An awesome interview with me appeared last Friday on the “Books, Books, and More Books” blog (www.ruthiesbookreviews.blogspot.com).  Ruth Schaller did a fab job with her questions!  If you missed my tweets about it last Friday I thought you might like to take a look at it here. 

I’ve done like seven interviews so far since “A Vampire’s Kiss” was published on March 9.  The wild thing is even if some of the same questions are asked (and they are from time to time) my answers are always different.  Why?  Cause it just depends on what kinda mood this slut is in: slutty, sluttier, or sluttiest.  No wonder one of my fans said she loves reading these interviews since she learns something different about me every time.  Now you know why.  lmao!

Speaking of that, I’m posting most of these interviews on my book site (”Interviews” button at http://www.avampskiss.blogspot.com) if you’d like to read more of them.  And I just finished another interview on Thursday night that will go live May 5 on a vamp review blog.  I was wide open that night, so it’s the sluttiest one yet.  No kidding.  I’ll tweet everyone to let you know when it goes live.

And speaking of vamps, I finished proofing Issue #3 of my serial novel “A Vampire’s Kiss” this weekend and emailed it to my verrry talented designer to beautify, so it will go on sale the first week of May.  Can you say smokin’ HAWT?!!!  Oh, yeah.  Dray and Sara are steaming up my computer for sure.  *sex-obsessed grin*

Okay, enjoy this interview.  It’s a good one!  

********

 (Interview with Books, Books, and More Books, April 2010)

Interview and Giveaway wth Laura Stamps

 by Ruth Schaller

For this month, I’d like to welcome someone very special! Let us all welcome author, Laura Stamps! She is snarky, witty and downright ‘dirty’! Gotta love it! So for this special occasion this month, I’ve had the privilege of reading one of her newest novels, The Vampire’s Kiss: A Manigault Vampire book! It’s been a pretty cool ride so far and I’m waiting for more to come! So let’s get it on!

Ruthie – Hi Laura and thank you so much for coming over to visit my blog! So let get started with this interview! Tell me have you always been a writer? I know sometimes when we’re younger we like to experiment with things and play with the ideas of what we want to be when we grow up. I wanted to be a lawyer and here I am an aspiring author and a school bus driver….lol

Laura - Actually, no. I always wanted to be an artist. And that’s what I became. Since I was a little girl I always won the top art awards in school. I participated in my first outdoor art festival when I was 17. Didn’t sell anything, but I learned a LOT. When I did my next art fair I sold a lot, and I continued to do art fairs through college in both South Carolina and Georgia. Naturally, I majored in studio art in college and became a professional artist (watercolor and acrylic painter) with paintings in galleries across the country and prints sold worldwide. In fact my prints and posters are still sold worldwide by my fine art publisher, Haddad’s Fine Arts Inc., in California. But there was a problem. I was never 100% satisfied creatively with painting. Something was missing. I just didn’t know what.

Then one day when I was thirty I picked up a “Writer’s Digest” magazine at the bookstore. There was an article in it about writing poetry, so I wrote a poem and…EUREKA!…I was completely satisfied creatively for the first time in my life. Wow! I had always been told by my English teachers in school that I had writing talent. But I never pursued it, because I’m also mildly dyslexic. Of course, I didn’t know that back then. I just thought spelling was incredibly hard for me. Art was easier, so I that’s what I did. But after writing one poem I knew I needed to change careers. I did, and it was very hard, but I learned my craft.

Twenty-three years later I’ve published more than 45 books with several publishers, and my fiction and poetry have appeared in over 1000 magazines worldwide. My writer’s resume is 80 pages long, full of awards and prestigious nominations like a “Pulitzer Prize” nomination (2005) and seven “Pushcart Award” nominations. I truly believe anyone can follow her/his dreams. It just takes lots of perseverance and the decision to never give up until you accomplish your goal.

Ruthie – I know some of your other books are about witches and this one takes your vamps and puts them both together. If you could do anything different with the serialized novel, what would it be?

Laura - Nothing. I absolutely love the concept of this serialized novel series and how my fans are embracing it. My main series is “The Witchery Series,” and my other series (”The Rune Witch Series,” “The Faery Witch Series,” and “The Manigault Vampires”) are spin-offs of this one. They all contain the same characters, follow the same timeline, and are set in Columbia, South Carolina. So readers are never lost in the fictional world I have created, no matter what series they’re reading. Kinda cool, isn’t it?

Ruthie -What do you think is the most difficult process of the publishing industry?

Laura - Depends on what stage you’re at. In the beginning it’s writing a query letter that a publisher or agent will respond to. The solution is to give them what they want: an author who has a strong resume of publication credits in magazines for your fictional genre. Very few agents or publishers will take a chance on an author who is not well- published in little magazines first.

If you’ve been in the biz for a while then you’re caught in the cycle of trying to keep your books in print (publishers have an annoying habit of going out of biz and/or merging). At that stage you’re also trying to find the time to finish and market 1-3 new books every year to keep your fans hooked on your series. That’s something most readers don’t understand. The writing at this stage is the easy part. The hard part is finding time to both market and write. All or much of the marketing falls on the shoulders of the writer these days. And if your books don’t sell (because you aren’t spending enough time marketing them) your books go out of print, and you may be dropped by your publisher or agent or both.

It’s is an endless rat race at times. That’s why novelists work such insane hours and are always kinda tired. It would be wonderful to just sit around in your jammies all day and write. But that’s a fantasy. It ain’t even close to the reality of a successful novelist.

Ruthie – When you’re writing, do you plan everything ahead of time or do you just kind of ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants’?

Laura - Both. I always work from a short outline, like 3-4 chapters ahead. I don’t start a book until I know who the characters are, what the climax is, and how the book will end. But I am completely character-driven. So I let them tell the story. I just incorporate that into my outline.

However, in “A Vampire’s Kiss” I didn’t. Oh, I had an outline. But for the first time my characters (Dray and Sara) refused to follow it. They had a certain way they wanted this story told. Yet I kept trying. Finally, after they refused to follow the first 20 chapters, I gave up, threw my outline away, and let them rule. The first draft of the novel ended up longer than usual, because they didn’t want to quit at my usual 28 chapters. Then they refused to follow their first draft and kept cutting chapters up. Yikes!

Consequently, “A Vampire’s Kiss” is one of the best novels I’ve ever written. Really. I always say my characters do a better job of writing than I do. And that’s certainly true of this novel. lol

Ruthie – For all of us aspiring writers out here in the blogosphere, can you share any advice with us.

Laura – Learn your craft, read novels by authors you admire, become an awesome marketer/salesperson, and never never give up! This is a tough biz and not for the faint of heart. lol

Ruthie – The characters in your Vampire’s Kiss serialized novel – they are fascinating. Are they based on people that you know, or did they just kind of evolve on their own as you wrote the stories?

Laura - Funny you should ask. Readers often think I am the heroine of every novel I write. Not. In each novel I want to address a certain issue, usually one I have some life experience with. Then I create the heroine, giving her the perfect personality to deal with this issue in a way that leads to the climax and the end of the novel.

For example, in “The Witches of Dixie,” high-strung Mirabella has to learn how to save her successful art biz when circumstances conspire against her. Definitely a crisis situation for her. Having been in the art biz, I know all about those ups and downs. Mirabella is actually a composite of about 20 artists I have known in real life. In “What Witches Want” Savannah is not only shy but her self-esteem has been damaged by an abusive marriage. She has to find a way to recover from this and go on to find a fabulous guy. Not an easy task for her. In “Call of the Witches” Maylene is fed up with her history of bad-news boyfriends. She takes a two-year celibacy vow to empower herself and break this aggravating cycle. But before it ends she meets the man of her dreams. Too funny! None of those women are me, but I have experience with all of those issues, as do many women.

However, in “A Vampire’s Kiss” I thought it would be fun to make oversexed Sara a clone of myself. Yeah, everyone who knows me can see me in kinky Sara and loves it! And Sara truly is ME. Her dialogue, her actions, her libido, everything. What fun! Of course I had a realllllllly hard time getting her out of bed with Dray. But that’s to be expected if you’re talking about me. *sex-obsessed grin*

Ruthie – Do you have a lot of time to read? And if so, who is your favorite author and what really strikes you about their work?

Laura – I used to. But the last year has been so insane for me that I haven’t had much time to read. Instead, while writing new books, I’ve been dealing with one ebook publisher that went out of biz in March, taking on a new agent in June, parting ways with that agent last month, and dealing with one of my publishers that is taking forever to publish some of my books. It’s amazing I’m not on serious meds by now. lmao! Oh, and then launching the vampire novel serial with Kittyfeather Press. So I’ve had no time to read at all.

 However, now that the vamp series is off and running, I have had a bit more time to read, like 15 minutes every day or so. But that’s a lot for me, considering how the last year has been.

My fav authors are Emma Holly (damn, that woman can tell a hot story!), Kathy Love, Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark Hunter series), and Lora Leigh (Bound Hearts series). And I still think “Colters’ Woman” by Maya Banks is one of the best ménage novels ever written. I know she doesn’t agree with me (we chatted on Twitter about it), but IMO it’s true. *lol* The kind of books I like to read for fun are written by authors who write the same way I do: lean, fast, and hot.

Ruthie – Now there are all types of books out there about vamps and what really are your thoughts on vampires? Do you have a favorite one from your books or from anywhere else (movie, other book, etc.)Laura – Vampires are sex-on-a-stick! My favs would be the Dark Hunters by Sherrilyn Kenyon, even though technically they aren’t true vamps, but close enough.

 

Ruthie – Do you listen to music or watch TV while writing, or any other quirky little author habits?

Laura - No. Because my books are character-driven I need complete silence when I write so I can hear them talking to me. As for quirky habits I started out in the writing biz as a poet in 1988 and didn’t write fiction until 1996. Most poets write first drafts by hand. So like almost all novelists who started out as poets, my first drafts are written by hand in one spiral notebook after another. The first draft of “A Vampires Kiss” was written in 9 white-hot weeks, one chapter every day in 3 thick spiral bound notebooks. When I finish the first draft of a novel, I type it on computer to edit it, which takes about 8 months.

Also because I started out as a poet I am a meticulous editor. Every chapter goes through 15-20 edits. And chapters with sex scenes go through 30 or more edits until the dialogue flows naturally from your tongue, the sex is HOT, the pace is perfect, and the readers’ panties melt. That’s what writing good erotica is all about.

Other than that I keep vampire hours, working until 4:00am and getting up at 11:30am to start all over again. I like those hours because I’m a night person, and I get about 8 hours of fan mail every day. But after midnight most people are asleep, so I can get a ton of work done then.

Ruthie – Do you have anything else that you’d like to share with the readers?

Laura – You had to ask, right? *lol* Besides being a Wiccan Faery Witch (just a fancy name for a SexWitch), I’m also a high level empath and a psychic. If you don’t know this already you will soon. But I’m just like one of the heroines in an erotica novel. I’m addicted to sex, lust, trashy lingerie, and cocks. Remember, Sara is me. So I’m a kinky girl (exhibitionist and voyeur). Kinda unusual for an erotica novelist, I know. But I live what I write.

Because of that I don’t include any sex scenes in my novels that I haven’t personally tried out in real life. Nothing makes me laugh harder than reading an unrealistic sex scene in an erotica novel. Hey, my readers tell me they use erotica novels to get ideas to spice up their sex lives. Last thing I want is to write a scene that will make them sick or might injury them. Totally NOT cool. So when I read a novel with a sex scene that makes me say, “Eeeew…bacteria!” or “UTI Alert!” I usually don’t finish that book. Kinda ruins the whole thing for me.

Fiction is fiction. But when I’m writing sex scenes and I know my readers might try some of these positions I prefer to take a responsible attitude. Not to mention my husband Wes loves it when I say, “Okay, honey, I need to work out the details of a sex scene for the novel I’m writing. Let’s get naked!” Yeah, men are easy like that sometimes. *lusty grin*

Other than that, I’m totally addicted to hunky strippers. Young male flesh. Yummy…..! Did I mention I’m also a cougar and proud of it? Hey, you asked! lmao

Now she is just too funny! Gotta love her!

xoxo
Laura Stamps ©
The Magickal SexWitch
Author of Paranormal Erotica & Romance Novels
(HOT Vampires, Shapeshifters, Witches)
laura@laurastamps.com
To see all my novel series:
http://www.avampskiss.blogspot.com
My verrrrry naughty blog:
http://www.LauraStamps.com
My “Laura Stamps” Fan Page at Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/sexwitch
Follow me on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/sexwitch

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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