IT'S GUEST AUTHOR SATURDAY!! Please welcome historical romance author Linda Carroll-Bradd...

 

Hi Linda and welcome to my blog! I am looking forward to our interview and learning more about you and your latest release TILDA - I must admit, I love historicals set on the American plains so will definitely be looking this up... Let's get things started with my questions, shall we?

1)      What is the best and worse thing you have learned from an editor/agent?

The best thing I learned early on was not to have body parts acting as the subject of sentences for the POV character. A bit technical on the craft side, I know, but I love learning the craft of writing technique by technique.

The worst from an editor was correcting things in my writing that made the technique weaker but more colloquial. I believe some editors just aren’t right for editing a historical voice.

2)      What is your typical day?

I don’t have one, because I’m also a freelance editor and I have to give that job its priority. If I’ve just started a new story, then I’m deep into the research phase. Once that winds down, I start putting details on paper. I attempt to list 100 things that could go into the story—from character traits to points of conflict to weather events to historical places. I’m part of a plot group of eight writers with whom I’ve been meeting for more than ten years. We have started doing Zoom write-ins in the mornings for a couple of hours. Whoever is available checks in and sits and writes. The accountability is nice.

As my deadline approaches, I assign a word count for the day and don’t stop until it is reached.

3)      What do you read while in the midst of a project? Or don’t you?

I do read for pleasure and usually in a genre different from what I’m writing. If the current work in progress is contemporary, I read historical, and vice versa.

4)      What do you do with a paperback once you’ve read it?

I have so many craft books that I don’t save fiction. I donate to the local library or I add it to my son’s free giveaway shelf in his apartment. But our tastes are really different and that doesn’t happen often.

5)      Are you nervous about friends reading your book?

Quite the opposite. I enjoy hearing that people I know have read it and am thrilled when I recognize the name of a person who’s left a review.

6)      What things inspire you to write? Location, music, film or even in a book?

For the past couple of years, I’ve been involved in multi-author projects where either a setting or a time period or a theme is the determining factor that a story must contain. Like my latest release is a wagon train story that had to be set in the mid-19th century in America. Those elements serve as a springboard to my creativity to build the character and plot.

Pre-pandemic, my husband and I often traveled to places in California and Arizona where I might place a story so I could take pictures and jot notes. I look forward to return to those trips.

7)      What’s next for you?

The novella I’m working on is titled Eveleen, and it’s part of the Rescue Me Mail-Order Brides series.  It’s a companion story to an earlier release in the series featuring cousins who experience a threat in their lives and have to seek out a safer place.

BLURB: After maid Eveleen Murphy rebuffs the romantic advances of her boss’s brother, she’s blamed for theft of jewelry. She answers an ad for a mail order bride in Wyoming Territory and jumps on a westbound train.

Dairy farmer Bjorn Crosby regrets writing to secure a farm wife the minute he sees the mail order bride ad in print. When he’s faced with the city woman herself, he wishes he could send her back. With such a tenuous start, what hope does this relationship have?

Releases June 12 https://www.amazon.com/Eveleen-Rescue-Mail-Order-Brides-ebook/dp/B0BLTBF1Q2

 

BLURB & BUY LINK:

Tilda, book 31 in Prairie Roses Collection multi-author series

Following her parents’ death, Tilda Torsdotter turns to her cousin, Rakel, for help and joins her family’s preparations to head to California. Tilda’s job will be to assist pregnant Rakel with her two children under age five and receive the protection of Rakel’s husband, Albert. Then Rakel sickens and dies, and Albert looks to Tilda to fulfill her cousin’s duties--all of them.
Flynn Mannix has his eye set on reaching the gold fields of California. An easy-going guy, he’s always made his way doing one task or another but now he wants to make something of himself. Hiring on as a driver on a wagon train seems like the easiest way to reach the west coast. Until he witnesses an inappropriate encounter and steps in. Suddenly, he’s committed to a marriage of convenience with Tilda and responsible for her safety until they reach California. At the end of the trail, will the couple go their separate ways, or will they realize the experience has made their marriage real?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXP3FBMT


BIO/WEB CONTACTS

As a young girl, I spent lots of my free time lying on my bed reading about fascinating characters having exciting adventures in places far away and in other time periods. In later years, I discovered and devoured family saga stories and romance novels. At a certain point, I grew cocky enough to think I could write one of these stories. Then I learned what a balancing act writing a novel is, but I wasn’t deterred. Twelve years later, my first fiction sale was achieved--a confession story.

After reading Debra Holland’s “Montana Sky” series and Caroline Fyffe’s “Prairie Hearts” series, I wanted to try my hand at historicals. I was thrilled to be invited to contribute to Sweetwater Springs Christmas and continued writing in the Montana Sky world by developing my Entertainers of the West series.

Married with 4 adult children and 2 granddaughters, I now write heartwarming contemporary and historical stories with a touch of humor and a bit of sass from my home in the southern California mountains. Lots of my stories are set in Texas where I lived for a dozen years.

Blog  http://blog.lindacarroll-bradd.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/linda.carrollbradd

Twitter  https://www.twitter.com/lcarrollbradd

Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/author/lindacarroll-bradd

 

BookBub  https://www.bookbub.com/authors/linda-carroll-bradd

Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1806413.Linda_Carroll_Bradd

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