Interview with Pauline Gruber – Where Did She Get Inspiration

Author Spotlight – Pauline Gruber

I am thrilled to be shining the spotlight on Pauline Gruber this month. You know how I like to ask questions! Well, here is my interview with Pauline. I’m looking forward to her new release, The Girl and The Gargoyle, coming out on June 26th.

Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been writing? What genre do you write?
I’ve been writing “seriously” for five years, although I’ve been dabbling most of my life. I write paranormal romance, fantasy adventure, contemporary romance, and science fiction for young adults. Maybe it would it be easier to list what I don’t write. Dystopian, steampunk, and horror.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
The inspiration for The Girl and the Raven came while I was falling asleep one night and then it proceeded to rob me of sleep for a week. A sixteen-year-old girl from Tennessee moves to Chicago and is nearly run over by a wealthy investor barrelling down the street. Turns out a demon is coming for the man’s son and this girl is the only one who can save him. It’s an over simplified version of the story, but there it is. I loved writing that story!
The inspiration for my vampire novel (not yet published) came from the Chateau d’Abbadie, a castle in France. I built a duplicate castle in remote Wisconsin where a group of poker playing vampires reside (they also garden at night). I had so much fun studying castles and interiors while writing that story.
Where/When do you do the most of your writing?
I write on the train while commuting to my day job. It’s fabulous because I can either plug in my earbuds and listen to one of my music mixes on my iPod or keep my ears open and eavesdrop on interesting conversations. It’s great fuel for future characters and stories. I also write at my dining room table at home.
What do you think has been your biggest accomplishment?Writing and publishing my first book. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done and the most rewarding.
Do you have a favorite author?
Just one? Seriously? I’ll be nice and keep it to 7. Ann Patchett, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Neil Gaiman, JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and Judy Blume
Do you have any advice for other authors?
The first is to put your butt in the chair and actually write. It’s been said hundreds of times before, but it bears repeating. There is a guy in my IT Department at the day job. He’s so creative and comes up with brilliant story ideas. I touch base with him periodically, to find out where he’s at with a particular story and to cheer him on. The answer is always the same. He rattles off a dozen reasons why he’s made no progress. It’s frustrating. His stories need to be told.
Second piece of advice: persevere. That one word is mighty powerful. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to give up. Whether you suffer from writer’s block, anxiety, lack of time, lack of ideas, a ton of responsibility, the blues, lack of sleep, whatever it is, DON’T GIVE UP! Believe in yourself and your stories. I promise you, the satisfaction you will feel upon completing your book is unlike anything else. And, like one of my readers recently pointed out to me “You’ve got big time bragging rights!”
Describe your latest WIP.
The Girl and the Gargoyle, the sequel to The Girl and the Raven, is being released on June 26th. I’m so in love with this book! Here is the blurb:
Being half-witch/half-demon and dating Marcus, a gargoyle, is complicated enough for Lucy. She can almost tolerate Jude, her demon father, implementing demon training. But when Marcus’s family arrives in Chicago, her world begins to crumble. Marcus’s mother wants him to return to the gargoyle clan where he belongs; his father wants Marcus to help him kill Jude. There’s one very major problem with this: if Jude dies, Lucy dies.
Marcus works with other supernaturals to help save Jude and Lucy. Meanwhile Lucy has her own plan and with the aid of a surprise newcomer, seeks help from the most unlikely—and dangerous—source.
The Girl and The Raven is at Amazon
The Girl and The Gargoyle will be released on June 26th.
How can readers reach you?
My website: www.paulinegruber.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulinegruberauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulineGruber

Interview with Catherine Cade – Romance Author

Author Spotlight – Catherine Cade

Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been writing? What genre do you write?

First, thanks so much to S.E. Smith, fabulous sci fi romance author for inviting me to guest here! Love SE’s stories, so I’m thrilled to meet her readers for a day.I’m Cathryn Cade. I grew up in Montana in the cowboy culture, taught school there, married and raised two wonderful sons. Now my husband and I live in the lake country of North Idaho, with a boat, bicycles and a love for brewpubs. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m usually quilting with colors as wild as my characters.I’ve been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil! As a teen, I read my first romance and that was it — I became a romance reader & writer. I wrote scenes and snippets for years. In 2007 my husband, the boys and I moved to Portland OR, where I discovered Romance Writers of America. Then I learned how to construct a romance that other people would actually want to read, and how to get it before a publisher.
What inspired you to write your first book?
In 2007, Samhain Publishing put out a call for shifter novellas. I sat down and over spring break from teaching I wrote Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bryght, a 30K erotic sci fi romance. The book debuted in 2008 at #1 on Samhain and the #7 best-seller on Amazon. What a thrill that was!
Where do you get your inspiration from?My space opera is just a short leap from the ‘horse opera’ westerns I loved as a child. My space captains are alpha heroes with lasers instead of six guns, my heroines wear fitted flight suits instead of petticoats and the Native Americans are planetary natives struggling to get Earthlings to behave when they show up uninvited on planet. I adore gadgets, so lasers, power shields and space ships are favorite aspects of my sci fi universe. I also love messing about with sexual mores and powers on the different planets—that’s just fun! Fiercely sexy alpha shifters, coolly arrogant empath-intuits, exotically beautiful desert-dwelling reptiloids … they all dwell in the Cade-iverse!
What series/book did you write that has the biggest following.My current sexy, futuristic LodeStar Series has been very popular. Logan Stark, space billionaire and his two younger brothers Joran and Creed fight to hold their own against villainous space pirates, and win true love on a futuristic Earth II and beyond. These guys are alphas who are willing to get as down & dirty as it takes to show their feisty heroines where they belong—at their hero’s side and in his arms. The major romance arc of the series has wrapped up for Logan Stark, but I’m now giving some fave secondary characters their own stories, so watch for more LodeStar goodness.
Is there anything that you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Can someone please, please clone me so I will have time to write all the series, characters and stories in my brain?? Recently a funny meme appeared on Facebook, that inside the mind of a writer are 25,000 screen tabs open all the time that cannot be closed. This is so true! I write sci fi, contemporary, contemporary paranormal and have too many ideas to count in all of these genres.
Describe your latest WIP

Cyborg Pleasure; the Space Madam’s Warrior, Book 6 in The LodeStar Series debuts in February 2016. Having a blast writing this one!She lost everything …Ilya Mondas once lived her dream — life with a band of space gypsies wandering the wild plains of Frontiera, the freedom to use her tech savvy to wreak mayhem on pirates and slavers, and her big, soft-spoken warrior Var, who adored her. Then she lost him, and the life she loved.She’ll do anything to get it all back …Now on her own, she must take over The Pleasure Palace, a ragtag space-station casino, home to hookers, gamblers and rogues. But one or all of them want her dead, and they have the monsters to do it — human-cyborg gladiators, created for the illegal fight ring hidden deep in the center of her new home. Where the biggest, baddest cyborg of all looks eerily like her dead husband.But can she trust him again?
How can readers reach you?I’m easy to reach & love to chat with readers. I spend a lot of time on Facebook, and I have an email link on my website, where you can also find all the books, along with reviews, exclusive excerpts and more. To keep up with new releases & maybe win books and bling, sign up for my newsletter!

Razor’s Traitorous Heart in Audiobook

Razor’s Traitorous Heart, The Alliance Book 2

Out Now in Audiobook:
Audible
iTunes
Amazon
Soundcloud

Blurb:

Kali Parks is a shadow in the war between two factions that are fighting to gain control of Chicago. Born and raised on the streets, she stands as a silent sentinel at her brother’s side as he battles to gain control. She will do whatever it takes to bring peace to those she has pledged her life to protect, including fighting against the creatures that came to their world almost six years before.

Razor, a councilman for the Alliance, has been sent to oversee the remaining Trivator troops on Earth and make sure the transition for the induction of Earth into the Alliance goes smoothly. He is the one the Alliance calls when they have a situation that needs to be resolved once and for all. His reputation for dealing with difficult rebels is renowned. He asks no questions and takes no prisoners. His job is to eliminate all threats to the Alliance.

He finds himself torn between duty and something he is unfamiliar with, his heart. When a shadow warrior saves his life and disappears, he discovers his world is no longer as cut and dry as he thought. The more he learns, the more he discovers he is not immune to the warrior’s passionate desire to fight to protect her people.

Forced by duty to settle the conflict, he must decide between the Alliance and his own desire to claim the unwilling warrior. When the conflict escalates, he does the only thing he can; he makes a pact with one of the factions in exchange for a prize that will surely cause a battle of a different kind – the one for his traitorous heart.

Will he be able to claim her before she escapes from him again? Or worse, will she sacrifice her life to protect those she loves before he can?

Listen Here:

Interview with Veronica Scott – Get To Know Her

Author Spotlight – Veronica Scott

Thanks for having me as your guest today! I love being the New Year’s Babe (uh, that was ‘babe’, right, not ‘baby’ LOL?) Happy 2015 at any rate and I’m honored to be here!

For those who haven’t met me, I’m a writer of science fiction romance, as well as ancient Egyptian paranormal romances; a voracious reader myself; a columnist for the USA Today Happily Ever After blog; wearer of long blingy earrings; lover of cats; mother to two and Gramma to one. Oh, and a totally addicted Twitteraholic. My day job is in the aerospace industry.

I started writing at the age of seven, a self-illustrated tale of princesses, flying cats and unicorns. Dad was a science fiction fan and gave me my first Andre Norton book at a young age, which I really think shaped my entire writing career from that moment on. Mom loved ancient history so we had all the sword and sandal novels and Time-Life books about Egypt, Greece and Rome. It seemed there were never enough SFR books to read (or novels set in ancient Egypt), so I started writing my own, but didn’t seriously pursue getting published until after my daughters were grown. I wrote PRIESTESS OF THE NILE in 2011, sent it off to the Carina Press slush pile and a few months later got The Call from Angela James. Now I self-publish both the SFR and the ancient Egyptian novels. Control freak here, love self-publishing!
I have a great support team of independent editors, cover artists and formatters, as well as a terrific audiobook narrator….

I like to create fully formed worlds containing their own mysteries and back story. I try to give the reader glimpses during the adventures, hopefully just enough to leave you wanting more. For the SFRs, which occur in a future galactic civilization called the Sectors, I ask myself “why this” and “how does that” and “if I lived on this planet what would I…” The novels may be science fiction, based in a technological, galactic civilization but I want there to be that element of something else, something mystical, that can’t quite be explained. By anyone!

The romance is really important to me when I’m reading a novel, and I love a strong heroine as well as an alpha male hero, so that’s what I write. Two of the heroines in my three published SFR’s to date are intergalactic businesswomen who don’t wait for anyone to rescue them, and who want to be equal partners insurmounting the danger and living the adventure. The third is a blind princess who surprises everyone with her strength in a crisis. The heroes in my books are Special Forces soldiers of the future, each with his own personal challenges, but courageous and caring – there’s nobody better to have at your back in a crisis.

WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM is a loose retelling of the Titanic, set in the far future…

ESCAPE FROM ZULAIRE is a story of a woman trapped behind enemy lines in an unexpected alien war, and the soldier charged with rescuing her…

MISSION TO MAHJUNDAR is about the blind Princess of Shadows and a soldier whose mission on her planet had nothing to do with saving her, until they fall into a forbidden love….

You can find out more about my books on my blog at http://veronicascott.wordpress.com/ They’re available as e books at all the usual online retailers and can also be ordered as paperbacks from Amazon. (Except for the two Carina Press Egyptian paranormal which are ebook only.) WRECK and ESCAPE are also available as audiobooks. The books are standalone and can be read in any order.

You can find me on:

Twitter as @vscotttheauthor

on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Veronica-Scott/177217415659637?ref=hl

Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5428500.Veronica_Scott

Amazon Author Central:
http://www.amazon.com/Veronica-Scott/e/B006CUCJ92/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1419270822&sr=1-2-ent

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