Interview with Ava O'Shay, author of Entrusted.

 Romance author, Ava O'Shay, stopped by for an interview!

 

How do you choose your character names? Do you ever change their names mid-process?

I LOVE to name things!  I get dogs just to name them…fish even!  The names for my female characters have either been names I would have used if I had a girl or students I have had in my classes.  Names kind of come to me as I write and often times during church when I am reading my bible instead of listening to the pastor.

Have you ever read a book that you expected to enjoy but didn’t or, vice versa, read a book that you didn’t expect to enjoy and fell in love with it anyway? Which book? 

I am embarrassed to say I did not enjoy any of the Harry Potter books.  Well I didn’t read any more than the first few chapters of the first book but I am sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed the others.  Don’t throw stones at me please.  I have a really difficult time reading that genre.

When writing, do you share chapters with friends or beta readers as you go or do you keep your projects secret until they are complete?

I do not share anything with immediate friends or family.  I have had a few beta readers but they usually bail on me so as of now I work with my friend and editor Kara and that’s about it.

What was your favorite subject at school? 

I loved history.  Not because I love history but because I love to do research and that was the class where I was encouraged to research.  All my books have some aspect of research in them because it is a chance for me to do what I love.  

Please describe your perfect day.

 My perfect day would be a day hiking, mountain biking, or kayaking with my boys.  I love the outdoors and I love my family so doing physical activities outside is my favorite time with them.

Buy links:  Entrusted by Ava O'Shay  (is on sale for .99cents right now!)

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

  Main Attraction by Ava O'Shay will be available July 15th in ebook only in paper back right now

Amazon

Serenity by Ava O'Shay

Will be released July 30th

Ava will start a Barnes and Noble signing tour through the Pacific Northwest on the 15th and there will be facebook contests throughout the months of July and August:   For more information, check this out!

Visit Ava's Amazon author page!

Check out Ava's Blog and sign up for her newsletter!

An Interview with Helen Rena, author of Into the Blind

 Helan Renam the author of Into The Blind, stopped by for an interview!

In a world where everyone is gifted, be it in dancing, lightning-bringing, or death-giving, Ever is born…all-powerful.

For this gift, she is kidnapped and trafficked at birth. Fifteen years later, Ever still hasn’t seen even a glimmer of her powerful gift. Locked in an abandoned mall in New York City, she’s fighting to survive her captivity, her brutal guards, and the other gifted kids in her cell. She would do anything to escape.

Fox is gifted in time manipulation. Like Ever, he hasn’t come into his gift yet; like Ever, he hates the mall; and like Ever, he longs to be free. But there’s one thing he values above his freedom—it’s Ever’s love…

…yet, when the two make a desperate attempt to escape, this attempt proves so dark and twisted that it just might destroy Ever’s love for Fox.


Check out Into the Blind on Amazon!

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- How do you choose your character names? Do you ever change their names mid-process?

- OMG…character names…I tend to agonize over them because they are obviously so important. In Into the Blind, my debut novel that's just come out, I favored telling names. You know like when you call your evil character Mr. Slime-Pants. Since Into the Blind is about a fifteen-year-old girl who must choose between her boyfriend and being all-powerful, I decided to give her a dual hyphenated name. The first part of the name was intended to be just a generic girl's name and the second, the name of a powerful queen. However, the queen I chose at first was just too obscure. The reference fell flat. So I had to scramble and find another queen. And that's how my protagonist became Ever-Jezebel.

- Have you ever read a book that you expected to enjoy but didn't or, vice versa, read a book that you didn't expect to enjoy and fell in love with it anyway? Which book?

- Last summer I decided to finally read Dostoevsky's The Idiot. I didn't expect to enjoy it. In fact, I didn't even expect to finish it because Dostoevsky is heavy going. Some of his books, especially the ones told by insane narrators, like for instance The Double, are too much for me. I'd like to stay sane, thank you very much. But I wanted to try reading The Idiot—it's one of my mom's favorite books—and surprisingly, I liked it. It was brilliant, and okay, in places it was a bit over the top, especially when the characters started going off the crazy end, but overall, it was an amazing book.

- What is your favorite game?

- I love Scrabble, but I can never beat my husband. Somehow he always finds longer words or words that would go over the tallest stacks of letters so he always ends up with the most points. Oh, and also I think he cheats sometimes. Once he swore that a word "zog" exists and that it's a physics term. Since we didn't have a dictionary handy at that time and I'm a humanities person, I had to believe him. Zog my elbow, right?

- What was your favorite subject at school?

- It was…okay, I don't remember what it was called or what it was about. Maybe it was First Aid because it was taught by our school nurse. Now, why I loved it was because we had it in our teachers' lounge (they must not have had an available room during that period or something) and there was a huge head of Lenin in that lounge. Yes, it was a Soviet school, and yes, it was Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution of 1917. So the teachers had his head in their lounge. Not even a bust. Just a head. And it was huge, the size of a couch standing on its end. And it was bald of course, because as historical justice would have it, Lenin got canonized as a baldie. So, back to the (maybe) First Aid class. The nurse, who naturally was not hired to teach us, but to take care of our scrapes, got constantly called out of the teachers' lounge, and we were left to our own devices sometimes for the duration of the entire class period. Yes, that was life. My friends and I chatted and gossiped, and what made it even better was that I did it while leaning against Lenin's head and patting him on his bald top. Hamlet with his poor Yorick's skull has nothing on me.

- Please share a favorite line from your newest book.

- Only one? But I like all of them. Okay, okay, I'll behave. I'll quote a bit from the first chapter of Into the Blind. It's when Ever-Jezebel gets caught kissing someone other than her boyfriend Fox:

And so I put my hands on Sinna’s shoulders, preparing to push him away, when I realized that his mouth tasted of strawberries, and his lips were fuller than Fox’s, and softer, and not as hot. And come to think of it, I’d never kissed anyone but Fox in my life. I began mapping Sinna’s mouth with my tongue.

And then there were steps—and a voice—Fox’s voice: "Ever, what the hell are you doing?"

 Thanks for stopping by Helen!

Interview with Barbara Garren, Author of Phasms: Infinite Potential.

Interview with Barbara Garren.

Get to know Babara and her new book, Phasms: Infinite Potential

·         What is your favorite board game? Card game?

       I’m not really into board games, but my husband and I have a game of Rummy that we’ve been keeping track of for almost 7 years. We play to 500 or a thousand, but keep track of who is ahead overall. The funny thing is, whenever we count up all the tick marks we end up being pretty even. 

·         When writing, do you share chapters with friends or beta readers as you go or do you keep your projects secret until they are complete?

       I share with one CP as I go along – usually chapter by chapter, but I have another CP who gets the whole project when I think I’m done with it. They each provide different types of feedback and this is what has worked best for us. It just evolved this way, and I would imagine different writers and their CP’s would work out their own process, as suits their needs. When I’ve made the first round of changes, I send to both of these friends, as well as a few other trusted Beta’s. I don’t share with friends or family until I think it’s ready to query or publish.

·         Do you have any special talents? (Singing, dancing, juggling, gardening, etc.)  

      

      LOL – no. I have none. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, can’t play any instruments, can’t paint or draw. I used to run really, really long distances (marathons and ultra’s) but a knee injury 3 years ago has pretty well put an end to that. I do make amazing soup – of any kind. I guess that’s it. 

·         What was your favorite subject at school?  

         I’d have to say math. I hated it at first and thought I was just dumb, but once I realized it was like a big puzzle waiting to be solved, I really got into it. I do math problems in my head for fun, or to prove I can. I loved physics too, and took AP physics as an elective, cuz I’m weird like that. 

·         Please share a favorite line from your newest book. 

       

       Hmmm – okay, this is from Captive Potential, Phasms Volume 2: “Aiden shrugged, and it was that motion, that inconsequential and dismissive movement that made me realize we really didn’t know each other at all.”

   

   Check out this special excerpt from: Infinite Potential, Phasms Volume 1

JAMIE’S NOT WITH ME on the beach. My arms and legs feel loose and disjointed. I walk along the edge of the water, picking up starfish and easing them back into the ocean, the waves pulling them back to their normal depth.

I look up, gasp, and jump back. Strange people float by me, inches off the ground, yet their feet leave shallow impressions in the sand. Their limbs are lean and graceful.

They remind me of the ballet lessons I took as a little girl. They wear loose, flowing clothes that move gently in the still air. Their skin has a soft warm glow, an iridescence that highlights their features: straight brows, fine jaws, and sensuous lips. The men are every bit as beautiful as the women. Some more so.

Their voices are soft, yet eerie with longing and desire. They pass, slowing to look at me, their hands resting gently on my shoulder before pushing off. Their thoughts, wishes, and desires swirl inside my chest. No two are alike, and each fills me with images of things I’ve never known. I think they are praying, but it’s no prayer I’ve heard or read. It’s more a sense, a feeling of what they long for, of what they have lost or seek, what they have never known and always known. What they hope to find.

Hundreds pass me, filling me with an ache, a loneliness of never finding, never knowing what they are. I look up as the last one pauses before me, familiar in all his strangeness. He’s tall and dark with features both beautiful and fierce. His mouth twists, threatening and tender, at the same time he reaches toward me with both hands.

Unlike the others, he stands square in front of me with both hands on my shoulders. His eyes have no pupils, no depth, yet no end of depth. He opens his mouth, revealing teeth that are even and white. Everything about him is achingly familiar, strong, and masculine. And alone.

The agonizing ache of loneliness creeps through his hands, along my shoulders, falling into the pit of my stomach, echoing how I feel. I stumble to my knees and he falls with me, his eyes locking with mine. He struggles, his mouth twisting, one hand cupping my face. His brow furrows, an inky wetness filling his eyes before he’s thrown back, yanked away by an invisible force.

He climbs to his knees, straightens, and stands. Pain and anguish radiate from him, mirroring my own feelings. He reaches a hand toward me once more, cries out in silence, and shimmers from my sight.

     Available for pre-ordering on KOBO at:

       http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/infinite-potential-1

  I'm a writer, a reader and a frequenter of the more charming sites in town, namely pubs.

  Born and raised in Southern California, I left to explore the world courtesy of the U.S. Navy. I've lived in San Francisco, New York and Norfolk, Virginia, but prefer to call San Diego home these days, with my husband, Henry (the inspiration for all the romance).

   When not working on my next novel or reading a good book, I can be found running after my grandchildren, my dog and my sanity.

   I believe a well-rounded diet consists of coffee, scotch, chocolate, popcorn and Luna Bars - in that order - and have been accused of violating grammar and etiquette rules in at least seven countries. My Muse is a Valkyrie named Prue, so look out. 

  You can follow me at:

  Website: www.bgarrenwrites.com

  Email: bgarrenwrites@gmail.com

  Blog: http://www.nofilterinstalled.blogspot.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bgarrenwrites

 Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/bgarrenwrites/

 Twitter: @bak229