Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

What influences you to read a book? The setting? The characters? The plot? The suspense? The humor? The sexiness? The thrill? So see, as readers, we even read under the influence. :) So what influences us to write? In Destiny of the Wolf , the heroine was in a vehicle accident. I was in that accident. I saw the air bag inflate. Felt the pain from it. Also in Destiny of the Wolf , the heroine must rappel off a mountain. I've done that. She turned upside down by accident. Who would do such a thing on purpose? :) Except when I did it, that time was off a five-story building. And it was embarrassing. So what influenced me to write scenes like this? Actually living them, except changing them a little to suit the story...different time of year, different location, werewolf vs. human. LOL :) What influenced me to write To Tempt the Wolf was that I used to visit the Oregon coast a lot when I lived in Tigard, suburb of Portland. And I loved it. But I also had read some historical stories w...

On another group blog I'm on, one of the authors brought up the question something to the affect of: do you ever write about pets in your romances? As a reader, do you enjoy reading about a hero or heroine who own pets? dreamstime© Serghei Starus But as a caveat~~I'm sure for my benefit since I'm the only werewolf author on the blog [or maybe that should be the only author who writes about werewolves on the blog] ~~ she said that werewolves didn't count. :) LOL Of course werewolves don't count. They're not anyone's pet! :) But as to the author's question about romances with pets, in Book 6 of my werewolf series, title as yet to be determined, the newly turned heroine has a cat. So how will a cat and a werewolf interact? And if the heroine brings home a hunky werewolf boyfriend, how will the cat and he get along? Such is the fun of writing about something that is a little bit out of this world. :) I love animals and have raised Afghan hounds, silky terr...

I'm running late today, more so than usual, but I have to say if customer service helps to ensure future sales of a product and word-of-mouth praise to help sell more, Lenovo has my mark of approval. I procrastinated about calling them, mainly because my daughter had the information on the purchase of the computer and we kept disconnecting before I finally got the information from her. But procrastination is not usually a good thing. When I procrastinate, other things pile up and before you know it, the mountain of work I'm facing could have been whittled away if I'd just not procrastinated. And, you know how it goes. If you procrastinate about one thing, putting it off until tomorrow, here comes ten other things and wham! You can't do anything about the thing you procrastinated about if your life depended on it. But sometimes I have thoughtful procrastination. And this is a good thing. It's when I'm trying to come up with a bear idea, usually an order for somet...

Everybody loves free stuff, right? So what’s better than reading your favorite authors’ works for free? In the past, Casa Babes have woven a fun tale out of a whacky cast of characters, the tale growing wilder and wilder until the end. They’re lots of fun, and one of these days when we’re not so inundated with deadlines, we’ll weave another fun tale for our readers! In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to share some of my before published shorts in a free read, serialized version in a newsletter. So if anyone is interested in signing up, I’ve already sent off the first two scenes from Goddess in Training for newsletter members but can forward these to you if you want to sign up. http://www.terryspear.com/ Why are free reads great ideas? It shows diversity. Some of our Casa Babes had never written in 1st person, so it was a fun challenge for them. Some only write historical so adding a historical touch to the contemporary story line made it fun for readers and the authors alike. I...

By Terry Spear http://www.terryspear.com/ Just like a seed buried in the soil for any kind of plant~ ground cover, tree, flower, blade of grass, our characters start out as kernels of possibilities. The environment the plant grows in shapes the plant. Too dry, the plant has to adapt or die. Too windy and the tree must bend or break. Just like our characters, they often don’t choose what life throws in their path. But with our characters, they have to make choices that often puts them at more risk. Some authors make detailed sketches of their characters before they launch them into their books. They have a neat concept of what their characters are all about before they write the opening scene. But for me, being a pantser who writes as the scenes come to me, I could no more do that, than I can plot out a book. What I envision is a character with a mission, with some big motivation as to why it is imperative that they must accomplish this task, and it has to have some time limit, or there...

At Skye McKye's Thoughts Over Coffee , drop by and post a comment for free chance at a copy of Destiny of the Wolf! When I'm writing a new book, this is something I'm always concerned about. Is the new story different enough? The hero and heroine new? The plot unique? The setting different? I work at a library and I hear, "Do you have a writer who writes like this person?" Which is the good side of the equation. It means the author has fans and they're not getting enough of her books to satisfy a need. But what we don't want to hear is, "I quit reading this author's works because it was the same old story. Same plot. Same characters. Same setting. I got tired of them." And in a series where the characters have to be the same, "No growth in the characters. Same old characteristics, faults and I was tired of the same old stuff going on in book after book." I know when I read a story, I want it to be new. I want the characters to have...

by Terry Spear Woohoo, it's my birthday!! So have a piece of chocolate (only chocolate will do) cyber birthday cake on me!!! Now a word about sexy shapeshifters~~ Years ago, I wrote a futuristic where the heroine shapeshifts into a panther and her brother, a dragon. So that was my first shapeshifter story. But I finally decided on werewolves. In part, because I loved reading mythology and legends when I was growing up, and partly because I loved Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London. The images he created for me about wolves stuck with me all those years, and I didn’t even realize it until I was asked so many times, why werewolves? Because wolves can see better, hear better, sense smells better, run better…yet in some ways are like our steadfast companion dogs. Okay, so Little Red Riding Hood comes to mind too. “All the better to see you with, my dear…” Or something to that effect. :) But when I was creating my werewolf world, I wanted something that was as believable as...

Have you ever thought of how your birth order affected you as a child? Teen? Adult? Were you a middle child? The first born? The baby of the family? An only child? Not sure??? Is the idea of birth order overrated? I was the eldest of two children and yep, I have the classic symptoms of being the eldest child syndrome--super responsible, often passed down parental instruction to my sister, helped her with a myriad of situations. One of my former friends was a middle child, the lost child syndrome--so he had to get attention by getting into drugs. My mother was an only child, again super responsible, really a friend to her mother when her parents divorced, so more like a miniature grown-up. Another friend of mine was the baby of the family, and on top of that a late in life baby. The combination made for a much doted on "baby," by both parents and older siblings. One friend told me he was the middle child, but only son, so doted on by his parents and sisters, making him the bab...