Author Saturday Spotlight: Kelly Wyre #Interview #Giveaway

Kelly Wyre got my attention with her book Fight. A recommended read by a most trusted friend. There was a complexity to that book a grit. It was raw love. You just don't get that too often. Like I said she had my attention. I started reading her books. One after the other. WOW! She has a versatility to her! It was official, I was blown away and had to have her as a spotlight! So I asked and she said yes. Here we are...lol.

We're going to take a look at some of her work, check out the interview, and end it with a giveaway!
Let us begin...

To Nathan Hunt, honesty is anything but the best policy. Telling the truth has gotten him nothing but heartache and pain; so lying about who he is and what he wants seems to be the only path to job security and friends. Hell, it even brings him a hollow kind of happiness.

Except, that's not much of a life for any man. Especially one with Nathan's passions. Desperate to cure his self-made misery, Nathan agrees to go along with a con that will score cash for Nathan to start over. There's just one problem: lying is getting harder by the day. And a con who can't lie, is a con who gets caught.

Nathan's attempts to distract himself from his moral quandary lead him to a mysterious, intoxicating man named Fury. The Mixed Martial Arts fighter knows a thing or two about lies and pasts better left buried. He and Nathan have something else in common - they both want to be with someone who lets them be themselves.

Together, they undertake a journey that proves honesty is more dangerous and more difficult than either of them could have imagined. And as they combat addiction, thugs, guns, and their own inner demons, Nathan and Fury can only hope that their battle to be together will be worth the bitter fight.

Ten years ago, Maxwell you-can-just-call-me Clark thought he would spend his life as a military man. But his world turned into a nightmare when a suicide bomber destroyed Clark's career. It's been a long road to recovery, littered with surgery, alcohol, and secrets, but Clark finally has peace. His bar, Glow, is the place to be in the city of New Amsterdam, the son of the mayor employs Clark as a confidential information man, and Clark's side venture as part-owner of a BDSM club is quite the profitable release. Clark's life is a good one, so long as no one gets too close.Then a man walks into Glow who will forever change Clark's rules and reality.

Thinking Professor Daniel Germain is just another handsome face ripe for Clark's kind of good time, Clark puts on his smoothest moves. When the professor turns him down, Clark goes on the hunt, and what he discovers shows him that even the deepest wounds can be healed by submitting to love.

As the son of the infamous New Amsterdam city mayor, Lucian learned at an early age that power is king, love is for the weak, and a real man never has a use for tears or mercy. The only source of light in Lucian's formative years is Shea Ollivander, who gives Lucian the impetus to break free from his father's rule and leave the city. Shea is never far from Lucian's side, a friend and companion. But after a lover dies despite Lucian's best efforts, Lucian returns home with a new purpose: build an empire of resources and men to destroy the sources of darkness that steal lives and souls. Shea's back in the city, too, and when three long years pass without contact, Lucian realizes he can't live without telling the man he loves that Shea is Lucian's only solace and reason for living. When the inclusion of Shea in Lucian's life leads to a horrifying discovery of pain and suffering at the hands of the very evil Lucian wishes to annihilate, the prince of the underground realm must set his sights on a path of bloody vengeance to save his newfound lover from certain destruction.

There are more to see. Check Good reads for books and blurbs: Kelly Wyre on GR

INTERVIEW

Thank you Kelly, for agreeing to be my spotlight!

Kelly: Thank you so much for having me! 

I have 10 easy peasy questions for you. 

Kelly: Sounds great, and absolutely.

 

Here’s the questions…

Kelly: *braces for impact*

     You are not primarily an MM author but many know you as such. You also write HET. How do the two differ and do you sway more toward one genre than the other?

 

            A: I've written five MM novels, an assortment of MM short stories, and one HET novel. *laughs* I tried to convince Hydee from Meet Me at the Gates to be male, but she simply wouldn't have it. I loved getting to write that novel and explore Hydee's world (both past and present, as she dreams of every one of her past lives and the other soul that is connected to hers; she's wonderfully spiritual and full of feminine energy in the best of ways), but I'm not sure I'm going to be writing more HET anytime soon. I simply find there's more to say in the MM world. There's more ground to cover, more issues to debate, more stereotypes to debunk, and more room to do all of the above. I love writing in MM because it gives an equality to fiction and characters that the readers not only enjoy, they demand it.

            I've often found, (note: in my reading experience, not my publishing experience; Loose Id was wonderful for both my MM novel and my HET novel published through them), that the romance genre is riddled with stories wherein one or both characters must "lose" or "give something up" of themselves or their lives in order to find their one true love. Now, this can be a good thing. If somebody's giving up self-destructive tendencies because they've found somebody who makes them want to be a better person, then that's fine and dandy.

            But too often it's giving up freedom, spirituality, or something otherwise intrinsic to his/her nature. And while it happens in romance fiction, it happens everywhere. Maybe I should say storytelling is riddled with this issue. Lord of the Rings is the most famous example. Arwen (the immortal elf) has to give up her immortality – the very thing that makes her Arwen – in order to be with her one true love, Aragorn, who is mortal.

            I always thought that was ludicrous. Why couldn't Aragorn become immortal? Why did they have to change at all? Sure it'd suck to live forever while your love one came and went, but isn't that a problem that's come up before in the, I don't know, millennia of the elves?            If they've got a way to give up immortality, shouldn't they have figured out a way to bestow it?

            That soapbox aside, what I'm trying to say, in my long-winded fashion, is that the Dominator Model – meaning, someone's always in charge and someone's always giving something up to "serve" the other person and our sociologically imprinted view of "love" – is rampant in fiction, particularly romance.

            I'm out to write examples of stories wherein people are accepted for who they are and who they want to become. People evolve and so too should love. And that love should be based on an individual person (or soul), not for what they can do and not for what they can give up in the name of supposed "true love." While I'm happy to attempt that in the HET world should those characters find me, I often find that the MM world offers the best platform, most of the time. It's what's hot, and there's a whole lot of leeway in how one constructs a story.

     Please tell us about your upcoming release?

            A: Well, the short answer is, I don't have one right now. *laughs* I'm working on three or four, but nothing's set in stone yet as for release dates. *Cue sports announcer voice* More about those upcoming books in a moment, folks.

     When you create characters do you use real life models or do you manifest how they will look in your head?

 

            A: Both. It starts with the person in my head and then I go on a Google hunt to find a reasonable approximation of the character. It comes from years of practice working with amazing fandom artists who always (blessedly) wanted to know what my original characters looked like so they could draw them. I've learned to have references for everything: face, hair, hands, tattoos, body type, and cock. Every inch matters (especially to the character)!

     If you had to start all over, would you choose a different path or stay on this one?

            A: Oh, I'm enough like Hydee to say I believe everything happens for a reason. We use free will to find our destinies and if we listen to the messages of the Universe, it'll lead us exactly where we need to be. I don't live with regrets or guilt; I don't believe in the first and I try to avoid actions that cause the latter. I wound up in the MM genre through a long series of random events, some of which were amazing and some of which were emotionally painful, but I've had a blast being here. Wouldn't change a thing.

     Can you tell us some of your favorite childhood books?

            A: Oh Lordy, how much time do we have? Right.

            I actually wrote a report, once, for some English class on my personal History of Books, and I think that sucker was about 20 pages long.

            I'll spare you.

            How about we go with the ones that hit me in the heart before the age of 14?

            The Happy Man and His Dumptruck (which I apparently requested WAY too many times as the bedtime story of choice), all of Dr. Seuss, but particularly The Sneeches and Other Stories, ("There be stars on thars!"), The Hobbit by Tolkien, Matilda by Dahl, tons of Judy Blume, the Babysitters Club books, all the Christopher Pike young adult books and a few of his adult ones, (most notably Season of Passage) Goosebumps and other RL Stein series, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (& associated sequels) by Schwartz, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, Anne of Green Gables (& the entire series) by LM Montgomery, anything by James Howe (Bunicula, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, Howliday Inn), Sideways Stories from Wayside School (and associated sequels) by Louis Sachar, Carrie by Stephen King, The Dark Tower series by King, The Belgariad and Mallorean series by David Eddings, The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McAffery, Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, and I'm absolutely sure I'm forgetting somebody, but there you go. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on, and still do. 

Plots have been known to sideswipe an author. What’s the craziest way a plot hit you?

            A: Oh my. Well, there is an incident with a raven, a book journey, a porn star, and a spiritual awakening... It's probably the most insane way a plot's ever gotten to me. I wrote up the entire thing for the promotional contest I did for Meet Me at the Gates (the book which was inspired by aforementioned black bird, porn star, etc). The contest was called the WE ARE INFINITE contest, and the posts you want to find are the FOLLOW THE RAVEN posts (though I was intensely proud of all the entries to that contest, particularly the ones that didn't involve me babbling on the page):

Linkage: http://kelly-wyre.blogspot.com/2014/12/we-are-infinite-story-index.html

            Other than that, I've woken up with characters' names on my lips, I've gotten ideas while walking back from class, I've had them in the shower, in dreams, after movies and books, and sitting in my office minding my own business. Usually when a character from the Otherworld wants to chat, they simply show up, sit down, introduce themselves, and it's up to me to provide them with refreshments and a listening ear. It's the only way to live, really; never a dull moment.

    How do you define creativity?

 

            A: These questions are supposed to be EASY?

            Lordy, let's see. I suppose, fundamentally, it's about personal expression. I hear quite often, "Oh I couldn't do that; I'm not creative!" but I find that's not true once you scratch away the surface definitions. Creativity can be in the way one dresses, in the way one organizes household chores, in tattoos, in oral storytelling abilities, or just the way a person delivers a punchline. Creativity can be problem solving: how do we cure cancer? Creatively. Traditional methods ain't working, so let's come at it from another angle. That's expression. That's creating and it's creativity. It's always personal because it has to do with the way an individual thinks. No two minds are alike, therefore, in a way, everyone is creative. We all have to express ourselves in this life somehow.

            The creative among us aren't only artists, authors, musicians, etc. They are the ones who think differently – be it about a specific issue or in general – and have the guts and gumption (not to mention the determination and willpower) to tell people about it or show others the way.

8.     Aside from your newest release, can you tell us about your future projects?

            A: I'd be delighted! I'm working on several projects at the moment. The first is the next New Amsterdam novel. I started that series several years ago with H.J. Raine, but we are no longer in touch, and I'm very excited about this book as it's me returning to those gritty streets and rediscovering my love and amazement for the people I find there. The novel's working title is Earthquakes and it's about a ballet boy and a military kid who meet in New Amsterdam and journey to a certain Southern city which I've also renamed. New Amsterdam is a combination of New York's layout, Chicago's political and crime machine, Tokyo's population, and Gotham's darkness. I hope to have this one done soon and out to find a home.

            The other major project I’m tackling is a joint effort with my frequent partner in crime, AF Henley. We call the series EXILE, and it's a dystopia/urban fantasy/romance set sometime in the future when human DNA has been altered post several near-apocalyptic events. I have no idea how I talked Henley into working on this with me, but the story's absolutely awesome (it was planted and quickly snowballed on us, so I'm not sure either of us can take the credit for what the Universe has provided). We're having so much fun. The first book is better than halfway done, and we have plans for books two, three, and maybe four. It'll be MM, for sure, and maybe some moresome/mixed couples later on down the road. I can actually hear Henley breathing into a paper bag, now, at the thought of writing female characters in sexual situations. Guess that'll be up to me. *laughing*

            There's also a fantasy MM novel in the works called Dreamwood. It's about a group of kids who think it's a good idea to go raise a forest god or two.

            I keep my Coming Attractions post on my blog fairly up to date. You can find it here: http://kelly-wyre.blogspot.com/2014/06/coming-attractions-and-points-of.html

            I also write books under other names and in other genres, and I've got at least three going on right now. I never read one book at a time (usually seven or so at once), and it's rare for me to work on only one thing at a time. I guess I'm a flitter. Or ADD. Or—SQUIRREL!

   How do you get in the zone when it comes to actually sitting down to write?

 

            A: It depends. Sometimes I sit down and go, but usually I talk it out with someone first. I think by speaking (much to the chagrin of my associates at times) and I think by writing, but WHEN writing, I like to think by speaking first, else I'll get the words tangled. I've got several wonderful people in my life who are willing to listen to me babble about a story before I sit down and tackle a particular chapter. It keeps me excited about what's going on and helps me focus.

            I've also been known to go for long drives listening to the soundtracks I make for each of my books. Usually the soundtracks are a work in progress, but I find that assigning music or musical tastes to characters helps me give definition to them.

 

How can your readers follow your work? Twitter, FB, website?

 

            A: I love social media! Find me in any of these haunts:

Connect with Kelly:

Twitter: @kelly_wyre

Facebook

Fan Page 

Tumblr (NSFW!) 

Google Plus
Goodreads
Amazon Author Profile

Okay, that’s all. Thank you, Kelly, for doing this and I look forward to all your future work.

Kelly: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Light and love to you and yours. <3

 

As you can see, Kelly Wyre is an absolute delight. I could easily sit at a cafe, cup of coffee in hand and talk to her for hours! Her books are equally as engaging as she is. Make sure you check them out.

Kelly is having a Reader's Choice Giveaway. Same game as every week, folks. Contest will run until Friday, May 15th. Winner will be contacted via email (so check your spam) Good luck to you all and thank you to Kelly for this wonderful Spotlight!

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