Take Five and Meet Author Caroline Clemmons

It's my pleasure to introduce you to bestselling author Caroline Clemmons. You'll learn a bit about her and her writing as well as her Texas Bride Series.  

Welcome to An Indie Adventure,Caroline.  Tell us, what inspired you to write your book CASSANDRA?

Although I love to read and write mail-order bride stories, I wanted something a little different. I came up with the idea of a small Texas town where there are lots of bachelors and no young women plus a young widow who wishes there were more young women in town. She goes back to her hometown of Richmond, Virginia to find suitable young women she will bring back to stay with her until they choose the man they wish to marry. So far, Josephine (book one) and Angeline (book two) have wed. Now it’s Cassandra’s turn. The folks in the town of Tarnation call the young women the Bride Brigade, and that’s the name of the series.

What were your experiences as a child or adult that contributed to you becoming a writer?

My dad is probably responsible for my love of telling stories. He used to talk about how his family came to Texas and told things that happened that were funny and/or interesting. In addition, I was a voracious reader and loved imagining my own stories. I remember writing and illustrating a few when I was in first and second grade. Then in school, English was always my favorite subject until I was old enough to take journalism. That really hooked me on writing but I didn’t try to write a novel for publication until much later.

What is most difficult for you to write?  Characters, conflict or emotions?  Why?

Yes. LOL I believe emotions are the most difficult. I know in my head what my characters are feeling, but don’t always get the emotion down. I write fast and most of the first draft is dialogue. I have to go back and layer in the emotion and body action, etc.

What is the first thing you do when you begin a new book?

I start a bible with all the characters. Usually, I write series, so I don’t want to lose track of eye and hair color or occupation. This is after I’ve plotted the book and written a two or three-page story synopsis to use as an outline as I write the book, a sort of map from the beginning to the destination. Then I’m all set to write the book. I take detours from the outline, but I always come back to the map. I have plotting partners who help me map the book. Then I go home and dive in, fleshing out the story as I write. Writing novels is a wonderful job!

If you were a TV, film or book character, apart from one you've created, who would you be?  And why?

I suppose Taylor Stapleton from Julie Garwood’s PRINCE CHARMING, one of my all-time favorite books. Taylor looks frail, cool, and ladylike but she is strong and determined and capable. She fulfills her promise to her grandmother and along the way discovers love and adventure and defeats her corrupt uncle. That’s a historical, as most of my favorite books are.

If you prefer a contemporary, then I think perhaps Flynn MacGregor in Lori Wilde’s THE SWEETHEARTS’ KNITTING CLUB. Flynn struggles to carry on as the matriarch of her family since her mother’s death. She’s dealt with an alcoholic father (now in AA), a wild sister (now reformed) and twin brothers. She’s taken her mother’s place in the Sweethearts Knitting Club—even though she can’t knit. She depends on her sister to knit for her. I can’t say why, but I empathized with Flynn and was rewarded when she found true love. 

Give us a brief summary of CASSANDRA, Book 3 of the Bride Brigade:

A desperate plan…

A masquerade to achieve a goal…

Lies that create a web…

Cassandra Bradford has the cast off wardrobe to pose as a lady. Her goal is to marry a wealthy man who can provide her young brother with a sound future. Drat the luck! The first man she sees in Tarnation is a dusty cowboy who sends her heart pounding. Not for her. She has a better life in mind.

Samuel Drummond is one of the wealthiest ranchers in that part of the state, but he wants that kept quiet. His first wife married him for his money then left when she became bored with ranch life. He won’t let that happen if he remarries. He intends to find a woman who wants him no matter how poor she thinks he is.

When both Cassandra and Sam learn omissions the other has made, there are fireworks between them. They must work through their anger and hurt to achieve happiness.

  

Buy Links: 

Amazon 

Bio:

Caroline Clemmons is an Amazon bestselling and award-winning author of historical and contemporary western romances. A frequent speaker at conferences and seminars, she has taught workshops on characterization, point of view, and layering a novel.

Caroline and her husband live in the heart of Texas cowboy country with their menagerie of rescued pets. When she’s not indulging her passion for writing, Caroline enjoys family time, reading, travel, antiquing, genealogy, and getting together with friends.

Find Caroline:

On her blog, website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Google+, WattPad, Shelfari, and Pinterest. Click on her Amazon Author Page for a complete list of her books.

Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter here to receive a FREE novella of HAPPY IS THE BRIDE, a humorous historical wedding disaster that ends happily—but you knew it would, didn’t you?

She loves to hear from readers at caroline@carolineclemmons.com

Five Secrets With Author Rolynn Anderson

Today we learn five secrets from author Rolynn Anderson.  I always love reading these because you never know what an author will reveal.  Even in her first paragraph, you'll learn an interesting tid-bit. One teaser, you won't see this one coming....but there is more, much more to follow, so don't stop reading now :)

Rolynn, tell us a bit about you!

I write contemporary suspense novels, spiked with romance. My name, Rolynn is pronounced the opposite of ‘roll-out’ :)  In my previous life I was a high school English teacher and principal in Washington State.  Since 2001, with Central Coast California as my main hub, I write/market, golf, garden, read and travel.  Wild Rose Press is my publisher for two novels, LAST RESORT and LIE CATCHERS.  Self-pubbed are my boutique funeral planner series: (LA: I told you wouldn't see this coming) FADEOUT, SWOON, and FAINT, and my stand-alone, FEAR LAND.  I delight in creating imperfect characters faced with extraordinary, transforming challenges.  My biggest hope: That you'll devour my ‘makeover’ suspense novels in the wee hours of the morning, because my stories, settings and characters, capture your imagination and your heart. 

Find Rolynn:

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Please tell us Five Secrets we may not know about FEAR LAND or you, but will after today!

1) Thanks for inviting me to tell secrets today.  We’re always challenging our characters to let go of their secrets…make sense we should do so ourselves!  FEAR LAND is a suspense novel about children and adults who suffer from anxiety.  Some are born fearful and easily traumatized; others go through tragedies that cause stress syndromes.  Most of us have suffered a trauma or two.  I wanted to learn about the how’s and why’s of it for myself as well as for my characters.  So my first secret is I used the story and heroes of FEAR LAND to understand my own issues.

2) I am an Army brat.  My father, an officer, retired from the Army the year before I started college.  Germany, Japan, Korea; Maryland, Wisconsin, Georgia, Minnesota were our homes.  Let us not count the number of houses and schools we occupied.  The secret about Army brats is that we might be adaptable and easy to get to know, but we have issues about developing deep relationships.  We seem to be hard-wired to manage leaving one set of friends and moving on to the next, without suffering sadness and guilt.  This is a blessing/burden dichotomy we all have to work out.

3) I work out grief by writing about it.  My three-book boutique funeral planner suspense series (FADEOUT, SWOON, and FAINT), helped me not only work through the deaths of both of my parents, but the concepts and the tone of the small-town sleuthing stories taught me how to design fabulous memorials for my father and mother.  It’s no secret we write what we know, but my secret is that I worked on my grief by writing about it.

4) We writers don’t see what our themes are until we step back and look at our novels objectively.  Not easy to do, right?  Sometimes a particularly observant friend will see our reoccurring topics and mention them, but that’s rare.  Normally it’s left to us to pull out our issues.  My funeral planner series highlighted father-daughter estrangement, which got me to thinking about my own relationship with my father.  This question led to going through a legacy questionnaire that my sister and I took separately, then compared answers afterwards.  Absolutely stunning comparisons of our visions of growing up, freeing both of us from thinking we were alone in our views of our family.

5) My biggest secret is I relish the power I have as a writer, to move my characters, settings and plots at will.  My art allows me the strength and status of a puppeteer, raising and lowering tension in the action as well as between characters, as I wish.  I rub my hands together every morning, excited about my task, working my people and plot lines for two or three glorious hours.  After that, it’s on to my life…over which control is minimal and cause/effect hardly discernible. 

Blurb :

Tally Rosella, an acclaimed psychiatrist who helps children fraught with anxiety, avoids adults because their brains rant at her.  But the chance to start a second child study and connect her findings to PTSD, sets her squarely among devious colleagues at a big California university.

Army Major Cole Messer, Tally’s new neighbor, won’t admit that trauma from combat tours in Afghanistan, destroyed his marriage and hampered his ability to lead.  As a teacher of college ROTC and single parent, he’s focused on enrolling his highly anxious son in Tally’s study and getting back to active duty.

Someone is dead set against Tally’s presence at the university, and blowback from her battles with co-workers put Cole and his son in jeopardy.  Watch what happens when people struggling with shades of anxiety collide with corrupt, revengeful foes.

Buy Links:

Amazon | Nook, iTunes & Kobo (Smashwords)