Sarah Williams's Blog: Write with Love , page 7

Monica McInerney Trip of a Lifetime

Monica McInerney is the Australian-born Dublin-based author of the best-selling novels The Trip of a Lifetime, Hello from the Gillespies, The House of Memories, Lola’s Secret, At Home with the Templetons, Those Faraday Girls (The Faraday Girls in the USA), Family Baggage, The Alphabet Sisters, Spin the Bottle(Greetings from Somewhere Else in the USA), Upside Down Inside Out and A Taste for It; the novella Odd One Out and a short story collection All Together Now, published internationally and in translation in more than 12 languages. Her articles and short stories have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies in Australia, the UK and Ireland.

Horses and history with Lizzi Tremayne

Lizzi writes about Historical Scotland, the Old West, Tsarist Russia, and Colonial New Zealand, as well as veterinary fiction and non-fiction—all with a horsey flair. She grew up riding wild in the Santa Cruz Mountain redwoods, became an equine veterinarian at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and practiced in the California Pony Express and Gold Country before emigrating to New Zealand.

First Kiwi Rita Winner Brynn Kelly

She won the 2018 RITA® for best romance novella for FORBIDDEN RIVER and was nominated for an RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award for her romantic thriller EDGE OF TRUTH. Her debut novel, DECEPTION ISLAND, finaled in the Golden Heart®. Brynn has a journalism degree and has won several other prestigious writing and journalism awards, including the Koru, Valerie Parv and Pacific Hearts awards. She’s also a bestselling non-fiction author in her native New Zealand.

Anna Campbell Queen of Regency Romance

Anna Campbell has written 10 multi award-winning full-length historical romances for Grand Central Publishing and Avon HarperCollins and 19 bestselling indie romances. She’s recently self-published a new series, the Likely Lairds.

Write what you know with T M Clark

Zimbabwe born, Tina Marie Clark’s novel My Brother-But-One was published by the Mira imprint of Harlequin, Australia in December 2013, and Queensland Literary People’s Choice Award in 2014. Shooting Butterflies,( 2014). Tears Of The Cheetah (2015), Child of Africa (2017), and Slowly! Slowly! (Wombat Books, 2017) is the children’s companion book to Child Of Africa. ( And a CBCA Notable Picture Book, 2018.) Nature Of The Lion (Mira) is now out!

 

Collecting awards with Pamela Freeman (Hart)

Pamela is an award-winning author for adults and children. She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney. Under the name Pamela Freeman she wrote the historical novel THE BLACK DRESS, which won the NSW Premier’s History Prize for 2006. Pamela is also well known for her fantasy novels for adults, published by Orbit worldwide, the Castings Trilogy, and her Aurealis Award-winning novel EMBER AND ASH. Pamela lives in Sydney with her husband and their son, and teaches at the Australian Writers’ Centre. THE DESERT NURSE follows her bestselling novels THE SOLDIER’S WIFE, THE WAR BRIDE and A LETTER FROM ITALY.

Swashbuckling sexiness with Bernadette Rowley

Bernadette Rowley is a lover of epic fantasy who is a veterinarian by day and an author by night. She is currently published in the genre of fantasy/paranormal romance with six books, all set in her fantasy world of Thorius.

Elizabeth Ellen Carter on Corsairs and Pirates

Elizabeth Ellen Carter is an award-winning historical romance writer who pens richly detailed historical romantic adventures. A former newspaper journalist, Carter ran an award-winning PR agency for 12 years.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. You will also have access to bonus episodes and insider information. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            G’day and welcome to Write with Love. Today I’m chatting to award-winning, historical romance writer, Elizabeth Ellen Carter. Hi Elizabeth, thanks for joining me.

Elizabeth E C:                Hello.  Thank you very much Sarah. Wonderful to be chatting with you.

Sarah Williams:             Wonderful, yeah. So, tell us about your story and how you got into this amazing career.

Elizabeth E C:                I’ve always been a writer. When I ran out of things to read when I was a kid, I started writing my own books. I started writing a girl detective story on my mother’s typewriter. When I grew a little older I realized that being a novelist probably wasn’t a first start career, so then I moved into journalism because at least they pay me to write. And it’s so funny  people  say, “Oh, you’re really good at creative writing, you should be a journalist”. And it’s sort of, in a way, creative writing is the worst quality you can have as a journalist because you’re supposed to be dealing with facts.

So, I didn’t do too well in the hard news department. I really liked features and I really liked talking to people, really exploring their motivations and going in-depth. So I did that for a number of years and in my 20’s I thought, you know, maybe I should write a novel again. And I shudder to think back about those early stories but I started reexploring my local historical. So it will be five years in October that my debut novel, Moonstone Obsession came out. And from there, I’ve got seven full length titles, the most recent one … I’ll do the big plug … Shadow of the Corsairs is book three in a series called Heart of the Corsairs and that’s set in the Mediterranean in the early 19th Century, looking at a real-life aspect of the pirates of the Barbary Coast.

Sarah Williams:             Oh fantastic. Wow. Pirates, who doesn’t love pirates.

Elizabeth E C:                [crosstalk 00:03:10]Good pirates.

Sarah Williams:             Good pirates. So tell us about that initial first book, how did you go about getting published? Did you have to do the submission processes and all those sorts of things? What did you do?

Elizabeth E C:                Well, I wasn’t sure how seriously I was going to take it because it was something to entertain myself initially. But a friend of mine, a big ex footballer, who writes jingles said, you know what, if you’ve written one of these things, you should join the Romance Writers of Australia and they had a competition for unpublished manuscripts and to my surprise, Moonstone Obsession, made the long-list and I thought, well maybe there’s actually something to this. So I started submitting. The third group that I submitted to, a small press in the United States, said yeah, we’ll take it. So it was a really sort of quick entry into the publishing and I learned a heck of a lot. I realize now that even though I was a journalist by trade, I’ve written everything from features on news stories to even writing scripts for radio and TV. There’s a real art to novel writing, which I really hadn’t considered before.

Sarah Williams:             There sure is, and that’s why organizations like Romance Writers are so fantastic teaching us the craft, and then the business side. So, that’s awesome. So, how long between books did you go, did your second one come out with that same small press?

Elizabeth E C:                Yes, yes, I had three titles with them and sort of one every year. It was funny, I was aware…this is the dark side of the publishing industry…I was aware that, as authors, you got to heavily promote yourself, you’ve really got to take control of that. Which is what I did and I was happy with that, but by the time the third book came out with this particular press, there were issues. There were three changes of editors through the process. I didn’t get my cover until an hour before release day.

Sarah Williams:             Oh my gosh.

Elizabeth E C:                I thought, no, you’re not going to get another title from me again. But I’d been working something a little different and this is my Roman Era-

Sarah Williams:             Ohhh.

Elizabeth E C:                -novel called Dark Heart, and I thought, no, I really want to give this a really strong opportunist. So what I did is while I was working on that, I still wanted to have a release for 2016 so I decided to indie publish two novellas. So, the first one is, Nocturne, and that is a Regency Gothic romance. And something a little fun for Christmas, The Thief of Hearts, which is a Victorian mystery romance.

The process after that was really interesting because I did the big submission rounds and I got the loveliest rejection letters in the world for Dark Heart … the sort of, “Yeah, it’s great, love it, but we can’t sell Roman”. “Yeah, we love it, but change the character’s back story, gut this, gut the history, do this, do that and we’ll work with you”. And it’s sort of, “No … no I believe in the integrity of this story”.

And I came within a month of saying, you know what, I’m going to self publish this, it will find a home. And I submitted to Kathryn Le Veque’s imprint, and anyone who knows historical romance knows Kathryn and her absolutely amazing medieval series. And within a week of submission, she sent me a contract.

Sarah Williams:             Oh wow.

Elizabeth E C:                And I’ve been absolutely delighted working with her ever since and she’s got some absolutely top draw historical romance authors and because she specializes in that, it’s just been absolutely brilliant.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, that’s absolutely fantastic. So tell us about your Regency books. So they’re a bit adventure, suspense, come on, give us the blurbs.

Elizabeth E C:                Okay. Well, start with this one which is book one in the Heart of the Corsairs series. That Kit Hardacre and Sophia Green. I love this couple a lot. The three book series is set in the Mediterranean towards the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars. What a lot of people don’t realize is during that time as well there was a lot of slaving from Africa into Europe. I mean everybody knows about the transatlantic slave trade but not a lot of people know about the pirates of the Barbary Coast. And between 1650 and 1830 between 800,000 and 1.25 million Europeans, some as far away as Iceland, were sold into slavery into Africa and Arabia. And so within that context I wanted to explore that and our darling hero, Kit here, is rather damaged by his experience. He was a captive of the Corsairs. His ship was captured when he was a cabin boy and being a pretty young blonde boy, went through quite a horrific ordeal before he escaped. So his passion for vengeance is the underscoring theme in the Heart of the Corsairs series.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, oh wow. So that’s really awesome. So then is the next one in that series, is it a sequel, or is it just?

Elizabeth E C:                It is a sequel, that is Revenge of the Corsairs. It takes up where Captive of the Corsairs leaves off. The hero is the first officer who works with Kit Hardacre, Elias Nash, and the heroine is Laura, a cousin of the heroine. And that is an exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder and dealing with the aftermath of the horrific events because Sophia and Laura end up in a harem [inaudible 00:10:43] and Laura as a result of that is pregnant to her abductor so there is a lot of dynamic. So don’t let anyone tell you that romance is lightweight.

Sarah Williams:             Doesn’t have to be!

Elizabeth E C:                There’s opportunity to really explore deep psychological themes built on the relationships and the dynamics of men and women and family at large is… that’s just made for romance.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, yeah it is.

Elizabeth E C:                That is romance.

Sarah Williams:             Mmm, yeah. And I always think it’s such a great way of exploring history as well. You know, I’ve not heard of that before. So that’s really, really fantastic.

So, number three?

Elizabeth E C:                Number three is Shadow of the Corsairs. That is actually a prequel to the first two. And the hero Jonathan, is an Ethiopian … he’s the equivalent of the son of a Duke … he’s the son of a Ras. And he’s an explorer. He’s had wanderlust all of his life. He’s partnered with a German explorer and everything is going fine and then he is sold into slavery. His camp at the source of the Nile is raided. But he discovers that it wasn’t just a random raid. He was targeted especially  for abduction. So part of Shadow of the Corsairs is, again, exploring love and loss, because Jonathan loses his wife and daughters. And also, looking at how one rebuilds again, as well as the machinations of Ethiopian politics, would you believe? Not a topic that a lot of romance writers [inaudible 00:13:01], but to me I couldn’t set a series in the Mediterranean without referencing Africa.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, yeah absolutely, gosh. Does it take a lot to research this? I mean are you just stumble at it and Google and books for months?

Elizabeth E C:                My husband jokes that its five minutes writing and twenty minutes research. He’s probably not far wrong. But the approach that I take is, and again, it’s was what you were saying before about how historical romance is a great way to explore history, because what it does is, it actually, through the eyes of the hero and heroine, puts you in a particular time and place. And my favorite historical romance authors make you feel immersed in that time and place. That you can smell what they smell and hear the sounds on the street. And it also explores what it would be like to live in that segment of time. So that’s what I try and do as well. So really make it so people feel like they’ve walked in somebody’s else’s footsteps for a few hours.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, absolutely, that’s fantastic. Do you have to do much travel for this? Or do, you know, been able to see these places?

Elizabeth E C:                Sadly, not which is why I really, really love Google Earth and of course thank goodness for the internet. As much as I love my history, there’s a lot I couldn’t do without it, because you’ve got instant access to historical research from the finest universities in the world. And to produce something which has actual history, as one of its underpinnings, you certainly couldn’t do it at that frequency that many historical romance authors can do without research being readily available in the comfort of one owns home. So, I would love to, traveling is big on the bucket list because of course the Corsair series is likely set in Sicily and of course Dark Heart, being set in Rome, to be able to actually walk through those place. So, no, the closest so far as has been San Francisco where I was on my way to RT in May. And one of my Christmas short stories, which will be coming out with the Blue Stocking Bells in November, is set in 1920’s San Francisco. So that’s the most recent time period[inaudible 00:15:57].That was fun to be able to walk those streets and really get a feel for the city.

Sarah Williams:             Yes, and 1920’s, that’s almost contemporary.

Elizabeth E C:                It is to me and I guess what the thing is, one of the reasons why it feels contemporary, even though its essentially old, is because we’ve got this permanent record, thanks to film. One of my favorite films was released in 1934 and when you think we are talking, 84 years ago, and yet we can see contemporary, how they lived, what they wore, how they spoke. All of a sudden, something that was 100 years ago really does feel quite modern.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, yeah. That’s it exactly. Wow. So having a background in PR, does that help you, you think, as an author?

Elizabeth E C:                It helps me with deadlines. I can do deadlines really well. I guess what it has done, my journalism background, is make me appreciate that there was a different style of writing. And they are completely different disciplines. So, you can’t just think well, no, I can write a novel. I know lots of journalists who say, yeah one day I’m gonna do that. And I think, no you’re not because the attitude you have is one particular skill set which doesn’t necessarily translate.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, exactly, that’s brilliant. So what have you got coming out next? You’ve got a few releases before the end of the year?

Elizabeth E C:                Ha, ha, ha. I’m crazy. I have just utterly, utterly crazy.the other,[inaudible 00:17:54] made myself. Okay, I have, and I can , oh, the Bell series, exclusively, haven’t quite sort of, we’re waiting for the official  go date. First, is going to be a short novel cathedral Promise of the Bells.

Cora Lee is an American historical romance author, she has organized a whole bunch of authors in a loosely connected series called, Legends of Love. So the brief was, take a legend from history, and reimagine that story in Regency England. So, I’ve picked, Dick Whittington and his cat.

So, I’m having a lot of fun with that. That’s gonna be a childhood sweetheart story. Next on the list, is the story set in San Francisco in the 1920’s, called, A Fine Chance. And that is part of the the Blue Striking Bells Anthology. And I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to reveal the name of the series yet. Watching out for that.

My publisher is also doing a Christmas anthology. So, my story contribution for that is called, Father’s Day. So it features Kit Hardacre here and a reunion story with his father, who is the hero of a series I’m working on now called The King’s Rogues. And that is set ten years prior to the [inaudible 00:19:38]that is set in the early part of the Napoleonic Wars. Our hero, Kit, believes he is an orphan. My publisher asked me, look can you do an extension. I said no. He said, what about another relative. And I thought, his father. So, they’ve got a lovely father, son reunion story. And, hopefully either at the end of this year or early next, book one in the King’s Rouges’ series called, Live and Let Spy. The full book series has titles that I’ve comprised on James Bond films. So, Live and Let Spy, From the Duke With Love, Playful. But a whole lot of fun. There’ll be a little bit lash and tongue, but it will have lots of romance and adventure.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, oh that’s awesome. So there’s lots to stay around and put our to be read file. That’s awesome. Cool. Well, where can we find you online and stay in touch and keep the eye out for all these covers and releases?

Elizabeth E C:                Absolutely. My website is the best place to do that and that is elizabethellencarter.com or if your having trouble writing all of that down, eecarter.com. And in my book club, if you sign up for that, I do a quarterly magazine for Love’s Great Adventure and the next edition will be coming out in mid September.

Sarah Williams:             Oh, that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for that today, Elizabeth, that was great.

Elizabeth E C:    Thank you, Sarah. It’s been a lot of fun.

Cathryn Hein talks Fair Dinkum Aussies

A South Australian country girl by birth, Cathryn loves nothing more than a rugged rural hero who’s as good with his heart as he is with his hands, which is probably why she writes them! Her romances are warm and emotional, and feature themes that don’t flinch from the tougher side of life but are often happily tempered by the antics of naughty animals. Her aim is to make you smile, sigh, and perhaps sniffle a little, but most of all feel wonderful.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. You will also have access to bonus episodes and insider information. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            G’day and welcome to Write with Love. Today I’m chatting with my all time favorite Aussie river romance author, Cathryn Hein. Thanks for joining me today.

Cathryn Hein:                    Thank you, that’s a bit [inaudible 00:01:02]. I’m very flattered, thank you.

Sarah Williams:             So I met you in 2016 at the Australian Romance Readers Association book signing event. Do you remember that.

Speaker 2:                    My goodness. Where was that?

Sarah Williams:             That was in Adelaide.

Cathryn Hein:                 Adelaide, yeah that was fun.

Sarah Williams:             That was. And I remember going up to you because I’d already read all the books I wanted to get from everyone and I asked for Rocking Hill-

Cathryn Hein:                  Rocking Horse Hill.

Sarah Williams:             Rocking Horse Hill, yep. And you didn’t have that one. And I said well what is your horsiest book? Because I love horses. So you gave me Promises and signed it and I went home and I read that. And I loved it.

Cathryn Hein:                 Thank you, thank you.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah it was just beautiful and we’ll talk about that book in a minute but first, can you tell us your story and how you got into being an author?

Cathryn Hein:                    Well like many authors, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. I wrote short stories mainly when I was younger and then in my 20s I really tried to write novels but between study and work and more study, it’s very, very difficult and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t understand any of the craft. I was just an avid reader and this is going back quite a few years before the internet had everything. Information wasn’t as accessible I guess so I just kept on plodding along. I’d write 10,000 words and then get completely stuck, put it aside, start something else when I had the time and I just couldn’t get anything done.

Then in the early 2000s we moved overseas and I wasn’t working and in the third year we were there I said this is my opportunity. If I don’t make the most of this spare time that I have and sit down and actually write that book that I’ve been wanting to write for so long, the this is a huge opportunity that I’m just letting go. So I did. Instead of treading off to the markets every morning as I tended to do, I sat down and I would write every morning and eventually ended up with 130,000 word monstrosity of a book which I still adore but it has an awful lot wrong with it. It had some really fun characters and it had some really cool things in there but just finishing that book for the first time, that was the end of me. I knew I’m doing this now.

I don’t think that’s an unusual thing for a lot of authors. The thrill of actually finishing a book is so huge and it’s so addictive too. And how many people do you talk to who say I’m gonna write a book one day. Well I did. Then we came back to Australia, I write another one and I joined the Romance Writers of Australia and I started entering the books in the writing contest that I have and I learned an enormous amount. I started going to the conferences. I started reading the newsletter hearts talk cover to cover for the craft art. I started listening to everything that was written in the online forums and just grew and grew from there. I probably written five or six full length manuscripts and I hadn’t really submitted anything. I made a few half hearted attempts with what were looking back now quite unsuitable publishes, mainly in the UK.

Because once I had those first contests that I entered with the RWA, I actually realized how little I knew and how bad the manuscripts were. I’m a really terrible perfectionist. I want it to be perfect before I start sending things out. I continued to go along that line and it just so happened that fellow romance author Karly Lane had posted on one of the RWAs forums that a publisher had seen her book trailer for one of her real romances that had just come out with another publisher and they had actually contacted her and asked her if she had anymore like that. She had already signed with Allen & Unwin but I read that with great interest and I thought I write real romance. So I emailed her and said can you please, please tell me. You don’t have to tell me the editor, at least tell me the publisher and it turned out to be Penguin.

I then looked at my pile of manuscripts and chose what I thought was the best one and sent it off and waited five months and I got an email back that said this is not quite what we’re after, do you have anything else. I’m like, do I have anything else? I had [inaudible 00:06:31] strike back with the next book and that turned out to be Promises. So it all happened very quickly from there and I was lucky enough to get a two book deal so those first two books were Promises which is now called The Horseman’s Promise and the second book called Heart of the Valley.

What’s interesting about Heart of the Valley is that those initial early works that were so bad pretty much unpublishable, I took all the good bits out of those works and stuck them in. The really best bits got in. All those manuscripts I wrote in the past, I’ve picked the best characters and the best plot points and the most emotional bits out of them and used them in subsequent manuscripts. So nothing’s been wasted at all from those.

Sarah Williams:             That’s really awesome, I love that. So you’ve got country roots and that’s why you write rural romance I’m guessing, yeah?

Cathryn Hein:                    Yeah, I’m from rural south Australia right down the southeast of south Australia. Everyone says you’re from south Australia, Adelaide. No, 400 kilometers from Adelaide. All my family’s still down there. Obviously I go down quite a bit to see everyone. Or as much as I can which is not as much as I’d like. And also just to soak up the atmosphere because I tend to set a lot of my stories in that region because I adore it so much. It’s a bit different to a lot of the other stories which you see are real outback and this is agricultural sort of operates … Australia’s very, very [inaudible 00:08:10] agricultural operations and climates so it’s nice to have something like that there. [crosstalk 00:08:17]

Sarah Williams:             I always find with your characters they’re gritty. I’m gonna call them gritty. They’re not overly romanticized like a lot of other authors do. They’ve got their faults and their highs and their lows as well.

Cathryn Hein:                    Perfect people you just wanna hate.

Sarah Williams:             That’s true.

Cathryn Hein:                    We all have our issues and so forth so I try not to … I try to make them as realistic as I can. I think I’m getting a lot better at it. I got asked a very interesting question that day at a panel I did just the other week about creating characters and whether they are like me and I think in the initial stages that might have been so. It was certainly a lot of myself and actually in Promises one of the incidents that happens quite early in the book where a horse bolt … She’s working for a race horse trainer and the horse bolts on her. That actually happened to me and I did exactly what she did which was kick the horse because that’s what my dad, who was a jockey, told me to do if that ever happened.

There’s certainly stuff that’s been used in my life as characters but I don’t … I think I’m getting much better at creating unique characters so I tend not to rely on that as much, although my dad was very funny about the country girl. When he read it he said that’s you. He was talking about Tash, the heroine and I said no it’s not. He said no, no, that is you.

Sarah Williams:             Well Tash is an awesome character. I absolutely love the country girl. So that one came out earlier this year. Let’s just talk about it because it is just an awesome book. Tell us the blurb for that one because everybody who hasn’t read it just needs to go out and buy the Country Girl.

Cathryn Hein:                    Yeah it’s really Patrick’s story in a way. He’s the hero. His fiance’s been traumatically injured in a riding accident and is lost all communication, needs 24 hour care. He’s young and everyone is trying to tell him to move on but in his eyes, he and Maddie were going to get married and he can’t move from that because he made her a promise. And then comes along Tesh whose moved home. She’s a hugely popular food blogger and she’s moved back to the farm because she’s got a contract to write a cookbook. It’s like the world’s happiest girl meets the world’s most miserable man. But he’s not miserable, he’s just trying to cope with the new situation he’s in. She’s quite fun because she just runs rings around him. She won’t tolerate him being angry. She just won’t put up with him being the way he is. Turns him around. It’s a wonderful love story I think.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah it is. It’s beautiful and I remember at RWA last year, I think it would have been. They were talking about we need to make the books a bit more modern and a bit more yeah, social media and that sort of thing. So when you did this one and you were talking. I’m pretty sure she uses Facebook and Instagram. Even if you don’t specifically name it. And actually reading that book I was thinking, oh what’s my next book gonna be about. So my next book has an aspect of social media-ness to it as well. I just loved that. I thought it was perfect timing. Country and the technology of today. Loved that book. Definitely people go out and buy it.

Cathryn Hein:                    If you’re writing contemporary stories there’s sort of no way you can avoid it. The biggest problem you’ve got with those sorts of things is stuff dates rapidly. Anything to do with technology dates books. I think I included mentions of Facebook but I was quite careful about mentions of any other thing because it could go the way of MySpace.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, exactly.

Cathryn Hein:                    You just don’t know what is really cool today, no one uses it tomorrow.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah that’s it. Taking photos on their phone and who knows it might be taking photos on a watch in five years.

Apart from rural romance, you’ve also tried your hand at writing slightly differently as well. So the French cries is something else you’ve had published.

Cathryn Hein:                    I just really adore that story. When we lived overseas we were in the south of France in Provence and the history around that area is just incredible. The town I was living with founded by the Romans. I bought so many books and tried to learn so much about the history of the area and I came across this wonderful story. We were going trip up three south France heading up to the Louvers and I came across this wonderful story about [inaudible 00:14:06], comes from the legend of Orlando. It’s like an Excalibur type legend. Anyway he’s fighting off the serasense and he’s got his magic sword and he throws his magic sword and it lands into the cliff base at Rocamadour and is just an unreal village that tumbles down a steep hillside. It’s on the [inaudible 00:14:30] and you can actually still see the sword which is fake but planted into the cliff base and that just stayed with me. I loved that story. I just warmed eventually a narrative out of it. I thought oh wouldn’t that be cool.

I actually had planned a whole bunch of these kinds of stories because it would be a really great way to have tax deductible overseas trips. I had written another one, it was called the Color Code but I haven’t published it yet. I’m still quite working out … Not sure if it’s in. I do home that it’s going to come out one day. That one’s a lot of fun. The French Five was a lot of fun too. I got to write about France and I got to write about the food and all sorts of wonderful things so it’s very cool.

Sarah Williams:             Oh that’s awesome. So you got the rights back on some of your books and you’ve decided to go hybrid so you self published some of them as well. Tell us which books in case we read them in the old name.

Cathryn Hein:                    Okay. Promises which my debut publication with Penguin is now called The Horseman’s Promise. Heart of the Valley and Heartland are Rocking Horse Hill and The Falls. I was going to rename The Falls to the Falls Farm but it’s just much easier to stay with the original titles. All those are not … They’re exactly the same books. I modernized a few things where it was needed but I put them out on mine now. I’ve also got a number of novellas that I’ve self published. They all, well not all of them but most of them are sticking in the same area as Rocking Horse Hill was set which is around a town called Levenham and it’s got this extinct volcano. Quite a dramatic landscape.

Sarah Williams:             Oh fantastic. So you’ll continue to put out the novella and self publish? So tell us what are you working on now?

Cathryn Hein:                    Right now I’m working on a novella called Itty and the Show Queen. It is a sequel to my previous book Chrissy and the Burrows Boys. This is all part of that Levenham love story series. These are really fun. These books are full of a lot of humor and they’re just really sweet, funny love stories where the men have to work hard to get the girls and they’re not ashamed of embarrassing themselves to get there. I’ve just written a very funny scene where the hero has to wear a tutu to the pub. His leotard doesn’t quite fit. That’s great.

Sarah Williams:             Oh I love it, it sounds awesome. Brilliant. Well where can we find you online to find out about all of your books and what’s coming out next?

Cathryn Hein:                    Best place is my website at cathrynhein.com and if you sign up to my newsletter you’ll also get a couple of free stories to enjoy over a cup of coffee and you’ll be the first to know when any of the new releases come out as well. Otherwise I’m on the usual social media suspects which is Facebook and Twitter.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, until they get behind the times. Well thank you so much for today Cathryn, that was great.

Marie Force and her 6.5 million book sales

Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of contemporary romance, including the indie-published Gansett Island Series and the Fatal Series from Harlequin Books.All together, her books have sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list many times.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. You will also have access to bonus episodes and insider information. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:             She’s a two-time nominee for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Romance Fiction. It’s the very talented Marie Force.

Marie Force:                 Hi there. Thanks for having me Sarah.

Sarah Williams:             It’s an absolute privilege to speak to you today. I know we’ve got lots to cover, so we’ll just jump into it. Can you tell us about yourself and your amazing journey?

Marie Force:                 I started writing fiction in 2003, 2004 and the very first book I wrote was this one which is Treading Water, and actually this didn’t get actually published until the end of 2011, but that was the first book I ever wrote and I finished it in 2005, tried to sell it, tried to get an agent, tried to do all the things that we do and didn’t really have much luck.

I finally ended up selling the seventh book I wrote, which was Line of Scrimmage and that came out in September of 2008. As of September of this year, I’ll be published 10 years. I have gone over seven million books sold since you got your stats. I guess I need to update my website. And 70 books written and I’ve got samples of all my series here.

This is Fatal Affair, which is the first book in the fatal series with Harlequin and that came out in 2010. Then, All You Need is Love, is the first book in my Green Mountain series which was with Berkley and now I’m self-publishing the end of that series. This one came out in 2014, and then this is Virtuous, which is book one in my quantum series which is erotic romance. Then this is Made for Love, which is book one in my marquee series, which is Gansett Island. That’s the one that sold more than three million books on its own and it’s just been my number one best selling series is Gansett Island and I’m working on next book 20 in that series, with no end in sight.

It’s been kind of a crazy ride. I started indie publishing in 2010. I’ve been traditionally published all along from 2008 straight through to today. I’ve been under contract to one publisher or another and right now I’m under contract to Harlequin for the fatal series and to Kensington for my new historical gilded series, which I’ve got the cover of book one right here, actually. Let me grab that for you. This is Duchess by Deception, which is the first historical I’ve ever written.

Sarah Williams:             Yes! Oh, that is beautiful. Yeah, I love it. Looks gorgeous.

Marie Force:                 Neat cover, isn’t it? I love it.

Sarah Williams:             It is, and as you were showing all your covers, I was going, absolutely spot on. That’s perfect for contemporary, that’s perfect for erotica. Everything. That’s good.

Marie Force:                 [crosstalk 00:02:46] cover. Big fan of … I love making all those decisions myself and I like working with the publishers too on that.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, absolutely.

Marie Force:                 Actually, Kensington recently released the first three Gansett Island books. So you saw book one, that’s Made for Love, and then these are new in mass market paper in the U.S. This is Fool for Love, and then Ready for Love … Whoops, wrong side. Ready for Love. Those come out this summer in the U.S. in mass market paper for the first time, so that was very exciting.

Sarah Williams:             Oh, wow! That is very cool. So apart from, obviously, your historical which is coming out, the other ones are all contemporary and set in America, in the U.S.?

Marie Force:                 Yeah. Well, they’re all contemporary in the sense that they’re all set in modern times, but they’re straight contemporary romances are Gansett Island and Green Mountain and Butler, Vermont series, and then also Treading Water is straight contemporary, Treading Water series, and then fatal is romantic suspense and then quantum is erotic romance. So, it’s a combination of a lot of different genres within contemporary romance. So it’s all contemporary except for the historical.

Sarah Williams:             Brilliant.

Marie Force:                 [inaudible 00:04:07] is funny, because I started writing that in 2010 and then I finished it … I sold it in 2017, finished it in 2018 and it’ll come out in 2019, and so that’s the longest trajectory of a book that I’ve ever had. And then the second one, I have to write in two and a half months. So, kind of a little scared about writing the followup in two months.

Sarah Williams:             Oh my gosh.

Marie Force:                 The first one took me eight years.

Sarah Williams:             Oh, gosh! So your historical is going to be a series as well?

Marie Force:                 It’s gonna be a series of at least three books. I don’t know if I’m gonna take on another big, long series. I’m finishing quantum in 2019 and then I’m finishing Treading Water in 2019. So I’m gonna be down two, which is good. I’m hoping to probably write three books in the Gilded series total. So we’ll see.

Sarah Williams:             Excellent. Well, let’s have a quick talk about your historical. So, is it historical, is it regency era or what kind of age?

Marie Force:                 It’s Edwardian, turn of the century, set in 1902, which is actually a really fun time to write, because there was so much innovation going on and so many new inventions and it was a really progressive time. People were … Can you see my dog freaking out behind me?

Sarah Williams:             No!

Marie Force:                 I hope not. One of my three dogs is freaking out behind me, playing with a toy, and I’m like, “Oh my god.” So, it was a really impressive time in the sense that people were starting to get indoor plumbing and they were starting to get electric lights in their homes and things like that. I write about a very forward looking duke who invested in all these inventions and he’s supporting the Wright Brothers in the United States who are trying to bring man to flight to reality and so it was really fun to write about the innovations and inventions of things that were going on in that time, and then to try to bring the romance into it, too.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah. So is it set over in the UK or America?

Marie Force:                 It’s set in the UK. The first book is set in the UK and then the second book is actually going to be set in Newport, Rhode Island, because the duke that is featured in Duchess by Deception has a good friend who’s an American and he invites the whole gang to Newport, Rhode Island for the summer. I live in Newport, Rhode Island and it’s … If you look up the mansions and The Preservation Society of Newport, Rhode Island, you can see all the Vanderbilt’s and the Astor’s and the Robber barons, as they were called at the turn of the century, industrialists, had massive homes in Newport, Rhode Island, which have been preserved and they’re a huge tourist attraction here.

More than a million people a year go through those mansions and it’s right down the street from where I live, really. So, I’m looking forward to bringing my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island into the series. So I think it’s gonna be really fun when the action switches to Newport for one book.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah! Oh, that’ll be fantastic! All right. So let’s take it in completely the different direction. Your quantum series, I’m really interested to talk to you about this one. Yay! Hot guys, we love it.

Marie Force:                 Let me show you this one, too. This book’s out next week.

Sarah Williams:             Oh!

Marie Force:                 Can you see that?

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, outrageous. That is gorgeous.

Marie Force:                 [inaudible 00:07:14].

Sarah Williams:             Love the frame.

Marie Force:                 Without the glow.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, that is gorgeous.

Marie Force:                 [inaudible 00:07:21] and let me just say that Outrageous is the funniest book I’ve ever written. Hands down, no questions asked, funniest book I’ve ever written.

Sarah Williams:             Oh, fantastic. So, the quantum series, tell us about the series and about some of the characters.

Marie Force:                 So, it’s basically it’s a group of Hollywood heavy hitters, so with movie star, director, cinematographer, producer, a female movie star and they’re partners in a production company and they’re all sexual dominants, and they’re very free and open with everything and one by one, they start to fall in love and so Virtuous, which is this right here, is book one of a trilogy that features the same couple in all three books, and then it moves into other couples in the subsequent books.

So, this is Outrageous, this is book seven, will be out next week, and then I’m going to do one more after that, and then that series is going to come to a close.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah. So how is it writing about BDSM and dominance?

Marie Force:                 I really have enjoyed it, because one of the things that I really love about it is the communication element of it. So, in a typical, what they call a vanilla relationship, there’s not a whole lot of discussion ahead of an encounter of what’s gonna happen and how it’s gonna happen and what to expect and all that. In the BDSM lifestyle, it’s all about communication, it’s about talking it out ahead of time. It’s about everybody being on the same page and no surprises.

The part that I most enjoyed writing is the communication element of it. I found that to be very interesting. Like I said, people don’t sit down, like in a business meeting, before they get busy. Like, “This is what’s gonna happen and this is how it’s gonna happen and this is what I expect from you and this is what I don’t …” I mean, who does that? So, the fact that … That’s a big part of the lifestyle and it’s the part I most enjoyed writing.

Sarah Williams:             Do you ever get asked the silly questions like, you write about BDSM, do you practice it in real life?

Marie Force:                 And I don’t. Yeah, and I think it’s probably obvious to people who do that I don’t, and I’m not trying to be … I’m not trying to be anyone that I’m not. I never am trying to be anything that I’m not, but I don’t solve murders either, but yet, my character of Sam Holland in the fatal series is a D.C. homicide detective. I’ve never solved a murder, but yet I can write about people who do. So, it’s kind of …

I love when Stephen King says that, because people always ask those questions. Like, “Oh, do you do everything that your characters do?” Stephen King’s like, “Well, I’ve never committed a murder.” So, it’s so silly that people say that stuff. I just had a lady tonight say to me, and she was totally sweet and funny and it was no big deal, but she was … ‘Cause my husband is sitting right next to her and she’s an older woman and she’s kind of, “So he must really like …” and I’m like, “No, not so much.” Regular schlepp-y old married couple at this point.

She thinks, “Oh, you must get a lot of practice in.” I’m like, “No, not really.”

Sarah Williams:             Too busy writing, sorry.

Marie Force:                 We have three dogs sleeping between us, what do you think goes on? No, but it’s just everybody’s got the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, is what my husband calls it, and it’s silly to us. I don’t know. Whenever somebody says something dumb to me about it, I’ll just be like, “You, too, are the result of a sex act.” And that kind of tends to shut down the conversation, because nobody wants to think about their parents that way.

Sarah Williams:             That’s true. I’m using that, that’s awesome.

Marie Force:                 Filthy. Every single human being, everybody does it, yet we all have to be … about it, especially in the U.S. I find that to be true, ’cause I’ve traveled a lot outside of the U.S. and it’s not like that everywhere else. We’re very puritanical in our views in the U.S. about these things, and we become … romance writers become cocktail chatter to our friends and stuff.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah.

Marie Force:                 [inaudible 00:11:36], I tell you.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, that’s it. So you’ve cut a deal with Harlequin at the moment. Do you enjoy working with publishers and having the hybrid in being in indie as well? You’re publishing both ways continuously.

Marie Force:                 I am, but I always have been, actually. I’ve actually been with Harlequin for eight years as of June of this year, it’s been eight full years of the fatal series with Harlequin, and so that’s not new. I guess I have a name in the indie community, which is obviously because of the Gansett Island series has done really well in indie, the quantum series, Treading Water. I’ve had more than 40 indie books and they’ve done really well, but I’ve also always been traditionally published too.

So there’s never been a time when I wasn’t. I really like so many elements of that. There is a lot of things that they do for me that I couldn’t do for myself, in getting paperback books into stores and things like that, and they pay me upfront, which is also really nice. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying, so … I have a really nice relationship with Harlequin. As you know, my father just passed away in July, somewhat suddenly, and I have a book due at the end of July and my Harlequin team was just like, “Do what you gotta do. There’s no pressure or …”

And Kensington, I’m also published with them with the gilded series, the new historicals, and they also brought out my Gansett Island paperbacks this summer and I really like working with them and at this point in my career, it’s about, is it fun? Is it beneficial? Is it profitable? If there’s yes to all those questions, then okay. And I really do very much enjoy working with my team at Harlequin and at Kensington. For me right now, it’s definitely a good place to be.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, and you literally have the best of both worlds. You’re very successful indie and then you’re very successful traditionally published. I mean, probably just looking at it from an indie in Australia, they probably are helping each other to promote your books and those sorts of things. People get hooked on your traditional, they might buy your indies.

Marie Force:                 Well, I like to think that all boats rise together. My experience has been if somebody finds one of my books and they both like them, they tend to go through and read everything. Obviously, now that I have 70 books, it’s not like they go through and they read everything right now. It’s like back when there was 20, they could rip through them in two weeks, and now it’s more of a commitment, but I tend to find … If I find an author that I really connect with, I want to read everything that they have.

It really just sometimes takes, I call it the gateway drug, the one book that gets them in and then hopefully you get to keep them. I often find that people will find one book from one series and that’s all it takes. And so, that’s why I always tell other authors too, “Don’t put out anything that’s not as good as it could be, because that could be your only shot with that reader. And so if it’s not the best thing that you could possibly make it, then it’s probably not a good idea to put it out, because that reader will not give you another chance.”

There’s so many other authors to choose from. You don’t want to ever squander that opportunity. I try to [inaudible 00:15:00] really seriously that the readers are also … A lot of my readers don’t have tons of disposable income, so they don’t get to go to movies or out to dinner, but they get their books, and so they’re … I try to make sure that I give them a good time, you know?

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, absolutely! So, which books did you get your nominations for, your RITA nominations?

Marie Force:                 Fatal Frenzy, which was book nine in the fatal series, in which one of my detectives … one of her members of her squad is killed in the line of duty, and that was a very powerful book and I was glad to see that one be nominated, and I’m trying to think of what the other one was. Oh, it was Ravenous, which was book five in the quantum series, which had a British hero, which I think he probably took me right over the top. Yeah.

Sarah Williams:             Awesome. You’ve got books on audio and print-

Marie Force:                 All of them are on audio. All of them are in audio. Yeah, and I’ve got my … I have a wonderful team working with me and so all my indie books are coming out on audio on the same day as everything else, so we really got it down to a science. And then I’ve got this book coming out in October called Five Years Gone, which is a big contemporary about … It’s about a woman whose boyfriend deploys after a terrorist attack and basically never comes back. She gives it five years, and then she’s like, “Okay, I can’t do this anymore. It’s time to get back to my life,” and she kind of has to pick up the pieces of her life, kind of accepting that he’s not coming back.

That one is out October 9th, but I wrote it at the end of last year, so it’s coming out. Get this, you’re gonna love this. Okay, it’s coming out in eBook, audio with Andi Arndt and Joe Arden, which who are two of the biggest names in audio right now, so I’m really psyched hat they’re gonna be on this project. It’s also going to be out on October 9th in German and French translation on the same day, and it’s gonna be in stores thanks to Kensington. I feel like it’s kind of the holy grail arrival moment as an indie author to have a book out in three languages on the same day, and then in audio, in high level audio, print. I’m really excited, and eBook, of course. So very excited about my little trifecta, as I call it.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, that is really fantastic, and I’ve actually spoken to Andi Arndt on the show. So, she is fantastic.

Marie Force:                 Oh, yeah. No, she did a beautiful job on Five Years Gone. I’m really excited about it, and looking forward to getting that book out in October.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ll write that one down. I love my audio.

Marie Force:                 Basically sat on it for almost a year after I wrote it so that I could do all these things with it. It’s fun.

Sarah Williams:             Oh, that’s fantastic. That’ll be absolute brilliant. Can’t wait! So, you also do some presenting of workshops and … Yeah, online and virtual as well. Tell us about doing that.

Marie Force:                 Yeah. So, that’s been really fun. I really do like to teach. I’m finding, I never thought I could ever really do it, and then I started to really start to enjoy it, and so that’s … The number one reason why I like to do the workshops is it just … It connects me with other authors and it is really fun to do. I do marketing 101, self pub 101. We do audio book workshop. A lot of them are on demand on my website. You can take them anytime you want. I’ve got a marketing one coming up that I’m gonna do in September.

So, sometimes I do them live, meeting in a given week, I’m there with the participants all week long. Other times, they’re just available on demand, so if you just want the info, you can get it at any time. They’re all at MarieForce.com/authors. So you can see … I also have a publishing and print Jack’s House publishing, in which I publish other authors and we have 14 books coming from Jack’s House this fall, which we’re really excited about.

Yeah, so that’s been really fun working with other authors and helping them to build series and things like that. Yeah, I’ve been having fun with that.

Sarah Williams:             Yeah. Wow, you just must be so busy.

Marie Force:                 [inaudible 00:19:17], but it’s all fun. It’s all stuff I like doing and if I didn’t like doing it, at this point, I wouldn’t be doing it, and I really do like … The Jack’s House stuff, like I said, I have a great team that supports me and so they’re doing all the Jack’s House stuff too and so that, it keeps everybody busy and employed-

Sarah Williams:             That’s it.

Marie Force:                 Yeah. We’re having fun.

Sarah Williams:             Fantastic! So you’ve already mentioned that you’ve got a couple of books coming out before the end of the year, which is phenomenal. My gosh, how long does it actually take you to write a book?

Marie Force:                 I give myself three months on the fatal books, which are the romantic suspense, because the murder mystery element of it is a little bit more taxing, a little bit more involved than the straight up contemporaries. The straight contemporaries I can do in two months. I have this really awesome run right now where I’ve got a bunch of stuff scheduled between myself and publishers, where I’ve got something coming in October.

Well, August is Outrageous and then October is Five Years Gone, and then November is Fatal Invasion, and then January is Duchess by Deception, and then March is Fatal Reckoning, which is the book they gave me the extension on that I’m finishing now, which involves a character that I’ve been writing for 11 years. Her father dies in the book-

Sarah Williams:             Wow.

Marie Force:                 … so I started writing that May 1st when my father was fine and this whole thing with my family has happened while I was writing about my character losing her father. So it’s this convergence of … I don’t know, a lot of my readers are saying it’s not a coincidence, but to me, it’s kind of crazy. I had already written her father dying somewhat suddenly, the funeral, all that, and then literally, my life followed that path that I had already written and it was just so crazy when I was like, “This cannot be happening,” but now it’s been a little bit … My father died three weeks ago today, and so it’s been a little bit difficult trying to get back into the swing of writing a book about my character’s father died.

This close to finishing it, but I just have to do it. So, I’ve got until the 15th of August now. I gave myself a little extension. But I’ve never missed a deadline, so I figure if you’re gonna miss a deadline, this is probably a good reason to.

Sarah Williams:             Absolutely.

Marie Force:                 It’s so crazy the way that’s all happened, and then so after March, I’ve got books scheduled out now until March. Exciting that I can kind of take a little breather on the indie stuff for a little bit and kind of stockpile some books while all that’s coming out. That’s kind of my plan right now.

Sarah Williams:             Well, that’s fantastic! Where can we follow you online and make sure we don’t miss a new release?

Marie Force:                 Just go to MarieForce.com, and then on the upper corner, you can see my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BookBub, Book and Main. If you’re not on Book and Main, you should be on Book and Main. It’s a really fun, new site, a great place to discover new books and new authors. So yeah. All the social media icons are on the upper right-hand corner of my website.

Sarah Williams:             That’s awesome.

Marie Force:                 [crosstalk 00:22:20].

Sarah Williams:             Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for that, Marie. That was fantastic.

Marie Force:                 Thanks for having me.