Thursday, August 16, 2012

Lex Valentine, Mating and Werewolves, Oh My!



How cool to be sharing a release day with the fabulous and talented Lex Valentine. Lex offered to visit my blog so we could celebrate our new babes together. Her book was just released at Ellora's Cave yesterday, August 15th. Welcome Lex and congrats on your new book.

-Tell us a little about the book and where did you get the idea to write this story.

Mating was originally a short story that won a contest to be published by Freya’s Bower. I got the rights back and decided to expand the story to novella length and submitted it to my EC editor who loved it. It’s the story of an Alpha werewolf whose brother meets his mate and takes off for NYC. The Alpha worries about his brother so he hires the Watchers Agency to follow his brother and make sure he’s okay. When he arrives in NYC and meets the owner of Watchers, he falls instantly in lust with her. She realizes they are mates, but is afraid of what might happen if she returned to Paris with him so she doesn’t tell him. They have a few intense days together where he doesn’t want to leave her and where she’s afraid to tell him they belong together.

- What advice would you give to aspiring writers? I think the two best things that were ever said to me were learn your craft and then don’t stop learning and don’t be so eager to be published that you’ll accept a contract from anyone. You should aim high, submit to the best publishers and if they won’t publish you, instead of looking for a smaller pub that might, you should look at WHY the big publishers (including the big 4 epubs) won’t take your work and fix that first.

- Are you seat of the pants writer or plotter? I’m midway between the two. I have an outline and a list of scenes that must take place. It’s like a road map for a road trip. I have places to be at specific times but in between I can go wherever I want. So as long as I hit the key scenes in the outlines in between, I can give the characters free reign.

- Have any of your titles ever been changed from your original choice? Nope. I’ve been lucky!

- If you could turn any of your books into a movie which book or series would it be? Oh, I think Mating an Runaways would be a great movie. Twin brothers who are werewolves, a long time lover who is a vampire, new lovers, and lives that are literally changed overnight due to mating.

- Do you have a character in one of your books that continues to haunt you at night or surprised you when you wrote the book?  I have a secondary character who likes to show up wherever I can fit him in. Weylyn Randall is a werewolf, a musician and a total and complete horn dog who will hop into bed with men and/or women (at least he did before he meets his mate) and is really laid back and fun. He has a great personality, he’s very sexual and he’s a breath of fresh air to any book I put him in.

- Which actor screams SEXY to you? Dermot Mulroney. Tom Hardy. Robert Downey Jr.

- Do you write full time or work outside of the home? I wish I could write full-time but I do have a full-time job that I love. I’m the network administrator for a 100+ year old cemetery and four mortuaries.

- Are you a morning or night person? I’m a night person but many years of having to get up very early have forced me to be a morning person.

- Do you have any favorite movies? Currently I’m loving the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr and the Avengers plus all the movies that led up to the Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America. I also loved This Means War. Two of my all time faves are Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Wedding Date.

- Do you use Beta readers? I do with my gay romances. Usually I have gay male writers read those.

- What’s next? The project I’m working on now is a novella, the third and last in the series, about two former Air Force pilots. After that, it’s on to the second of my Out in the NFL series and the 7th book of the Tales of the Darkworld.

- Do you have a favorite author? I don’t have a favorite author. There’s just far too much good stuff out there these days. I have lots of favorite authors whom I buy pretty much all of their stuff. I love Regina Carlysle and Desiree Holt. I love Z.A. Maxfield and Josh Lanyon. There’s just lots and lots more. The authors I’ve read this week and loved were A.R. Moler, Jet Mykles, Dee Carney and Mina Carter.

- Have any of your characters ever ended up completely different than you’d intended? In Ride the Lightning, I intended to make the hero sort of confused and unsure of what he should do when he meets his mate. Instead the guy came out as a perfect asshole who was an utter jerk to the heroine. Of course, he is redeemed later in the book. ;)

- For fun. What is your favorite kind of chocolate or chocolate dessert? (I love chocolate covered cherries) I love dark chocolate so anything with dark chocolate is a fave. I like Black Forest Cake, dark chocolate covered raisins or dried cherries and dark chocolate covered caramels.

Want to find out more about Lex Valentine?







My book that is being released on the 15thMating

Blurb:

As Alpha, Roul Verlaine always looked out for his twin. When Ranulf flees to New York City with his new mates, Roul hires the Watcher Agency to check on him. All thoughts of his brother vanish when Roul meets the sexy owner of Watchers. Morgan Kale is a rare white werewolf, a lone wolf who sets Roul’s senses on fire. His wolf instantly wants her and Roul can’t resist her. She bests him at chess and martial arts and is the fiercest, most perfect lover he’s ever known. And he doesn’t want to leave her.

Morgan knows instantly she and Roul are mates even if he hasn’t figured it out yet. His seduction overrides her common sense and yearning heart. The sex is mind-blowing and they even get along outside the bedroom. But Roul is in town for only three days, and Morgan must decide whether to tell him they are mates…or let him walk out of her life forever.
 

BUY LINK:
http://www.jasminejade.com/p-10277-mating.aspx

5 comments:

N.J.Walters said...

Great interview. Dark chocolate is good on just about anything. *g*

Lex Valentine said...

Oh NJ, you are so right about that! ;)

Nona Raines said...

Great interview, Lex,the book sounds great and your day job sounds interesting, too! Your advice about writers holding out for the larger publishers is very interesting. I think a lot of authors want to use smaller pubs as a stepping stone to larger ones. Do you advise against that?

Lex Valentine said...

You should always aim high, Nona. If the bigger epubs won't take you find out why and work on that. It's too easy to let a small pub that isn't as particular about what they take give you a contract. Then you spend all your time promo-ing and writing the next thing for this publisher instead of working on your craft, fixing the things that were wrong enough about your work to keep the big 4 epubs from accepting your manuscript. Getting stuck in the small pub world and never working on your craft to make yourself better is not the way to go. You would not believe how bad some books are from some of these pubs. Writers with potential have been stunted in their growth because they took a contract for something that was rejected by all the bigger epubs and now think that what they are turning out is good when in fact, it needs a lot of help.

I can think of 4 Six Sentence Sunday authors who had potential but needed to work on their craft. They took contracts from small pubs and now are turning out other books just as in need of help as the first one. It makes me really sad that they missed the boat on this.

Kathy Kulig said...

Great point Lex about writers needing to continue to work on their craft. I just got back from a workshop in NYC. Congrats on your new book! And thanks for doing the interview.