Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi! Well, I’ve written more books than I’ve had published. 🙂 I wrote three novels that will never see the light of day. Since then, I’ve published two novels, three novellas, now available bundled in a single volume, and two collections of short stories, now also available bundled in one volume. Wonder Guy is a novel in the Fairy Godmothers’ Union cycle that starts with the series of short stories. Another novel in the Fairy Godmothers’ Union cycle will be published in November.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I was just getting to that. 🙂 The latest, due for release in November, is ‘Holiday Enchantment: Thanksgiving.’ It’s part of a series involving five single women who start a holiday club together so that none of them need be alone for ‘family’ holidays. This first of the Holiday Enchantment series tells the story of Helen, who has been widowed for two years and decides it’s time to move on with her life. She writes a letter of farewell and sends it off to her late husbands email account – and gets a reply. This begins a series of events that lead her on a journey across country and across worlds. Based loosely on the fairy tale ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon,’ this is a story I love and am looking forward to sharing with my readers.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I usually do my first drafts in longhand: pen on paper in spiral notebooks – but I don’t think that’s so unusual. There’s something about feeling the flow of the words through the pen that just seems easier.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My history of reading folk and fairy tales has been a huge inspiration. I’ve read all the Andrew Lang collections of various color Fairy Books, the Arabian Nights, the Brothers Grimm and every other source I could find. Then there are the years of reading more current Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’ve devoured books by Tolkein and CS Lewis, JK Rowling, Andre Norton, Robin Hobb, Christopher Stasheff, Mary Janice Davidson, Darynda Jones, Seanan McGuire and a host of others.
What are you working on now?
Under the name of Laramie Sasseville, I also write for a YA/Middle-Grade Fantasy series. The first in this series, ‘The Winter Knife,’ came out in January. I’m now working on the next book, ‘One of Me is Missing,’ planning a release for this summer. This book has been a lot of fun – the young heroine wants to try her hand at every possible skill, and take ever summer school class available. When her wish is granted, she finds herself split into eight different selves, able to be in as many places at once – it’s all fun an games until she encounters a human trafficking ring and one of her needs to be rescued.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still figuring that out. 🙂 My rights reverted this year from the publishers who originally published my work, and I’ve been re-releasing them all under my own imprint and learning more about the process of marketing and promotion than I previously imagined there was to know.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Keep writing, keep reading, solicit constructive criticism and embrace the RE-writing.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
From the movie, “Harvey” with Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, … “in this world you must be oh so very smart or . . . oh so very pleasant. I recommend pleasant.”
Wiser words were never writ.
What are you reading now?
I’ve been reading a series of entertaining novelettes that begin with ‘Outlaws of Olympus’ – a tale in which characters from Greek legend show up in the old west. Imagine Mercury as a gun-slinging, ‘Quicksilver Kid’ and Hercules as an itinerant priest.
What’s next for you as a writer?
More of the same, I hope: writing, revising, and publishing. Once I’ve published ‘One of Me is Missing’ this summer, I plan to get back to writing the second in the Holiday Enchantment series, ‘Yuletide’ so that I can publish it in December, once ‘Thanksgiving’ is out. (‘Thanksgiving’ is basically ready to publish now, but I want to do it closer to its eponymous holiday.)
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
A MacBook, if I could bring a solar charger too – so that I could keep writing indefinitely. I’m afraid I’d run out of blank notebooks all too soon. Also a survival handbook suitable to the island’s ecology and a manual that would include Morse code and flag signals. I’m afraid being confined to reading the same work of fiction over and over too often would spoil it for me.
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