Kate and I met through HCRW in Raleigh – she travels slightly farther than I do, but we meet in the middle – and I love New Bern! – spent a week there every summer with my cousins, so it’s kinda home…

* You are going to be new to many of my readers. Tell us about yourself. I was born and raised in the Washington DC area, went to college nearby at the University of Maryland, and spent most of my working life in the northern Virginia suburbs. When I retired, my husband and I decided that the city we’d grown up in had changed and grown too much for us to want to stay, plus our children had moved away. So we looked at a map, chose eastern North Carolina, and moved here.

It was here, living in the swamps near the coast, that I finally found a subgenre I could successfully write – traditional historical mysteries with a bit of a love story.

* Tell us about the book that’s just come out. Deadly Scandal is the first in the Deadly series. It features a young woman, Olivia Denis, who is suddenly thrown out of her ordinary, comfortable life as a wife and homemaker in 1937 London with the violent death of her husband. While the police believe her husband committed suicide, Olivia knows he was murdered. To support herself, she must find her first job. She is hired by the father of a friend to be a society reporter for his daily newspaper, but the job comes with a secret, secondary assignment. Olivia learns that not only has her life been upended, but Europe is sliding toward disaster.

* What started you on your love of writing? My mother had a complete collection of mysteries from the “Golden Age” that I read as a child. Both my parents were avid readers: history, biography, fiction. My father was a journalist and editor, and I felt a need to copy him. However, I found non-fiction too boring. I wanted to make up my stories and then write them down. 

* Do you write in more than one genre – tell us a little about each one and the books you’re working on in each? Everything I write is comes under the blanket of historical mystery. However, I write in three different series.

First are the novellas I write with fellow HCRW member Hannah Meredith along with Louisa Cornell and Anna D. Allen. The series is called Christmas Revels, set in Regency England, and we are currently working on volume 3 to come out in October.  

Second is the Victorian Bookshop Mysteries featuring Georgia Fenchurch and her friends that make up the Archivist Society. This is a group that take on the cases that Scotland Yard can’t solve. There have been four in the series so far, The Vanishing Thief, The Counterfeit Lady, The Royal Assassin, and The Conspiring Woman. At the end of The Conspiring Woman, Georgia finally becomes engaged to the Duke of Blackford whom she met in The Vanishing Thief. Her next case will come out next year as Georgia tries to solve a case while getting ready for her wedding.

Third is the Deadly Series, the first of which is Deadly Scandal. More about that is above. The second will be out this year and is called Deadly Wedding.

* Have you attended any writing conference or classes? Tell us about some that and some that have been especially helpful. I’ve found Craftfest, part of the International Thriller Writers conference, Thrillerfest, to be very helpful. For several years I attended the RWA conference and found their workshops useful. Sisters in Crime, Heart of Carolina Romance Writers, and Pamlico Writers Group all put on good workshops.

* Are you a member of any writing groups? Yes, Sisters in Crime and RWA and various chapters of both as well as New Bern Fiction Writers and Pamlico Writers Group.

* How attached do you get to your characters? Do you know what happens after the book ends? I need to figure out what happens after the end of the book because that leads me to write the next book in the series. I don’t think I could write a series where I didn’t like my main characters. As a result, my stories are not “hard boiled” or edgy. My characters may be stubborn or batty, but they are ultimately decent.

* Describe your ‘perfect’ writing day. A day where I can spend hours in front of my computer, successfully creating new scenes, without telemarketers ringing my phone. They drive me nutty. My mother will soon be 94 and lives in another state. When the phone rings, I need to see who is calling.

* Could you tell us the one question you wish people would ask about your writing… and don’t forget the answer. How long were you writing on a nearly daily basis before your work was clever enough and well written enough to present to the reading public? Twelve years and sixteen manuscripts. That proves I’m either dedicated or crazy.

Bio –   

Kate Parker grew up reading her mother’s collection of mystery books by Christie, Sayers, and others. Now she can’t write a story without someone being murdered, and everyday items are studied for their lethal potential. It’s taken her years to convince her husband she hasn’t poisoned dinner; that funny taste is because she can’t cook. Her children have grown up to be surprisingly normal, but two of them are developing their own love of literary mayhem, so the term “normal” may have to be revised.

Living in a nineteenth century town has inspired Kate’s love of history. Her Victorian Bookshop Mystery series features a single woman in late Victorian London who, besides running a bookshop, is part of an informal detective agency known as the Archivist Society. This society solves cases that have baffled Scotland Yard, allowing the victims and their families to find closure. The Vanishing Thief, The Counterfeit Lady, The Royal Assassin and The Conspiring Woman are now available online and in bookstores.

This year has brought a new series featuring a young widow in late thirties London who lands a job as a society reporter for a major newspaper. With Europe on the brink of war, the newspaper publisher finds a second assignment for her, one that can’t appear in the paper. The first in the series is Deadly Scanda, the next will be Deadly Wedding.

Follow Kate and her deadly examination of history at Kate Parker and Facebook.

Bloodstock was released February 6 and as usual with Cyn’s writing became my new favorite – check it and her out!

Amazon,  Barnes & Nobles, All Romance

You are going to be new to many of my readers. Tell us about yourself.  

I’m a transplanted Yankee living in Florida, which by the state of the weather in the rest of the country, I am very glad to be here!  I grew up in Pennsylvania, went to school in Colorado, lived and taught in Duchess County, New York, and then tried my hand at living abroad.  I’ve lived in Germany, Brazil, and Panama.  Guess I still have a few Viking genes floating around in my DNA.

Tell us about the book that’s just come out.

Bloodstock is a product of my Hungarian half.  My father was Hungarian and my mother Swedish.  It is about a woman who raises horses for the Hungarian Cavalry and paints miniatures on the side.  She is hired by Prince Szigismond Rackoszi to paint two miniatures as the first exchange for his offer of marriage to the daughter of his neighbor.  If you like cowboys (Hungarian Csikos), horses, and Transylvania hotties, you’re going to love Bloodstock.

What started you on your love of writing?

I can’t name an actual person, but majoring in history and having to research and write numerous papers set me on the road to writing.  Romance writing is SO much more fun than writing history.  You can fudge the facts in Romance.

Do you write in more than one genre, tell us a little about each one and the books you’re working on in each. 

Although I’m probably best known for my 4-book paranormal series, Clann Doone, I like to write Historical with a Paranormal twist.  You can find that aspect in Piper Paid, a time travel book set in 18th Century Scotland, and Candles on the Beach Parts 1 and II:  A Dress for Lemanja and Sleeping in the Arms of a Sea Goddess.  Both books are set in Colonial Brazil.  I’ve also done a M/M romance entitled, The Danegeld, which is about a very blonde, blue-eyed Dane who gets kidnapped by a sex ring operating in Alexandria, Virgina, and whose friend, ex-Special Forces now private investigator, Ross DeLassy, who will not accept leaving a friend behind.  I’m currently working with several Florida authors to publish an Erotica anthology.  My novella is entitled Basket Case and it features Gunner Nord who gets an unexpected paid massage and happy ending.  It was unexpected because the woman who paid for it had just dumped him.  But thanks to the talented fingers of the massage therapist, Sirena Socorro, it just might lead to a happy forever.

Have you attended any writing conference or classes. Tell us about some that and some that have been especially helpful.

I’ve attended one RWA Conference and I’ve taken a couple of on-line classes offered by RWA.  I really liked the one on 18th century medicine and the one on sailing ships.  Both were treasure troves of information on how things worked at that time.

Are  you a member of any writing groups?

I belonged to Heart of Carolina when I lived in North Carolina, and now I belong to Tampa Area Romance Authors.  Both groups have really helped me as a writer because their guest speakers have been valid sources of publication information and the do’s and don’ts of writing.  I also belong to the RWA Chapter of FFP (Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal) and I have a critique group that meets monthly.

How attached do you get to your characters? Do you know what happens after the book ends? 

I’m very attached to my characters.  To me, they are real people.  As far as what happens when the book ends, some of them refuse to let me leave.  That’s probably why my paranormal series has four books in it, and Auric is bugging me for another one. (As well as me, Cyn! D)

Describe your ‘perfect’ writing day.

Let me be frank here.  All writers are time travelers.  A perfect writing day is sitting down to the computer as soon as you drag yourself out of bed and then writing until the words stop flowing.  At this point you discover you are still in your pajamas, haven’t eaten breakfast, your bladder is sending out Mayday messages, and it’s now five o’clock in the evening.  No lie, this has happened to me too frequently to discount the time travel aspect.  Of course there is a price to be paid for time travel:  a sedentary life-style and intermittent insomnia from a brain that refuses to shut down until four or five o’clock the next morning.  Yes, writers willingly suffer for their art.

Could you tell us the one question you wish people would ask about your writing and don’t forget the answer.

Hmm, that’s a tough one. Perhaps it would be, “Do you find it easy or difficult to write?”  My answer would be it depends on the characters.  Some characters, like Auric Doone, are very easy to write because he has strong opinions about everything.  Nels Kirkegaard, in The Danegeld, was more difficult because he is a very private person.

Excerpt –

He was tricked into giving his word.  Now Prince Szigismond Emre Janos Rackoszi, Viceroy of Transylvania, found himself honor-bound by a dishonorable man’s maneuvering to marry a woman he had no interest in.

He was also bound by his promise to gather into the bosom of his family the mother of his intended who hated him.  The Baroness Szechenyi blamed him for her husband’s death and was making it her life’s mission to keep him from honoring the commitment he’d made.  A commitment he would willingly cast aside, except Rackoszis never went back on their word, no matter how great the personal discomfort.

The Baroness made it only too evident she found him repugnant.  No, she found him more than repugnant, she actually had nerve enough to call him a soulless abomination to his face.  The silly woman thought him a vampire, a revenant bent on making her daughter over in his image.  Once again family honor forbade him from telling the Baroness there really were such creatures, but he was not one of them.  He wasn’t soulless, he wasn’t undead, and he didn’t drain humans of their blood.  No, he was none of those things, he was a different kind of creature altogether.

Now he paced the corridors of his dark castle and cursed the ancient gods for their capriciousness.  The artist he hired to paint his and his intended’s miniatures, Baroness Beatrix Celine Baranyi, was a horse breeder and talented artist who preferred cowboy, Cziko, attire to proper riding habits.  And despite her unusual choice of dress, she was bringing light and laughter into his life for the first time in a century, and he couldn’t have her.  His word stood in the way.  He was damned if he broke it and damned if he kept it.  The only recourse left him was to pray.  If the ancient gods had even the smallest regard for him, they’d help him figure a way to possess Beatrix for what remained of his very long life.

Bio 

I am of Hungarian and Swedish descent, and, like my Hun and Viking ancestors, I have nomadic genes. Trust me, such nomadic wanderings can wreak havoc on your English. I actually thought my roaming days were done when I retired after twenty-four years of government service. I’ve just finished what I hope will be my last migration, this time to sunny Florida. At least this migration was swifter by Honda than by Hun horse or Viking longboat.

Before settling down to write full-time, I was a Special Operations (US Army and US Marines) military historian/archivist. I write paranormal/historical romance for Rebel Ink Press. I guess the concentration on Special Operations has left an indelible impression on my writing because my characters, both male and female, are distinctly Spec Ops in their outlook. They leave no man behind, color outside the lines, and are very, very lethal. My books: Aurelia, Auric, Clann Doone, and Hearts Asunder are from a series devoted to the original SEAL team, the one founded by Poseidon, Ruler of the Seven Seas to keep humans from polluting his realm by using it to transport drugs, guns and modern slaves.

Once a historian, always a historian, but now that I’m no longer gainfully employed as one, I enjoy giving history a paranormal twist. Candles on the Beach is a two part series. Part 1 is entitled A Dress for Lemanja. It is set in 19^th century Brazil and the heroine, Edwina Webb is a 19^th century woman with 21^st century career goals. The hero, Captain Alexandre Joao Marshall is the master and owner of a clipper ship who finds himself bound to Edwina by legal contract and love. The exigencies of business, social mores and just plain hard-headedness will keep the two apart until the sea goddess Lemanja takes it upon herself to intervene. Part 2 is entitled: Sleeping in the Arms of a Sea Goddess. Lemanja is a very interesting deity. She is vain, beautiful, demanding and, if given enough incentive, will intervene to keep two headstrong people from ruining their lives.

Piper Paid is set in 17^th century Scotland, the Isle of Sky to be specific. The heroine is a 21^st century former Marine who finds gathering herbs for her new business can take unexpected turns when she harvests an unpaid debt from a fairy that sends her back in time to save a life of a Highland piper.

Bloodstock is an indirect tribute to my Hungarian roots. The heroine raises and trains horses for the Hungarian cavalry, but she is also well-known for painting miniatures. She’s been hired by a Transylvanian prince to paint two miniature for what will be a token exchange for a marriage proposal to the daughter of his neighbor. If you like cowboys (Hungarian Csikos), horses, and Transylvanian hotties, this book is for you.

One of the things about writing is, you can challenge yourself by attempting to write in other genres. I recently completed a novella entitled Basket Case. I really left my comfort zone here and tried my hand at Erotica. Basket Case will be part of a Florida Author’s Group anthology and is due out in April.

I am currently working on a paranormal romance involving a 21^st century Special Operations medic who is killed while trying to treat a patient, and reawakens to find himself a newly licensed physician in the year 1804. The tentative title for this book is Golden Hours.

I would love to hear from you via Facebook.com/Cyn Hadyn.

You know the saying – time flies when you’re having fun – I kinda got smacked in the head with it this month. My grandson turned one year old. I only blinked and he’s already a year??  

I know all about relativity – when I was a kid, Christmases were decades apart, they never seemed to come soon enough. Now I barely have one paid for before the next one crops up. And it’s moving faster all the time. But the first year for a baby really does fly.

From barely being able to squirm all the way to walking is scary fast. I’ve accomplished a few things over the last year since his birth – visiting every six to eight weeks, completing a re-edit of Rth Rising as well as the sequel, Rth Claimed. Finished a book for Soul Mate Publishing (a time travel story), which is scheduled for June and have two more shorter stories in the works, but he learned to walk and feed himself and laugh! I have to agree that’s the bigger accomplishment.

Posting this for my Daddy’s birthday, Valentine’s Day – he would have been 93 and this little guy would have had him wrapped tight around that little finger, just like his Daddy did.

Can’t wait to see what we both learn this coming year . . .