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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Starstruck Blog Tour Interview





Book Blurb:

Nerdy astronomy geek Marsha, M to her few friends, has never been anybody special. Orphaned as an infant and reluctantly raised by an overly-strict "aunt," she’s not even sure who she is. M’s dream of someday escaping tiny Jewel, Indiana and making her mark in the world seems impossibly distant until hot new quarterback Rigel inexplicably befriends her. As Rigel turns his back on fawning cheerleaders to spend time with M, strange things start to happen: her acne clears up, her eyesight improves to the point she can ditch her thick glasses, and when they touch, sparks flyliterally! When M digs for a reason, she discovers deep secrets that will change her formerly humdrum life forever . . . and expose her to perils she never dreamed of. Yes, the middle of nowhere just got a lot more interesting!




Buy links:
 


Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/1b2f1Gr



Excerpt

The next morning my alarm actually awakened me, jarring me out of a dream I didn't want to leave, a dream involving Rigel—again. I lay still for a moment, grasping at the retreating shreds of the dream, but it escaped before I could remember any details.

With a sigh, I rolled over and plucked my glasses from the nightstand and put them on, then sat up. And squinted. My vision was blurrier than yesterday—a lot blurrier. I pulled my glasses off to examine them, but they didn't look smudged.

Before putting them back on, I glanced at my clock and blinked. Then blinked again. The numbers were as clear as they normally were with my glasses on. I turned on my bedside lamp and slowly looked around my room. Amazingly, I could read the names of the planets and their moons on my poster of the solar system and easily pick out titles from book spines in my overstuffed bookcase: A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit, The Last Unicorn. The blurriness was gone.

"No way," I said out loud.




Author Bio:
Author of sixteen novels to date, primarily Regencies and historicals from Harlequin and HarperCollins, Brenda Hiatt is now indie publishing her historical backlist and continuing to write and publish new books, her most recent a mystery, OUT OF HER DEPTH, from Bell Bridge Books. Her first original indie book, STARSTRUCK, launches in September 2013, a YA science fiction romance. For the past dozen years, Brenda has collected data on writers' earnings, which she shares at her website, http://brendahiatt.com.




Places to find Brenda:








Interview 


1.    What is one of your favorite Myths/legends to write about?I'm fond of Pygmalion and Galatea (aka "My Fair Lady"). I used that theme for my very first Regency, Gabriella, and the idea of someone being transformed/transforming her or himself has cropped up in a lot of my books. I guess that's at the basis of all Cinderella stories, which are some of my favorites.
2.    If you could live back in time, what time period would you choose and why?
Regency England. I love what an interesting, transitional time it was, between the bawdy of the Georgians and the repressed Victorians, on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. There's a reason I've set so many books in that period!
3.    Have you ever come across a song that might fit the theme of one of your books?
Muse's "Resistance" was particularly appropriate for the theme of Starstruck. (And for Ship of Dreams, the whole soundtrack to "Titanic"!)
4.    Do you remember what you felt when you had your first kiss?
Scared and excited and happy and self-conscious all at once! Plus the thought that I could tell my girlfriends I'd finally been kissed. LOL!
5.    When writing do you have a playlist of music you like to listen to? What are a couple songs on it?
Lots and lots of Muse! Two favorites, especially for Starstruck, are "Resistance" and "Uprising."
6.    What do you do when you think nobody is watching?
Sing along with the radio really loudly. (No, I am NOT a singer! LOL!)
7.    What was your favorite childhood book?
Probably The Black Stallion. I loved horse stories. All animal stories, really! Oh, and the Narnia series. A little later I "graduated" to Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart, Jane Austen and J.R.R. Tolkien.
8.    What is your favorite addition to chocolate?
I'd have to say raspberries, though chocolate added to almost anything makes it better! (Okay, maybe not pizza…)
9.    Do you have any hobbies or activities you enjoy doing?
Taekwondo, scuba diving (not that I get many chances in Indiana), walking/hiking, and traveling. And reading, of course!
10. What's something you do to de-stress? Read (especially reread old favorites) and watch sappy romantic movies.
11. We all know about muses...what do you think inspires you to allow your creative juices flowing?
Muse! (LOL! I mean the band.) I've written my last three books to their music (plus a few selected others). 
 Giveaway Info:

1 Lucky person will win the chance to name their very own star.
1 eBook copy of Bridge Over Time

10 Fun Facts (things the fans don't know)
1.    I write on a treadmill. I've found 1.3MPH is my ideal writing speed. (Any faster and I make a lot more typos.) Firing up the treadmill and putting on my writing music almost instantly puts me into the Zone.
2.    I have a 2nd degree black belt in Taekwondo. I'm especially proud of this because I only started out as a white belt about five years ago. (I was the oldest color belt in my school for quite a while!)
3.    I'm obsessed with dolphins, but haven't figured out a way to work them into a book yet.
4.    The Harry Potter series and then the Twilight series are what lured me into writing young adult romance after 16 books aimed at adults. I discovered I enjoyed reading YA so much, it only made sense to try writing it!
5.    I have a daughter who works for DreamWorks Animation. Her name was in the tag-end of the credits of their most recent movie, "Turbo"!
6.    I have a daughter who sings opera, and she's narrating the audio version of Starstruck for me!
7.    I met my husband at a Halloween party, while in costume… dressed as a hooker! His first-ever words to me were, "How much do you charge for your services?"
8.    In re-releasing my backlist romances as eBooks, I've been able to use my daughters as cover models on two of them, The Cygnet and Ship of Dreams.
9.    In 2010, I walked the last 100 km of the Camino de Santiago with a dozen other women, several of whom are also writers. VERY cool experience!
10.    My husband proposed to me (though he was joking--we barely knew each other) after first tasting my lasagna. (The REAL proposal happened more than 6 months later.)




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