The Definition of Romantic.

The great thing about Romance is we all have different things we think is romantic.  That’s part of the reason why there are so many sub-genre’s in romance. One person thinks chocolate and roses are romantic while another thinks the most important thing is to know they are there for you – and change the tires on your car before a trip, and make sure it has plenty of oil.

For me, when I write romance, I lean less heavily on the flowers and chocolate and more on "the tires are ready for your trip" type behavior.  The less subtle, the more alpha male style of truly being romantic.  Alpha males – at least in my experience – are more a bout pleasing their wives with the subtleties in life.  My husband claims to not have a romantic bone in his body – I tell him yes he does.  It’s in his little finger.

Because when you care about someone, you always want to do little things for them.  That’s not to say we all don’t LOVE those roses and box of chocolates. Those are the above and beyond.  For example, right now I’m sitting by my mother’s bedside as she loses the battle with cancer, and what does my husband do?  He does all the shopping, and all the errands, and when an opportunity came up to get me out of the house, he was all for it, and took me to an awesome dinner at a very different Mexican restaurant. 

What is the one thing your husband or significant other has done for you that is romantic that is not in line with the "typical" romantic actions?

A Bit About Blood Moon Betrayed:

Sean left his pack, searching for an inner peace destroyed when his one daughter was shot and the other kidnapped and tortured.  Not to mention his  mate had left him.

He gave up his position as pack  leader and headed out to the woods. But when he found a woman being beaten by two humans, he is jolted by the realization she’s his True mate.

Caden lives in fear, and at last her terror has caught up with her.  Her ex-husband has decided it’s time for her to die.  Just as she’s about to breathe her last, a man tells her everything is going to be okay.

But how can it be, when her ex-husband still wants her dead?

And once Sean brings her back to his home, secrets are revealed, and it seems no one is going to be okay.  For as the blood moon rises in the October sky, betrayal is in the wind, and upon it floats the scent of death.

Download your copy of Blood Moon Betrayed now!

First, thank you for spending a little time with us. We’re excited to see you have a new release out today, Saint’s Gate. Your known for “gripping” and intense tales, and as I understand it, your latest is no different. Which leads me to a few questions…

WWR: Can you tell us a bit more about the story than the back cover reveals?

BACK COVER COPY:

When Emma Sharpe is summoned to a convent on the Maine coast, it’s partly for her art crimes work with the FBI, partly because of her past with the religious order. At issue is a mysterious painting depicting scenes of Irish lore and Viking legends, and her family’s connection to the work. But when the nun who contacted her is murdered, it seems legend is becoming deadly reality.

Colin Donovan is one of the FBI’s most valuable assets—a deep-cover agent who prefers to go it alone. He’s back home in Maine after wrapping up his latest mission, but his friend Father Bracken presents him with an intrigue of murder, international art heists and a convent’s long-held secrets that is too tempting to resist. So is Emma Sharpe. As the danger spirals ever closer, Colin’s certain of only one thing—Emma is at the center of it all.

A ruthless killer has Emma and Colin in the crosshairs, plunging them into a race against time and drawing them deeper into a twisted legacy of  betrayal and deceit.

CN: Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan are both FBI agents and they both are from the southern Maine coast, but that’s about all they have in common! Emma is from a renowned family of art detectives and grew up in quaint, pretty Heron’s Cove, and Colin is a former Maine marine patrol officer and lobsterman who grew up in run-down Rock Point. Both are fictional villages, based on the great deal of time I’ve spent in Maine, hiking the Bold Coast to walking the beaches of Kennebunkport. I think Emma’s and Colin’s different backgrounds add to the sparks between them.

WWR: We’ve found lots of readers enjoy connected books. Is this book part of a series? If so, what are some of the other books to come?

CN: Saint’s Gate is the first in my new Sharpe & Donovan series. I love to write (and read!) connected book. This is the first time I’m doing continuing characters, and I’m having a great time. We get to see Emma and Colin next year in Heron’s Cove. I’m writing it now, and the story definitely tests them, as FBI agents, as individuals and as a pair.

WWR: We found a great discount coupon on your site—a printable $2 off coupon—for Saint’s Gate, does the publisher do this on most of your books? In this economy, it certainly makes the books more affordable for sure!

CN: I love a deal! My publisher has done coupons for a number of my books, and they’re great. There are actually two for Saint’s Gate. Readers can download the $2-off coupon on my website, good at participating retailers August 23 to August 30. Or they can tear out the coupon at the back of The Whisper, good at participating retailers August 30 to September 13. Individual retailers also offer discounts.

WWR: Taking a step back, can you tell us what inspired you to write romance fiction? Specifically the more suspenseful tales you write? Have you ever considered writing in another genre?

CN: I always bring a sense of romance and adventure to what I write, whether it’s the funny, sexy romances I wrote for Bantam Loveswept and Harlequin Temptation early in my career or atmospheric romantic suspense like Saint’s Gate. I’m thrilled to have a contemporary romance out in February 2012. It’s called Secrets of the Lost Summer, and I’m so excited about this book! The idea had been simmering for a while, and when I finally mentioned it to my editor and agent, they were about as excited as I was.

WWR: A lot of writers complain that although reading’s what made them want to write, they don’t often have much time for reading once their careers take off. Have you found that to be true?

CN: Does anyone have time to read all the books they want to read? I always have a huge to-be-read pile. Right now, as I type this, it includes books by writer friends, books of Russian fables and fairy tales, a history of Carthage (it was on sale and looked good!), two classic novels I should have read by now but haven’t (I’m not telling which ones!) and several novels that caught my eye.

WWR: Readers and writers alike love to know the ins and outs of how a writer structures their time when working on a book. Can you share a typical day in your writing life with us? Also, has the way you work today changed from the way you did things when you first started out?

CN: I often tell people that I’m a disciplined writer but not a regimented one. Writing is the best job, but I don’t treat it like a 9-to-5 job, because, for me, it isn’t. I tend to write more in spurts when I’m starting a new book and by the end, when it feels as if the entire story’s at the tip of my tongue, I’ll write from dawn to midnight. Well. Not often until midnight. I have a friend who stays up until 4 or 5 AM, but I’d rather get up at 4! 

WWR: In that same line of thinking, is the writing life anything like what you imagined when you first started out?

CN: The good parts are just what I imagined: hearing from readers, working with a great agent and great editor, having a fabulous publishing team behind me. The bad parts…that’s life, right? We all have our ups and downs and run into the occasional skunk. ;-)

WWR: Do you like to hear from readers? If so, how would a reader contact you?

CN: Hearing from readers is one of the best parts about being a published writer! Readers can e-mail me (carla@carlaneggers.com, or visit my website), join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

WWR: Do you participate in any blogs? Is there somewhere that your readers can find you if they want the chance to talk with you?

CN: I just started my own blog, called "Out on a Limb." It’s on my website. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter and occasionally guest blog. Readers can also check my Calendar on my website for my personal appearances. Stop in and say hi!

WWR: We’d like to leave any authors out there with something as well, so we were wondering what the single most important piece of advice you received after you decided you wanted to be a published author one day?

CN: When I was very young — twelve, probably — I read a book that advised writers to pay attention to what agents and editors had to say about a project and not so much to what friends and family had to say. Getting professional, objective feedback when we’re starting out isn’t always that easy, but, at the same time, everyone has an opinion about what we write. What opinions do we let in our heads? What opinions do we act on? What opinions help us realize our vision of the story, our dream of becoming a published author? Answering that question for ourselves can be very helpful.

Carla, thank you again for taking a little time with us! We can hardly wait for Saint’s Gate to come out!

Good morning everyone. I hope you’ve had a great week and that you’re all looking forward to the weekend. I’ve come along today to talk about my new release, FORBIDDEN BLOOD, which is the first book in my new Vampire Venators paranormal romance series, and in particular what went into creating the cover.

You see, not only do I write novels, I create the covers for them too. The fact that I have a diploma and a degree in Graphic Design probably won’t come as a surprise to most people who know me. I finished my honours degree back when we were on the cusp of entering the twenty-first century, and since then I’ve continued to nurture my Photoshop skills and improve them. I went into web design, and then into web programming, but I never stopped designing or using my graphic design skills. But that’s enough about me. It’s high time we talked about the cover art I designed for Forbidden Blood.

Forbidden Blood is a vampire romance novel with elements of revenge and betrayal, as well as mystery and suspense. It also features a hero, Kearn, who is exiled from his family, cast out from society, and has closed off his heart, and a heroine, Amber, who is warm and caring, and does everything she can in order to reopen Kearn’s closed off heart and be with him.

I wanted to convey all of that in the cover. I’m a firm believer in the line of thinking that says a cover should give the reader a glimpse of what’s between it. I love to convey elements of a story, or even just the overall feeling of it, in my covers.

With Forbidden Blood, the colour scheme was very important to me. I wanted elements in there that represented Amber’s special blood, Kearn’s coldness, and also Amber’s warmth, so I chose to have the entire cover in a colour scheme of red, blue and purple. I chose purple because it’s a warm colour and also a combination of red and blue, so it would link the colours together into a well-rounded scheme.

For the actual stock photography, I didn’t just want the hero and heroine on the cover, but wanted the sense of mystery. The hero, Kearn, is tracking a man who has been breaking the law by harvesting blood from humans with a rare blood type. They’re known as Source Blood to the vampires. Their blood can give any vampire who drinks it anything from a nice buzz to godlike powers depending on how much they imbibe. Kearn has been tracking a man for three years and his identity has somehow remained secret, which is unheard as the species of demon who governs the Venators (their hunters who carry out death sentences on law breakers—Kearn is one of these Venators) has always known the identity of the law breaker prior to this.

When Kearn saves Amber from the bad guy, and she agrees to play bait for him so they can lure the man out and Kearn can sentence him to the endless dark, they end up participating in what the bad guy sees as a game. He taunts Kearn by manipulating others and making them do his bidding, by showing up and then evading Kearn, and so on. I thought that since so much of the story revolves around the mystery of who this man is, it was important to have him on the cover, so I searched for a picture that seemed right to me and found one that was ideal. At the start of the book, the man is hooded when he attacks Amber and makes her drink his blood, and I managed to find a picture of a rather sinister looking hooded man for my cover.

For Kearn and Amber on the cover, I wanted something that said both vampire and love too, something that conveyed not only the gentleness of Kearn towards Amber, and his deep affection and need for her, but her acceptance of what he is. I thought the picture I found and used said everything I wanted. It showed tenderness between the couple, the trust that Amber feels towards Kearn, as well as how far she will go to win his heart. I loved how the woman was reaching back to touch the man’s face, almost guiding him to her throat, and how at peace they both look.

I decided to have the main focus of the cover as the hero and heroine, having them covering two thirds of the design, and placed the hooded figure at the back, shrouded in darkness and smoke to add to the threat and mystery. Overall, I think the design conveys what I had set out to, evoking the right feelings and giving just a glimpse of what happens in the story.

It’s not my most elaborate design, but it’s effective and matches the idea I’d had for the cover and what I had hoped to achieve.

Read the blurb below for more information about the book, or go to my site and read the first chapter for free, and see the story behind the cover for yourselves.

Forbidden Blood is available now in e-book formats direct from my site, on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBookstore and will soon be available at Sony Reader Store and other retailers. It will also shortly be available in paperback from Amazon.

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Read an excerpt: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/ebooks.php?title=Forbidden%20Blood

Available in e-book for $3.99 from:
Author’s website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/ebooks.php?title=Forbidden%20Blood
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055I1LNW/
Amazon Kindle Germany: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B0055I1LNW/
Amazon Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0055I1LNW/
Barnes and Noble Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forbidden-blood-felicity-heaton/1103572024
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66030

Biography:
Felicity Heaton is a romance author writing as both Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. She is passionate about penning paranormal tales full of vampires, witches, werewolves, angels and shape-shifters, and has been interested in all things preternatural and fantastical since she was just a child. Her other passion is science-fiction and she likes nothing more than to immerse herself in a whole new universe and the amazing species therein. She used to while away days at school and college dreaming of vampires, werewolves and witches, or being lost in space, and used to while away evenings watching movies about them or reading gothic horror stories, science-fiction and romances.

Having tried her hand at various romance genres, it was only natural for her to turn her focus back to the paranormal, fantasy and science-fiction worlds she enjoys so much. She loves to write seductive, sexy and strong vampires, werewolves, witches, angels and alien species. The worlds she often dreams up for them are vicious, dark and dangerous, reflecting aspects of the heroines and heroes, but her characters also love deeply, laugh, cry and feel every emotion as keenly as anyone does. She makes no excuses for the darkness surrounding them, especially the paranormal creatures, and says that this is their world. She’s just honoured to write down their adventures.

If you want to know more about me, or want to get in touch, you can find me at the following places:

My website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
My blog: http://www.indieparanormalromancebooks.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/feheaton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton

Felicity Heaton

I love to write about Texas Cowboys.  After all, I’m married to one.  Well, sorta.  Actually, I’m the one from Texas, he’s a transplant.  From Massachusetts.  Shush!  Don’t tell anybody.  Because to look at him now – you’d never, ever guess.  He has taken to life in Texas and the everyday work at our ranch like a duck to water. 

When we married, he was willing, but his knowledge of country ways was very weak.  So, I began the task of educating him in our mystical, wonderful way.  Here’s a taste of his education.

1 – I had to teach him to drink sweet, iced tea instead of hot tea.  We have hot, hot weather in Texas and iced tea keeps you cooled down enough to get through the day.

2 – We like things hot, too.  And not just our lovin’.  I eat jalapenos on my hamburgers and in my chili and stuffed with pimento cheese – and we eat hot sauce on everything!

3 – One thing that didn’t take too much encouraging was Deer Season.  We treat Deer Season like a national holiday.  Men all take vacations to go spend days at deer camps and we buy extra freezers just to hold the spoils of the hunt.  In Heart and Chains, they have a romantic encounter in a deer stand. Ahem! I wonder where I got that idea. . .

4 – We chicken fry things down here – that’s dipping meat or vegetables in flour, then egg and milk and then flour again and deep frying it.  We chicken fry steak, pork chops, pickles, cheese – heck we even chicken fry chicken.  He likes this part of being Texan.

5 -We live in Tornado Alley – that mid section of the country that spawns huge, killer tornados.  Therefore, we have a storm cellar.  That’s not a basement – we can’t have basements in this part of the world because the water table is too high.  So, we have storm cellars which are nice-size little holes in the ground that have been reinforced and furnished with enough stuff to get you through a few hours when you need to get out of all hell breaking loose overhead. 

6 – Friday Night Football – Here high school and college football is like deer season – sacred.  Everybody knows football and everything shuts down on Friday night because everybody’s at the game.  In my family we are staunch, staunch University of Texas people.  In all of my books – everybody has gone to Texas.  We bleed burnt orange at my house and Bevo is on top of the Christmas tree instead of an angel.  We do have some friends that went to Texas A&M, we’re nice to them anyway.

7 – We wear cowboy boots like other people wear sneakers.  I have about 12 pair.  We also all have belts with our names on the back and purses that have been hand-tooled to display our initials and our brands.  My sweetie wear a belt – too – I tooled this on it – MINE!  He may not be born-raised Texan, but he has a really cute butt.

8 – Armadillos.  The first time my stud muffin saw one, he thought he was going nuts.  Armadillos look like armor-plated possums.  They trudge around the yard at night and root around looking for worms.  Did you know they always have 4 identical looking babies – quads – every time!

9 – The Texas Rangers are a group that we hold in high esteem.  Texas is the only state that can break off from the union and be a country of it’s own and the Rangers are our CIA, Scotland Yard and Mossad all rolled into one.  HEART IN CHAINS features a romance between a tough Texas Ranger and a Mossad agent that is assigned to keep him alive. Hot, Hot, Stuff.

10 – We all have front porches and we sit on them in big rockers and rock.  And that’s where we drink a lot of iced tea and HARD LEMONADE – YEA!

11 – We raise cattle – my family raise Registered Beefmasters and Longhorns.  Beefmasters are extra, extra big.  In fact they’re huge.  A full grown bull can weigh well over a ton.  I’ve very involved in raising the bulls.  I pet them when they’re little and brush them everyday and they eat out of my hand.  On our first date, I took Snookums down to meet my pet bull Sultan.  When he saw me coming, he (sultan) broke out in a run – straight for me and my sweetie.  Well, doll-face thought we were going to die.  When I didn’t move, he bravely stepped in front of me like a bull-fighter facing off a freight train.  Sultan was just coming for a hand-out – he knows out to stop.  Although, he does skid in the last few feet and when he stops, his nose is about a millimeter from your own.  It takes a brave man to stand stock still when a ton of bull is running at you full-speed.  When he stood his ground to protect me, I decided that day – he wasn’t going back up north.  I married that man – and now he’s my hero and I pattern all the cowboys after my Massachusetts man-candy. 

My latest cowboy book Hot On Her Trail is now available!

I’m Felicity Heaton and I’m primarily a paranormal romance author. I write passionate paranormal romances with bite, as well as magical urban fantasy romance novels. I’ve penned over 30 books since I started writing back in 2005, most of them paranormals, but I do also write science fiction romance stories.

What stays true in most of them is their locations. I love writing stories set in more exotic locations, ones that readers might be familiar with or new ones that I can bring to life in their minds through careful description of the sights, sounds, smells and other senses that come alive when we visit new cities.

I write a vampire romance series as F E Heaton called Vampires Realm, and 99% of the books in that series are set in Europe and Russia, places like London, Prague, Budapest, St Petersburg, Paris and Venice. Readers really enjoy taking a break from US-based paranormal romances and seeing vampires in a more historical setting, heading back to the birthplace of their myth. It’s something I often hear from them in emails, or from reviewers on their blogs and sites.

I normally choose to write about locations that I have visited once, or even more than once, because that way I can draw on my personal experience of the city I’m writing about in my book and can add another level to the description, rather than writing from pictures. Writing is all about drawing on experiences, and I’m fortunate enough to be from the UK, so Europe is within easy reach for me.

I have another series that I write as Felicity Heaton and it’s also set in Europe, as well as Heaven and Hell. The Her Angel series focuses heavily on two major European cities—Paris and London. They’re two cities that I enjoy writing about as they’re both beautiful, and readers are familiar enough with them to be able to picture them clearly with less assistance than some of my other destinations in my stories. They’re also two cities that are quite different in feel and appearance, even though they do share some similarities in the styles of architecture, and I like to draw on those differences in the stories.

London and Paris also feature in my epic vampire romance novel, Love Immortal. Love Immortal is the story of Lauren, a thirty-something who is trying to find out what her purpose in life is. What she doesn’t expect is to have a run in with a werewolf, and to be rescued by a handsome immortal who tells her that not only is he her protector, but she’s really a reincarnated demi-goddess on a three thousand year old mission to defeat the original werewolf, Lycaon, before he can gain revenge on Zeus and Olympus.

Love Immortal globe-hops around Europe, starting out in a London suburb where Lauren is rescued by Julian, and then into the more affluent centre of the city to meet the demon-hunting organisation of people with phenomenal powers called Ghost. From London, we hop to Paris, city of romance, which has a far darker side than the heroine imagined possible. In Paris, I focus on describing the feel of the city, and the general architecture to bring it to life, and of course bring in the famous sites that most readers are familiar with from movies and books—the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. Love Immortal also features places less familiar as we hop to Greece, so description takes precedence so readers can visualise the landscape and the feel of the area. I think locations can really add something to a novel, and to the experience a reader has when reading it.

Locations can excite the mind and the heart, drawing us deeper into the world we’re reading about, surrounding us with that city or that landscape. It can add a new level to a book and we can share the excitement that the characters feel as they venture somewhere new, or are swept along in their story through lands familiar to them but that a new light has been cast upon because of their current situation. As a writer, I think location is one of the most important elements of a good story, up there with the characters and the plot arc. A great location, or locations, can turn a good story into something amazing and full of colour and life!

Love Immortal
Felicity Heaton
Rescued from werewolves by the most breathtaking man she’s ever seen, Lauren is dragged into the fight of her life and a dark world she never knew existed. There, she discovers that she’s the latest reincarnation of a goddess and must drink the blood of her immortal protector, Julian, in order to reawaken and continue her three thousand year old mission to defeat Lycaon, the original werewolf.

With the help of Julian and an organisation of people with supernatural abilities, Lauren fights for her life, their future and the fate of mankind against Lycaon and his deadly army, but can she succeed when Lycaon has killed all of her predecessors?

Can she crack the armour around Julian’s heart and seize her happily forever after with him? And can Julian bring himself to trust Lauren with the fragments of his heart after everything he’s been through?

Read excerpt: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/ebooks.php?title=Love%20Immortal

Available in e-book from:
Author’s website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/ebooks.php?title=Love%20Immortal
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HYHHME/
Amazon Kindle Germany: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B004HYHHME/
Amazon Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004HYHHME/
Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Love-Immortal/Felicity-Heaton/e/2940011179648/
Kobo Books: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Love-Immortal/book-OyQ9CMW5Jkaf0K_UwfVfGw/page1.html
Sony Reader Store: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/felicity-heaton/love-immortal/_/R-400000000000000340123

Available in paperback from:
Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1456487884/
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456487884/
Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Love-Immortal/Felicity-Heaton/e/9781456487881/

Biography:
Felicity Heaton is a romance author writing as both Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. She is passionate about penning paranormal tales full of vampires, witches, werewolves, angels and shape-shifters, and has been interested in all things preternatural and fantastical since she was just a child. Her other passion is science-fiction and she likes nothing more than to immerse herself in a whole new universe and the amazing species therein. She used to while away days at school and college dreaming of vampires, werewolves and witches, or being lost in space, and used to while away evenings watching movies about them or reading gothic horror stories, science-fiction and romances.

Having tried her hand at various romance genres, it was only natural for her to turn her focus back to the paranormal, fantasy and science-fiction worlds she enjoys so much. She loves to write seductive, sexy and strong vampires, werewolves, witches, angels and alien species. The worlds she often dreams up for them are vicious, dark and dangerous, reflecting aspects of the heroines and heroes, but her characters also love deeply, laugh, cry and feel every emotion as keenly as anyone does. She makes no excuses for the darkness surrounding them, especially the paranormal creatures, and says that this is their world. She’s just honoured to write down their adventures.

If you want to know more about me, or want to get in touch, you can find me at the following places:

My website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
My blog: http://www.indieparanormalromancebooks.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/feheaton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton

If you’d like to have a chance to win some of my books, then head over to my blog where I’m hosting a 500 Blog Followers International Giveaway between now and June 30th 2011: http://www.indieparanormalromancebooks.com/p/blog-follower-giveaway.html

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them and I’ll respond to them as soon as possible.

Felicity Heaton