Showing posts with label Tracy Cooper-Posey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tracy Cooper-Posey. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Today I have romance author Tracy Cooper-Posey on my blog after having her contact me about scheduling an author interview, author guest blog and a book review. I have reviewed Tracy's upcoming release, Ningaloo Nights, which I got an advanced copy to read and you can get your own copy this Friday, October 9th. Don't forget that Tracy has also been on my blog this past Tuesday with an author interview. Now onto my Tracy guest blog about her upcoming release Ningaloo Nights:
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When I was a teenager, I spent some time touring and camping around the northwest of Western Australia with my parents. We used to throw folding beds and gear into the back of the family station wagon, petrol and consumables into the trailer hitched on the back, and take off for two weeks at a time. At night, we’d find a quiet place off the beaten track and camp for the night. Some of the places where we camped were so out of the way, that when we had settled down for the night, and the fire was out, the silence was so total I could hear for miles and miles. And I would lay looking up into the night sky, which was never fully black even out there, and feel a profound peace. So when Ellora’s Cave asked me to write a story that would make readers want to go to Australia, I flashed back on those moments, and knew I wanted to put them into the story. It was just a matter of finding a story to build around them.
The story therefore had to be set in and around Ningaloo, and that made it at least picturesque—Ningaloo Reef itself is spectacular. But the country around Ningaloo isn’t the sort of country you can just drive around willy-nilly. My parents had a healthy respect for the place, and knew how to get around without killing themselves accidentally, and I must have absorbed some of the rules of country travelling even though I was a bratty teenager, because I found that the precautions and expediencies that Mason Hayward takes to get Sherry to Derremawan in Ningaloo Nights were some of the same things my parents used to do when we were travelling around the Exmouth Gulf...I remembered them, even though that was more than twenty years ago.
The story wrote itself rather quickly once I had the concept in place. The plot fell together in a day or two, and I wrote steadily over about three weeks. I was on a short deadline, so I didn’t take any breaks, and luckily, didn’t hit any snags in the plot or characters. The ending suggested itself to me about half-way through the story. I didn’t plot that it from the start. But when I thought of it, I went back and wrote in the necessary set up at the start of the story so that the ending would work. I’ve had a couple of beta readers who have told me that the ending is one of the best things about the story...which goes to prove that plotting ahead of writing doesn’t ruin a story at all. You can still be surprised by what the story will bring out as you write it. Ningaloo Nights is part of the Going Down Under series, and I believe it is the first or one of the first of the series to be released at Ellora’s Cave.
Blurb:
New York cop Sherry Abandonato cashes in her savings and dashes to Ningaloo in remote northwest Western Australia to find her sister who disappeared ten days ago. The only one with the skill to guide her to Derremawan is Mason Hayward, once an official guide with a reputation for getting people out of trouble, but now the town’s bad man. In a searing afternoon of unexpected passion, Mason strikes a bargain. He’ll get her to Derremawan, if she agrees to go there with him unconditionally, on his terms and his conditions. Sherry is astonished to find herself agreeing to the insane bargain, and worse, responding positively to the idea of three days of Mason Hayward dictating terms out under the Australian sun.
New York cop Sherry Abandonato cashes in her savings and dashes to Ningaloo in remote northwest Western Australia to find her sister who disappeared ten days ago. The only one with the skill to guide her to Derremawan is Mason Hayward, once an official guide with a reputation for getting people out of trouble, but now the town’s bad man. In a searing afternoon of unexpected passion, Mason strikes a bargain. He’ll get her to Derremawan, if she agrees to go there with him unconditionally, on his terms and his conditions. Sherry is astonished to find herself agreeing to the insane bargain, and worse, responding positively to the idea of three days of Mason Hayward dictating terms out under the Australian sun.******
Excerpt:
By reading any further, you are stating that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are under the age of 18, it is necessary to exit this site.
An Excerpt From: NINGALOO NIGHTS
Copyright © TRACY COOPER-POSEY, 2009
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.
Chapter One
In only three days Sherry had already got used to laid-back Australians but stark-naked ones were definitely a novelty. Especially this Aussie.
She hadn’t been expecting anything quite so…beautiful—not emerging from such a place as this. The shed she had stepped around looked like it had been slapped together with nails and sheets of rusted corrugated iron. When she peeked inside it on her way around to the rear, it was clear that the man she was seeking did indeed live in it, for there was a cot and an old mattress and a folding card table and a few basic living amenities. Very basic. She’d felt a long way from New York at that moment, despite some of the tenements she patrolled being just as run-down and unloved.
She’d heard sounds beyond the shed and rather than step inside, she’d moved around it, for the smell coming from inside the quarters had been less than savory. No wonder the sergeant at the tiny Ningaloo police station had been so reluctant to give her the man’s name.
Mason Hayward.
Sherry stared at the naked man now, the heat of a torrid February morning forgotten as she watched him reach up to the bucket hanging over his head and pull on the rope attached to the lip at the bottom and running up through the same hook that held the bucket.
Water poured over his black hair, dousing him from head to foot, every inch well-tanned. He stood easily six foot two inches and as he controlled the flow of water from the bucket, Sherry assessed his physical fitness, running her gaze over the tight buttocks, the satin-sheened skin spreading over agreeable, wide back muscles as they worked under very little disguising fat. Long legs. The well-developed muscles clenched as he turned. His chest was as pleasing as his back, with hard Pecs and heavy shoulders. The biceps were flexed, iron-hard.
As a New York cop, Sherry had long ago lost all shyness around the locker room and her assessing gaze flowed smoothly to his cock and testicles. He was all male, well endowed in a way she had rarely seen.
“Should I be charging admission?” His voice was deep, with a gravelly timbre and the tone was dry and completely devoid of amusement.
She jumped guiltily and forced her gaze to his face. He had eyes the same light blue as the Australian summer sky—transparent and depthless. “I’m sorry—” she began, then halted. There was no way to explain what she had been doing. What had she been doing? She was aware of her heart thudding in a way that she’d almost forgotten. How long had it been since she had felt this sort of racing charge? Abruptly, she became aware of the heat of the day again. It was beating at her temples, making her sweat. The heat was a live thing, curling around her, throbbing in time with her heartbeat.
He reached for a ratty brown towel hanging over a piece of wire hooked into the gutter next to his head. It was a casual movement. He wasn’t trying to cover himself up. Her presence here hadn’t caused him any concern at all. He wrapped the towel around his hips and tucked the corner in to secure it. “If you’re looking for Ningaloo, you need to turn around and head south about five kilometers. You’ve passed it already.” The heat didn’t seem to be bothering him at all but he hadn’t just flown out from the depths of a New York winter, either.
“I’m looking for you,” she told him.
His brow lifted and he smiled, showing white, even teeth. “My lucky day.”
“You’re Mason Hayward, aren’t you?”
Abruptly the smile was gone. He looked up at the sky, shut his eyes briefly, as if reaching for calm. “Bugger it,” he said softly. His gaze, sharp and assessing, fell on her face once more. “Who sent you?” he demanded.
His on-point sharpness surprised her. “H-he made me swear not to tell anyone.”
Anger flicked at his features. “What do you want, then?”
Her gut clenched in response. She had faced down killers with more calm than this. Mason Hayward was radiating fury and danger but of a kind she had no experience with and her Glock was back home in New York. “I need you to take me to Derremawan,” she said quickly, trying to appease him with the answer he wanted. “None of the registered guides will take me there.”
His eyes narrowed. “Derremawan,” he repeated softly and gave a short, sharp exhalation. “Why there, for god’s sake?”
She stared, astonished. “You don’t know why?”
He grimaced. “Indulge me.”
“My sister—” She blinked furiously, fighting back the flood of tears that threatened every time she tried to speak of it. “My baby sister, Pepper, disappeared ten days ago. In her last text message to me, she said she and her boyfriend were going up the trail to Derremawan. The local authorities…they haven’t closed the file but they aren’t pursuing the matter, either. They looked along the trail with a helicopter and they found the car but no…no bodies. And that was the extent of their investigation.”
“So you flew out here from America to do what?” His eyes were drilling her now. It was uncanny the way they seemed to pierce right through her. She knew she should resent the heavy-handed examination but she needed Hayward, so she answered truthfully.
“I’m here to find her.”
He shook his head. “Go home, lady. I’m sorry about your sister but the cops are right. After ten days, they’ll have been out of water long enough to be dead, no matter what.”
“I know that,” Sherry told him as evenly as she could, although the admission wrenched at her. The tears blurred her sight and she blinked again. “I’m not stupid, Hayward. I know I’m a Yank and all that but I know that much. I said I wanted to find her. Not save her. I just want to find her and find out what happened to her. I think—no, I know that foul play was involved.”
His head tilted as he looked at her. “Are you a cop?”
“As it happens, yes, I am. Why?”
“You talk like one. ‘Foul play?’ Do you know the chances of that happening around here? Where are you from in the States?”
“New York,” she said, gritting her teeth against her rising resentment over his casual dismissal and the arrogance behind it. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t born here.
He crossed his arms. “You’ve got over two thousand people per square kilometer there. Here, the official count is less than half a person. If you really think someone was up to no good out there at Derremawan, the chances that a third person came along and did ’em in are laughable. So that just leaves the boyfriend.”
His gaze would not leave her alone. He was skewering her. Making her writhe with guilty shame. Because that had been exactly what she had been thinking on the long, long trip from New York to L.A., to Shanghai, to Singapore, to Perth, then back up to Ningaloo. She had never trusted Ryan to do right by Pepper. Not at all. And her fury had sustained her all the way here.
“I’m betting your parents are both dead and they died a while ago,” Mason Hayward added softly. “And you’ve been mum and dad to your little sister since then.”
She jumped. She couldn’t help it. “Fuck you and the motherfucker who bore you,” she spat, her voice thick with more tears and turned to go. She would find someone else. Anyone but this asshole.
“Wait,” he said gently, his hand on her elbow. “Wait a minute.” He didn’t hurt her but he halted her just the same. There was no arguing with the forced behind his hold.
She kept her head down to hide her tears. Those, she would not let him see.
“How much money have you got?” he said.
Money. She had been warned it would come down to money with him but the confirmation filled her with an inexplicable sadness. She mentally converted the wad of US dollars she had stashed away and said warily, “The equivalent of about two thousand Australian.”
“That’s not going to be enough.”
She looked at him—tears be damned. “No wonder this town hates you. You can add one more to the tally, Hayward. You’ve got the sensitivity of a pack mule.”
She wrenched her elbow out of his grip and walked away from him.
******
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Today I'm reviewing an advanced e-copy of Tracy Cooper-Posey's upcoming release that I've had the pleasure of reading, Ningaloo Nights, which comes out on Friday, October 9th. This book really intrigued me because it is set in the Australian outbacks which I find fascinating because they are totally different from my city life in NYC. It was also very fascinating that it's about a New York cop named Sherry Abandonato who cashes in her savings and dashes to Ningaloo in remote northwest Western Australia to find her sister who disappeared ten days ago. That must have been a real adjustment for her since she's in a new territory that is completely different from New York because they have different rules out there in Western Australia where you could easily get lost if your not from there or with someone who is from there. The only one with the skill to guide her to Derremawan is Mason Hayward, once an official guide with a reputation for getting people out of trouble, but now the town’s bad man. This almost reminds me of the movie called Australia with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman except that this is in the present while the movie was during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In a searing afternoon of unexpected passion, Mason strikes a bargain with Sherry that she simply can't refuse if she wants to find the truth about what happend to her sister and her boyfriend. He’ll get her to Derremawan, if she agrees to go there with him unconditionally, on his terms and his conditions and Sherry is astonished to find herself agreeing to the insane bargain, and worse, responding positively to the idea of three days of Mason Hayward dictating terms out under the Australian sun. This is a short put erotically sweet novel that will have you breathing heavy and have you sweating with the heat that is going on between Sherry and Mason during this novel. Tracy Cooper-Posey delivers a wonderful novel that had me reading it from start to finish without pause and made me want more even after the novel was done. I'm definitely going to have to find more novels by Tracy's if they are anything like this great novel and if you want a hot steamy Australian man to read about then Ningaloo Nights is the right book to read. I give this book 4 Open Books:
Here is the description of the book from Tracy's website and picture:
NINGALOO NIGHTS by Tracy Cooper-Posey $ 4.45 (81 Pages)
New York cop Sherry Abandonato cashes in her savings and dashes to Ningaloo in remote northwest Western Australia to find her sister who disappeared ten days ago. The only one with the skill to guide her to Derremawan is Mason Hayward, once an official guide with a reputation for getting people out of trouble, but now the town’s bad man. In a searing afternoon of unexpected passion, Mason strikes a bargain. He’ll get her to Derremawan, if she agrees to go there with him unconditionally, on his terms and his conditions. Sherry is astonished to find herself agreeing to the insane bargain, and worse, responding positively to the idea of three days of Mason Hayward dictating terms out under the Australian sun.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Today I have romance author Tracy Cooper-Posey on my blog after having her contact me about scheduling an author interview, author guest blog and a book review. I will be reviewing Tracy's upcoming release, Ningaloo Nights, which I got an advanced copy to read and you can get your own copy this Friday, October 9th. Don't forget that this Thurday Tracy will be back to blog about how she came to write her novel, Ningaloo Nights. Now onto my interview with Tracy:
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Phoebe Jordan: When did you know that writing romance was going to be the thing that you would do with your life? Which author inspired you to start writing romance?
Tracy Cooper-Posey: George Lucas inspired me to write romance, which sounds bizarre, I know. I fell in love with Star Wars (the original movie), and wrote the sequel. I didn’t realize that what I was doing was called fanfic—they didn’t have a name for it then, and I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. I was too embarrassed. But I had Han Solo and Leia falling in love long before George Lucas got around to it in the second movie. But nothing I wrote ever topped Han Solo’s damned near perfect “I know” in response to Leia’s confession of love in the second movie—or Harrison Fords desperate expression as they put him into the carbon freezer. That moment, and the lesson in romantic conflict, character, emotional intensity and the art of not saying everything has stayed with me and I’ve been striving to deliver the impact of that moment in my romance novels ever since.
Phoebe: Did you know what type of romance you wanted to write about or did you experiment with different genres before you chose the one that you felt was for you?
Tracy: Oh, lordy, I tried everything, and I’m still skipping around the genres. Thanks to the wonders of pen names, I can write different genres of romance for as long as I have the energy and time, and for as long as publishers will continue to pay me to do so. Because I read everything, and I mean everything (I read science fiction, straight science, straight fiction, suspense novels, historicals, histories, biographies, thrillers, and more) I really couldn’t settle on a romance sub-genre I could stick with. There are drawbacks to floundering around and trying everything—you never really build up a true readership in a single genre. I learned this the hard way, so these days I try to stay true to one or two genres. Romantic suspense, contemporary romance and historical romance are my big three under my own name, with romantic suspense being the central core.
Phoebe: What was the first fiction you ever wrote? And do you still have it with you?
Tracy: Ah, well, that would be the sequel to Star Wars. I wish I did have it! I continued to write stories after that Star Wars effort...the die was cast. And apart from those very early efforts, I have kept just about everything, especially as I bought a computer very early on—I bought my own personal PC in the early eighties, and I’ve never lost my files. The earliest work I wrote was science fiction romance...even then I was romance-oriented.
Phoebe: How much research do you have to do for your novels and does it take you a long time to gather that research?
Tracy: The amount of research will depend upon the genre I’m writing in, and the setting of the novel, and if I’ve written a book in that setting before. For instance, if I’m writing an historical novel set in 5th Century Britain: Most historical romances takes oodles of time to research because you have to get the history straight, and I’m one of those writers who doesn’t just paint a pretty backdrop for the hero and heroine to stand in front of. I have real events and characters moving around, political ramifications, suspense storylines that have an effect on the main characters. So you can’t fudge the research. But for 5th Century Britain, I’ve written at least two books in that time period already and I know it really well, so that’d cut down the time. Plus, if the book was, say, an erotic romance, then there would be far more story time devoted to the sexual subplot than the politics, and that would cut down on the amount of research time you’d have to spend on who was doing what back then. On the other hand, you’d have to spend some time finding out how they thought about sex in those days, and that can be very difficult research to conduct!
Also, 5th century Britain is technically Ancient Britain. In other words, The Dark Ages, when there is very little to no information available about the times, the people, or the way they lived. So that can either complicate or simplify your research, depending on your point of view. In my case, it complicates matters, as my editor has an advanced history degree, and doesn’t let me get away with anything! Simply settling for a contemporary setting just to get away from the research doesn’t work much either. As soon as you move away from your home territory, you have to make sure you’re being accurate, and that takes research. There’s some whopping inaccuracies in some very popular books out there right now that have quite ruined those books for me...to the point where I simply can’t read them, and that’s a pity. If the author had taken the time to look up the matter as they were writing they could have avoided disappointing the reader. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed these glaring flaws that could have been fixed with five minutes research on the Internet.
Phoebe: How did you come up with the concept for your currently released novel, Dare to Return?
Tracy: I wanted to write a book about the town where I spent my teenage years. (Geraldton, Western Australia.) That’s where the book started. Most of my teenage years I spent windsurfing, snorkeling and scuba diving in and around Geraldton, just as the heroine does in the book—and the heroine’s run-in with the grey nurse shark is actually auto-biographical. So when I sat back and thought about what I’d done with my teenage years, it didn’t seem like a very useful way to have spent one’s time. Just like the heroine, I’d hid out at the beach because I wasn’t one of the popular kids at school (too busy reading and writing my stories and getting straight A’s)...and my mind starting turning over what a waste it had all been, and what would I have done to make it more useful, and that’s how the story starting to form. I fantasized about burning my school year book as a symbolic “up yours!” for those years of purgatory...and my imagination took it from there.
Phoebe: How did you come up with the concept for your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights?
Tracy: Ellora’s Cave approached me about writing a story set in Australia that would make readers want to go there. They’re doing a series called “Going Down Under” and they invited all their Australian authors to contribute to the series. Ningaloo Nights was my contribution. Ellora’s Cave wanted settings and heroes that were evocative of Australia. Ningaloo Reef and the town of Ningaloo isn’t too far north of Geraldton, and my family and I toured around that country when I was a teenager, so I knew it well. Sitting here in Canada, with evergreens and mountains around me, makes me remember that flat dry land with a certain amount of sentimentality, so it was with pleasure I wrote Ningaloo Nights.
Phoebe: How do you come up with each of your characters for your novels? How do you choose their names out of so many names out there?
Tracy: How long is a piece of string? This is a complex question to answer and basically would take a book on character building to answer it completely! The two central characters in a romance...well, one of the two characters are usually in my mind to start with because of the story demands. In Ningaloo Nights for instance, I already knew that I wanted the heroine to be American, so that the primary readership, North Americans, would feel more comfortable reading the story. Then, as an author I’m always looking for the most amount of conflict possible, I asked myself who would be the most uncomfortable in a tiny little town like Ningaloo? Well, that’s easy: Someone from a big, big city like New York. And so Sherry Abandonato started to form. The second character in a romance must add to the romantic conflict, so I always ask the question: Who would be the worst person for Sherry to fall in love with? And that’s who Mason Hayward must be. Names...I love playing around with names. I always try to have a good reason for a character’s name, and Mason does in Ningaloo. Names have meanings, and even if I can’t work it into the story, I try to pick names with appropriate meanings or with a nice feeling when you say it. I use Behind the Name a lot to help me research names. They have a last name page, too, that I use for last names.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite character that you really enjoyed writing about in your currently released novel, Dare to Return? Did you have a character that you felt you could really relate to in your currently released novel, Dare to Return?
Tracy: I always like my characters when I’m writing them—especially the heroes. I tend to fall a little bit in love with them myself. I think that’s almost inevitable, if you’re a romance writer. If you can’t empathize and like your heroes, how are the readers going to like them? But I really liked Vivien. She had guts that I sometimes wish I had myself. She walked away from the hero and built her own life despite loving him. That takes backbone and a strength of character that not a lot of women can claim.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite character that you really enjoyed writing about in your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights? Did you have a character that you felt you could really relate to in your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights?
Tracy: I’m going to have to confess that Mason was my weakness in this one...all the way.
Phoebe: Do you have a process of how you start to write your novels?
Tracy: I’m a plotter, and have been since very early on in my career. I like the speed it gives me in writing novels. The first step is usually brainstorming story ideas. I used to do this on paper—great sheets of paper everywhere, but lately I’ve learned to do it on the screen, so no more dead tree wastage. Plotting evolves out of brainstorming. There’s no dividing line. Just gradually the ideas become more concrete and detailed and I start making firm decisions. Then the book’s plot coalesces out of that morass. I keep plotting, adding more and more detail, until I’ve reached a point where I feel I’m ready to write—usually at the point where I believe I have a scene by scene breakdown. I say “believe” because it never ends up being quite as detailed as I think it’s going to be. The final book never looks exactly like what I’ve plotted and often ends up looking quite a bit different, but that’s the joy of writing versus plotting.
Phoebe: Have you ever considered writing a series or are writing stand alone novels your preference? How would writing each be different for you?
Tracy: I am currently writing a series for Ellora’s Cave. Red Leopard and Black Heart are the first two books in a series called Guns ‘n Lovers, set in a fictional island nation called Vistaria, off the coast of Mexico. The third book, Blue Knight, is currently a work in progress. I have written series under other pen names, and don’t mind writing them at all. They give me a chance to develop really solid characters and storylines that you just can’t build in a single title. However, I also like a decent single-title book that is well written, well balanced and solid, like a decent meal. You don’t get many of them these days. Authors and publishers all seem to be going for the trilogies, which are great to read, but sometimes you like to have a damn good read in one sitting.
Phoebe: What process did you have to go through to get your first book published and did it take you long?
Tracy: Yes, I struggled to get published about as much as any author struggles, I believe. My saving grace was that I was struggling about the same time the e-book industry was coming into being and Ellora’s Cave was opening its doors. Otherwise I might have ended up taking a completely different path. I started trying for publication while I was still living in Australia, and aimed exclusively for publication with Harlequin Silhouette. I won the Romance Writers of Australia’s inaugural Emma Darcy Award (their equivalent of the Golden Heart) for Eyes of a Stranger, and Harlequin ended up looking at it twice (before and after the win), and rejecting it twice. Then I began sub-genre hopping, second-guessing what I “should” be writing. By then I was living in Canada, and the e-book industry was firing up, and Hard Shell Word Factory bought everything I’d ever written. I was suddenly published...in a format that no-one would buy, that bookstores wouldn’t stock, and that I had no idea how to promote, when readers had never heard of e-books. That was ten years ago. A few years later I heard of Ellora’s Cave, and co-wrote a manuscript with a friend of mine, that we sold to them. A rather tame regency romance, as it compares to what EC are selling these days. The money we made on that romance was staggering. Suddenly I was really published, in a way that made sense. Now, e-books and e-publishing is a legitimate business, and readers understand what an e-book is. Cerridwen Press, Ellora’s Cave’s non-erotic imprint, is now re-publishing all my books from ten years ago, and this time I have a chance to actually find readers that I didn’t find back then.
Phoebe: Do you ever get writers block? What do you do to get rid of it so you can get back to writing your novels?
Tracy: I rarely get blocked. Not truly blocked. When I start dithering over writing and procrastinating about getting on with the manuscript, I’ve found that it’s usually because I haven’t plotted in enough detail and I’m not entirely sure about what comes next. A few minutes or an hour or so of detailed plotting cures the problem and I can get on with writing with renewed confidence. I’ve never experienced a “block” such as other writers have described—the psychological blank wasteland where word simply have not flowed despite every trick they’ve tried to bring them to the page. I’m not sure what I’d do if that happened. Perhaps I’m too practical and anal about my work habits? I’ve never considered writing to be a matter of courting my muse. It’s a matter of putting my butt in the chair and cranking out pages.
Phoebe: What is your biggest reader pet peeve, if you have any? (stock characters, unresolved endings, predictability, everything wrapped up hurriedly in the end, etc.)
Tracy: I think I may have touched on this one already: Getting your facts wrong. It’s my biggest peeve right now only because lately I seem to have been getting my nose rubbed it all over the place. Some very prominent authors who really ought to know better have included the most awful whoppers in their stories. One author who shall remain nameless built an entire series around a basic premise that simply couldn’t happen in the real world and to this date, no-one has called her on it. It drives me bonkers. As for predictability, as a romantic suspense author used to plotting to stay ahead of wily readers, I’m used to being able to spot where the author is leading me, so I’m resigned to predictability. It’s a nice change when I pick up the occasional book that surprises me. Charlaine Harris manages it every now and again, for instance.
Phoebe: Which aspects of writing do you enjoy the most and why? And what is your biggest writing pet peeve? (overuse of exclamation points, adverbs, bad guys named Wayne, etc.), if you have any?
Tracy: I love almost all aspects of novel writing, but I think the biggest and most exciting part of it has to be the story-concept stage. The potential for what sort of story you might come up with next is essentially endless and you may well come up with the idea, the one that is going to send shivers down your back, the Gone With the Wind for this generation, or the one that is going to keep you up for the next month while you scribble it down. Many writers get struck with ideas as they move about their day. As a full time writer I don’t get that luxury because I’m writing or immerses in book business all day already. So I have to deliberately generate story ideas in specific sessions, and that’s when I get to have those idea moments.
Phoebe: What is the one writing tool can you not live without?
Tracy: My computer.
Phoebe: How do you handle your writing schedule and your personal life without going insane?
Tracy: I’m an anal geek, and Outlook rules my life. If it isn’t talking to me on my computer, it’s beeping at me on my Blackberry. I think it has more conversations with my husband via email than I do—letting him know what I’m doing next. But at 5pm, it tells me to get my butt upstairs so I can become a normal person and a wife, and on weekends, I turn into Mr. Intensity’s adoring side kick (my husband is a professional wrestler). So it all works out.
Phoebe: What do you do to relax after having spent a long while writing? Do you have any hobbies?
Tracy: Hobbies, no. But after writing all day I work out with weights at the gym (my husband weight trains with a vengeance and oversees my own workouts) and I run a couple of miles doing wind sprints on the treadmill every second day, and spend my evenings with him. We also attend romance writing and reader conventions at least once a year.
Phoebe: Is there any advice that you would give to an aspiring romance writer that you wish someone had given you?
Tracy: Plenty, but most of it has been said by others. Unfortunately, there is not sure path to success in this industry, and there’s no single path. We each get there in different ways. The one thing I learned and continue to be reminded of is that you never know what’s around the corner, so don’t give up. It could all change tomorrow.
Phoebe: Is there any writing tips, research tips, promotion and marketing tips that you would give to an aspiring romance writer that you wish someone had given you?
Tracy: I have a ton of articles, advice and resources on my website, on the articles page. I would encourage anyone who’s interested to wander through that page and read the articles there.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite genre you like to read? Who is your favorite author(s)?
Tracy: I don’t have a favorite genre. I read all over the map. Honestly. Favorite authors: Classic Stephen King (The Stand and earlier), Stephen O’Donnell (Modesty Blaise books), Mary Stewart (Merlin series), Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series), Desmond Bagley (anything with his name on it), Neville Shute (anything), Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse), Stephanie Myer (Twilight Series...yeah, I ‘fess up), Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Lora Leigh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Anne McCaffrey, Ken Follett, Mike Resnick, Joe Haldeman, Peter F. Hamilton, William Goldman, J.K. Rowling, T. H. White, J.R.R. Tolkein.
Phoebe: What are you reading now? And what do you plan to read after that?
Tracy: I’m currently reading Dark Lover by J.R. Ward. I have The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger up next.
Tracy Cooper-Posey: George Lucas inspired me to write romance, which sounds bizarre, I know. I fell in love with Star Wars (the original movie), and wrote the sequel. I didn’t realize that what I was doing was called fanfic—they didn’t have a name for it then, and I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. I was too embarrassed. But I had Han Solo and Leia falling in love long before George Lucas got around to it in the second movie. But nothing I wrote ever topped Han Solo’s damned near perfect “I know” in response to Leia’s confession of love in the second movie—or Harrison Fords desperate expression as they put him into the carbon freezer. That moment, and the lesson in romantic conflict, character, emotional intensity and the art of not saying everything has stayed with me and I’ve been striving to deliver the impact of that moment in my romance novels ever since.
Phoebe: Did you know what type of romance you wanted to write about or did you experiment with different genres before you chose the one that you felt was for you?
Tracy: Oh, lordy, I tried everything, and I’m still skipping around the genres. Thanks to the wonders of pen names, I can write different genres of romance for as long as I have the energy and time, and for as long as publishers will continue to pay me to do so. Because I read everything, and I mean everything (I read science fiction, straight science, straight fiction, suspense novels, historicals, histories, biographies, thrillers, and more) I really couldn’t settle on a romance sub-genre I could stick with. There are drawbacks to floundering around and trying everything—you never really build up a true readership in a single genre. I learned this the hard way, so these days I try to stay true to one or two genres. Romantic suspense, contemporary romance and historical romance are my big three under my own name, with romantic suspense being the central core.
Phoebe: What was the first fiction you ever wrote? And do you still have it with you?
Tracy: Ah, well, that would be the sequel to Star Wars. I wish I did have it! I continued to write stories after that Star Wars effort...the die was cast. And apart from those very early efforts, I have kept just about everything, especially as I bought a computer very early on—I bought my own personal PC in the early eighties, and I’ve never lost my files. The earliest work I wrote was science fiction romance...even then I was romance-oriented.
Phoebe: How much research do you have to do for your novels and does it take you a long time to gather that research?
Tracy: The amount of research will depend upon the genre I’m writing in, and the setting of the novel, and if I’ve written a book in that setting before. For instance, if I’m writing an historical novel set in 5th Century Britain: Most historical romances takes oodles of time to research because you have to get the history straight, and I’m one of those writers who doesn’t just paint a pretty backdrop for the hero and heroine to stand in front of. I have real events and characters moving around, political ramifications, suspense storylines that have an effect on the main characters. So you can’t fudge the research. But for 5th Century Britain, I’ve written at least two books in that time period already and I know it really well, so that’d cut down the time. Plus, if the book was, say, an erotic romance, then there would be far more story time devoted to the sexual subplot than the politics, and that would cut down on the amount of research time you’d have to spend on who was doing what back then. On the other hand, you’d have to spend some time finding out how they thought about sex in those days, and that can be very difficult research to conduct!
Also, 5th century Britain is technically Ancient Britain. In other words, The Dark Ages, when there is very little to no information available about the times, the people, or the way they lived. So that can either complicate or simplify your research, depending on your point of view. In my case, it complicates matters, as my editor has an advanced history degree, and doesn’t let me get away with anything! Simply settling for a contemporary setting just to get away from the research doesn’t work much either. As soon as you move away from your home territory, you have to make sure you’re being accurate, and that takes research. There’s some whopping inaccuracies in some very popular books out there right now that have quite ruined those books for me...to the point where I simply can’t read them, and that’s a pity. If the author had taken the time to look up the matter as they were writing they could have avoided disappointing the reader. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed these glaring flaws that could have been fixed with five minutes research on the Internet.
Phoebe: How did you come up with the concept for your currently released novel, Dare to Return?
Tracy: I wanted to write a book about the town where I spent my teenage years. (Geraldton, Western Australia.) That’s where the book started. Most of my teenage years I spent windsurfing, snorkeling and scuba diving in and around Geraldton, just as the heroine does in the book—and the heroine’s run-in with the grey nurse shark is actually auto-biographical. So when I sat back and thought about what I’d done with my teenage years, it didn’t seem like a very useful way to have spent one’s time. Just like the heroine, I’d hid out at the beach because I wasn’t one of the popular kids at school (too busy reading and writing my stories and getting straight A’s)...and my mind starting turning over what a waste it had all been, and what would I have done to make it more useful, and that’s how the story starting to form. I fantasized about burning my school year book as a symbolic “up yours!” for those years of purgatory...and my imagination took it from there.
Phoebe: How did you come up with the concept for your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights?
Tracy: Ellora’s Cave approached me about writing a story set in Australia that would make readers want to go there. They’re doing a series called “Going Down Under” and they invited all their Australian authors to contribute to the series. Ningaloo Nights was my contribution. Ellora’s Cave wanted settings and heroes that were evocative of Australia. Ningaloo Reef and the town of Ningaloo isn’t too far north of Geraldton, and my family and I toured around that country when I was a teenager, so I knew it well. Sitting here in Canada, with evergreens and mountains around me, makes me remember that flat dry land with a certain amount of sentimentality, so it was with pleasure I wrote Ningaloo Nights.
Phoebe: How do you come up with each of your characters for your novels? How do you choose their names out of so many names out there?
Tracy: How long is a piece of string? This is a complex question to answer and basically would take a book on character building to answer it completely! The two central characters in a romance...well, one of the two characters are usually in my mind to start with because of the story demands. In Ningaloo Nights for instance, I already knew that I wanted the heroine to be American, so that the primary readership, North Americans, would feel more comfortable reading the story. Then, as an author I’m always looking for the most amount of conflict possible, I asked myself who would be the most uncomfortable in a tiny little town like Ningaloo? Well, that’s easy: Someone from a big, big city like New York. And so Sherry Abandonato started to form. The second character in a romance must add to the romantic conflict, so I always ask the question: Who would be the worst person for Sherry to fall in love with? And that’s who Mason Hayward must be. Names...I love playing around with names. I always try to have a good reason for a character’s name, and Mason does in Ningaloo. Names have meanings, and even if I can’t work it into the story, I try to pick names with appropriate meanings or with a nice feeling when you say it. I use Behind the Name a lot to help me research names. They have a last name page, too, that I use for last names.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite character that you really enjoyed writing about in your currently released novel, Dare to Return? Did you have a character that you felt you could really relate to in your currently released novel, Dare to Return?
Tracy: I always like my characters when I’m writing them—especially the heroes. I tend to fall a little bit in love with them myself. I think that’s almost inevitable, if you’re a romance writer. If you can’t empathize and like your heroes, how are the readers going to like them? But I really liked Vivien. She had guts that I sometimes wish I had myself. She walked away from the hero and built her own life despite loving him. That takes backbone and a strength of character that not a lot of women can claim.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite character that you really enjoyed writing about in your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights? Did you have a character that you felt you could really relate to in your upcoming novel, Ningaloo Nights?
Tracy: I’m going to have to confess that Mason was my weakness in this one...all the way.
Phoebe: Do you have a process of how you start to write your novels?
Tracy: I’m a plotter, and have been since very early on in my career. I like the speed it gives me in writing novels. The first step is usually brainstorming story ideas. I used to do this on paper—great sheets of paper everywhere, but lately I’ve learned to do it on the screen, so no more dead tree wastage. Plotting evolves out of brainstorming. There’s no dividing line. Just gradually the ideas become more concrete and detailed and I start making firm decisions. Then the book’s plot coalesces out of that morass. I keep plotting, adding more and more detail, until I’ve reached a point where I feel I’m ready to write—usually at the point where I believe I have a scene by scene breakdown. I say “believe” because it never ends up being quite as detailed as I think it’s going to be. The final book never looks exactly like what I’ve plotted and often ends up looking quite a bit different, but that’s the joy of writing versus plotting.
Phoebe: Have you ever considered writing a series or are writing stand alone novels your preference? How would writing each be different for you?
Tracy: I am currently writing a series for Ellora’s Cave. Red Leopard and Black Heart are the first two books in a series called Guns ‘n Lovers, set in a fictional island nation called Vistaria, off the coast of Mexico. The third book, Blue Knight, is currently a work in progress. I have written series under other pen names, and don’t mind writing them at all. They give me a chance to develop really solid characters and storylines that you just can’t build in a single title. However, I also like a decent single-title book that is well written, well balanced and solid, like a decent meal. You don’t get many of them these days. Authors and publishers all seem to be going for the trilogies, which are great to read, but sometimes you like to have a damn good read in one sitting.
Phoebe: What process did you have to go through to get your first book published and did it take you long?
Tracy: Yes, I struggled to get published about as much as any author struggles, I believe. My saving grace was that I was struggling about the same time the e-book industry was coming into being and Ellora’s Cave was opening its doors. Otherwise I might have ended up taking a completely different path. I started trying for publication while I was still living in Australia, and aimed exclusively for publication with Harlequin Silhouette. I won the Romance Writers of Australia’s inaugural Emma Darcy Award (their equivalent of the Golden Heart) for Eyes of a Stranger, and Harlequin ended up looking at it twice (before and after the win), and rejecting it twice. Then I began sub-genre hopping, second-guessing what I “should” be writing. By then I was living in Canada, and the e-book industry was firing up, and Hard Shell Word Factory bought everything I’d ever written. I was suddenly published...in a format that no-one would buy, that bookstores wouldn’t stock, and that I had no idea how to promote, when readers had never heard of e-books. That was ten years ago. A few years later I heard of Ellora’s Cave, and co-wrote a manuscript with a friend of mine, that we sold to them. A rather tame regency romance, as it compares to what EC are selling these days. The money we made on that romance was staggering. Suddenly I was really published, in a way that made sense. Now, e-books and e-publishing is a legitimate business, and readers understand what an e-book is. Cerridwen Press, Ellora’s Cave’s non-erotic imprint, is now re-publishing all my books from ten years ago, and this time I have a chance to actually find readers that I didn’t find back then.
Phoebe: Do you ever get writers block? What do you do to get rid of it so you can get back to writing your novels?
Tracy: I rarely get blocked. Not truly blocked. When I start dithering over writing and procrastinating about getting on with the manuscript, I’ve found that it’s usually because I haven’t plotted in enough detail and I’m not entirely sure about what comes next. A few minutes or an hour or so of detailed plotting cures the problem and I can get on with writing with renewed confidence. I’ve never experienced a “block” such as other writers have described—the psychological blank wasteland where word simply have not flowed despite every trick they’ve tried to bring them to the page. I’m not sure what I’d do if that happened. Perhaps I’m too practical and anal about my work habits? I’ve never considered writing to be a matter of courting my muse. It’s a matter of putting my butt in the chair and cranking out pages.
Phoebe: What is your biggest reader pet peeve, if you have any? (stock characters, unresolved endings, predictability, everything wrapped up hurriedly in the end, etc.)
Tracy: I think I may have touched on this one already: Getting your facts wrong. It’s my biggest peeve right now only because lately I seem to have been getting my nose rubbed it all over the place. Some very prominent authors who really ought to know better have included the most awful whoppers in their stories. One author who shall remain nameless built an entire series around a basic premise that simply couldn’t happen in the real world and to this date, no-one has called her on it. It drives me bonkers. As for predictability, as a romantic suspense author used to plotting to stay ahead of wily readers, I’m used to being able to spot where the author is leading me, so I’m resigned to predictability. It’s a nice change when I pick up the occasional book that surprises me. Charlaine Harris manages it every now and again, for instance.
Phoebe: Which aspects of writing do you enjoy the most and why? And what is your biggest writing pet peeve? (overuse of exclamation points, adverbs, bad guys named Wayne, etc.), if you have any?
Tracy: I love almost all aspects of novel writing, but I think the biggest and most exciting part of it has to be the story-concept stage. The potential for what sort of story you might come up with next is essentially endless and you may well come up with the idea, the one that is going to send shivers down your back, the Gone With the Wind for this generation, or the one that is going to keep you up for the next month while you scribble it down. Many writers get struck with ideas as they move about their day. As a full time writer I don’t get that luxury because I’m writing or immerses in book business all day already. So I have to deliberately generate story ideas in specific sessions, and that’s when I get to have those idea moments.
Phoebe: What is the one writing tool can you not live without?
Tracy: My computer.
Phoebe: How do you handle your writing schedule and your personal life without going insane?
Tracy: I’m an anal geek, and Outlook rules my life. If it isn’t talking to me on my computer, it’s beeping at me on my Blackberry. I think it has more conversations with my husband via email than I do—letting him know what I’m doing next. But at 5pm, it tells me to get my butt upstairs so I can become a normal person and a wife, and on weekends, I turn into Mr. Intensity’s adoring side kick (my husband is a professional wrestler). So it all works out.
Phoebe: What do you do to relax after having spent a long while writing? Do you have any hobbies?
Tracy: Hobbies, no. But after writing all day I work out with weights at the gym (my husband weight trains with a vengeance and oversees my own workouts) and I run a couple of miles doing wind sprints on the treadmill every second day, and spend my evenings with him. We also attend romance writing and reader conventions at least once a year.
Phoebe: Is there any advice that you would give to an aspiring romance writer that you wish someone had given you?
Tracy: Plenty, but most of it has been said by others. Unfortunately, there is not sure path to success in this industry, and there’s no single path. We each get there in different ways. The one thing I learned and continue to be reminded of is that you never know what’s around the corner, so don’t give up. It could all change tomorrow.
Phoebe: Is there any writing tips, research tips, promotion and marketing tips that you would give to an aspiring romance writer that you wish someone had given you?
Tracy: I have a ton of articles, advice and resources on my website, on the articles page. I would encourage anyone who’s interested to wander through that page and read the articles there.
Phoebe: Do you have a favorite genre you like to read? Who is your favorite author(s)?
Tracy: I don’t have a favorite genre. I read all over the map. Honestly. Favorite authors: Classic Stephen King (The Stand and earlier), Stephen O’Donnell (Modesty Blaise books), Mary Stewart (Merlin series), Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series), Desmond Bagley (anything with his name on it), Neville Shute (anything), Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse), Stephanie Myer (Twilight Series...yeah, I ‘fess up), Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Lora Leigh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Anne McCaffrey, Ken Follett, Mike Resnick, Joe Haldeman, Peter F. Hamilton, William Goldman, J.K. Rowling, T. H. White, J.R.R. Tolkein.
Phoebe: What are you reading now? And what do you plan to read after that?
Tracy: I’m currently reading Dark Lover by J.R. Ward. I have The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger up next.
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- Phoebe Jordan
- Love to read romance novels of all types of genres and review them for fun. 🥰
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