I had the great honor of asking Renae a few questions and really got to see how she ticked. I will share that with you all as well, in a bit.
Renae is hosting a Reader's Choice Giveaway for everyone today. You will have the chance to win either, Loving Jay, The Blinding Light or her new book The Shearing Gun (Which is available September 19th)
I've read Loving Jay and The Blinding Light so let me share those blurbs, covers and my review of them...
One thing Liam Turner knows for sure is that he's not gay—after all, his father makes it very clear he’ll allow no son of his to be gay. And Liam believes it, until a chance meeting with James “Jay” Bell turns Liam’s world upside-down. Jay is vivacious and unabashedly gay—from the tips of his bleached hair to the ends of his polished nails. With a flair for fashion, overreaction, and an inability to cork his verbal diarrhea, Liam believes drama queen Jay must have a screw loose.
An accident as a teenager left Liam with a limp and a fear of driving. He can’t play football anymore either, and that makes him feel like less of a man. But that’s no reason to question his sexuality... unless the accident broke something else inside him. When being with Jay causes Liam’s protective instincts to emerge, Liam starts to believe all he knew in life had been a convenient excuse to stay hidden. From intolerance to confrontations, Liam must learn to overcome his fears—and his father—before he can accept his sexuality and truly love Jay.
My Review: 5 Stars
This book could have been twice as long and I still wouldn't have tired of it. I loved it soooooo much! It was a breath of fresh air. Jay was delightful, funny and the perfect diva! Liam *sigh* sweet, protective so in love with Jay, Liam! I adored him. I read a lot of books of all genre's and with all sorts of plot. I was deep in a dramatic, moody all consuming book and was desperate to just feel and enjoy something. This book was PERFECT and on top of it I became consumed anyway and I wish I could do it all over again!
Jake Manning’s smart mouth frequently gets him into trouble. Because of it, he can’t hold a job. Combined with some bad luck, it's prevented him from keeping steady employment. A huge debt looms over him, and alone he shoulders the care of his alcoholic mother and three younger sisters. When a housekeeping position opens, Jake’s so desperate he leaps at the opportunity. On landing, he finds his new boss, Patrick Stanford, a fussy, arrogant, rude… and blind man.
Born without sight, Patrick is used to being accommodated, but he’s met his match with Jake, who doesn’t take any of his crap and threatens to swap all the braille labels on his groceries and run off with his guide dog unless he behaves.
Jake gets a kick out of Patrick. Things are looking up: the girls are starting their own lives and his mum’s sobriety might stick this time. He’s sacrificed everything for his family; maybe it’s time for him to live his life and start a relationship with Patrick. When his mother needs him, guilt makes his choice between family and Patrick difficult, and Jake must realize he’s not alone anymore
My Review: 5 Stars
I love a book that when it ends I feel no other book will do! I am in book hangover mode. This is the second Renae Kaye book and she is EASILY a fast top favorite author. I am blown away by her and hope she never stops writing. Patrick is a rich blind man who has a heart bigger than most realize. Jake faces the world with eyes wide open and a selfless heart. What happens when these 2 meet is breathtaking! This is a MUST READ!
I haven't read the Shearing Gun yet but I will share with you all the cover and the blurb for it...
At twenty-five, Hank owns a small parcel of land in Australia’s rural southwest where he supplements his income from the property with seasonal shearing. Hank is a “shearing gun”—an ace shearer able to shear large numbers of sheep in a single day. His own father kicked him out when his sexuality was revealed, and since no one would ever hire a gay shearer, Hank has remained firmly closeted ever since.
Elliot is the newbie doctor in town—city-born and somewhat shell-shocked from his transplant to the country. When a football injury brings Hank to Elliot’s attention, an inappropriate sexual glance and the stuttered apology afterward kickstarts their friendship. Romance and love soon blossom, but it’s hard for either of them to hope for anything permanent. As if the constant threat of being caught isn’t enough, Elliot’s contract runs out after only a year
**YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CHOOSE ANY OF THESE BOOKS! HOWEVER, IF YOU SELECT THE SHEARING GUN YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL SEPTEMBER 19TH TO RECEIVE IT**
Interview:
Thank you so much for agreeing to this. I am such a
huge fan of your work. You are truly a talented person and I'm grateful that
you share it with all of us.
Thank you <blushing madly>.
I’m just a newbie author starting out, so I’m really happy to hear that
my work is touching people.
I have read Loving Jay and The Blinding Light. Both outstanding books.
One thing I LOVED was that you strayed from the norm. Many writers have either
gorgeous men, cute men but rarely do writers have MC's with disabilities. In
both Loving Jay and The Blinding Light you have MC's that are. Is there a
reason behind that?
I have a special spot for reading books where the hero is not
perfect. In fact, I love it when the
hero is just an everyday guy off the street.
When I sat down to write, these are the types of characters I immediately
turned to. I believe that every man is
hero material, you just need to appreciate what is special about him. You will find that all of my characters are average everyday guys – the type of man
you could possibly meet on the train. ;)
Any person could be gay – rich, poor, fat, thin, smart, cute, disabled,
confident, shy, religious, athletic. As
for disabilities, I deliberately chose to make Patrick blind in The Blinding Light – as this was the
inspiration behind the book. I imagined
that there was a guy who was driven mad by the smell of his new housekeeper who
he never met.
But I will confess something to you.
I didn’t occur to me that Liam from Loving
Jay was “disabled” in any way until after the book was released.
Liam was very confused when I first “met” him. He told me about this guy he saw on the train
every day and was attracted to. But he
didn’t understand the attraction. He
knew he wasn’t gay, because Jay
embodied what it meant to be gay – makeup, flamboyance, and style. But Liam had to come to the conclusion that
being gay has nothing to do with whether you like football or not, and has
nothing to do with “manly” pursuits his father judges people by. The accident played into his confusion since
it happened at a crucial time in his life – exactly when he was discovering his
self-identity and sexuality – and he was getting very confused over the whole
masculine and gay thing. But this never
set out to be a book about disabilities.
It was a book about accepting who you are.
So it was purely a coincidence that my first two books have disabilities
in them. I promise that my third book
doesn’t. The Shearing Gun has Hank and Elliot, and they are great. Although, I’m sure Hank could do with a slap
across the back of the head…
Have you ever considered doing a series?
Of course. I’m sure that every
author does. But I find it hard to plan
that far ahead. Stand alone stories fit
my writing style, but I’m hoping you will get a spin-off of Loving Jay next year.
Currently I’m working on a story that involves a friend of Jay’s. He’s had a bad experience and we are working
through it at the moment. Jay and Liam
are there to lend him some support.
Another book of mine, which will be released at the end of the year, has
a few characters that my beta reader and editor have begged for more
information about. So they are on my
list of TO DO stories!
Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer just see where an
idea takes you?
I start with a concept and then I just write with it. I don’t plot or outline at all. I think this gives more of a realistic feel
to the characters – they don’t know what is coming and neither do I.
With Loving Jay I started with
a question: What if there was a guy who didn’t realise he was gay until he met
this beautiful, glittery peacock of a man?
Then I worked on that – why didn’t Liam realise he was gay? Maybe he had it drummed into him from birth.
Maybe he looks at all his brothers and sees the example set by them. Maybe he did try to be gay, but it didn’t work
for him…
With The Shearing Gun, I
started with the concept of a firmly closeted shearer who believed that he
would never get shearing work if it became known he was gay. Then I gave him a man he couldn’t
resist. I worked through the questions –
why is he closeted? Why does he think he would be shunned? How does he hide it in his everyday
life? How would he react to someone
coming into his life who is gay and insists on flirting with him?
How do you relax?
Relax? Let me just look up that
word in the dictionary… J
As a mother to two small children, I don’t really have time to
relax. But if I get the chance, I’ll
crawl into my bed with my kindle.
Usually one (or more) of the cats will find me and we’ll have a nice
cuddle while I lose myself in another world.
Can you tell us about any of your future work?
In September, my next book is out – The
Shearing Gun. In the US they have
cowboys? In Australia, we have a lot of
sheep. This is my version of a rural
Aussie novel. Hank is a shearer who is
firmly closeted, but he falls for the newbie doctor in town.
Then at the end of the year, I have Safe
In His Arms to be released. This was
a very hard novel to write – two men with tragedy in their backgrounds. It’s not a light-hearted read like Loving Jay at all.
I’m currently working diligently on two books – the afore mentioned
spin-off from Loving Jay, plus a
spin-off from Safe In His Arms. The former is very light and humorous, the
other not so much. But they are both set
in my hometown of Perth and both have my everyday characters in them.
When an idea strike for a book, how does the process go: From start
to finish?
The character hits me more than the idea. I like to dwell on my characters for a while,
flesh them out, have a back story, work out what they like to do, where they
work, where they live, what’s their problem.
At any one time I have upwards of 20 such characters chattering away to
me in my head.
Then I sit and put them in a scene.
That first scene is crucial – it needs to be energetic. It needs to suck
the reader immediately into the story.
It needs to set the tone. For me,
I think about how I would tell an audience if I was on a stage – how would I
convey the bits they need to know and keep their attention?
Then I write. And write. And write.
For me, I work through the story from beginning to end. I don’t write the end scene before I’ve
reached the end. I grow with the
character and the reader’s knowledge about the character grows each chapter.
Of course I reread what I’ve done occasionally and make a few changes –
an extra sentence here, change the word there – but mostly it’s just a matter of
slogging away on a daily basis, putting words on a page and progressing the
story.
Once I’ve finished, I put it away for a couple of weeks. I move on to another project. I read other people’s books. I forget about
my story, so when I pick it up again, it is like I’m reading with fresh
eyes. Once I’m happy, I send it to my
BFF to read. She is my beta reader and
is the only one who gets a sneak peek. Any
changes she recommends, I work over whether I wish to rewrite, then submit to
my publisher.
What are your thoughts on good/bad reviews?
I believe in honesty. A reviewer
straddles a very hard fence between the author and the reader. A bad review can bomb a story out of the
water before it has even reached the reader, so the reviewer has a lot of power
to influence the success of a book.
So yes – a reviewer should be honest, but at the same time, they should
not be brutal. I don’t think a lot of
reviewers are aware of the amount of work that goes in to producing a novel,
and for that, really, an author should get some credit.
I enjoy reading through my reviews, because I enjoy seeing what
different reviewers get out of it, so I enjoy in depth reviews, not just two
paragraphs. Small plot points that I
hardly considered when I wrote the book, are often what is dwelt on – good and
bad – and it is fascinating to me.
Of course good reviews are going to boost sales for an author (and make
them feel good about writing more), but sometimes bad reviews are crazy. Some people seem to rate all but a handful of
books at one or two stars. This is not
helpful, as I believe anything under three stars is because the book is badly
edited, badly constructed or completely misses the mark. Most professional sites avoid the “if I was
writing this novel, this is what I would’ve done” theme, but some do.
Reviewers have power – and they should use it honestly, wisely and
carefully. Give credit where credit is
due, give encouragement to writers who were good but just missed the bar of
brilliance, give constructive feedback where you feel it necessary, but don’t
take your anger and negativity to the internet.
Who designed your covers?
Maria Fanning did Loving Jay.
It was exciting for me for I’d never gone through the process. I wanted a lake view to capture the feeling
of the final scene where Liam’s brother was married overlooking Yangebup
Lake. So I snapped pictures of the lake
and sent them to the artist, because I didn’t want a lake that was obviously
not Australian. Maria ended up using my photo
on the cover, so that lake is authentic – that is Yangebup Lake.
Bree Archer designed The Blinding
Light – twice over! I didn’t have a
set idea for this one, apart from I wanted something to show some sort of
blinding light. She made me a brilliant
cover, then two weeks before the cover reveal, another author used the same
photo for her book! In a panic we had to
do the cover over. Bree was wonderful
with this.
Paul Richmond is the artist for The
Shearing Gun. I think he has
captured my vision remarkably. The cover
shows the historical Dumbleyung pub – which any person growing up in the
country will know that the town revolves around the pub! And just in case you didn’t realise from the
title – the book has a shearer in it.
Tell us what the perfect writing atmosphere for you would be?
Silence. I mean it. I’m usually surrounded by kids playing, kids
interrupting, kids screaming. And the TV
seems to be always on! My writing spot
overlooks where the kids have their TV and toys, so I can keep an eye on them.
I’m usually listening to Sesame Street, Peppa Pig or Jimmy Giggle as I write.
A perfect writing atmosphere would be the absence of sound.
How can your readers follow you through social media or website?
In the 12 months since my first contract with Dreamspinner was signed, I
have slowly built up my sadly lacking knowledge of social media. So I have a lot to offer people now:
Email: renaekaye@iinet.net.au
Website (with blog): http://renaekaye.weebly.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/renae.kaye.9
Twitter: @RenaeKKaye
I also blog each Saturday at Café Risque which is shared by a number of
authors:
Renae has been so unbelievably marvelous! Her books , for me, are ALWAYS a one click buy. She writes in a way you immediately want to do it all over again! I look forward to MANY more books from her!
THE GIVEAWAY:
The
winner will receive their choice of Renae's books: Loving Jay, The Blinding
Light or The Shearing Gun as an eBook. If they are a member of
Dreamspinner, the item will be placed on their Bookshelf. If not, I can
email the book in either .mobi, .PDF or .ePUB form.
If your choice is The Shearing Gun, then you will not get your copy until it releases on the 19th.
Contest runs until the 5th of September! I will email the winner, you have read the rules so let's do this...
a Rafflecopter giveaway
