01/27/12

It’s a week for anniversaries. On January 25, 2009, I interviewed Leah Braemel, my first critique partner, on the almost eve of her first published book, Private Property, which released on January 27^th  with Samhain Publishing. We met through a Margie Lawson online workshop on Deep Editing and became fast, long-distance friends. She lives in Ontario while I’m in bayou country – Louisiana. Back then she was working on a paranormal shapeshifter story, and I was working on a romantic suspense with paranormal elements. My how things change!

Leah has since published 3 books in the Hauberk Protection series with Samhain (Hidden Heat, book #4 in the series, is set to be released in May) along with 2 westerns, Texas Tangle and Tangled Past, with Carina Press. (For a Canadian, she does a mighty fine Texan.) She lives with two college-age sons, and her childhood sweetheart whom she refers to as Gizmo Guy though I affectionately call him Geeky Guy because he’s as smart as Bill Gates, just not as rich.

Livia: Welcome to the Muse, my friend. Things have really changed for you since our Margie Lawson days, have they not?

Leah: They have. Back then I thought I had no chance of getting published, let alone multi-published. I’ve learned a lot, not just from Margie’s course, though hers were the best I’ve ever taken, but also from other writers, and of course my editors. They’ve changed on the home front too: my eldest “college-age” son finished college, has found a job and a girlfriend and moved out from home while my youngest has gone from a high school freshman to “college-age”. Yikes.

Livia: Your newest release, Perfect Proposal, revisits Sam and Rosie (yay!) from Personal Protection, book 2 in the series, as Sam is trying desperately to arrange his er, perfect proposal for his special lady. Tell us about them and about the Hauberk series.

Leah: Sam, the owner of Hauberk Protection, was a secondary character in that first story Private Property.  As Livia can attest, he underwent a lot of transformations as I’d originally wrote him as a football player.  Then as I wrote, I made him Mark’s future business partner and boss, and Hauberk Protection was formed. Sam got his own story in Personal Protection where you met the rest of the Hauberk Protection team, and the future love-of-his-life Rosalinda Ramos, a spitfire bodyguard who can cow a man who is a foot and a half taller than her. At the end of Personal Protection, you know they’re going to stay together, but marriage is never mentioned. Nor are they married in book 3, Deliberate Deceptions during their cameo appearance.

I’d always wanted to see Sam make that final commitment, and I’ve had enough reader comments about him that I thought my readers would like to see it too. I had planned for Perfect Proposal to be a very short story, less than ten pages or under 5000 words. But in my usual fashion it ended up three times longer than I’d anticipated—mainly because I wanted to make sure Sam didn’t have an easy time getting down on one knee. (It’s so fun messing with an alpha male’s head, LOL, by screwing up his carefully-made plans.)

Livia: What made you decide to self-publish this title?

Leah: When I first discussed my plans on writing Perfect Proposal with my Samhain editor last summer, I’d thought it would be a short story, and I’d planned to make it only available for download on my website. Once it reached 13,000 words and I fell in love with Sam and Rosie all over again, I realized I wanted people who had bought the previous books on the bigger ebook sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble to be able to find it and easily download it. Which meant I had to venture into the self-publishing realm. So I wrote the story, hired an editor—who ended up being the same lady who edited my westerns for Carina Press—and learned the ins-and-outs of formatting it myself.

Livia: Men: Living in a house full of testosterone has to be great fodder for writing romance, or not. Are Gizmo Guy, Curly and Guitar Hero romantics?

Leah: From some of the conversations I’ve overheard, you’d wonder, LOL. But yes, Gizmo Guy has always been romantic. I knew Guitar hero has a romantic side (bringing his girlfriend flowers “just because” for instance) but I didn’t realize how romantic he could be until I saw a series of posts between him and his SO on Facebook when they were celebrating their first anniversary together earlier this month.  I’ve never seen any man get so…mushy, LOL. But don’t tell him I said that As for Curly, he’s young yet and still new to the dating scene, but I’m certain he will be a romantic—his father’s set the bar high.

Livia: Holidays: We love to hear about our guests’ holiday traditions – your family has an unusual gifting tradition at Christmas. Tell us about it. And do you expect three dozen roses on Valentine’s Day?

Leah: Valentine’s Day has never been big in this house, and other than buying me a poinsettia every Christmas, Gizmo Guy rarely buys me flowers. But he will buy me other things for Valentine’s Day—scented bath bombs or body lotions, bird feeders because he knows I love to feed the winter birds, things for my computer or my office.  He used to travel a lot for his job, and he’d always buy things for me in whatever city he was in.  So when I was collecting angels, I received tiny ornaments (or larger ones) from around the world. He manages to scout out unusual presents that I’d never find if I was looking for them, and so many times has proven he has listened to me. As for our Christmas tradition of hiding someone’s main present every year, now that Guitar Hero has moved out, we’ve discovered we may have to change that tradition and find a new one.

Livia: Research: I remember when you were doing research for one of your books you actually went to a biker bar to mingle with the locals. I know our Musers would like to hear about that.

Leah: LOL, since Sam rides a Harley, and I was considering having another one of my Hauberk guys a bike rider, too—or maybe one of my heroines—I went to “ladies night” with the local Harley Davidson women riders’ group and had a great time. They were from all backgrounds and all ages who welcomed me with open arms, encouraging me to go for my own motorcycle license. There was one lady who was in her early 70s, and quite a few my own age, along with some younger gals.

For my westerns Texas Tangle and Tangled Past, I was invited by my original critique partner who breeds Arabian horses to visit her farm in Texas (and would love to return for another visit). Some of her routines made it into both of those books, and I use her as my resource whenever I am writing a horse. Sue also introduced me to her father who taught me how to shoot a number of pistols—revolvers and semi-automatics, a very handy lesson when I write any of my characters carrying or using guns.

Along those lines, since I write about former police officers and FBI agents, I attended the Writers’ Police Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, last fall. Talk about eye-opening being surrounded by all those alpha males and females. I got lots of fodder from them, including listening to a talk by a former undercover New York police officer, especially since the hero in my current novel used to work undercover too. I was surprised by how different he seemed compared to the rest of the uber-alpha officers, until I realized he had to be more low key so the bad guys wouldn’t automatically peg him as a police officer. And I got to talk briefly with his wife — who gave me some very interesting insights into her husband, character traits that may turn up in the hero in my current work-in-progress who, by serendipity, had been an undercover cop before he joined Hauberk.

(Should I tell Gizmo Guy that I am researching strip clubs for my current novel?) Livia: He’d undoubtedly want to go along

Livia: Writing: Are you a plotter or a pantser or a plantser/plotser? How has that process changed through your series?  

Leah: For various reasons, I’ve found myself having to plot more and more. Not exactly where I have a detailed scene-by-scene outline before I start to write, but I need to know where I’m going or else I wander terribly and end up having to delete far too much of my document to get back on track. Although I knew how I wanted Personal Protection to end, I didn’t “plot” and ended up writing 20,000 words then deleting 10,000, then writing to 50,000 words and deleting 17,000.  I figure I wrote approximately 150,000 words to end up with about 80,000. It was far too frustrating and I realized I needed to try something different in order to write faster.

While I was pondering how I needed to adjust my writing process, I wrote Texas Tangle. I’d originally planned that it would be a novella, but when I finished the 22,000 word first draft I went through it and started making notes about expanding characters and showing different facets of the characters’ relationships with each other. Draft two finished at 45,000 words, the manuscript I submitted to Carina was almost 65,000 words and thanks to some suggestions from my editor, the final copy is over 72,000 words. I’ve discovered I really like that method—adding words, not deleting them and starting again. So now I work on getting the bare bones of the story in the first draft, then filling in the blank spots and layering in character depth in the second draft. That method lets me keep my focus on the specific scenes I’m writing that day because I know where everyone (and everything) is heading and stops me from wandering around chasing distracting plot bunnies.

Livia: Your Space: It’s always fun to see where authors write. Is there a picture you’d like to share, your new companion, your new office, your guys?

Leah: Thanks to my readers, and my eldest son finally moving out on his own last fall, I finally had my dream office created. (Or almost my dream office – my real dream office would be in a smaller house behind the main house with a private bathroom, and an exercise gym, with no phones and a door no one would knock on for fear of disturbing me, LOL. But this one is close.) Freshly painted walls, a new shiny hardwood floor, a closet that houses a book case (naturally), along with boxes of…well, stuff that I can keep behind closed doors, a lovely new L-shaped desk complete with plenty of drawers and a hutch that is supposed to help me keep paperwork off my desk. And a door I can close to keep people out when I need to concentrate.

That was the plan.

Naturally enough now I’ve got everything in place, we decided to bring a new puppy into the family. Seamus, our four-month-old Shih Tzu puppy, has now taken over my office during the day. DevilPuppy doesn’t care that he’s destroying part of my dream office as he happily chews my printer stand and turns it from a corner to a curve. Or chews on the comfortable chair for when I want to curl up and read. As for those pee pads I used to protect my lovely new floor? Like most little boys, his aim is off and always finds the one place left bare.

And the door? Unfortunately doesn’t seem to stop anyone from barging in to interrupt me. Looks like it’s more than just Seamus who needs some lessons in respect for my office.

Livia: What’s next for you?

Leah: My next release is Hidden Heat, book 4 in the Hauberk series which comes out from Samhain in May.  And while I’m waiting for the edits for it, I’m working on book 5. In between housetraining sessions with Seamus. Which at the moment involve multiple trips outside into the snow. Did I mention Seamus doesn’t like getting his feet wet?

Have a question for Leah? One lucky commentor will receive a copy of Perfect Proposal or her romantic suspense Deliberate Deceptions – your choice.

Want to know more about Perfect Proposal or the rest of Leah’s books? Visit her website , buy Perfect Proposal at Amazon or Smashwords , and follow her on Twitter or on Facebook.

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