Paranormal Romance Book Author Interview

Writing is my passion.  It's an escape.  Through my books, I invite the reader to escape with me, if only for a little while, and if I've done my job right, they'll leave my world smiling.

As a marketing and French major and mother of six, I hadn't always thought to be an author.  I've had a number of diverse jobs, from spending nearly a decade in corporate America, to finding host families for high school exchange students from all over the world, to owning and operating my own martial arts school.

I didn't always dream of being a writer.  In fact, I hadn't even thought of it before beginning my first novel, Destined Love is Immortal.  As a pre-teen in middle school, I'd enjoyed reading, but when the homework load got heavier and I had a lot of assigned reading first in high school, then in college, the last thing I wanted to do when I had free time was pick up a book.  Holding a job which required a lot of proof reading later also did nothing to make me want to read.

So what made me eventually start reading and then writing?  When my youngest son was born, he had to be hospitalized for over a month.  That's when I began reading again.  It was a desperately needed escape.  Eventually, I heard an interview of a famous author talking about how she'd written her first book with a house full of kids watching cartoons in the background the whole time and I thought, "Hey, that's me!"

I write young adult novels, primarily of the fantasy genre, as well as children's picture books.  When I read, I prefer the fantasy and paranormal stuff, so that's what I chose to write.  Generally, whether I'm writing a novel or a children's picture book, I try to include a moral to the story, so that while being entertained, the reader also has something they can take away from my book and apply to their real life.  

When I opened my first dojang (martial arts school) my instructor told me, "Teach what you know."  Being five months pregnant, opening a business as a martial arts instructor, I was nervous and unsure of myself, even though it didn't show outwardly.  The advice worked, and my business was a success, through the day that my family relocated out of state and I sold it.  I've found the "Teach what you know" advice to be sound, except now, as a writer, I write what I know.  

I've traveled extensively in Europe, and I combine my real life adventures with fictitious characters and an exciting plot line to make memorable and entertaining stories.  My novels take place it locations I love, and I have contacts there who graciously answer all of the questions I have when it comes to getting the details right.

I love to read teen scifi and fantasy novels, and my husband says I'm an eternal teenager.  Moreover, I love to spend time with teens.  First I did this through placing high school foreign exchange students, and now through the time I spend as the organizer of our church youth group.

My first novel, Destined Love is Immortal, is about a teenager girl whose life is going very poorly.   She gets dreams at night of fighting in Belgium, amongst other things.  In fact, her dreams are much more than that, a fact which she learns much later.  Deciding to escape her life, she goes to work in Belgium for a year, and things really get exciting when she comes face to face with an ancient war god.   Destined Love is Immortal is a book with moral values, and the kid of book I would want my teens to read.

In addition to teen novels, I also write picture books.  Basically, I've written these to teach my younger kids lessons they need to know in a fun, silly, not-scary way.  Currently, only one of these is published, Dragon at the Cabin.   It's a rhyming picture book about stranger safety, similar in style to the popular Dr. Seuss books.  The book shows that while going with a stranger may look fun, it is NOT and can actually be dangerous and scary.  However, this message is presented in a fun way.  My books are for sale on Amazon.com as ebooks and the teen novel is also available as a paperback from createspace.