http://writinglikeamother.com/2013/03/02/interview-with-writing-mother-and-author-donna-steele/

Stop by and say hi!

Tell us about yourself:

What television sitcom is most like your family? Why?

I wish I knew! I have to be honest, I rarely watch TV and when I do it’s usually a cooking show or something on the History channel or Discovery. I watch a lot of BBC America (I love Six Nations Rugby!) as well. I honestly don’t think I could name a current sitcom if you held a gun to my head. J

What’s your favorite thing to do to relax?

Reading seems cliché, so while I do read a lot, I also like to walk, embroider, and spend time with my four-legged kids.

Do you prefer…

Public speaking or public singing?

Public singing…public speaking scares the crap out of me. Public singing, easy, after a few drinks in a dark bar, who cares. Right? lol

Writing in a notebook or typing on the computer?

Typing definitely…although I take notes in my trusted notebooks and keep a journal.

Coke or Pepsi?

Coke Zero

Living without your cell phone or living without your computer?

I could live without the cell phone. In fact, and don’t tell on my here, most days I turn the ringer off so I can work without the distraction.

Now about you as an author…

Did you always want to be an author?

Always. Even before I could spell.

Did anyone in your life influence you or encouraged you to be a writer? (teacher, family member, friend)

The first encouragement came from Santa when he brought that typewriter when I was eight. Then my sixth grade creative writing teacher, Mr. Trokey, created a monster in me and Miss Simpson my high school English teacher gave me gentle nudges along where I needed them most. It was my husband who was the final shove off the cliff into publishing and my best friend, whom I met through writing as we started out at the same small press, helps when I need the occasional kick in the pants to keep going.

Do you have a common theme or item that appears in each of your books?

It’s funny you asked this one. I was just thinking about that the other day. My heroines all have immense struggles, emotional or psychological. And more often than not, one of my favorite foods appears in my books…fried green tomatoes.

What have you learned the most from being in the writing business?

To stay true to myself and no matter what, the joy in what I do is most important.

Tell us about your latest release:

How did you decide on your story plot?

A Slower, Lower Leap is actually book three and consequently the last installment of the Slower Lower series, so the setting and characters were predefined. The plot however, was undetermined until the hero told me late one night. Logan is the youngest in the Delaney clan and I knew his story would come of him growing up…how he would manage that was a mystery though until he met Lizzy Jenkins in book two, A Slower, Lower Life. After that, her character started to develop and the obstacles Logan would face became clear.

How did you choose your characters names and location for your story?

My husband was born and raised in Seaford, Delaware and something about the area just kept tugging at me and telling me to write a story…that was book one, A Slower, Lower Love which was never intended to be a series until E at Rebel emailed me and said, “Hey, I’ve got an issue.” The issue was she wanted more. So a Seaford based series was born. The characters…well, they’re an Irish family third generation, so Irish names it was. J

Do you have a favorite scene? Why?

One of my favorite scenes is so subtle and soft. It’s the first time Logan kisses Lizzy and it’s one of my favorites because it’s so subtle…very few words, lots of emotion.

Do you have a character that you identify with? Who and why?

I was a single mother myself when my husband “rescued” me, so I totally identify with Lizzy and the day to day struggles of what it is to raise a child alone. Now, she does have it worse than I did as Colby is a special needs child. I don’t have that experience but my best friend does through her personal life and a few years as a teacher, so I relied on her for advice on how to convey Colby’s character properly.

Thanks for having me by, Donna. And readers, don’t forget to scroll down and enter to win some signed copies of A Slower, Lower Love and A Slower, Lower Life. J

Lila Munro currently resides on the coast of North Carolina with her husband and their two four-legged kids. She’s a military wife with an empty nest and takes much of her inspiration for her heroes from the marines she’s lived around for the past fifteen years. Coining the term realmantica, she strives to produce quality romance in a realistic setting. Her genre of choice is contemporary romance that spans everything from the sensual softer read to BDSM and ménage. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading everything she can get her hands on, trips to the museum and aquarium, taking field research trips, and soaking up the sun on the nearby beaches. Her works include The Executive Officer’s Wife, Bound By Trust, Three for Keeps, the Force Recon series, the Slower Lower series, the Identity series, and the Private Collection. Currently she is working on two new series set to release summer of 2013, the At Your Service line and the Steele Image line. She’s a member in good standing of RWA. Ms. Munro loves to hear from her readers and can be found at Realmantic Moments   Facebook    Goodreads   Twitter You can also contact her via email at lilasromance@gmail.com and you can find all her works at: Amazon   ARe  Nook    Bookstrand

A Slower, Lower Leap

Book 3, Slower Lower series

Rebel Ink Press

February 17, 2013

Purchase Links:

Amazon               ARe                        Barnes and Noble

Blurb:

When you’re the last man standing…

Not only was Logan Delaney the last of his siblings to remain unmarried and unsettled, his entire family believed he’d never find a wife. The baby of eight, he’s been dubbed an irresponsible player and told he’ll never amount to a hill of beans. And at one time, Logan may have been okay with those descriptions, but no more. On a quest to prove his worth, he’s spent the entire summer learning the family business, staying in at night, and saving his money. And if his family would stop meddling in his affairs and trying to dictate who he should and shouldn’t be seeing, he might just show them he’s found the one, Lizzy Jenkins.

And have a bad reputation to blame…

Elizabeth Jenkins had always known Logan Delaney existed, but he’d never so much as turned one glance her way until she handed him his butt on a silver platter in three sentences or less over the phone. After that it seemed at every turn there he was and the more she resisted the heat building between them, the bigger the fire got. Until his family interfered. And why wouldn’t they? Between Logan’s legacy and her baggage, they were a disaster in the making.

Can you be trusted with a fragile heart?

But Logan doesn’t run when he finds out about Colby. In fact, he embraces Lizzy’s special needs son and defies the advice of everyone urging him to leave Lizzy alone. But after one moment of weakness, Logan finds himself knee deep in a marriage complete with the little boy whose father bailed before his birth and Lizzy’s grandfather, who needs constant care as well.  Then there’s the man who just might be the demise of it all.

Excerpts, please choose one:

Excerpt 1:

With a mixture of emotions swirling through her, Lizzy watched the same storm overtake Logan’s features which was brewing inside her. A veritable lightning bolt passed between them as soon as he’d touched her. She knew she’d always been attracted to Logan, but the instant heat still scalding her skin from his fingers left her unsettled. It was but a mere couple of hours prior she was trying to convince herself she could do with some sort of quickie sexual gratification, although she’d admitted it could never be with Logan, and now she wanted nothing more and the door to her emotions was wide open leaving her vulnerable and believing maybe they could have both. And just as she was trying to tell herself to stop trusting the lies her deprived body was concocting, Logan decided to try to convince her he might be interested in more as well.

Where was Logan the player and who was the imposter sitting across the table from her who could probably talk her right into his bed with one sentence or less and keep her coming back heartbreak on the horizon or not?

As her pulse slowed a bit, she turned to look at Colby and reminded herself why she couldn’t be playing horizontal Twister with anyone let alone Logan. And she sure couldn’t go letting Colby think there was a reason to get too comfortable around him. He seemed to like Logan and the Delaney herd of kids and she didn’t want him getting his feelings hurt because she couldn’t control her hormonal urges. What if she made the mistake of screwing Logan’s brains out, things didn’t work out, and that made it awkward to be coming around anymore? This was the first time anyone had really taken them in and welcomed them unconditionally and she didn’t want to rob Colby of it.

Excerpt 2:

Lizzy watched Colby make yet one more circle around the living room with his arms spread and sighed in frustration. He was oblivious to the disruption he was causing which only added to her exacerbation with the situation. How could she possibly be angry with him when he didn’t grasp the concept of time or what it did to her nerves when his unscheduled moments of innocence hampered what should have been her scheduled life? And it surely wasn’t his fault he was the way he was or that he’d even been conceived at all for that matter. No, his conception was wholly her fault and she’d been paying for it for nearly six years. Alone.

But the truth was, no matter how many times she kicked herself for believing whispered promises in a back seat and guilt swamped her even though medical science would argue it was nothing she’d done to make him this way, Lizzy loved her little boy more than life itself. There were days, though.

Like today, she wanted to sit and cry until there were no more tears left then cry some more. Rarely was it, though, Lizzy had time for such frivolities as tears. What time wasn’t taken up with Colby’s care was spent at her job as the assistant officer manager at the farmer’s market, somewhere she had no intention of working a lifetime and which brought her to yet another responsibility on her list. School. When she wasn’t working or caregiving, Lizzy was an almost full-time student and watched the sun rise on a new day without sleep having studied all night more than once. In a word, she was not only exhausted physically, she was just plain tired. Never in her life would she have imagined being twenty-three and feeling so defeated.

What she wouldn’t give for one night of freedom. One night filled with beers and dancing. Maybe even some hot sweaty sex in the form of someone who would disappear the next day and not look back. Well, that and not leave her knocked up. Alone was fine, with another baby to tend to by herself, not so much.

Of course she had no idea how to go about this stranger for one night sex. The closest she came to any man was when they made deliveries to the market or they drove their grandfathers to the Senior Center for bingo and hung around waiting for the old farts to get tired of dotting cards and fighting the caller over what had come out as B-five but was mistook for B-nine because someone’s hearing aid battery was running low. And although they all knewher fairly  well, they avoided her for the most part because of which grandfather she dropped off at bingo. Thank God none of them knew Michael Silcox was the one who’d left her high and dry with a special needs child, not exactly prime bait to fish with in the pond of hooking up. Her name associated with his would only add fuel to the stay away from Lizzy fire as his family owned most of Georgetown.

Click below for the giveaway!

<a id=”rc-c5869e0″ href=”http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c5869e0/” rel=”nofollow”>a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Please come visit with me over at Britni’s and remember –  Brittany’s place

 

Welcome  Home

Writing On Angels’ Wings was a labor of love. I’d always been a fan of the 1940’s era, having watched 40’s movies (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Abbott & Costello, etc.) on television while growing up, and although I was born in the 50’s, I felt like I was truly a part of the 40’s. When I began to write seriously, I knew a novel taking place during that time period was on the top of my list.

So in 1984 my first draft of On Angels’ Wings was born. A rather long novel, weighing in at over six hundred pages, it did well on my agent’s list, and was “almost” contracted by two major publishers at that time. After waiting almost a year for one publisher to decide, it was rejected at the last moment because they had taken on publishing another WW II novel that same year and didn’t want to take on another.

OAW was shelved for three decades, though it never left my thoughts. Then one day I took it out, dusted it off, and rewrote it down to two hundred some pages. My characters and a major part of the plot stayed the same, but it came out different this time around, better, more mature. I truly liked it far better than its original rendering. The years had softened it and mellowed it, allowing more emotion to shine through.

Since the original story was written before I had my second son, when he was born I named him Johnny, after my hero in the story. Lt. Johnny Morgan is a Navy flier in the tale and my son, at the ripe old age of seventeen, attained his pilot’s license. He is a private pilot with the goal to become a commercial pilot after college. I may have named him after my hero, but his love of flying was all his own. It was truly odd how it turned out that way.

On Angels’ Wings is my second release from Rebel Ink Press. I would be honored if you would read about my characters—Anne, Johnny, and Daniel—who have been so close to my heart for so long a time.

BLURB:

December 1940 found the world on the brink of a conflict greater than it could ever fathom but for Anne Miller, the days before Pearl Harbor find her world full of excitement and promise.  She’s left the comfort of family and friends back in Washington, DC to venture out into the foreign and beautiful Hawaiian landscape to make a new life for herself and her fiancé, Corporal Daniel Beiler.

Little did Anne know her perfect world was just an illusion.  She didn’t expect to fall in love with a Navy flier she’d meet at the USO dancehall on the eve of “the day that will live in infamy.”  Her love for Daniel is threatened while she fights new and strange emotions for the brave and reckless Lieutenant Johnny Morgan.  How can she love both men and remain true to either?  Will the outbreak of WWII tear their lives apart or pull them together on the rain-drenched islands of the South Pacific?    On Angels’ Wings is a story of desperation, hope, and fulfillment during the tumultuous years of World War II.

EXCERPT:

            Anne was dancing a fox-trot with a young man in a devil’s costume when she noticed a pair of crutches leaning against the side wall. They made her think of Johnny again and she sighed.

            Just then, a tall Robin Hood tapped the devil she danced with on the shoulder and said, “May I cut in?”He wore a green, half-face mask. The devil shrugged and released Anne.

            The green-costumed Robin Hood swept her up into his arms and pulled her close. Anne gasped as she looked into deep blue eyes. “Johnny?” she asked, breathlessly.

            “Robin.”

            She chuckled. “Johnny, you’re dancing.”

            “Uh-huh. I brought my crutches just in case.”

            “But you’re dancing without them. I’m thrilled.”

            The band signaled it was time for her to return to stage for the next set. Johnny released her then tipped his hat and strode away. She watched him go, noticing a slight limp, but otherwise he was walking without the aid of crutches. A strong sense of pride enveloped her and she almost flew up on stage she was so happy.

            She took the microphone and said to the group, “Excuse me, boys, I want to tell you a little story.” The commotion in the hall dimmed. “Someone I know has proven to me tonight he could move mountains and his courage is as big as his heart. When he was down and out with no hope, he said, ‘I’m not going to let this get me down,’ and today he’s accomplished his goal. Fellas, I give you Lieutenant John Morgan.”

            Clapping filled the room. Johnny sat in the rear of the hall at a table and shook his head, obviously embarrassed.

            “Come up on stage, Lieutenant Morgan. I have a song for you,” Anne said.

            Johnny gave up the ghost, pushed back his chair, and stood up. Slowly he made his way on stage and stood next to her. “I’ll get you for this,” he said good-naturedly to Anne.

            The band struck up the opening notes and moments later she was pouring her heart out to strains of Frank Sinatra’s Old Black Magic.

            “Sing, Lieutenant,” came a few shouts from the crowd.

            Johnny chuckled, but surprised Anne by belting out the lyrics to the song flawlessly, as though he’d practiced with her before. His baritone voice was loud and clear and they sounded good together. She sang happily, her eyes locked with his.

            He took her hand and held it as he sang, “For you’re the lover I have waited for.”

            “The mate that fate had me created for,” she sang.

            They finished the remainder of the song in perfect harmony. All during their duet the audience cheered, clapping wildly. Then Burt, on his trumpet, played a slow, romantic ballad called Moonlight Becomes You.

            Johnny pulled Anne into his arms. A large mirrored ball suspended from the ceiling rotated slowly as they danced on stage, casting prisms of flickering, bejeweled light cascading around the darkened hall. It shimmered across Johnny’s hair and mask like moon kisses.

            She closed her eyes and like the flickering of a hummingbird’s wings, Johnny’s lips brushed her cheek. Her heart beat wildly and she blinked. Though his lips were warm, she shivered.

            He pulled her even closer and she felt the heat of his hard, muscular chest wedged against her breasts, the firm pressure of his hands at the small of her back. There was noise and music, song and chatter, but she heard nothing but the excited beating of her own heart in harmony with his.

            The song ended and he stepped back. “Thank you, Annie,” he said, bowing to her. Without another word, he went back to his table.

Purchase links:

Amazon

Barnes & Nobles

AllRomance

Book Strand

To visit Joanne – http://joannecberroa.wordpress.com