Author Saturday Spotlight: Alexa Snow *Interview and Giveaway*

I am so excited to have Alexa Snow, author of such books as Sleeping Stone, On the Dotted Line and Family Values as my Spotlight author this Saturday.

As a fan it's a delight to get the opportunity to talk to an author I admire greatly.  You won't find Alexa mingling on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter. She isn't Anti-social media but as you will see in the interview later on, she has her life in order and knows how to live it.

I have read many of her stories and yet there are still many I have not. There has never been a book of hers I've put down and not had a smile on my face and a wish to do it all over again.

She often co-writes with Jane Davitt, who is another talented author. Also in the interview I tackle how they make it work.

Not having the ability to chat on a thread with Alexa or see what she's up to on Twitter, it really is a genuine treat to talk with her. You will all she that she is as wonderful in real life as she is in the creation of her characters.

If you go to her Goodreads page ( Alexa Snow on GR ) You can easily read through the many titles she has written! There are quite a few. If she's a new author for you... You're going have a lot to catch up on LOL!

Blurb:
Jazz Stone is full of life and energy, the kind of person that others gravitate to, and when Chris meets Jazz, he's instantly smitten. But the course of true love never runs smoothly.

Just as they seem to find solid ground to stand on, Jazz's former lover Richard shows up, strewing an already rocky road with gravel. When Jazz has a serious motorcycle accident that threatens to end his life, Chris and Richard try to carry on without him. Can they find common ground of
their own?

This is one of my favorite books! It hooked me in a way that my mind and body had to come down from the high of it. I was so taken by it that I try to always have it accessible to me. *Whispers* It's also the giveaway today.

Blurb:
When college drop-out Paul LeBlanc first meets pediatrician Dr. Cameron Fraser at the emergency room, he isn't hoping for anything more than good news about his best friends' James and Alison's baby. He's more involved in baby Gabby's life than the average guy his age might be, but there's a good reason for that -- she's his biological daughter, a gift given to his friends when it turned out James wasn't able to father a child.

Cameron asks Paul to go for drinks, but Paul doesn't want to hope for more than a few dates and maybe some hot sex. As it turns out, Cameron isn't into casual sex, but Cameron also knows right away that what he wants with Paul is anything but casual.

Paul's life is complicated. He has a mountain of debt that no one knows about and just paying the bills is a struggle. He's sick of rummaging in the couch for change to do a load of laundry and worrying about when his junky car will break down next. Still, he suspects that the added complication of a boyfriend might be worth it if that boyfriend is Cameron.

TERRIFIC BOOK! I remember reading this and saying "Uhh god, come on, awww, wow , deep breaths" It's one of those books you are so happy you took the time to read!

She has a series she wrote with Jane Davitt that I LOVEcalled The Square Peg Series. It's 2 books...

Blurb Book 1:
Benedict, a successful accountant, who's just been dumped for being boring, is surprised and pleased to learn that he's inherited half ownership in a gay bar from his estranged father, seeing it as a chance to get out of his rut. That's until he meets his new partner, a mouthy, disturbingly hot Brit called Shane, and discovers that the bar's in the red and Shane's not interested in renovations that could drive away their regulars.

When a late-night confrontation turns into the hottest sex either of them has experienced, they realize there's one way to fit a square peg into a round hole, but are they solving problems or papering over the cracks? As they explore the new dynamic between them, pushing their limits until Ben's shocked at where his desire to dominate Shane takes him, the renovations to the bar begin. They're building something new, something good -- but fear and an unexpected act of violence may tear down what they've created

Blurb Book 2:
Vin's a hot Goth, tattooed and pierced and the most popular bartender at the Square Peg. Want to date him or buy him a drink? Sorry. Vin's body is a temple and he's barely been kissed. His heart belongs to Riley, the guy he crushed on in high school and can't forget.

How about Vin's BFF Patrick? He'd let you buy him a drink and have your wicked way with him in the men's room (shh, don't tell Shane or Ben, the bar owners!) Okay, maybe Vin needs to loosen up and Patrick needs to calm down, but they're set in their ways.

Enter Riley, looking for Vin, and suddenly everything changes. Vin's handed a happy ending on a plate and Patrick's free and easy lifestyle loses its glitter as he sees what Vin has.

But does Vin really have his dream guy or does he just have Riley? Maybe they're not the same thing, after all.

As reality ruins fantasies and divided loyalties make life complicated, choices need to be made by Vin and Patrick, but timing's everything. Speak too soon or wait too long…either can leave a true happy ending out of reach.
(Author note: not a threesome romance or menage.)

If you don't fall in love with the men in this series I'm not sure we can be friends anymore people! Really grab this series!!!!

Alexa Snow doesn't have an Amazon Author's page but click on the Goodreads  page I linked above and the book you want and there are buying options.


***INTERVIEW***

 Sleeping Stone really got to me. It was one of the first M/M books I read and it made me fall in love with ménage. The tangle of old love, new love, and now love in the midst of a tragic time was overwhelmingly beautiful. How do you as a writer take 3 characters and outline them so well to the point that the story flows and the emotion comes through perfectly?

Even though the main character, Chris, was the point of view character in Sleeping Stone, my real focus was on Jazz. There was something appealing about him that I wanted to be able to look at from an outside perspective; even his house was fascinating to me, and I could see so clearly why Chris -- or anyone, really -- would be drawn to Jazz and his life. I honestly had no idea the story was going to be a novel when I started writing. I was reading a bunch of random song lyrics online and came across the lyrics to "Adonais" by The Cure. I'd never heard the song (and still haven't, oddly enough) but as I read the lyrics, Jazz appeared fully-formed in my head, almost as real as a flesh and blood person, and I started writing immediately. There were things that I knew right off the bat (that Jazz was in a coma, that he had a history that included a long-term relationship with an older man) and things I had no idea how I was going to resolve (Richard's return, Jazz waking up) but not finding out what would happen was never an option, although it took me just shy of four years to complete the book. So I guess that's a very long winded way of coming around to the answer to the question, which is: I have no idea. There wasn't any outlining involved. It was more a case of jumping in with both feet and hoping for the best.

You collaborate with Jane Davitt quite a lot. Do you favor collaboration or writing alone? And how do you make it work with a writing partner?

I adore Jane, and I far prefer writing with her to writing alone. It's so much quicker and easier! One of the joys of writing with a partner is that when you get to a point where you just don't know what happens next, you can pass the story off to the other writer and give yourself a little break. Being able to work my way through those roadblocks is one of my biggest challenges when I'm writing solo, so having someone else to help with that is incredibly valuable to me. And of course Jane is ridiculously talented and creative; working with her forces me to stretch myself. I can't even begin to understand all the ways that knowing her has made me grow as a writer and a person. Currently Jane and I use Google Drive to co-write, and my biggest complaint about it is just that it's updated so frequently that from one novel to the next we lose track of how to do things like leave comments for each other. Otherwise we've found it to be a great tool for collaboration.

Killing Time was something special. Magic and Love and of course unspeakable evil. Totally different from Sleeping Stone and On the Dotted Line. Do you like to mix up your writing with syfy/fantasy and more realistic story lines? Do you favor one more than the other?

I've been a fan of science fiction, fantasy and horror since I was a child -- I started reading Stephen King far sooner than I should have! -- and although there are ways in which writing more traditional contemporary romance is simpler, the extra work that goes into creating a world that's either slightly or very different from our own always seems to be worth it in the end. I'd love to write a proper horror/romance at some point, maybe something with zombies or in a post-apoc setting, but I've never had an idea that really stuck with me long enough to consider it. I hope that will change. Writing Killing Time was amazing fun, though we struggled making sense of all the magic during the editing process because we'd taken so many shortcuts while we were racing along writing it. (In fact, our joke working title for the novel was "The Hot Mess," something I laughed about more than once.) 

What was the first piece you ever wrote?

I honestly don't remember at this point! The first thing I wrote and completed that wasn't for a school assignment was a short story about a kitten that was adopted by a mother dog that I think I wrote in high school -- I have a typed copy of it somewhere that I made for my grandmother (which was returned to me after her death.) I also wrote a novel in high school/college that will probably never see the light of day, along with a bunch of hurt/comfort fanfiction featuring Kirk, Spock and McCoy that I'm sure in retrospect would be horrifically embarrassing. 

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I don't think I ever knew I wanted to be a writer. I think I just was a writer whether I wanted to be or not. (That might make it sound like I wouldn't have chosen this, when in reality that isn't something I've ever considered one way or the other. It's just who I am.) I've always just written. In middle school, I carried a notebook with me and wrote stories about an alter-ego whose name started with the same letter as mine, her friends and their adventures. I don't really remember any of them, but I'm confident they were mundane and rather dull. There have been times when I stopped writing, but they were usually rather short, and going back to it has always felt like a huge relief.

What scene (s) in your writing has made you laugh the hardest or cry the most?

I fear it makes me sound robotic if I admit that my own writing, while cathartic emotionally on some level, isn't something I've ever laughed or cried over. I think I'm most fond of the intensely romantic moments, when the characters realize for the first time that they're madly in love, or when there's been some misunderstanding and then the characters clear things up and reunite. Yes, reunions are one of my favorite things! The moments that have been special to me are more from the writer's viewpoint than the reader's; I was so excited and thrilled when I finally typed the words "Jazz woke up" in Sleeping Stone that I could barely contain myself. For hours afterward I was as wired as if I'd had three cups of coffee in quick succession, but it was definitely as much about getting to that point in the story as it was about the relief and joy I felt for Chris and Richard. I suppose I'm also very fond of the scene at the end of Waking the Dead (the third book in the Laying a Ghost trilogy that Jane and I wrote together) when John and Nick spontaneously decide to perform what amounts to a private marriage ceremony. Jane and I hadn't planned that at all and the characters surprised us with it, much to our overwhelmed delight.

 You seem to be a more private author than most, so, how can your readers follow your career? What social media's or websites do you have?

I limit myself to my website and my LiveJournal, and I'll be honest and admit that both of those are only updated in perfunctory, obligatory ways. In addition to writing, I manage a household and a family that includes two people and three cats, so when I have time to focus I'd prefer to add a few hundred words to a story than to write a blog post that may or may not interest anyone. This kind of question and answer format makes it so much easier! I wouldn't know what to write about without some guidance. 

Website: http://home.comcast.net/~alexasnow/

LiveJournal: http://alexasnow.livejournal.com/

What inspires you in your writing?

My biggest inspiration is a character that I really connect with, though the reasons for the connection can be pretty varied. I've been Chris in Sleeping Stone, completely enamored with someone who seems to shine more brightly than anyone else. I've been Sterling in Bound and Determined, going after something that I knew I wanted even though it didn't make a lot of sense at the time. Being able to get inside a character's head and understand his motivation is so important to me, and when I'm able to do that is when I do some of my best work.

Another thing that inspires me is reading well-written stories (or even non-fiction) of all kinds. There's something about reading good quality writing that not only draws me in but creates a desire to emulate not the style or genre but that feeling that's evoked. It's strange to me that it doesn't matter whether the piece makes me feel bleak, invigorated, angry, loving or hopeful -- but as long as it makes me feel something, I find it inspiring.

What are some day jobs that you have held?  If any of them impacted your writing, can you share an example?

In high school, I worked at a summer camp (Girl Scouts!) and a candy store (discount chocolate!) I think overall I've worked most in human services type jobs: I worked in a home care setting with deinstitutionalized elders, in a day habilitation program with severely disabled adults, as a teacher's aide with a little girl with cerebral palsy, and as a nanny. I've met a lot of interesting people, and had the chance to get to know some on levels that make it easy to sympathize even with those who, on the surface, seem to be impossible to understand. I think it's made me more capable of seeing the motivations behind characters' actions even when those characters seem to be nothing more than unpleasant troublemakers. Being able to empathize with a difficult character is just as important as being able to empathize with a beloved one!

Can you tell us about any future projects you are working on at this time?

I've been working on a solo novel that's a bit reminiscent of the first series Jane Davitt and I wrote together (Laying a Ghost.) It's about two men who can see ghosts and how they've run from their ability in very different ways. Once they get together, though, they both realize that there are many reasons for them to change, the most important ones being each other. While I find solo writing to be slow these days, I'm enjoying writing this story, which is entirely character driven. I am often as surprised by the things that happen as I hope the eventual readers will be.

I can't thank Alexa enough for taking time out of her busy schedule for this Spotlight! She has been amazing and as you all can easily see she is FABULOUS! Make this an author you add to your list!

The giveaway today is for Sleeping Stone! (EEEEEEEEEEE) How my spotlight giveaway's work if you're not familiar is... You enter the giveaway below on Rafflecopter. It runs for 5 days. This one will end on the 13th of June. I will notify the winner via email asking you what format you would like the book delivered to you. You will have 48 hours to respond. If I don't hear from you I will go to the runner up. Alexa will  email you your ebook and it's reading time!!!!

Thank you all! Have a great week!

***GIVEAWAY***


a Rafflecopter giveaway