-annoying at the same time. Her character was very Summer Glau-esque, so it was a challenge to make her accessible and relatable.

Have you ever found that you didn’t like your Hero or your Heroine? If so, what did you do to change that?

Well, I'm having that problem a little with my current work in progress. It's a sequel to Lust After Death, tentatively called "Studdenstein." The story is very, very gender-bendy. A tough-as-nails heroine rescues a male robot sex slave who doesn't want to be rescued. My hero, Royce, is vain, superficial, and in mad-crazy denial. His superficiality hides his pain- but it's hard to show that.I know I'll get there in the end. But for now, I want him to be the man I know he can be. And he's not there.


Can you tell me a bit about your most recent/upcoming release?

My most recent release is Mercury Rising. It's my first male-male story and a comedic erotic romance. All my stories contain some comedic elements, but Mercury was the first in which I structured the book in the tradition of 1930's screwball comedies.

My next release is Lust After Death- my zombie marriage of convenience story. And boy, hoo-yah- that took ages and ages to get right. But now it's awesome. Truly awesome. It's sexy and fun, and has good-looking frankenstein-type creatures called "steins."

And scars…Mmmmm, scars.

What do you do to unwind and relax?  

What is this "relax" of which you speak?? o.0

Seriously though, I have a hard time winding down. Once I start kicking on a new story, or revisions, or promotions, I'm like an energizer bunny. The hardest thing is to settle down long enough to read! 

When I am calm, though, I like to read. I also ride my bike, eat fancy cheeses. I hang out with my two daughters and husband.

Our big family activity is camping. We own a little camping trailer, and in the summer we love to go out to RV resorts in Washington and Canada. My zombie series is set in the northwest- and my zombies camp way more than you'd expect them too. :)

Is there a genre you haven’t done that you would like to explore in the future?

At some point, I'd like to foray out from paranormal to futuristic. (Yes, LOL, I know that's not a major shift.) Also, someday I might want to try my hand at middle-grade. I have school-aged daughters and they're always asking when I'll write a book for kids. :)

Tell us about your favorite restaurant. 

Voila. It's a French place a couple blocks from my house and I'm a fixture there. I like to go at 5 pm and have a drink while I write. I learn so much watching people interact there, too. Customers, staff, people doing deliveries. It's a great place to people watch.

Do you listen to music when writing? Do you feel like some stories write themselves a soundtrack with specific music? If so, what book and what kind of music influenced it?

Nooooo. I've never been about to work while listening to music. If I do, I listen to something instrumental. Like yoga music. Sometimes, though, I put earbuds in if I'm at Starbucks working so that no one will try to talk to me.

Does your significant other read your stuff?

Sometimes select scenes. He's not much of a reader and would never read anything in the romance genre. So I don't expect him to.

Plotter or Pantser? Why?

In the general scheme of things, I'd say I'm more of a pantser than a plotter. I do take notes on characters before I write, and I usually plot out a general sequence of scenes. But then I adjust that rough outline as I go.

Anything more involved than that tends to backfire for me.

What is your favorite meal?

Ethiopian food! Especially the vegetable dishes. I've learned to make a lot of them at home, and we have a market where I can buy injera bread a mile away. But it still tastes better at a restaurant.

What are your thoughts on love scenes in romance novels, do you find them difficult to write?

When I first started writing, the only thing I felt I could write were the love scenes. Funny, but the longer I write, the harder the love scenes get and the easier the rest comes. I'm not sure why that is.

I don't think I'll ever have a hard time writing love scenes. (I spent years writing about biology and science, after all.) However, as my writing deepens and the complexity of my characters expand, I find it harder and harder to just throw them into the sack and let them work it out all hot and sweaty.

Now I need, like, feelings and stuff. Ew.

What do you have coming up next for you? Care to share any details with us?

Much to my agent Saritza Hernandez's chagrin, I'm not a planner. Honestly, I can never see more than one story ahead of where I'm at, and sometimes not even that! So I'm going to try to whip Studdenstein into shape. Then I'll probably write another zombie story. I have four more story ideas for that series…at least. But I'll have to see how many actually work out. I love my steins and their cyber-punk-meets-forest-floor world, but I find a lot of series get stale after the third book.

So yeah, more steins (aka mechanized zombies). And then we'll see.

Who are some of your favorite authors, and if we were to visit your home, what books would we find on your bookshelf, end table, floor or e-reader?

The authors that motivated me to start writing were Larissa Ione and Shelly Laurenston (writing as GA Aiken. I'll always like her dragons best.)

I also love Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series, Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling. I've recently gotten very into reading Charlotte Stein.

A recent review of Mercury Rising compared me to Katie MacAlister, Erin McCarthy, and Vicki Lewis Thompson, so all three are on my list to read once I get my head out of Studdenstein. It's so funny to hear yourself compared to people you haven't read! It just reminded me of how many great authors are and how I need to read more!

(Oh, and I just read Starkissed by Lanette Curington. Loved it!)

Ack, and I haven't even mentioned the male-male authors I love. Or the BDSM crowd.

Too much to read!

If you could be any character of any book or movie, who would you be?

Princess Leia. Who wouldn't?

Where can readers find you on the web?

My website is www.thedaisyharris.com

I'm also on Facebook and Twitter, but on twitter way more. My handle is @thedaisyharris. Give me a shout-out and I'll follow back!

 Sneak peek into Mercury Rising

Take a sexy romp with the gods in this hilarious and hot ménage!

Over-extended - and closeted - charmer Mercury the Messenger struggles to accommodate all the factions of the Deities International Conference and Kibbitz. However, his skills at diplomacy stretch to the limit when the object of a chance tryst turns out to be his assistant, and his arranged fiancée arrives at the scene.

Dillon Rodriquez, Mercury's executive aide and a soon-to- be MBA student, refuses to be the closeted god's side- dish. But when an accident at the conference strands the god in the human world, Dillon agrees to act as his guide.

Traveling from San Diego down the Baja Coast to Cabo, Mercury experiences a side of life he never imagined, and he learns that if he wants to earn the love of the one man who matters, he has to stop trying to please everyone else.

MERCURY RISING is available for purchase at the publisher's site: http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/mercury-rising.php

On amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mercury-Rising-ebook/dp/B004YE6T2G

All AllRomance EBooks, Kobo, Nook, and more!

Excerpt:

       Dillon stepped off the water-taxi onto the Solstice’s custom-built staff entrance. The pockmarked kid guarding the door to the ship’s interior raised an intercom to his mouth.

       “Hey, give me a second before you call up!” Dillon shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and then tugged his T-shirt off. He worked his arms into his uniform, leaving the front unbuttoned, and flashed the ID hanging from his pocket at the boy. “I’ll let the boss know I’m here.”

       The kid shrugged. “Lanus should still be supervising the cocktail party clean up, but they posted a list of assignments in Ballroom Seven.”

         Dillon nodded and searched through his bag for his phone. It flashed about fifteen text messages, all from his boss asking when the hell he was gonna get there. His email, on the other hand, was still empty. He’d just have to hope his professors were cool. With a shrug, he slipped the phone back into his pocket and walked through the door separating the salty harbor from the dank, narrow hallways behind the kitchens.

       The paint might once have been turquoise, but had taken on a tannish-gray hue. Beads of condensation dripped down the walls. Abandoned paper bags and half-full beer bottles with floating cigarette butts lined the sides.

       He sank his hand into his backpack and pulled out the crisp box of Camels he’d bought expressly for the trip. Dillon didn’t smoke as a general rule, but working gigs for Lanus called for every possible mechanism to blow off steam.

       He tapped the lid of the box on his hand. The hoodlums he’d hung out with as a kid had done that, and Dillon had picked up the habit, though he had no idea what the purpose was.

       “Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you.”

       At the comment, Dillon looked up to see a guy in an Italian suit standing in an open doorway—probably one of the conference attendees. His thick black hair flopped at odd angles and bags hung under his otherwise bright eyes. He towered in the low-ceilinged hallway, broad shoulders contrasting with a slim body. The guy steadied himself on the wall with a hand, but he didn’t look drunk, just dead tired.

       “No worries. You want one?” Dillon positioned a cigarette on his lips and held out the pack in the man’s direction.

       The man’s midnight blue gaze lingered a second too long. “Um, yes. That would be great.” He licked his lips.

       The devil riding his shoulder, Dillon approached the guy. He pulled a cigarette out of the package and lifted it to the politician’s almost-pretty face.

       With a shy grin, Mr. Sexy bit the cigarette out from between his fingers. He smelled like scotch and privilege and all kinds of wrong.