Reader Interview of Moi Part 1

Right, sistahs!

Blog one of… um… a BUNCH!

The next several blogs will be an ongoing reader interview featuring Goodreads “Searock”. Searock had a whole slew of questions, I had very long answers. Now, in these upcoming blogs with Searock and me, there will definitely be spoilers from several of my books. So beware before reading.

We’ll start here:

From Searock!! Woot! Here we go:

Congrats, Kristen, on the wonderful success of “Motorcycle Man”! We fans are ecstatic with the book and over the moon for Tack. It’s already considered an instant “KA classic”. You must be very pleased with how the Dream Man series finished up.

Thanks darlin’, I’m actually surprised I could pull it off. I’ve never ended a series and I wanted to do right by my dream men. Pleased as punch it came out okay.

• What have the last couple of weeks been like for you?

Busy. The last couple of weeks and then some. Always busy!

I am so excited for this opportunity to ask you questions and love that you plan to have a regular spot for reader interviews here on your blog! Some of my interview questions are about “Motorcycle Man” which most of your readers have devoured recently. I have lots of questions about your writing process. In fact, there’s so many that they may overlap, so please feel free to bypass the one’s that become redundant. Some questions are based solely on curiosity about you personally, but I understand if you prefer not to respond to those for any reasons.

• I mentioned on Goodreads recently that you seem to have lots of characters “floating around in your atmosphere”. I’ve wondered how those characters come into being and how they evolve for you. Can you describe how characters “come to you”.

Well, if you’re talking about a hero and heroine, usually I’ll have an idea or get inspired by something and the germ of a story will hit my head. Then the hero, heroine or both will hit me. When they do, they are very robust. In other words, I don’t think, “Hmm… what color hair should he have?” They just come to me, fully-formed, looks, how they sound, how they move, their histories and personalities. Sometimes, they (the hero/heroine) will be introduced in a previous book in a series but still, as with all my secondary characters, they hit me with the action and I just know them. I don’t know how it works or how I know them. I just do. Either I dredge them up from my own experiences or they simply surface. For instance, the next book I’ll be writing, Chace and Faye’s book in the Colorado Mountain Series, Chace was a character in the previous book in that series. The instant he showed while I was writing Lady Luck, I knew him intimately and that his story had to be told. And Faye came to me later. They are both very strong in my head and I can’t wait to get crackin’ on their story!

• I am also curious how the story process works for you. Is that a separate thing? Do you have both the character and the story ahead of time? Not being a writer, I have a near-cuckoo curiosity about those processes, like discovering the secrets of a magician or something. *rubs hands together with giddy excitement*

It’s different with each book. Like I said above, I have a germ of an idea and then it explodes. I don’t have any clue what’s going to happen. I just start typing. I don’t know until it’s over how it will end. The only thing I know is, for the hero and heroine, it’ll end happily.

• Have you had the same writing process for as long as you’ve had the gift of storytelling? Has it become a more distinct process over time?

Yes, I’ve had the same process since I started and it hasn’t become more distinct. Normally, an idea comes to me and then the hero and/or heroine hit me. Then, if the other of that duo hasn’t, she or he’ll come to me and away I go. It’s an obsession. Completely. All I think about. I’ll lie in bed at night and the action will unfold in my head so I’ll get up early the next morning, take care of business then hit it so I can type out the action that happened in my head while I was trying to get to sleep. Once I do that, the story just carries on as I type. Then back to bed and the story continues.

• Your sister has mentioned you’ve been telling stories since you were pretty young. Having you actually been writing stories all along as well?

Not really, no. I started writing in earnest about ten years ago. Back in the day when I was starting out after graduating from Purdue, I’d write short stories as presents for my family at Christmas because I didn’t have any money and loved my family so I wanted to give them something. And I might pen something here and there. But it was only very occasionally.

• Can you just as easily write from a story prompt or do you need the story to come to you naturally? Could you simply decide you are going to do a story about a character on an island in the Mexican Caribbean and then go, research it and write it at will?

Good questions! Terrible answer with I don’t know. I’ve never had anyone say, “Write about this.” Then I’d make up a story about it. Nor have I thought, “Hmm, time to spend time on an island… now what can happen there?” But, I have a very vivid imagination so I doubt this would be a problem for me. Time to go spend time on an island and get inspired!

• Regarding Tack’s book specifically, did you have the whole thing before you started writing? How much of it developed during the writing? Did Tack surprise you? Was he different in your mind before writing MM than in the end?

I love these questions, Searock, because now I’m going to share a little known secret. Tack has TWO books. I started writing Tack’s story ages ago. He was going to come after Hawk and Gwen. I wrote nearly a whole book about Tack before Brock and Tess or Mitch and Mara even entered my mind! It’s sitting on my hard drive. But it was written in a time of my life where I was coming out of some seriously bad stuff, about two years of it. And while I was writing it, I just did NOT connect to it. Tack, in his book that’s been published, is a pretty out there, in your face alpha. The Tack in the book before that was even more so, if you can believe THAT! So yes, he surprised me in the first book because he was very, very, VERY aggressive, very opinionated and very alpha. He’s darker, the story is darker and the heroine’s back story is devastating.

Only some of that eeked through in his story with Tyra which I feel is truer to the real Tack. The Tack I gave my readers wasn’t really different than what he was in Mystery Man. I knew he’d be a surprise to readers (though not to me) because he was Tack with Gwen but we got mostly his gentle side, seeing as Gwen’s life was a bit crazed and he was looking out for her. She didn’t get pulled into his Motorcycle Club world and I knew when that started to unfold for the reader, Tack’s history, his goals for the Club and his responsibilities to it would be shared – and what he had to do/how he had to be for that. When he found his woman, he had to be certain she could tough it out in his world and accept it and him as they were. He also had to know she’d have his back. He had a woman in his past who didn’t know how/didn’t want to support a man who was a leader. He needed a woman who could hold her own in that world AND take care of him as he fulfilled his responsibilities to his Club in the world in which they live. I love my Gwen, I think she’s awesome. But she’s not that woman. Tyra most certainly is.

By the way, not long ago, I reread Tack’s first book and to my utter shock, I freaking LOVED it and I was torn because I wanted to finish it and release it. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to rework it and publish it or if I’ll let it fester on my hard drive. I do know it was better than I remembered. I connected with the characters after the second reading and I want that story to see the light of day. We shall see.

This is part one… more to come from Searock and Moi! Stay tuned.