Author spotlight with C.R. Moss

What is the biggest piece of your advice you can give a beginning writer?
Learn the craft! This means grammar, characterization, plot, etc., all the good things that go into a story. You might be able to tell a good story, but if you can’t write it by showing what the characters are doing/feeling, your writing career won’t go anywhere. Get involved in a critique partnership/group. Learn the non-creative side of the business as well. Be prepared.

Name one thing readers don’t know about you.
I used to crew for a balloon pilot.

Who is your favorite all-time author?
It’s a tossup between Anne Rice and Stephen King.

Are love scenes easy/difficult to write?
Sometimes they’re easy, other times they’re hard. For me, it depends upon the story and the mood of the characters. In one story I worked on, my hero and heroine were supposed to have a threesome with another character and then my hero decided he didn’t want anyone else but him to touch his girl. We were at a stalemate and the story went on hold until he stopped having a hissy fit.

What’s your biggest reward in being a writer?
I’m able to get paid doing what I love.

To date, which is your favorite story? Which one did you have the most fun writing?
To date, my favorite Extasy Books story is The Redeemer found in The Mystics. The one I’ve had the most fun writing so far is Dirty Little Trip in my Dirty Little series of books that follows scrumptious, bad boy demon, Ash.
Readers can find C.R. Moss at www.crmoss.net

Author spotlight with Courtney Breazile

Courtney, what has been your biggest influence on becoming a writer?
Everything I have read. I have always loved books and all the enjoyment I found in them since I was a child, I wanted to create and share with others. Every time I read a great book, I thought about how much I wanted to write something like that.

How did you feel when you got your first publishing contract?
So excited and scared. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of my shyness to be able to advertise myself and put myself out there.

How do you categorize yourself: pantser or plotter?
I am definitely a pantser. I usually sit down with a vague plot line and a great opening scene in my head, but no real idea of where I am going. I really like the story to flow and not feel like I am stuck with an idea I already came up with.

What makes a book great in your eyes?
It makes you want to ignore everything around you just so you can finish it! I do that often, just ask my family.

What is the biggest piece of your advice you can give a beginning writer?
The best piece of advice I have ever gotten, and use quite a bit is, when you’re stuck, go back, re-read what you have written and figure out where you deviated from the book you were intending to write.
It works for me, I would recommend it to others.

Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Oh yes, and they are my little secret…

What influences your writing? And why?
I am influenced by a lot of things. What I read, what I watch, my dreams and sometimes just what I hear from people around me. I often look at people or situations and think of how it would look in a story. I don’t think I am ever not getting ideas and storing them in my head for later.

Name one thing readers don’t know about you.
Okay this is kind of funny but…I have never mowed the lawn! Seriously, I was a spoiled child I guess. I never mowed the lawn and never lived without a man to do it for me. I plan to keep it that way, a small but very attainable life goal I think.

What are you working on now?
Right now I am working on edits for the third book in the Immortal Council Series and also something new I am not quite ready to announce.

Who is your favorite all-time author?
I don’t have a favorite, there are so many that I love. One that stands out that I have loved for a long time is Stephen King. I love horror.

Are love scenes easy/difficult to write?
It depends, some are easy and some are more difficult. It depends on how much personal experience I have to relate to the scene.

Do you write in one genre or several different ones? And why?
There is always romance behind my stories, but I have written historical, horror, urban fantasy and contemporary. I write whatever feels good at the time. I like not being bound to one particular genre.

If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
On a tropical beach, always on a tropical beach.

How do you deal with the dreaded writer’s block?
I try and force out words sometimes, just to see if I can get the flow going. If that doesn’t work, I read over what I have written or I get away from it and take a break. Sometimes start writing something else.

Do you have another career besides writing? What is it?
I have a degree in elementary education and teach preschool.

What’s your biggest reward in being a writer?
Knowing that I am doing what I have wanted to do since I was a kid, knowing that I am not one of those people who sit back and say I could do that or I want to someday, I am doing it and that feels great.

To date, which is your favorite story? Which one did you have the most fun writing?
My favorite story so far is Keeping Blood, the second in my Immortal Council Series. I absolutely love the characters in it and how it really created the series. I started writing it first, then went back and wrote Blood Visions, the first in the series.

How do you go about developing your characters and setting?
I take notes when I am beginning a story on the character. I picture them in my head and go from there. Setting is the same, I feel like the books play out as a movie in my head as I write.

If you had the opportunity to say one thing to your readers, what would that be?
I hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Visit Courtney at: www.courtneybreazile.com

Author spotlight with Regan Taylor

Hello Regan,
Tell us, what has been your biggest influence on becoming a writer?
Having a vivid imagination. My own every day life is pretty staid. I like it that way. I'm not big on needless drama and constant adrenaline rushes. But I do like the idea of going to other times and places. Reading is one avenue for accomplishing that and writing takes me every further.

How did you feel when you got your first publishing contract?
Stunned. Utterly and completely stunned. It wasn't anything I ever saw myself doing.

How do you categorize yourself: pantser or plotter?
Dreamer—most of my books come from my dreams. I have vivid dreams, often lucid dreams and write them down as soon as I wake from them. I've studied dream work since high school and have trained myself to wake up immediately after a dream and to write it down. Since I started writing, I dream the next scene for most of my books. So does that make me a dreamster?

What makes a book great in your eyes?
Three dimensional characters, solid research, being able to transport me into the story so I feel like I'm part of it.

What is the biggest piece of your advice you can give a beginning writer?
You know, even after, ummm, let's see, five years since my first book was published, I still feel like a beginning.

Do you have any guilty pleasures?
I'm human, what do you think?

What influences your writing? And why?
My dreams, my day to day life.

Name one thing readers don’t know about you.
I take classes like normal people go to movies.

What are you working on now?
With All Dispatch.

Who is your favorite all-time author?
Alexander Dumas.

Are love scenes easy/difficult to write?
Painfully so.

Do you write in one genre or several different ones? And why?
Most of my books are time travels so that seems to put me in several genres within the same book. I do like books—and writing—with reincarnation and dream themes.

If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
Right where I am—in my living room with my cats.

How do you deal with the dreaded writer’s block?
Writer's block? Knock wood, never had it.

Do you have another career besides writing? What is it?
I'm a legal secretary.

What’s your biggest reward in being a writer?
I can decide what the ending should be.

To date, which is your favorite story? Which one did you have the most fun writing?
Traveling Bride—which hasn't been sold yet. The Thrill is Gone—it's my fantasy of what my life should have been.

How do you go about developing your characters and setting?
The characters tell me who they are and what they see.
Okay, at the risk of sounding crazy and going back to my other career—I was a therapist for awhile although I guess I still am because it's not really something you resign from. While completing my masters, Jung was my icon, my hoped for arrival point as a therapist. I believe when we say our characters speak to us that they are in fact parts of ourselves. They say most of us use 10% of our mental capacity. I believe authors have found a way to use at least part of that other 90% and that’s where those fascinating characters come from. They are parts of our psyche and if we listen to that inner voice, we know what makes a good story.

If you had the opportunity to say one thing to your readers, what would that be?
Happy reading.

http://regantaylorsworld.blogspot.com/

Author Spotlight with Blak Rayne

Hi Blak and welcome!
Tell us, how did you feel when you got your first publishing contract?
Excited and happy all in the same breathe, and I suppose there was a little fear of the unknown mixed in there.

What makes a book great in your eyes?
A great book maintains solid characters who aren’t impervious to change and an interesting secret helps as well.

Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Smoking. I quit a long time ago, but I still get the urge to light up. The main character in the novel I’m currently writing is fighting with the same bad habit.

What are you working on now?
The story has a surreal futuristic setting. The main character, a bounty hunter, is asked by a close friend to assist with a murder investigation and stop a black market slave trade smuggling ring, while at the same time struggling with his feelings for his latest bounty. All I can reveal, it there are several stories within a story and a secret or two.

Are love scenes easy/difficult to write?
I find them fairly easy as long as I’m in the mood. When I write, my moods shift from character to character, taking into account how they’re feeling during that particular scene.

Do you write in one genre or several different ones? And why?
I’ve always written in several different because I find where one lacks or inhibits me another will allow me to release my full imagination.

What’s your biggest reward in being a writer?
It gives me a chance to share my personal experiences, thoughts, feelings and opinions with the reader.

How do you go about developing your characters and setting?
Almost every character I’ve ever created is loosely based on someone I know. This can include my own personality traits or who I’d like to be. And it’s the same set of rules for the settings in my stories, most are again loosely based on places I’m familiar with and the odd time somewhere I’ve dreamt of traveling too.

If you had the opportunity to say one thing to your readers, what would that be?
If anything I’ve written causes someone to pause for a thought, made them laugh or cry, or even made them angry, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Emotions are a powerful tool and when the reader feels as the characters do then the book has succeeded to entertain and perhaps even enlighten. I appreciate feedback so please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at http://www.blakraynebooks.com/ or at any of my other links listed in the website. Thanks!