AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Kerri Nelson and Courting Demons

 Hi, Kerri and welcome to Plotting Princesses! Let's learn about you and your new book, Courting Demons (btw, cool title!)

How long have you been writing? How did you get from a legal career to writing romance? I’ve been writing since about the second grade.  That was when I discovered my love of poetry, anyway.  But I wrote my first full novel as a senior in high school.  It has only been read by one other person besides me and she’s been sworn with a blood oath of absolute secrecy. 

But, seriously, I began navigating the road to publication about a decade ago.  Started taking classes, then joined RWA and various chapters, then attended conferences and finally caught my break in 2009 and now my main goal is to stay published with new material every year.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Karen Cote and Erotic Deception



Karen Cote



Tell us about yourself. How long have you been writing? I live in Southern California and I’m married to my best friend and promoter. I have a little black pug who is my critique partner (she gets jealous of my keyboard) and I began seriously writing in 2006.

How did you get from your day job to writing romance?  My husband’s wonderful belief in me (and his job-LOL)

Who is your favorite author(s) and why?  Too many to mention. Linda Howard, Rachel Gibson, Judith McNaught, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Karen Rose are a few. They all have tortured heroes who need to be saved.

Tell us about your new book.

Blurb: Told she’d never have children…abracadabra, she’s pregnant. Would the man she loved disappear when he found out? 

Linda Steinberg asks: Are you a Horizontal Writer?

    Butt in Chair. Hands on Keyboard. We’ve all heard the advice, in countless workshops and articles. Seems pretty self-evident, doesn’t it? The only way to write is to write. Write crap now, and fix it later (or have your critique partners fix it). You can’t repair what’s not there.

     Who can argue with that? Workshop presenters usually offer disclaimers along the lines of, “This might not work for everybody. Take what you can use and discard the rest,” but I’ve never heard a disclaimer for BIC HOK. It’s so obvious, so basic. An essential first step.

     Except when it doesn’t work.

Entangled, a Paranormal Anthology

by Michelle Miles

I'm so excited to talk about the new anthology I'm in. It's a paranormal/Halloween anthology called Entangled. It's available as an ebook at B&N, Amazon, Smashwords and other fine online retailers. It will sell for $2.99 through October and then $3.99 thereafter.

I know most people don't like anthologies. But the thing that's unique about this one is that all the proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Eleven of us have banded together to support breast cancer research with our writing. Authors4theCure includes award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors, as well as two breast cancer survivors.

BCRF-funded research has helped save lives and improved the quality of care and rate of survival for tens of thousands of breast cancer patients in the past decade. Their research has revealed that the "cure" is a mosaic made up of as many approaches to diagnosing, treating, preventing and surviving as there are different types of breast cancer. The anthology is also a mosaic made up of many stories donated for this worthwhile cause.

I hope you'll pick up Entangled, not only for the fantastic stories but for helping an awesome cause.

MY SECRET READING STASH

MY SECRET READING STASH

Pssst! I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

Are you ready? It's a big one.

Writers—are also—readers!

Long before we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, we read. And read. And read. At some point along the way, I'm sure most of us said . . . It can't be that hard, I think I'll write a book. (Or we read a book that didn't end the way we felt it should and decided we could do it better!)

No, this blog post isn't about writing. Today it's all about reading.

Birthday Wishes

Toooo meeee! I partied last Friday--thank you to all who so sweetly wrote me. Lol.
I love celebrating my birthday. It's the one day All About Moi. Presents, dinner, cards--nothing feels better. Right?

Definitely, there's nothing better than birthday cake and I'm pretty non-discriminatory. I love almost every kind of cake, especially the ones with lots of icing flowers and leaves. (I bet you're thinking get out the cholesterol medicine.)

PP Welcomes Alisha Paige: Silent Lucidity...Writing From Dreams

How do you come up with new ideas for your latest novel? I'm always curious to see what inspires writers. I'm a big dreamer..yeah, I dream big and I actually remember very vivid dreams. I've been known to wake up from a dream and jot down everything before I forget it. Have you done this?

Once I dreamed I was this teenage girl that moved to a new world (Early America) with my parents. I was very wealthy and our home was ready for us when we arrived, built with the best materials of the day. Servants were carrying my large trunk inside our new home. I watched from the windows, looking out at this foreign, new land as a very handsome man rode up on a horse. I'm watching all of this out the wavy oval glass of our front door. A bear approaches and the man pulls out a knife and spars with it. I gasp and know right then and there that I will marry this man one day. Then I woke up. Ahhh! How disappointing! I immediately wrote the dream down. I usually don't dream of other time periods. This was really odd.

Another night I dreamed I was the member of a wedding party. This is the weird part..my ex husband was there too. After the wedding, there was a huge party in this hotel and we were all staying in two adjoined, very luxurious hotel suites. It was late night and everyone had crashed. In my dream, I wake up when I hear voices, whispers really and doors creaking open. I look over the shoulder of the person sleeping next to me..again, this was highly odd....I don't make a habit of sleeping with a herd of people...and I see all these men coming in, posing as waiters in white coats, pushing room service trays.

Plotting Princess Sylvia McDaniel: Plotting Made Simple

People think writers have a burst of brilliance and then we sit down at the computer and the stories pour out.  When the idea for a book comes along and it's a good one, you have to stop and think about what company would want to publish this idea. Is there a market for it? How did these characters get into this predicament? How do I get them out? Is there enough conflict to last four hundred pages? Do I like these people enough to spend six months with them?

I admit, I'm an anal plotter and I spend months plotting a book. Then I spend several weeks researching, picking out names, doing a story board before I ever sit down at the computer and put those first words on the page. I envy the ladies/gents who are pansters and just sit down and write.  I have blinking cursor syndrome when I try to write without my road map.

BACK TO TEMPTATION (THURSDAY)

It's that time again. Welcome to Temptation Thursday. The first Thursday of each month here at Plotting Princesses we'll be bringing you little snippets from the current works in progress of several of our members, both published and aspiring authors. Every month will be a little unique with different contributors, new short stories, articles or books we are working on, to give you a taste of the variety of writing talents from the Princesses.


So sit back, grab your favorite beverage (and maybe some chocolate to go with it) and enjoy the ride.


UNTITLED—Elizabeth Essex
The toff limping out of Spring Gardens onto Cockspur Street was just the sort she liked, if she couldn’t have a drunk. Big man, but tired, he was, weariness stewing from his bones like the cold steam of his breath in the frigid, snowy air. And he was a gimp—heavily favoring his left leg—but without a cane or walking stick. So far so good. It paid to stay well clear of walking sticks.


STRANJE HOUSE, EXILE FOR DREAMERS, Book 2—Kathleen Baldwin
I raced toward the woods. He wouldn’t be able to run me down as easily in there. The trees would hide me. After all, I am part forest. My eyes are green as leaves, my hair ash brown like bark, my skin pale as air. I am Welsh, a daughter of the earth. My mother used to say the spirit of these things, the soil and trees, the rocks and beasts, they call to us. “We are part of this land,” she would say. Only now, my mother lies silent, cloaked beneath the very earth she spoke of with such fondness.