Can you tell us a little about how you started writing; was it something you have always wanted to do?
I have always loved writing and it is definitely always something I wanted to do. Even when I was at school I loved creative writing more than anything else. It is something I would love to do for a living and hope to one day, though I imagine it is not going to be until some time in the rather distant future.
What do you consider to be the key elements of a great story?
For me to really enjoy a story I have to be able to engage with the characters. I have to feel for them and the trials they are going through.
I have to admit that I am also a total plot whore. Although I don’t have any issues with hot, sexy, spicy stories, it is always the stories with great plots that I return to and re-read over and over again.
Strong plots and likeable characters are what makes a story great for me, at least as a reader.
Could you tell us a little about how you develop your characters? Who has been your favorite character to write? The most challenging?
My characters tend to just come to me and take on a life of their own. They don’t always do what I intend them to do, even arguing with me about who they are going to end up with at the end of the story.
My favourite character to write is usually the most recent one, which right about now is the demon Alastor from Between Heaven & Hell. That being said, Benji from Touch of a Ghost holds a special place in my heart as well. He just never gives up, despite being long dead.
I think the most challenging character I have written is one that is still in the process of being worked on. He is a merman who lives in a society which is, of course, vastly different from the real world. Writing about his experiences up on land have been very challenging mainly due to trying to imagine what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in what is an alien world with all these new and strange contraptions, people and customs.
Getting into the mind of someone going through this has been very challenging indeed.
Have you ever found that you didn’t like your Hero or your Heroine? If so, what did you do to change that?
That isn’t something that I have actually come across in my stories yet, although I suspect in time this will happen sooner or later, especially if my characters insist on going their own way.
I am not sure how I would end up changing it, though it isn’t outside of the realms of possibility that the hero may end up a villain or anti-hero instead. In my opinion that is not necessarily a bad thing and many of my favourite characters have been of that ilk.
If you were to start again, with the knowledge you have now, what would be the first thing you do?
Since I am still very much at the start of my career, I feel I have every opportunity to do the do-over now without too much trouble. The one thing I would change would be to start writing my stories earlier. I wasted a lot of my spare time in my twenties pursuing a career I didn’t really want to enter, but felt pressurized into by my employers. If I had my time over I would dig my heels in on that and spend more time on my writing instead of waiting until now.
Can you tell me a bit about your most recent/upcoming release?
Unfortunately, I don’t have an upcoming release at the moment, though not through lack of effort.
My most recent release is Driving Me Crazy, a short story about a young man who falls for his driving instructor. Instead of telling him how he feels he fails his driving test repeatedly so he can spend more time with him. Not the brightest thing to do, but people in love often do crazy things. It is a light-hearted story which is one of my few stories that doesn’t have a paranormal element to it.
Is there a genre you haven’t done that you would like to explore in the future?
Many of my favorite stories are historical ones and this is a genre I would love to explore in the future. I am not sure whether it will be a straight historical or with a paranormal flavour though. I do love the supernatural and it creeps into many of my stories a little too much.
I don’t see myself delving into historicals any time soon though. I have far too many paranormal contemporary stories on the go and would rather improve my writing in the genre I am most familiar with a lot more, before I explore the minefield of historical romances.
If you could throw a party with any five people (living or dead) who would you pick and why?
Ooooh, great question.
I would probably pick Terry Pratchett, who is one of my favourite authors and someone I have come to admire as a person as well in recent years due to how he has handled his illness. I also think he would make a very entertaining dinner companion.
My second choice would be Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who I have been fascinated with since I was a teenager. He is by far the most interesting historical figure I have ever read about and the more I read about him the more interesting I find him. He was also, in my opinion, quite good looking, and who doesn’t like a little eye candy at the dinner table?
My third choice would be Jensen Ackles. The star of one of my favourite TV shows and, from all reports I have heard, a thoroughly nice guy.
My fourth choice would be Aphra Behn, who is widely believed to be the first woman to make her living by the pen. I would love to talk to her about how she struggled to write back in the 17th century and to find out more about her fascinating life as well.
My fifth choice would be my best friend because even if my four choices all turned out to be a disappointment, I know my best friend would make up for that and turn the evening round.
Though with all these at the dinner table together it is anyone’s guess as to how smoothly or not the meal would go.
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?
As someone who spends a lot of time audio typing I find it rather hard to listen to music when I am writing because I tend to type the lyrics instead of the story. Kind of amusing at times when I read something back and see the lyrics to some recent chart hit in the middle of the dialogue.
That being said, occasionally a song does pop into my head and inspires a story, or at least gives birth to a plot bunny.
What are your thoughts on love scenes in romance novels, do you find them difficult to write?
I enjoy reading love scenes, though as I said above I am something of a plot whore. Love scenes for the sake of them tend to cause me to skim read a bit, but if the story is engaging and the love scenes are purposeful I read them properly.
I don’t find them particularly difficult to write, though I do try to give my characters a bit of variety in their love making. Often this is by taking them out of the bedroom altogether.
Like my reading preferences, when I am writing I do tend to concentrate on the plots more than the love scenes.
What are some of your favorite things or hobbies to do?
Like most writers, I enjoy reading and spend most of my time with my nose in a book. Or these days in my Kindle.
I also enjoy history and enjoy going to see historical reenactments around the country. This also gives me the opportunity to indulge in my other main hobby of photography, something else which I would have liked to have done professionally earlier in my life.
What do you have coming up next for you? Care to share any details with us?
Well, hopefully, what is coming up next is my first full length novel Between Heaven & Hell. It is also my first male/male/male romance – something I never imagined I would write, but somehow did. It was one of the many occasions when the characters went off on tangents of their own and what started off as two immortals fighting over a human ended up as a ménage à trois.
It also started off as a Halloween submission but got far too long for the open call it was meant for. I am hoping I can get it contracted before the end of the year.
It is the story of Tristan, a human who finds himself falling for two very different men. Machidiel is an angel and Alastor is a demon. Tristan is prepared to risk his heart for them both, but what about when the price is his soul?
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?
Well, my bookshelves are a huge library with just about everything on them. And I mean that literally. I own something like 2000 books, and if it weren’t for the lack of space it would be even more.
Many of them are romances, mostly the male/female kind.
There are also a lot of history books, biographies, TV tie-ins for some of my favourite shows – usually paranormal shows.
Books on tracing your family history – lots of those as I have been researching my family tree for years now.
Lots of travel books as well as guide books for places I have visited.
Some general chick-lit books, though not as many as you might think.
Lots of fantasy novels – Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams etc.
Some lingering Stephen King novels from the days I was devouring all the horror novels I could get my hands on.
Lots of true stories about angels and ghostly experiences.
Quite a lot of the classics including a couple of hundred classics in audio form as well.
My e-reader is where you find my male/male romances… where younger eyes can’t see them.
My entire book collection covers pretty much any genre you can name.
As for my favourite authors, it tends to vary on my mood but these are some of those I enjoy the most and read consistently – Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lynn Kurland, P.C. Cast, Shannon Frost, Ethan Day and Terry Pratchett. They are the ones that when a new book comes out from them I drop everything to run and get it.
And, although she is not an author I follow like the ones above, Dinah Lampitt is always one of my favourite authors simply because she wrote my favourite book of all time, Banishment. It is a little known book and I rave about it whenever I am given the chance. It is a time travel romance and well worth reading if you like that sort of thing, and if you can track down a copy. I was lucky enough to get it when it first came out but understand it is rather more difficult to find these days.
If you could be any character of any book or movie, who would you be?
Can I make different decisions to those the character in the book/movie made? If so I am spoiled for choice as there are many I wish I could jump into the lives of and put things to rights.
Scarlett O’Hara is a brilliant example of a character whose life I would dearly have loved to put to rights in both the movie and the book. Of course, it wouldn’t be the great book/movie that it is if she had acted anything like me.
If not then any character with the ability to fly would be great. I think I’d like to be a shapeshifter with that ability rather than a human though. I am trying to think of a character that fits the bill, but I am honestly drawing a blank right now.
Perhaps there is something lacking in my library after all – female shape shifters with the ability to fly – hmmm, do a sense the birth of yet another plot bunny?
Where can readers find you on the web?
Website – http://lmbrownauthor.webs.com/
Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/lmbrown
Sneak Peek into Driving Me Crazy
Available at Amazon Kindle, Silver Publishing and other fine e-bookstores.
Lusting after Lee Cooper, his sexy driving instructor, isn't the most sensible reason for failing his driving test for the third time and when he discovers the damage he has inadvertently done to his instructor's reputation and business, Brandon knows that he is on his last chance.
After persuading Lee to give him one final course of driving lessons Brandon makes it his priority to figure out if the spark he feels between them is one-sided or whether he can persuade his sexy instructor to move their lessons from the front seat of the car to the back.
Extract
Crooking his finger, he backed towards the door, beckoning Lee to follow him outside.
Lee's arms were back around him by the time they reached the car, and Brandon reached behind him to open the rear passenger door, only to find it locked. "Where are the keys?"
"Didn't you have them?" Lee asked between kisses.
"You were driving."
Brandon tried to remember if he had removed the keys from the ignition, or even locked up the car. Then Lee's lips pressed against his own in a firm kiss and any coherent thoughts flew from his mind.
"Keys?" Lee mumbled against his lips.
"Fuck! I don't remember." Brandon drew his right leg up and wrapped it around the back of Lee's thigh, pinning the taller man to him quite effectively.
"Try. The. Ignition."
Brandon understood the words, of course he did; he just wished his brain could manage to comprehend how to do what was requested of him. The only thing his body seemed to register was the fact that Lee was in his arms, and he was pretty sure he was about to come in his pants.
Then Lee was gone and Brandon gave an involuntary whimper at the loss.
"Here," Lee triumphantly declared. "You left them in the ignition and the door unlocked."
"Sorry."
"Good job there's no one round here likely to steal the car either."
"No one would want this heap of junk anyway,"
Brandon teased as Lee reached inside to unlock the rear door.
"Junk?"
"We'd better be careful how we go in the back here. Don't want to risk it falling apart on us."
"I'll make you fall apart before my baby does."
Brandon snickered. "Your baby?"
"You keep insulting her and I may change my mind."
"You think your car's female? What do you imagine she's going to think about two men getting it on in her back seat?"
"She'll like the show. Now, get your clothes off and get in there."
Brandon's heart began to race again at Lee's husky command. He gave him a mock salute and pulled off his shirt. He wanted to take his time undressing, to tease Lee with an impromptu strip show, but then Lee licked his lips and the only thing Brandon wanted was that tongue on his body.
Available from Silver Publishing
2 comments:
Love the interview, and I thought I was the only one with over 2000 books in my library. And that's printed books, so we're not including e-books are we? Shuddering to think how many of those we've got.
Keep on writing, we need more of us out there with flair and the potential for more.
Glad you liked the interview. Sorry I've not been back to comment sooner - evil day job is being spectacularly so at the moment.
No, my 2000 does not include ebooks. If it weren't for the lack of space I am sure I would have hit 5k years ago. But despite my begging for an extension to the house it just isn't happening. Thankfully the advent of ebooks solved that problem. :-)
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