Meet Desert Breeze Author, Sue Perkins!

#1 - How long have you been writing? When did your muse come to visit? What is his/her name?

I've been writing for about twenty years now, with the intent of getting published I mean. I've always written for my own enjoyment but about twenty years ago I decided it was time to go out into the world and see if I was good enough to be published. I took a creative writing class to find out how to format and submit to publishers and this helped me a lot. I'm still friends with the tutor and regularly attend her writing retreats.

I don't really have a muse, well not one with a name. I can envisage my characters and story, but although something nags me to get on and write the darn book, the nagger has never actually introduced themselves to me.

#2 - I understand you live in New Zealand. Tell us a little about New Zealand. What do you love about it?

I was born and raised in England, but my husband and I decided to emigrate to New Zealand when our family was young. New Zealand has two main islands and we live at the top of the South Island on a three acre block. We have all sorts of scenery in this country from sub-tropical in North Island, through the thermal hot areas in the middle of the North Island, right the way down to the bottom of the South Island with the skiing and glaciers. I love living here with lovely blue skies due to very little pollution in our atmosphere, although we do have to be careful about UV. There's also the wonderful countryside, beaches and the laid back attitude of New Zealanders. There's a "she'll be right" way of looking at things which I think is also shared by Australians. Funnily enough my children are now grown and living back in England.

STEPH: New Zealand sounds cool. What an exciting background you have!

#3 - What was the last movie you saw?

That would be Wall-E. I love movies which are family entertainment. I don't go to the movie theatre much but the one before that was Mama Mia. Lovely film, the audience stayed way past the end of the credits, we could hardly believed it had really finished.

#4 - Who are your favorite authors?

Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Terry Pratchett, Trudi Canavan - can you see a trend here? All of these are fantasy authors who write about alternate worlds. I also love romance books, but now ebooks are so easily available I have far too many favourite authors to list them here although Julia Quinn and Janet Evanovich are definitely near the top of the list.

#5 - How many books have you written? What's your favorite genre to write?

Do you mean how many have I written or how many have I had published? I've written about twenty or thirty books, but so far have had seven published most in ebook and trade paperback. My favourite genres (more than one) are fantasy, romance and young adult fantasy.

#6 - Do you plot your books or do you write by the seat of your pants.

Definitely seat of the pants. I get a vague idea of a character and storyline and I let it stew for a while, usually because I have another book to finish writing. When I'm ready I start writing, and it takes on a life of its own from there. For instance my (then) two year old daughter saw a punk rocker on the London underground. She was fascinated by the purple spikey hair and in the end the young lady with the hair blushed like mad because this young child was staring at her. Years later I was telling a friend about this incident and it sparked off an idea for a book which became Three Hearts.

#7 - Tell us a little about Three Hearts, your Desert Breeze release. Do you have a book trailer you can share?

As mentioned above it started from an idea, which was then encouraged by an item on the news about an international custody battle. I was living in Timaru, New Zealand at the time so this became the setting. Darcy, the heroine, has looked after her niece since the child's mother died giving birth to her. Now Travis, an American, appears and claims Brooke is his daughter and he wants custody. The Pacific Ocean separates their homes which creates all sorts of problems.

I do have a book trailer and it can be seen on the Desert Breeze website page for Three Hearts. The link is http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-41/Three-Hearts/Detail.bok


#8 - Do you have any more books coming up?

I have a fantasy book coming out later this year with another publisher. I also hope to submit another romance to Desert Breeze in about another five or six months. This one is a World War 2 romance.

STEPH: World War II is such a rich goldmine for stories. I'm looking forward to it!

Thanks so much for this interview, this has been fun!

STEPH: Thanks for being here, Sue!