Hello and welcome!
I am so happy you could join us today.
There are fantastic teasers at the end!
There are fantastic teasers at the end!
G.H – How are you today?
I’m great thank you, it’s Easter Sunday
and the weather in the UK is warm for once, so I have the windows and doors
flung open as I type.
G.H – Opps given away how long ago I sent
out my questions! Hehe
G.H - When did you first start writing?
Officially in October 2014, that’s when I
first put fingers to keyboard to write my first novel.
G.H - Did you always want to be a writer?
If not what did you want to be?
I don’t think I made a conscious choice as
a child to be a writer, but I did keep diaries and come up with stories and was
always told that I had a good imagination. I think it was when I was in my
mid-twenties the thought of writing a book came to mind, but I was too busy
with work and life at the time.
G.H - Are you a full-time or part-time
writer? How does that affect your writing?
I’m sort of both! Officially I work from
home, managing the family business, but in reality it’s not a very taxing job,
so most of my time is put to my novels. I get quite irritating when “work”
interrupts!
G.H - How did you become involved with
the subject or theme of your book?
My latest book, a standalone erotic
romance, revolves around Lulu McQueen, who owns a honeytrap agency. She’s sent
in to lure cheating spouses and provide wives, or suspicious girlfriends, with
proof. Maybe some of you are the lucky ones, who never had someone you loved
break your heart by having an affair, sadly I was and I was totally oblivious
to the signs. I guess the idea for this book came from that heartache, of
wishing I’d known sooner and finding out in a controlled manner.
G.H - Why did you choose to write in your
particular field or genre? If you write more than one, how do you balance
them?
I didn’t plan to write erotica, but it’s
a big market for female readers at the moment. It kind of crept into the books
I was writing at the time and the readers loved the scenes, saying they were
hot and realistic, so it stuck. I am however branching out next year, to try my
hand at a romantic comedy, which was always my intention when I decided I was
going to write.
G.H - Where does your inspiration for
these stories come from?
A lot of it is from personal experience,
that initial seed that blossoms into fiction. I also get ideas from looking at
pictures and creating a story in my head around what I see, or listening to
people in restaurants, on buses or trains!
G.H - What was your favourite chapter to
write and why?
With The Temptress my favourite chapter
to write was when Lulu was confronted with her one night stand, that she’d
never got over, and having to pretend she didn’t know him, having to squash her
feelings for him and do her job. I’m sure many women have had a crush, or been
in love with, someone who was oblivious and they had to disguise their feelings
each time they saw them.
G.H - Where is your favourite place to
write?
My family has a holiday home, up on the
Welsh coast and if I had a choice, I would be up there writing, surrounded by
mountains, trees, birds and the sounds of the sea. Sadly internet connection up
there is virtually non-existent, and
with social media playing such a large part in independent authors
self-promotion, it’s not practical to cut yourself off for long periods of
time, so I make do with writing at home.
G.H - Do you have a certain routine you
have for writing? i.e. You listen to music, sit in a certain chair?
I usually have the radio on low in the
background, like white noise, it weirdly keeps me focussed. Though I shouldn’t,
as I have a fully kitted out office with ergonomic chair, desk and keyboard, I
usually sit in my recliner, with my laptop on my knees, which is not good for
my wrists and I’ve suffered quite badly lately.
G.H - Do you use a computer/laptop for
your first draft or are you a pen and paper writer?
As a touch typist I do everything on
computer, it’s faster and legible! If I have an idea while I’m out and about, I
make notes on my iPad.
G.H - How do you come up with characters
names and place names in your books?
Characters names are relatively easy, I
use a baby book, of popular names and skim it with my character in mind, trying
to picture if I can see them with a name I’m drawn to. Places are much harder.
If you use a real town or city, you have to get details right, so if you’ve
never been there you have to do a lot of research. If you want a fictitious
place, you think you’ve come up with the ideal name, google it and you find out
it already exists, so you have to try again!
G.H - Did you learn anything from writing
your book? What was it?
I learned that I should have tried this
much sooner than I did. I love what I’m doing, especially when you get messages
from readers saying how much they loved something you wrote, there’s no better
feeling.
G.H - How long does it usually take you
to write a book, from the original idea to finishing writing it?
My novellas, like the ones in my “For the
Night Series” on average took me two days each. A full length novel, mine are
usually around 150,000 words, takes around three to four weeks if I force
myself to slow down. I wrote my largest novel, 170,000 words in just two weeks,
but that puts a lot of strain on my fingers and wrists, so I’m learning to pace
myself, which is hard. If you have the story in your head, you just want to get
it on paper in case you lose some of the ideas or inspiration.
G.H - Can you describe the feeling you
had when you saw your published book for the first time?
Disbelief I guess. More so to hold a
printed book in my hand, something that I’d created and people were buying and
reading. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the amazement of that, I hope I never
do!
G.H - Who are some of your favourite
authors?
Over the years I’d have to list Enid
Blyton, Agatha Christie, Franklin W. Dixon, J. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. I’d
just in awe of their imaginations, Tolkien in particular. As a writer in my
genre, I particularly love Sylvia Day’s Crossfire Series.
G.H - Have you ever suffered from a
"writer's block"? What did you do to get past the "block"?
Luckily I haven’t really. I had one day
where one of the books I was writing started taking a different path to the
idea I’d originally had in my head. I got frustrated trying to work out how to
get it back on track without scrapping the work I’d already done. I simply went
to bed to sleep on it. When I woke up I realised that I didn’t need to be
constrained by an idea of what I thought my book should be, if I’d taken it in
a particular direction, that was what felt right for those characters. So I
scrapped my original idea and just kept writing where my head was taking me and
it worked, Logan Steele the escort with a heart has gone down really well.
G.H - Time for a few crazy
questions!
G.H - Do you write naked?
Haha, NO! My cat doesn’t need
to be traumatised for life, plus who wants naked butt prints on a sofa or
chair? Ewwww.
G.H - What is your biggest
failure?
I’m not sure I’d class it as a
failure, as I learned a valuable lesson from it and it made me stronger, but
the breakdown of my marriage was a difficult time in my life. I chastise myself
for being so young and naïve, to not realise that I deserved to be treated
better, but now I accept that maybe I had to go through that to make me
understand my worth and to never let myself be treated that way again.
G.H - What is the biggest lie
you've ever told?
Probably the one that most
women are well practiced at! Saying “I’m fine” when really we’re hurting inside
and want someone to hold us and tell us everything’s going to be ok.
G.H - Have you ever been in
trouble with the police?
Once – I was caught inside a
restricted area in a showground, the night before a big local event, giving my
boyfriend a blow job! We were warned not to let it happen again and sent on our
way.
G.H - Do you drink?
Smoke?
From my late teens to my early
thirties I drank and smoked heavily, looking back they were coping mechanisms
for some of the events life had thrown at me. I gave up cigarettes fourteen
years ago and now detest the smell of them. Drinking I rarely do, maybe three
of four times a year, but when I do, I forget my limits and end up horribly
drunk, which puts me off for another long stretch.
G.H - What is your biggest
fear?
Losing my mother. She’s not
just my mum, she’s one of my best friends and the thought of not having her
around one day is really painful. So I’m making the most of spending time with
her while I can.
G.H - What do you want your
tombstone to say?
“She came, she saw, she laughed.”
I’m a firm believer that
laughter can make most things seem better.
G.H - If you had a superpower, what would it be?
To eat as much dairy produce as
possible and never put on any weight!!
G.H - What secret talents do you have?
I’m not sure it’s a secret, or
a talent, but I’m an incredibly fast reader. On holiday I can read three books
in a day. I’m also told that I do the most amazing impression of a seal and
cockerel (rooster).
G.H - What is something you want to accomplish before you die?
I’d really like to fall in love again one day.
G.H - Do you have any scars? What are they from?
Too many. Chicken pox ones, six on each shoulder from arthritis and impingement surgery, three sets of three laparopsic scars from exploratory surgeries and gallbladder removal, a large horizontal scar from hip to hip from a hysterectomy, one on my right side from running into a barbed wire fence, large burn scars on my stomach, hip and upper thigh from where I accidentally set my sarong on fire on holiday … the list goes on! They all tell a story though, while I may not love them and parade them at every instance, I’m not ashamed of them either.
Too many. Chicken pox ones, six on each shoulder from arthritis and impingement surgery, three sets of three laparopsic scars from exploratory surgeries and gallbladder removal, a large horizontal scar from hip to hip from a hysterectomy, one on my right side from running into a barbed wire fence, large burn scars on my stomach, hip and upper thigh from where I accidentally set my sarong on fire on holiday … the list goes on! They all tell a story though, while I may not love them and parade them at every instance, I’m not ashamed of them either.
G.H - Do you dream? Do you have any recurring dreams/nightmares?
I dream every single night and
remember them in the morning, which I thought was normal, but apparently it’s
not. I used to get a recurring nightmare, but since I made positive changes in
my life and dealt with some painful memories I’ve not experienced that for a long
time.
G.H – Back to normal questions!
G.H - What piece of advice would you give
to a new writer?
There’s lots of advice I wish I’d been
given as a new writer, but I think the most important one is to do research
into how to prepare for release of your writing baby, not to jump in blind like
I did. It’s not as simple as write and press publish, there are many important
steps in the process if you really want to give yourself a running start
against the ever increasing competition. The one most important thing, that I
can’t stress enough, is get a professional editor, or proofreader at a minimum.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re good enough to spot your own errors.
Many readers, understandably, are not tolerant of mistakes in work that they
have paid good money for.
G.H - Would you share a deep dark secret
about you with us?
As
a child I went through a weird phase of eating paper, particularly sweet
wrappers, the waxy kind like on Opal Fruits which were around in the seventies,
when I grew up. Apparently it’s called “Pica” and can be a reaction to a
stressful event in your life, though I’ve never got to the bottom of what set
it off. It can also go hand in hand with OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
which I have a mild strain of. It only manifests with me into what I consider
organisation – alphabetised DVD’s, CD’s, books and my clothes grouped into
colours in the wardrobe etc. Though it does freak me out if someone uses
multi-coloured paperclips, or different coloured pins on a noticeboard! As long
as it doesn’t affect anyone else and doesn’t take up too much of my time, I
don’t consider it to be an issue.
Here are some great teasers! Note: Adult viewing only!
Thank
you for letting us get to know you and your books. It was an absolute pleasure
to have you with us!
Thank
you so much for having me!
Everyone,
please remember any questions or suggestions please write them in the comments
section below.
Thanks G :)
