Thursday, December 3, 2015

An Interview with Susan Squires @susansquires ~ Time for Eternity: The DaVinci Time Travel Series, Book 1 Begins


Time for Eternity - Banner

BOOK INFORMATION

TITLE – Time For Eternity SERIES – The DaVinci Time Travel Series, Book 1 AUTHOR – Susan Squires GENRE – Regency Paranormal Romance PUBLICATION DATE – October 27th, 2015 LENGTH – 384 pages PUBLISHER – Independent COVER ARTIST – Rebecca Poole, Dreams2Media

BOOK SYNOPSIS

Desire and destiny collide in this novel—first in a stunning new series—from New York Times Bestselling author Susan Squires.
Tempted by Fate
Once, Frankie Suchet loved Henri Foucault—and it cost her everything. For two centuries, she has cursed the French duke who gave her his blood and then disappeared forever. Today, this sexy vampire is a bartender living in San Francisco. And Frankie has been granted the chance to go back in time…to kill the man who made her what she is. But becoming “Françoise” again means losing all memory of the risk Henri poses to her future…and her heart.
Seduced by Danger
France, 1794. The Reign of Terror is in full swing. From the first, Henri is an enigma, saving Françoise from an angry Parisian mob. Drawn to his seductive vitality, Françoise discovers there is much more to him than she once knew. Henri’s devotion to rescuing innocents from the guillotine is his sole passion—until he encounters Françoise’s intoxicating blend of innocence and experience. And as their attraction explodes into dangerous desire, the only way to save each other may be to sacrifice their timeless love…
“Superb writing…and intricate characterization make each novel by Ms. Squires and absolute winner.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

BUY & TBR LINKS


EXCERPT

She was about to lose her virginity and she was glad. She wanted to lose it with the wicked duc, not some dull apothecary’s assistant. Let the future be damned.
He bent to kiss her neck, now balanced on both elbows above her, and thrust in fully.
She gave a little shriek as a stab of pain shot through her. He went still. 
“You’re a virgin.” It sounded like an accusation. He dropped his head, his face curtained by his hair. “I…I didn’t know. I thought… I would never have just…” 
“It’s better now.” How embarrassing that she’d shrieked. Now he felt warm inside her. Satisfying. This was where she belonged, joined to Henri Foucault. “This is nice.” He looked so contrite. But more than that, he looked a little…frightened. Not like the wicked duc at all. She couldn’t have that. “That kissing before… down there… was nice.” 
“Have you, uh, never had an orgasm?” 
She shook her head. “I would have known, I’m sure.” 
He took a breath and squeezed his eyes at that. Then he opened them as though he had decided something. “You can get the same feeling again, only by a different means, if you’ll bear with me.” The small smile was back, but it was rueful now. “It won’t hurt like that again.” 
“I’d like that.”
Time For Eternity - 3D Cover

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Author:  Susan Squires
Date of Birth:  11/27
Date of Interview:  11/23
Place:  I’m at the beach in Redondo Beach.
The Book:  Time for Eternity

Tell us about your newest release.
What genre do you enjoy writing the most? Why?
I’m a romance writer to the core. I’m always disappointed when I read a Nicolas Sparks novel that purports to be a romance but everybody dies at the end. That’s not a romance, that’s a tragedy. I love the “getting to know you” scenes where the hero and heroine begin to suspect that they are right for each other in spite of all apparent evidence to the contrary. And I love to see how characters that feel real work out their issues and achieve a happily ever after ending. I have always been a lover of the paranormal, because the consequences can be so much bigger. (Save the world, risk your soul—that sort of thing.)

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your story?
TIME FOR ETERNITY was full of surprises. Time travel books allow you to visit other times and places, and so I learned lots about the French Revolution. When Frankie the modern day vampire, goes back to kill the man she thought she loved before he can turn her into a monster, I knew that modern Frankie would have to co-exist with the innocent Françoise she is in the 18th century. Figuring out how to convey that was surprising, and fun. And when I searched for my hero, I harkened back to the story of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and to my first and favorite romance hero (see below—the Duc d’Avon from Georgette Heyer.) That created a surprising meld of all my experience with romance and adventure. P.S. Did you know that Monsieur Guillotine created his device as a humane way to execute prisoners?

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? 
I loved the Duc D’Avon in Georgette Heyer’s  THESE OLD SHADES. He’s handsome, smarter than anyone else in the room, jaded and a “bad man” who has done some very bad things. Yet he finds his match in a resourceful orphan who is both as jaded as he is, and innocent in her faith in him. When he gets his revenge on the man who abandoned her to a foul fate, it’s SO satisfying.

What is your most treasured possession?
I always think of this question as, if you had 10 minutes warning of a tsunami coming (we live at the beach) what would you grab? So of course, it would be our dogs, Blitz and Belle, our treasured Belgian Sheepdogs that run our lives and “organize” us. The only question is about the word “possession.” I think they would say we’re the “possession” and they’re the owners.

With whom, living or dead and why, would you like to sit and chat with for an afternoon?
I think I’d like to talk to Abraham Lincoln. After seeing the movie a couple of years ago, I learned that he was way more complicated than anything we learned about him in school. He took great risks for something he believed in, and was willing to do some questionable things—like blackmail?—to accomplish it. He was both idealistic and imminently practical, and we could use some of that in our leaders today.

Who or what has been the greatest love of your life? Why, How?
I’ve been married for forty years, and I still love the man like crazy. Who knew? I thought I would be thirty, terribly sophisticated, having liaisons as I chose and leaving them heartbroken. I met Harry at 21, and that was all she wrote. We married four years later after cohabiting for three and a half. My parents were divorcing, and his should have divorced rather than continue their dance of pain. We didn’t have great examples of monogamy working out to happily ever after. He finally talked me into marrying him by saying that he just couldn’t take the chance of letting me get away. And he still shows me he loves me every day. Sometimes that’s by bossing me around when he doesn’t think I’m taking care of myself. But I see through that to the love beneath. We’ve supported each other through thick and thin, traveled the world together creating memories, and had great times, and we’ll have many more.

What is your greatest regret?
Actually, my greatest regret is about writing. I persevered in the en, and published 17 books with Dorchester and MacMillan before I started putting out my own books. But I didn’t do it quickly enough. What I mean is that after I wrote my first book and discovered it wasn’t very good (most first books aren’t), I didn’t start doing the hard work of learning my craft for several years. Then, when I sent out the revised first book and got an agent interested, she said I needed to cut the book almost in half to get it published, and I didn’t know how to do that. So I quit writing for another several years before I recommitted to writing and wrote a second novel. That was the one that got published (DANEGELD). SACRAMENT, the first book, was also published, after I learned how to cut it down. But I let myself get discouraged several times before I recommitted to my path. I would have been published a lot sooner if I had just kept at it. 
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How can readers connect with you online? 
My website is at www.susansquires.com and all the information about books, existing and upcoming is there, as well as pictures of locations, etc.  My author page is where I actively post on Facebook at AuthorSusanSquires. And I post on Twitter @susansquires.

Can you tell us what is coming up next for you? 
I’m currently working on the last (maybe) book in my Magic Series, about a modern day family who has inherited the magic in their DNA from Merlin of Camelot. The magic, once dispersed and lost, is coming together again. When one of the Tremaine family meets someone else with the magic gene, they get true love and a magic power. You’d think that would be great, right? But when has the course of true love ever run smoothly? Each sibling of the large Tremaine family has their own book, and we’re down to Tammy, the youngest, and the culmination of the Tremaines’ fight against the Clan (who got their power from Morgan Le Fey.) This series benefits from starting from the beginning, since you get to watch the kids grow up and into who they’ll be when they find the One for them. The first book is Do You Believe in Magic? 

TOP TEN AUTHOR TIPS
  
1.       Write routinely if you don’t write every day. It takes too much effort to get back into the habit if you let too much time go by between writing sessions.
2.       Don’t try for perfect in the first draft. Just get it down. You can always fix it later.
3.       Make sure your first chapter starts with some action and defines some problem. That’s how to make it interesting.
4.       You first line or two has to grab the reader. Make it stand out, AND reveal something about the character or the character’s problem.
5.       End chapters on a high note, or a problem or a question. Don’t let them dribble away with routine matters.
6.       Pay attention to grammar. Grammar is the signpost to meaning for the reader. And even if you hire a copy editor to clean up your bad grammar, you’ll pay a lot less if she doesn’t have to do too much.
7.       Be hard on your characters. Give them faults and problems, and then make the problems worse. Authors are in an abusive relationship with their characters, and that’s what makes a book satisfying for readers when things finally work themselves out.
8.       Speaking of faults, lots of authors make their main female characters too one-dimensional. I think that’s because we identify with our main characters. Who wants to admit faults? But multi-dimensional characters are way more interesting.
9.       Don’t use setting and situations as “wallpaper” that fades into the background your story. If you’re writing historical, tell us what it would really be like to live in that time. If you’re writing about a particular profession, bother to understand what they do and use it in the story. Really go there and take the reader with you.
10.   Take the time to put your book down after you’re finished for a “rest” period. Then go back and do a ruthless editing job on it. The time away will give you some distance. The editing will make the book the best it can be….
AUTHOR BIO
Susan Squires is a New York Times bestselling author known for breaking the rules of romance writing. Whatever her time period, or subject, some element of the paranormal always creeps in. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer's choice awards. Publisher's Weekly named Body Electric one of the year’s most influential mass market books and One with the Shadows a Best book of the Year. Time for Eternity, the first in the DaVinci time travel series, received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.
Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and two very active Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help her write by putting their chins on the keyboarddddddddddddddddddddddd.

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1 comment :

  1. Thank you for the wonderful interview and for participating in the Tour. Victoria at My Family's Heart

    ReplyDelete

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