Dianna Love | Diana Love is Passionate About...

Wow, finishing that sentence is going to take some thought. Many years ago I would have simply ended that sentence with "art," because I’ve been a portrait artist since birth.

I still love art, but now I love writing and fishing and motorcycle riding and golf and...my husband.

Isn’t it funny how our passions sometimes change over a lifetime? I’ve always put my all into everything I ever attempted because I don’t know how to do anything half measure, but that doesn’t mean everything I tried became a true passion.

At one time, I played competitive racquetball 4-6 nights a week. Before that I was around a group who rode motocross bikes. Both of these activities I jumped on, pursued, and loved. But I don’t actively pursue those now.

Other things have stayed as part of my life in some form and become true life passions - art and now writing, motorcycles, fishing, and my husband.

I’m passionate about practically everything I do, or I don’t do it for long, but recently I’ve found a new passion. Meeting readers. Up until 2001 when I started writing for the first time, I never expected to meet a reader except in a checkout line at a bookstore. I certainly never expected to meet one from the opposite side of the table at a book signing. These days, I love getting to spend hours with them at our all-night signings when Sherrilyn Kenyon and I are on the road touring. Their stories are amazing and heartwarming.

Now that I spend so much time getting to know characters in our stories I always want to know what they are passionate about, what are their dreams and what are they willing to go to the wall to do in reaching their goals. Their answers will sometimes surprise me, but more often touch my heart when I realize their true passion, just like mine, is not a passing whim, but something they’ll give their all for.

How would you describe YOUR passion? Is it cooking or riding horses or teaching children or developing technology or what?

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Linda Conrad | What Do You Love to Hate?

A witch appears in my newest trilogy, The Safekeepers, for Silhouette Romantic Suspense.  In fact, she’s a black witch who curses the Ryan family. Several white witches who do good deeds are in all three books too, but the witches don’t take up the entire plot.  I’ve also written about psychics, mediums, and Native American supernatural beliefs.  My editor and I call that light paranormal elements.

Not long ago I was wondering if light paranormal was as popular with readers as dark.  Oh, I already knew about the popularity of those sensual dark vampire and werewolf stories.  Or at least I thought I did.  I happened to ask a readers group and my own newsletter subscribers what they thought.  Boy, did I get an earful!

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“…straight paranormal is currently being overdone.”  “Vamps are sooo over.”  “I don’t care for vampire and the like in books.” “I’m a big paranormal fan who is tired of the vampires.”  And these are the nice replies!

But at the same time as people complain about vampire books, one of the best-selling series currently is the Twilight series by Stephanie Myer.  And please don’t tell Sherilyn Kenyon that vampires are out.  She’ll laugh all the way to the bank.   So is this a case of people secretly loving what they claim to hate?

Hooked? Read the rest and comment to be entered in Linda's one day blog contest to win signed copies of these books PLUS some Godiva chocolate to enjoy!

Dianna Love | Walk the Land

Research is the strength of all stories, regardless if it is contemporary, historical, fantasy or futuristic. So how does an author create real settings in all of these worlds?

I like to walk the land every time I can to pick up details we don’t see in a casual passing or on the internet. When Sherrilyn Kenyon and I were writing our new romantic-suspense story PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT (Pocket/June 10, 2008) last fall, we spent time in New Orleans (NO) surveying areas specifically for the story in spite of our joint knowledge of Louisiana. Sherrilyn knows New Orleans well since her Dark-Hunter series is set primarily there, KCON (Kenyon Convention) is in or around the French Quarter each year and she lived in NO at one time. I had family in Louisiana at one time and still do in Biloxi, Mississippi, plus friends in NO. I’ve fished from many of the coastal Louisiana towns along the Gulf of Mexico and had a business in NO at one time, so Louisiana has been a favorite location of mine for many years.

Even with all this background, we spent time there last fall “walking the land” so we had fresh images of law enforcement locations and proximity of residences to the French Quarter, exit routes, airports (small ones, too) and shipping container storage facilities. I photographed areas and wrote notes pertinent to the story. And we always talk to people wherever we go. All this played a part in creating realistic scenes. When I wrote my RITA award-winning book, WORTH EVERY RISK, I had a lot of emails from readers saying how the setting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida felt so real. That wasn’t too hard to do since I grew up in Florida and chose that city for many reasons that fit the story.

What about paranormal or fantasy stories – where do those settings come from? Sherrilyn has created such realistic sounding locations her books that fans often ask about the actual location of Sanctuary (Were Bear Bar) that will appear again in the upcoming ACHERON book (St. Martin’s Press/August 5, 2008), even though it is a fabricated establishment. She gives fans a walking tour through the French Quarter each year at KCON so they can see where different scenes occurred.

I have a paranormal novella coming out this fall that leans heavily toward fantasy. The setting is midtown Atlanta, Georgia – not far from where I live in Peachtree City. Even though I’ve lived here for many years and visit midtown quite often I still spent time walking through Piedmont Park just for the story, visualizing major scenes then traveling between different locations to get a good feel for time and place. But one setting is under a mystical mountain that is part of the actual Hindu mythology, another blend of mythical history with fictitious properties. I hope you’ll get a chance to read MIDNIGHT KISS GOODBYE (in the Dead After Dark Anthology by St. Martins Press/December 2, 2008) to see how I used real locations with fantasy elements.

~ Do you have a favorite story setting?

~ Did you ever read something that felt so real you wanted to go find that location…and did you try?

~ Have you read about a paranormal, fantasy or futuristic location you’d like to visit? Please tell us.

Visit my ONE DAY ONLY blog contest for a chance to win a copy of PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT. Two winners!!

Dianna Love

Dianna Love writes a romantic-thriller series with #1 NYT best seller Sherrilyn Kenyon. For more on PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT and Dianna please visit www.authordiannalove.com/, and for information on Dianna’s nonfiction book Break Into Fiction™: Power Plot YOUR Novel coming out in 2009 visit www.breakintofiction.com/