The lovely and generous Donna L Bolk is here with me today!

I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Donna here today for a number of reasons...1. She is a fellow Wild Rose Press writer, 2. She is a fellow contributor (and debut storyteller!) of the exciting new series from Wild Rose, Class of '85 and number 3, she made me cry with her enthusiastic praise of The Arrival of Lily Curtis. What other reason do I need to ask you to put your hands together for my colleague and friend?

Hi Donna! Let's kick off the interview...

1. What is your writing routine?

Routine? That hints at being organized -- not one of my strong suits. I have one rule, write five days a week, some days I might write for twenty minutes others days it might be three hours. My weekends go to family and friends unless I’m on a deadline.

2. Which author/s inspire you to write?

I’ve always been an avid reader. But I can’t say other authors inspire me to write. Life inspires me, an article in the newspaper, or something I hear on the radio, I’m a big what if person.

3. Which is your favorite romance subgenre to read? To write?

I’m going to borrow an old line and say; "I’ve never met a subgenre I didn’t like."

4. How do you deal with criticism/rejection?

I listen with an open mind. I might change something or I might keep it the same. In the end if my story flies or flops, it’s on me.

5. What do you expect from an editor?

For me a great editor is someone who believes in my story almost as much as I do.

6. Tell me about your latest release

Getting It Right is the kick off story for The Class of ’85 a new series published by The Wild Rose Press, under The Last Rose of Summer line.

7. Tease us with a blurb or short excerpt

Tye tilted his head and looked at the boy out of the corner of his eye. "Done any jail time?" Not the best icebreaker, but it did the trick.

"I'm working on it," he said. "You?"

Squatting, Tye bent his arm and rested it on his thigh. "I'm not always right, son. But I am fast."

"Name's Keith." He dropped the cigarette butt into an empty beer can and grinned. "Rumor has it, fast beats right every time."

He'd intended for the off the cuff response as a joke. From the look on Keith's face, he took it for gospel. It seemed they'd found common ground but Tye didn't take that as a good omen. He'd already been where the kid could be headed.

8. Which is your favorite character in the book? Why?

I always fall in love with my hero, in Getting it Right its Tyler Jackson. Life kicked him around, it’s taken him twenty-five years, but now he’s kicking back and returning to his hometown to win the heart of the woman he’s always loved.

9. What is next for you?

I had a requested manuscript in the works for The Wild Rose Press when I received the invitation to participate in The Class of ’85. I loved the concept and I had been working on Getting It Right, so that all came together for me.

10) What are you working on right now?

Made For You, a romantic comedy, involving an uptight lawyer and a free spirited costume designer.

11) Your biggest piece of advice to aspiring novelists?

This is a tough business and it’s easy to get discouraged. Believe in yourself. There’s only one person who can stop you from being successful, and that’s you.

12) Where can readers find you?

My website and blog are in the design stage, in the meantime I can be reached at dlbolk @ hotmail . com

Loved the excerpt as I loved the story - can I ask one more question, how did it feel when you were told yours would be the debut story of the series?? I would've flipped, LOL! Bring on your comments and questions, Donna is waiting...

Missing Guest means an 'off the cuff' post from me!!

Hellooo!

Unfortunately, my scheduled guest for today couldn't deliver her post due to unforeseen work commitments so I will be filling in. I have nothing prepared so it gives me the perfect excuse to talk about my latest contract with the fabulous Wild Rose Press, even though I promised myself I wouldn't do this yet, LOL!

'Transtlantic Loving' is my first novella-length release and is part of a series of stories which make up a brand new series called The Class of '85. As soon as the senior editor of the Last Rose of Summer line at Wild Rose announced this series, I was desperate to be a part of it!
It is set around the down of Summerville, USA and the premise is either the hero, heroine or both, need to have been a part of the Class of 85. All these characters receive an invitation to attend the reunion and the invitation is the one common 'must-have' included in each story. The rest is up to the author - will they go? Where are they now? Were they prom queen? The geek? The stories abound and I LOVED the idea!

So I got busy scribbling away and 'Transatlantic Loving' was finished a couple of months later. Here's the blurb:

Blurb

In a desperate bid to escape the bitter reality of her children accepting her ex-husband’s new – and younger – fiancée, Lisa Cavendish travels from the UK to accompany her friend to a high school reunion. Forced to dress as Madonna in her hey day, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with the school’s coach, who seems to hold as much regard for his child as her ex did when he walked out…

Aaron Taylor can’t believe his eyes or ears when he is introduced to Lisa – sexy and funny, she has no idea how her accent enhances the heartbreaking wait he endures waiting for his daughter to call him back to the UK. But after spending just three short weeks with Lisa, he sees the answer to his pain in the eyes of the most phenomenal British lady he has ever met…

I haven't a release date yet, folks but expect one any day now - keep coming back for the news!! What do you think? Do you like the cover? I love it and thank artist extraordinaire, Nicola Martinez from the bottom of my heart xxx

Today I am interviewing historical romance author Liz Arnold!!

Good morning and welcome to my blog, Liz! I am so happy to have an historical romance author here because this is a genre I am still learning so much about. I can't wait to learn more about you and your writing.

Liz Arnold is a new romance author who’s been writing poetry and non-fiction for over 20 years. Her first novel is MESSAGE TO LOVE from The Wild Rose Press.

1) Did you set any goals for 2010?
I’m a very goal oriented person. I write a goal list five days a week and check it off as the day rolls along. I consider it a great day no matter what happened if everything on the list is checked off.
My 2010 goals include continuing to work on my next historical romance and get a good enough chunk done that it can be submitted.

2) What is the best part of the writing process for you?
Writing is an obsession for me. When I was ten years-old I declared that I would publish a book about history. A short time later I wrote the fifth grade play for our class and it was a western romance. I have never looked back just kept writing and publishing. The best part of writing for me is the words. I’m a word freak. I love words.

3) The worst part?
The worst part about writing is that I can’t get enough of it.

4) What is the book you wish you’d written?
The Wizard of Oz

5) Favourite author/s & book/s?
I’m a big fan of Connie Mason books from the 80’s and 90’s. Everything she wrote is an inspiration as far as the romance, the settings, and the true love. I don’t envy her, I love and respect her work.

6) Tell us about your latest release?
MESSAGE TO LOVE began as a very vivid dream one night. It stuck with me for days and I was compelled to write it down. When I did, I knew it was a historical romance. There was a man on horseback trying to deliver a message he had strapped in a leather pouch across his chest and there was a woman who helped him escape jail so he could deliver the message.

After some research, I hit upon an event called “The Message To Garcia” from the Spanish-American War in 1898. President McKinley sent a secret message via military messenger to General Calixto Garcia, head of the insurgent forces in Cuba fighting for independence from Spain.

In my story Audra Wakely is a young American whose father has been imprisoned by the Spanish authorities in Santiago de Cuba for allegedly helping the insurgents. Lt. Rollins McBride is a member of the newly formed U.S. Naval Intelligence and he has been told to arrest Audra’s father for treason because the government thinks he has been helping the Spanish. He latches onto Audra in order to find her father and she tries everything she can to lose him, but falls in love with him instead.

7) Tease us with a blurb/short except
“It was a dream, just a very bad dream.”
She stepped back out of his hold. Clammy spots of moist heat lingered on her arms where his hands had been.
“I’m all right now.” Audra reached for the door and noticed the sickly sweet odor of liquor on his breath. “You can leave now. I want to go back to bed.” She pulled open the door and gestured into the hall.
“Sorry, but this time you’re going, too.” Rollins strode over to the dresser and pulled out a drawer. “Better pack. We have just under two hours.”
“I’m not in the mood for comedy Rollins,” she sighed. “I’m really very, very tired. I’ve got to get some rest. Now—“
“Let me make myself clear.” He sounded gruff. “I said we’re leaving, and unless you want to get on a ship bound for Santiago with your shirttails hanging out, better change and get ready.” He made to leave the room. “I hope you have a shawl or something. It’s gotten cooler out, and we have half an hour in a wagon to get to port.” Then he vanished into his own room next door, leaving Audra gape-mouthed in the hallway.
“Who does he think he is?” She growled as she stamped her foot against the cold hard floor. “Infuriating! He is absolutely infuriating!” Audra heaved the door shut with gusto. “These are not my shirttails, either!”

8) What is your favourite attribute of the hero and heroine?
I love that Audra is an independent woman who has a plan. It’s not always the best plan but it’s a plan. And I love that Rollins is a good man who is strong enough to know when he’s whipped and enjoy it!

9) What’s next?
Next on the agenda is a historical romance set in Marietta, Ohio in 1790 when the U.S. government established the Northwest Territory. Rebecca Pennington is a smart young woman who wants to be a doctor but the establishment in Baltimore won’t allow her to practice so she follows her parents to Marietta to discover when she arrives that her little sister has been kidnapped by raiding Indians.

On the journey she must join a transport in Pittsburgh and meets Romney Applewood who has spent ten years as a young boy as a captive of the Delaware Indians in Ohio. He’s willing to be Rebecca’s guide to Marietta because he has a vendetta to settle with a certain Shawnee brave who mistreated his little sister while she was a captive.

He doesn’t want to return to the Ohio Valley because there is a price on his head. He killed two Shawnee and two French traders while rescuing his sister. They want his scalp, but he can’t resist the smart, pretty, determined Rebecca. She has no idea how dangerous the Ohio frontier is or how much danger she’s in of falling in love with Romney, the white man the Indians call Dark Moon Walker.

10) Tell me where you write?
At a great desk on a pc and sometimes on my laptop at Panera when I can get away.

11) Where would you like your career to be in 5 years?
Profitable.

12) Where can we find you?
MESSAGE TO LOVE is available at www.thewildrosepress.com and the regular online book sellers.
My new blog is up at www.lizarnoldbooks.wordpress.com. Please visit soon! I give away reader’s packages once a month!
My email is lizarnoldromance@yahoo.com. THANKS FOR HAVING ME VISIT YOUR BLOG!


Liz Arnold
“Stories you will love.”
lizarnoldromance@yahoo.com

www.lizarnoldbooks.wordpress.com

Thanks so much for being here today, a fellow Wild Rose author is always a pleasure to host. I loved your excerpt and even your next books sounds right up my street. Huge luck with sales! Now over to you, Liz is waiting for your comments...

Toni V Sweeney sends her hero for some serious therapy!

A Devil of a Sequel

Back in the Dark Ages when I was still writing novels for my own benefit because I couldn’t afford to buy them, I wrote a little ditty called Bargain with Lucifer. Starting out small and getting more outrageous as it went along, it concerned a young Creole named Lucifer Deveraux who makes a marriage of convenience to gain a fortune, falls in love with his wife, and ends up accidentally killing an ex-girlfriend to save that marriage. Throughout the story, try as I might, Luc was definitely not a nice person. Though handsome and sexy, he was, by turns, cruel, arrogant, and violent. As critic Margaret Marr points out, “There’s no way that I’d let a man treat me the way he treats Julie; he’d be out on his butt with a broken nose in no time flat!”(http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/10/NW1000098.php) In fact, in some places, he almost seemed to have two personalities, and eventually actually questions his own sanity. In the end, he decides he’s just so undisciplined and accustomed to having his way that he’s not crazy, but spoiled. Nevertheless, a good session with a psychologist is definitely in order. The story ends with Luc heading back to Dallas where everything started, to begin psychotherapy, leaving his wife to wait for his return as the husband and father she’d want in her life.

I was now burdened with some left-over plot lines and some unanswered questions: what about Michel, the younger brother, whose wife Luc accidentally killed; what about the child she had before she died, which may or may not be Luc’s; what’s Julie going to do all this time her husband’s away playing with Dr. Freud?

The answers to those questions came in Brother Devil, Michel’s story. Like its older brother, it started out small and then ran wild. Michel begins as a repressed widower, starved for affection by the treacherous wife who actually loved his brother. Discovering himself suddenly free of the chains binding himself to his cruel, unfaithful spouse, he responds like the frustrated, sexually-deprived male that he is…he runs amok. One woman after another falls to Michel’s suddenly awakened male charms and while his sister-in-law worries about him and his brother offers advice via Skype from Dallas, Michel the Angel finds himself fluttering in a downward spiral of sex and violence…and the sad part of the whole thing? Michel never wanted any of that…all he wants is someone who’ll love him for himself alone, a fact that is pointed out in an even more shocking climax when he meets Laurel Duncan, his wife’s cousin and look-alike…

Wonder what Margaret Marr will think of that? I can’t wait to find out!

Bargain with Lucifer and Brother Devil are available as e-books and print from Class Act Books, www.classactbooks.com. They are published under my pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone. Trailers can be seen at www.youtube.com/icsnow14

Love how you've explained your internal concern with a main character, Toni! Many people think writers must love or at least feel confident with every character we create but very often that isn't the case at all. I love that you knew deep-down things were quite right and worked out a sequel was in order to set the equilibrium. Sounds fabulous, bring on the comments!

Back from holiday and happy to welcome a brand new guest, Ann Yost!

Great to have you here, Ann! Can't wait to get started with the interview...

1) What is your writing routine:

My best case scenario is to get up bright and bushytailed, take the dog for a brisk two-mile walk, eat a container of yogurt and be seated at my computer by eight a.m., write until twelve, take a short break, then return to the computer for another five hours of writing.

More often it goes like this: I hear my husband leave for work around 6:30. Induced by guilt I prop my eyelids open with toothpicks, sling on the same clothes as the day before, tie the dog in the front yard, warm up a breakfast burrito, work on a jigsaw puzzle, exchange words with son as he leaves for work, read the Style section of the paper, approach my computer around nine a.m. and check to see which of the Bachelor couples is broken up, write for a few hours, nap, run errands, talk on phone, fix supper, write another couple of hours then collapse on the couch.

Sometimes I have pancakes instead of the burrito.

2) Which author/s inspire you to write?

I love them all. Every year for decades I’ve held a Jane Austen festival in the spring during which I re-read all her books and re-watch all the movies made of them. I am inspired by Jayne Ann Krentz, Jo Beverly, Marilyn Pappano, Mary Jo Putney, Georgette Heyer, Jack Hornby, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh….

3) Which is your favorite romance subgenre to read? To write?

That has really jumped around. Since I re-discovered the romance genre ten years ago, I’ve read and written both contemporaries and historicals. I love the Regency period but I also love stories that could actually happen today. I wish I had more affinity for paranormals but I like to read and write about small towns with quirky people and things that seem real to me.

4) How do you deal with criticism/rejection?

Not real well. I understand it is part of the business and when it is offered gently and, especially with suggestions, I appreciate it. When it is in a form letter that tells me all the possible reasons the manuscript isn’t chosen I find it kind of laughable. When my mother read my first book THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO and asked whether it was necessary to have all those “bulges” that hurt. On the other side, when someone reads one of my book and tells me she likes it or she laughed I am delirious and that totally makes up for the rejections.



5) what do you expect from an editor?

I have had two editors. One was very prompt and made excellent suggested changes and got the manuscript through the process very quickly. That was great. The other one takes longer but I feel she is more invested in the story so I don’t mind the time. I guess I’d like to feel as if the editor likes the story on an emotional level and is giving me suggestions that will strengthen that level. I have been a journalist for a long time and don’t feel I need too much help with grammar.

6) tell me about your latest release:

ABOUT A BABY came out August. 13, 2010. It is the first book in a trilogy about the Outlaw family of Eden, Maine and it centers around the eldest brother, Basil, a veterinarian, who has been living in exile in L.A. where he got involved with Hallie Scott, a woman facing a fertility deadline. The story starts a year after Baz rejected Hallie’s plea to give her a baby. Hallie now works with Baz’s estranged father in Eden, and Baz is returning home for the first time in twenty years because he is willing to do whatever it takes, including reconciling with his family, to win Hallie back. Despite the sweet story, the books is super spicy.



7) Short excerpt:

“I know I have to regain your trust, honey, but having a baby was the most important thing in the world to you last year. You said you wanted a family with me. Are you trying to tell me you don’t want that anymore?”

Hallie was raw and hurting and she just couldn’t fence with him. She drew in a deep breath.

“Please listen carefully because I don’t want to talk about this again. I don’t want to marry anyone. I can’t marry anyone.” She kept her voice steady. “I’m not pregnant. I will never be pregnant. I told you last year that I had a small window of time for conceiving. The window is now closed, as closed as this conversation.”

She started for the door, praying she could hold back the tears until she got to her apartment.

“You can’t know for sure that you’re infertile.”

There was that typical male arrogance. She turned to look at him. He had his hands on his hips and he wore nothing at all but a scowl. She tamped down the anger and the pain.

“I’ve got a lab report that says otherwise.”

8) I love Hallie. She has been on her own a long time but nearly always has a cheery outlook. She’s got a warm heart. When she has to euthanize a family’s beloved pet she mourns with them. She is also afraid of snakes and I really like the scene where she shrieks and throws two full cups of coffee into the air when she finds a boa constrictor with ennui coiled on her examining table.
9.) What is next for you?

My next Wild Rose Press book is FOR BETTER OR HEARSE. It is the part of the Jewels of the Night series and is the first of three books called THE DARLING BUDDS OF MAYVILLE about sisters in a small Michigan town who decide to turn a former mortuary into a wedding boutique.

10)

In addition to the MAYVILLE series I am working on a short Regency in which a nobleman is forced to marry for the sake of his title. It is called THE EARL THAT I MARRY.

11.) Your biggest piece of advice to aspiring novelists?

Persist. Remember, writing is a form of communication and it is only complete when someone reads your work. Don’t get stuck in re-writing the first chapter one hundred times and don’t walk away when you’re discouraged. The classes and books and workshops are all good but when it comes down to it you just have to plant your butt in the chair and write. You can do it. We can all do it! Oh, and don’t let your mother read your spicy books!


12)Where can readers find you.

My website is www.annyost.com It is supposed to be newly updated as of Aug. 17 and I would love for readers to visit and let me know what they think. Thank you so much for giving me this great opportunity to express myself.

Love the sound of your new trilogy, Ann! Sounds fabulous, you must have been over the moon when The Wild Rose Press contracted you! Ann would love to read your comments and answer any questions!

Hellooo!!

I am just taking a few minutes out from my family holiday in wet and windy Wales (boo-hoo!!) to share my first review of The Arrival of Lily Curtis with you. And yes, I am absolutely thrilled!!

Check it out!!



http://seriouslyreviewed.blogspot.com/2010/07/arrival-of-lily-curtis-by-rachel.html?zx=8fed48987f765528

See you in a week or so, people!

Best
Rachel x