Words that tug on the heartstrings
After devouring book one, I nosedived straight into this book and have to say I loved it too although it became a little samey and predictable but fun reading none the less and I’m glad I read it. The characterisations are great and I love the friendships within this book. My only real criticism though is that there were quite a few mistakes in here that were missed. It didn’t spoil it for me but did bring me out of the story a few times more than I’d have liked.
1. Can we start with your name and where you’re from?
My name is Catherine Green, aka SpookyMrsGreen: The Pagan Housewife, and I am from Cheshire, UK. Originally, I come from the Staffordshire Moorlands.
2. Most authors love reading, is this true for you and if so who was/is your inspiration?
Of course I love reading, always have done! My early inspiration came from authors including Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. As I grew older I discovered Judy Blume, LJ Smith and Anne Rice. More recently my inspiration comes from Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.
3. What genre do you write in or do you cross over into many?
I write paranormal romance and contemporary English Gothic. My stories are primarily romance and stories about what happens when you fall in love, but my characters usually turn out to be supernatural or magical in some way. It just happens! I do have some humans in the stories as well…
4. If you could take any character from someone else’s book and make him/her your own creation who would it be and why?
I wouldn’t like to take on another author’s character, but I do admire Anita Blake from the author Laurell K. Hamilton. She is a heroine, but she has many flaws, and these are explored and even worked on throughout the series, which I think is important. I don’t like my book characters to be perfect, it gets boring that way!
5. When did you first start writing?
I have been writing since the first time I learned to form words. As a child I would copy out pages of prose from my favourite story books simply because I loved the act of writing, and the way my writing flowed across the page. As I grew older I wrote diaries (journals), and eventually I began to dabble in short stories and poems. My novel writing only began about eight years ago.
6. Do you plan every inch of your books or do you just let the words flow?
Oh no, I’m too impatient for that! I tried planning my first novel, Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel), and I still occasionally refer to my character notes and location details if I get confused with my current manuscript. But I am what we refer to as a “pantser” – I write by the seat of my pants, typing away furiously and seeing what happens. Then I tidy up the writing later.
7. Who is your favourite character and why? (your own character)
Hmm, that’s a tricky one because I love them all! Alright, I do secretly have a favourite: Marcus Scott. He appears in my very first novel, Love Hurts, and he was only supposed to be a minor support character. He is a vampire, friends with the Mason brothers, and he develops a fixation with my heroine, Jessica Stone (read the books to find out why!). Marcus Scott became very insistent while I was writing the first three Redcliffe novels, and eventually I gave in and wrote his story, which was published as The Darkness of Love. He became a vampire during the late 1800s, on the whim of his Lord and Master on an English country estate.
8. Was there an event in your life that triggered a particular book, or even a scene in a book? If so what was the book and what was the event?
My books are really a collection of memories and experiences with added supernatural twists. The main theme throughout all my stories is the entity of being in love, and what it means to love another person. I have a very passionate relationship with my husband and we have been together since we were teenagers. A lot of our personal drama has appeared in my novels in some guise or other, along with themes I have observed from my peers.
9. Are you working on anything at the moment? If so can you share any tasty morsels?
Oh yes, lots of things! Let me see… Well primarily I am working on the final three books in the Redcliffe novels series. Jessica Stone has transitioned fully into the person she was supposed to be, and now she and her spirit animal are learning their place in the Redcliffe werewolf pack.
In other news, I am working on a series of novels set in and around the North West of England featuring vampire hunters and their adventures. One is about a vampire hunter who lives on a narrowboat and takes on a hit that unravels some very deep, very dark and very surprising secrets about herself and her occasional work partner. If angels and demons are your thing, you might like to read this one…
I have a first draft of a novel about a retired vampire hunter who is married with young children when she is persuaded to return to her old job for one last target – the female vampire that almost killed her ten years previously. She must hide her previous identity from her husband in order to protect her family, but of course it never works out that way, does it?
And then we have Hunting the Hunted. This is almost ready for publication, and might even lend itself to a sequel, I haven’t decided yet. This one follows the story of a vampire called Frederick James who haunts the old tunnels beneath Manchester city centre. He is targeted by a group of hunters, but they struggle to capture him when he meets a witch who entraps him in a love affair before revealing the true nature of his intentions. This novel has strong homosexual themes and is a bit more experimental for me as a writer. I like it!
10. What one piece of advice would you give to someone starting out?
Always be positive. When you feel the urge to write, just do it, and don’t worry about the consequences. If you decide to share your work with the world then fabulous, but be prepared for a long and arduous journey on your quest for fame and fortune. Ultimately, we write because we have to. It is in our nature.
11. What do you do when you’re not writing?
Mostly I wrangle children! I have two daughters, one aged 6 and one aged 3, so they keep me busy. We also have a big soft dog and two pet turtles. When I’m not desperately trying to tidy my messy house, I like to indulge in hobby crafts, mainly card making. My current obsession is craft stamps, but I also enjoy decoupage. I am also a Tarot reader, and am doing a Tarot reading every day for my #365DaysofTarot challenge. I plan to compile a non-fiction book with the results when it is finished.
12. What is the hardest part of the whole writing, editing, marketing process for you?
Definitely marketing. It is such a complicated, huge and confusing task. Where do we start? Who do we advertise to? How do we advertise to them? I am still exploring this one, so I will get back to you with an answer eventually (I hope!)
13. We all have those friends or family members who make sweeping statements about our writing or the process, which is your particular bug bear?
I don’t really have a bug bear because truthfully my friends and family don’t discuss my writing all that much. We are often too busy being consumed by the demands of the children and whatever domestic crisis is taking centre stage. I sort of get on with it quietly in the background.
14. What is your idea of happiness?
Happiness to me is an equal partnership between myself and my husband, where our parental duties are shared and I am free to work on my craft without hurrying or having to stop for mealtimes and bedtime routines etc. You’ve probably guessed that I am still struggling to achieve that balance!
15. For this one I want you to showcase your creativity by painting me a picture, with words, of your ideal setting to write in.
My personal library is a room at the back of my house. It is average size, square, with French doors opening out onto a picturesque garden where colourful flowers bloom in the borders, and my children play happily on the lawn. I have a Victorian antique desk to the left of the French doors, on which sits my laptop, notebooks, printer and coffee mug. Two of the walls are lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves, and in front of the Victorian fireplace sits a small, velvet sofa on which I can rest and read when I need a break. The polished floorboards are covered with a soft rug, and the colour scheme is a mixture of muted purples and greens.
How does that sound?
Lovely (me)
16. What makes you laugh/cry?
My children, my husband and my dog mostly.
17. You’re stranded on a desert island and you can take three men/women who would they be and why? This can be practical or purely sexual in nature.
Ooh, I haven’t thought about that! I might say I will just take my husband for now, because at least then I would get some quality time with him.
18. What is your most annoying habit?
Impatience! I cannot wait for things to happen, I always try and hurry them along. It doesn’t always work, and I am trying to calm down a bit and let things happen naturally.
19. Please tell me about your books?
Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel) is about a young woman who runs a bookshop in Cornwall with her best friend. She falls in love with a local police detective and later discovers that he is a vampire, and that his identical twin brother is a werewolf. She is dragged into their complicated and dangerous lives, to her detriment, where secrets are told and lives are lost…
Love Kills (A Redcliffe Novel) is book 2 in the developing Redcliffe series. In the quiet Cornish seaside town of Redcliffe, Jessica Stone recovers from an horrific werewolf attack and comes to terms with revelations that her lover, Jack Mason, is a vampire, his brother, Danny, the werewolf pack leader, and her best friend, Simon, is a werewolf. Add to that her discovery that she is a witch, and life is suddenly a whole lot harder than it used to be. Jessica has to fight for her own life and Jack’s when faced with his jealous vampire master who wants her old lover back. But things are never easy, and a vampire master is not so easy to defeat…
Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel) – Life has changed forever in Redcliffe, Cornwall. Jessica Stone used to be a normal, happy human. Now she is an angry, conflicted and confused witch. It all happened when she met Detective Jack Mason and his identical twin brother Danny. Jessica almost died twice, fell into a love triangle, and she became a murderer. Now she faces the ultimate challenge as she continues the fight to save the man she loves, while simultaneously struggling with her lust for his werewolf brother and their vampire friend. Can she survive, or will love finally end her life completely?
The Darkness of Love – Lord Gregory Stockton is a powerful and respected businessman embracing the modern era of the Victorian industrial revolution. He has a grand and beautiful manor house complete with a repertoire of servants, and his young wife is charming, attractive, and the perfect lady to his gentleman. The only thing they lack is an heir to the family estate. Lord Gregory knows he can never produce a child, for he is a vampire, although his wife and servants know nothing of his secrets. There are other ways to provide heirs for his estate, however, and Lord Gregory has noticed the romantic attraction between his wife and the young stable hand Marcus Scott. He hatches a plan to bring the would-be lovers together, and then cruelly tear them apart as he continues to build his empire and secure his power base in the south of England. The humans are pawns in the vampire’s game of lust, love and control.
The Vampire of Blackpool – The vampire, the witch, and the hunter battle it out in a contemporary Gothic adventure in Northern England.
Meredith Hanson lives in Blackpool, the former Victorian holiday hotspot of Northern England. She masquerades as a reclusive author, feeding on the blood of unsuspecting tourists without remorse. Her life takes on new meaning when she meets a young witch in a local pub one evening. Despite Meredith’s cold demeanour, she finds herself oddly fascinated with Samantha Morris, and falls into an accidental relationship with the girl. It is at this time that a vampire hunter arrives in Blackpool. He is tough, he is determined, and his next target is an ancient vampire that has been spotted in the tourist town. He intends to bring her down and destroy her to save the lives of innocent humans.
Will he succeed? Or will the experienced vampire seductress be the cause of his undoing?
My Vampire Boyfriend: A Redcliffe Short Story Anthology – The pretty seaside town of Redcliffe in Cornwall is a popular location for holidaymakers during the summer season. It has good waves for surfing, good pubs for socialising, and a vibrant tourist industry. It is also home to a hidden werewolf pack, and several vampires and witches, who all live within human society, pretending to be just like the rest of us.
Bookshop owner Jessica Stone used to be one of those humans. Then she met Detective Jack Mason and his twin brother, Danny. They took her on a wild adventure that shows no sign of slowing down. Now she is deeply embedded with the vampires and werewolves, and learning the power of their lust, and a magnetic attraction that is just too hard to ignore. She is also learning about her own true heritage, and how to feed her desires and satisfy her powerful animal familiar that resides within.
This anthology contains adult themes, and scenes of a sexual nature.
20. Lightning round
Tea or Coffee? – Coffee
Cash or credit? – Cash
Cats or Dogs? – Dogs
Beach or Mountain? – Beach
Summer or Winter – Spring!
Sweet or Savoury – Sweet
Early riser or late riser? – Late riser
Morning or Night? – Night
Christmas Tree – real or fake? – Fake
Sex – Lights on or off? – Lights on!
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions.
Please leave Facebook, Twitter, Website links so we can check you out further.
Author of British paranormal romance series The Redcliffe Novels, Catherine Green was raised on books from a young age, and has happy memories of Saturday mornings spent in her small local library, devouring the contents of the shelves. Catherine has always been fascinated by the supernatural world, and it feels natural for her to write about vampires, werewolves, witches and other mystical creatures in her contemporary stories.
If you sign up to Catherine’s newsletter, she will send you a free copy of her Redcliffe short story, It’s Complicated, to introduce you to her fictional supernatural seaside town in Cornwall, England.
More recently, Catherine released her contemporary English Gothic novel, The Vampire of Blackpool. These novels will show you the darker, sexier side of our favourite British seaside resorts!
You can find Catherine in the following places:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpookyMrsGreen
Author blog: http://www.catherinegreenauthor.blogspot.co.uk/
Twitter page: https://twitter.com/SpookyMrsGreen
The Pagan Housewife Blog: http://spookymrsgreen.com/
My Mother had bee one of those alluring women, a flaming redhead, who had men baying at her feet like enslaved dogs. Not for her the indifference of men, she had played the game to the hilt and every man that walked out of her life was a man she had send packing.
Find out more about Athena’s journey to self-discovery as she throws aside the shackles that bind her in.
Novelette pricing:
Kindle 0.99
Paperback: £3.50/ $5.00
Amazon Link: http://mybook.to/ALifetime
For more information and reviews: https://gibbsdream.wordpress.com/my-published-stories-a-lifetime-or-a-season/
1. Can we start with your name and where you’re from?
My name is Zak Jane Keir, though I also write under Sallyanne Rogers. I’m from south London.
2. Most authors love reading, is this true for you and if so who was/is your inspiration?
Yes, I am a total bookworm and always have been. I think the first writers who made me want to write were Ed McBain and Paul Breeze, though I also love Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jilly Cooper.
3. What genre do you write in or do you cross over into many?
In terms of published work, it’s nearly all erotica and erotic romance. I do dabble in horror and crime fiction occasionally, but I never seem to get those stories finished.
4. If you could take any character from someone else’s book and make him/her your own creation who would it be and why?
Ooh, that’s a tricky one. I mostly like (and almost believe in) other people’s characters the way they have been written. I suppose I’m not the only person who might have liked to make Anastasia Steele less of a vacant, soppy dipshit.
5. When did you first start writing?
When I was a kid. I was about 7 or 8 and I sat down one day and wrote a ‘book’ about murdered ballerinas who came back as ghosts. I was always thrilled when homework involved writing a story, as well.
6. Do you plan every inch of your books or do you just let the words flow?
A bit of a mixture. Some books have started with a synopsis (usually when I planned from the start to submit them to a publisher whose policy was to request a chapter and synopsis), some others with a concept. Usually it’s an idea of who the main two or three characters are, and why they want to have sex with each other, and the reasons why they might have difficulty getting there.
7. Who is your favourite character and why? (your own character)
I like Rosa in Black Heart: there’s a lot of me in her. Only she’s tougher and cooler than I am, and makes a better impression on people.
8. Was there an event in your life that triggered a particular book, or even a scene in a book? If so what was the book and what was the event?
Quite a few, really. Lots of the BDSM stuff I write is based on things I have either done myself or watched other people do. Though the biggest one was a dream I had; an incredibly vivid dream about a woman being tied to a post and whipped, then fucked up the bum, and it also featured a dream version of a friend of mine. That turned into The Switch, which was my first published novel, in 1997. I won’t link to it as it’s out of print and also has not aged very well. The friend who featured in the dream got written into the book as a fairly thinly disguised version of himself, and he absolutely loved it. He told me once that it had helped him, er, win the affections of a woman he was chatting up when he explained that he had been featured in an erotic novel…
9. Are you working on anything at the moment? If so can you share any tasty morsels?
Yes. I have a few short stories planned out, at least approximately, and a novel I am working on intermittently but hope to finish later this year. Here’s a short extract, hopefully without any typos. I keep telling people it’s ‘the one about rope bondage and Brexit’ though that doesn’t quite sum it up.
Tanis, under the shower, water beating down on her face, her shoulders and her breasts, turned her thoughts determinedly back towards Hush. His profile identified him as male, but his avatar was as unrevealing as hers: he’d gone for a photograph of bundled ropes. It wasn’t just rope they discussed when they messaged each other privately, but rope was very frequently the topic of conversation. Tanis thought about rope and her hands made shapes in the air, under the streams of water. She traced lines around each wrist with the fingertips of the opposite hand. A double column tie on your wrists, and you’d have to follow me wherever I led you… She turned the shower off, stepped out, grabbed a towel from the hook and flung it round herself, picked up the another and gave her hair a quick, vigorous rubbing. Glancing in the mirror as she combed her damp hair into shape, she noticed that her nipples had hardened. The flat wasn’t cold – Tanis had, over the past week or so, been allowing herself to put the heating on in the evenings as winter approached. She’d been accustomed to pay-as-you-go meters in previous flat shares and was still inclined to be cautious about how much energy she used, even though Shaz and Michael contributed to the electricity bill because of the amount they not only used to run some of the machinery but which they could also claim back as a business expense. Tonight, though, with a damp, chilly mist in the air and plummeting November temperatures, she’d given the radiators a good half hour session, so it was comfortably warm; warm enough to sleep naked, but her nipples were definitely erect. She finished drying herself and ran her palms over the taut, tingling buds. She felt a similar tingle from her clit, and grinned to herself. Maybe it was time to do something about that.
She took the time to clean her teeth and dab a bit of moisturizer onto her cheeks and forehead, quite enjoying this bout of procrastination. She thought of rope again; the way it could bite in or slide over the skin like a caress. She thought of Hush and the phrase he sometimes used: ‘the infliction of pleasure.’ It was definitely time for bed.
10. What one piece of advice would you give to someone starting out?
Read a lot, write a lot. Most of your first efforts will be crap, and that’s OK, because most of everyone’s first efforts are crap. Keep going. If you want to self-publish, pay for an edit if you can possibly afford it.
11. What do you do when you’re not writing?
Outside of paid work and family/household stuff, I am a Morris dancer, I like going to fetish clubs and rope groups, and I also run a book stall at events like Brighton Twisted Market.
12. What is the hardest part of the whole writing, editing, marketing process for you?
Probably the marketing. I am fairly clueless and terrified of pissing everyone off by spamming them to death. Though the thing that drives me the most insane is trying to get Amazon reviews. People who ask for ARCs and then don’t bother to read them or write reviews, grrr!
13. We all have those friends or family members who make sweeping statements about our writing or the process, which is your particular bug bear?
The people who think authors are all loaded – and the ones who think that women who write erotica are nice cosy housewives who ‘just have a vivid imagination’. Yes, some of them are, but there’s a whole range of attitudes and experiences.
14. What is your idea of happiness?
Financial security ie not worrying about the bills, everyone I care about being healthy and content, and new experiences to look forward to.
15. For this one I want you to showcase your creativity by painting me a picture, with words, of your ideal setting to write in.
I’d like to have a corner table, near the open fire, in a proper country pub with a lovely view out of the window – either a light sprinkling of snow on the fields, or blue skies and blossoming trees. Except I’d probably end up getting distracted by the beer, and the other customers, and not get much done. Where I actually write is in the room I call my office at home, which is a complete tip full of cold cups of tea and discarded newspapers.
16. What makes you laugh/cry?
I have a vulgar and childish sense of humour, so I generally laugh at fart jokes and bad language. Things that make me cry tend to be loss eg bereavement, worry and frustration.
17. You’re stranded on a desert island and you can take three men/women who would they be and why? This can be practical or purely sexual in nature.
I wouldn’t care as long as one of them had a top-of-the-range mobile phone which still worked and could summon rescue.
18. What is your most annoying habit?
Probably my keyboard-warrior tendencies. I love a good ruck on the Internet, even if it’s about relatively unimportant things.
19. Please tell me about your books? For each one please send a pic (kindle cover would be perfect)
I have one novel out, Black Heart, which is a femdom pansexual romance. Otherwise I mostly have short stories included in anthologies: there are probably too many to list but here are a few of them.
Who Thrilled Cock Robin? – erotica inspired by folk songs
Inked – sex and tattoos
Silver Desire – women over 50 having sexy adventures
Goodbye Moderation: Lust – a brilliantly dark and twisted collection, but not for those who prefer erotic romance with happy endings
Sticky Fingers and Warm Leatherette – an anthology that is all my own work; mainly BDSM-themed.
Facebook: Zak Jane Keir (or Sallyanne Rogers)
Twitter @decadentmadamez or @dswsallyanne
Website: www.dirtysexywords.com
Amazon author page https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zak-Jane-Keir/e/B00J8YMLKG/
Maria Gibbs 