Saturday Author Spotlight: Adrienne Wilder #Interview #Giveaway

I'm always excited for my Author Saturday Spotlight! Talking with these talented authors always makes my entire day. Today I have author Adrienne Wilder. Author of such books as In the Absence of Light, My Brother's Keeper Trilogy, Bound Gods Series, and many other amazing works! We have a fantastic interview, we'll look at some of these terrific books and we'll wrap it up with a giveaway. So, pull up a chair and stay awhile.

For years Grant Kessler has smuggled goods from one end of the world to the next. When business turns in a direction Grant isn’t willing to follow he decides to retire and by all appearances he settles down in a nowhere town called Durstrand. But his real plan is to wait a few years and let the FBI lose interest, then move on to the distant coastal life he’s always dreamed of.

Severely autistic, Morgan cannot look people in the eye, tell left from right, and has uncontrolled tics. Yet he’s beaten every obstacle life has thrown his way. And when Grant Kessler moves into town Morgan isn’t a bit shy in letting the man know how much he wants him.

While the attraction is mutual, Grant pushes Morgan away. Like the rest of the world he can’t see past Morgan’s odd behaviors.

Then Morgan shows Grant how light lets you see but it also leaves you blind. And once Grant opens his eyes, he loses his heart to the beautiful enigma of a man who changes the course of his life.

This is book one of three. All books are full-length novels and must be read in order. All books are available now.


The My Brother's Keeper Trilogy

The town of Gilford has a Big and Terrible secret hidden in the ground.
Infecting those it touches.
Exploiting their darkness.
Consuming their souls.
It’s hungry. It’s vile. It’s evil.
And it wants out.



Book One: The First Three Rules

Marshal Jon Foster lost his purpose and his sanity the day he saw the image of his dead brother. The distraction saved Jon’s life but cost the lives of innocent people including his best friend and partner. It was a price for survival Jon couldn’t live with and was sure he’d never understand.
Driven by grief and guilt he tried to escape his past by fleeing to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Only instead of peace, the memories festered.
Then the offer of a stick of gum from a stranger changes Jon’s life and puts him on a road out of the nightmare he’s trapped in.

Ellis Harper has lived the past twenty years isolated from the outside world and sole caretaker for his mentally disabled brother, Rudy. While Ellis loves his brother, he longs for a life he’ll never be able to have.
Shut away, his days consist of chores, endless cartoons, and games of Go Fish. A world that seemed to have no end until an innocent misunderstanding turns Ellis and his brother into a target for a town bully.
It’s a fight Ellis can never win on his own but thanks to a chance meeting with a stranger, he doesn’t have to.

What begins as a new journey in love for both men quickly unfolds into something neither of them could have ever imagined.

Kaleb Holten’s father’s debt to an underground group The Association has just been called in, and the man can’t pay the loan. Instead of turning over his wealth, he releases his son and Kaleb finds himself thrown into a world where a class of men see themselves as untouchable. Going so far as to call themselves gods.

After the Great Economic Collapse there are no laws that cannot be broken. And Kaleb is forced into a ten-year sentence of servitude where he will have no say, no rights, no value and yet be coveted and protected as if he were a priceless treasure.

Leo Roan, has slipped the noose the Association bound him with by breaking his addiction to ambrosia and Kaleb Holten was supposed to be his last assignment as a doxie Master. But something about the boy begins weaving a new net that will not only ensnare him but the conscious darkness inside, that craves pain, agony, suffering, and death.

Interview

Adrienne, I can’t thank you enough for being here today. I’m actually a bit awestruck over it. I’m fairly new to your stalking squad but no doubt you are one heck of a writer. Your Bound Gods series devoured an entire weekend of mine and I really wanted this opportunity to poke around your brain a bit. So thanks for being my victim.

Don’t worry. I don’t consider it being a victim at all. More of a willing sub.  

Let’s talk about you a little. I don’t like to get too personal so don’t be scared lol. You’re quite unforgiving when it comes to your writing and I admire that a great deal. Where did that come from? When did you decide that you were writing this for you and find that peace in it?

I guess I write as close to real life as possible. Even when the world isn’t real. And real life isn’t forgiving. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people get away with terrible things. Justice isn’t always served, and no one is perfect. We all have regrets, things we wished we’d done different, not done at all, or wish we did do. I think everyone has skeletons and they scare us. We don’t like to look at the ugly side of life which is why most of us read, and read romance, because in its heart of hearts, we know it will have the happy ending most of us can only dream of. 

But at the same time, because most of us can only dream of those happily ever afters, it leaves us feeling shorted. I often put my characters through hell because we all have our own hell we live at some time in our lives. I try my best for all my stories to end with hope. I can’t stand hopelessness. As long as there is hope there is reason to keep going, to keep looking, to keep dreaming, to keep striving. So I keep hope alive, even the tiniest flame. Sometimes it stays small sometimes it roars to life, but I do it because in real life we fight personal battles that no one will ever understand or identify with. And while those battles may not have monsters, or gunfights, or fist fights, they are real to us, and the scars left behind are just as real. So when my characters finally do get to their happily ever after, they’ve often done it against all odds. That’s my way of passing on hope to the reader. That no matter how bad things seem, there’s still hope, even if it’s just a spark in this chapter, it can become something brilliant in the next so keep on keeping on.

You entwine darkness and light in your books. You grasp a Dark fiction, erotica, and balance in there some good old fashioned romance. It’s incredible really. Rare. What line do you give yourself? Or do you just write and if it takes you darker, do you just go with it?

I wish I could say I have some deep understanding when it comes to building a story. That I construct characters after hours of study. That I outline events and plan things to the finest detail, but it would all be a lie.

Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I just write. I go into the world existing in my brain and record what happens. I rarely have a plan. I rarely have any idea as to what’s going to happen. Half the time I don’t even know the characters I’d dealing with until I write down their dialog, their thoughts, their reactions. 

In the end, I just write. And I write how I want to write not how people tell me to write. And yes, I know sometimes that makes more work for me, especially in edits, and I abuse, twist, and break grammar rules. I’m not going to tell anyone you have to know how to it correctly before you go and make scrambled eggs of it. I’m just going to say, that however you do it, if your audience gets the story you experience and try to tell, then keep going.

I’m also not saying this way of writing is the best way. Because honestly I envy people who can plan, plot, and diagram. I can’t. My brain goes in a hundred different directions all at once and I have no control over it.

Bound Gods… Book 3 is out now.  I am so excited! I adored the first 2 immensely. What can you tell us about this journey? Is there a set number of books to it or are you just going with the flow and going to stop when the story ends?

Well, I thought there would only be 3 because I knew the series would have a limited audience and getting it edited is expensive. I’m only using one editor and a beta reader so I’m sure mistakes are slipping through the cracks, but hopefully readers will forgive me on that.  Anyhow, when I got to book three, thinking I would be the wrapping up the main story, I realized there was a lot more than I remembered. So there will be at least 4. Three will be out as soon as it comes back from my beta/editor and I have one more go through (This week I hope). 4 should be out by end of May early June. Depending on how sales go, I might continue. I have written a few side stories with other characters, and have far more that happens after the initial “ending”, but again, it will depend on how well the books do.  Also, the farther I go into that world the more taboos I break. I worry I might have crossed the line at a few points but then I remind myself, these are not real people, it’s based on mythology, and we all know how dirty the Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic, etc. gods were.  I have a lot of books in my head that want out and writing a series forces me to put other stuff aside because I usually write all the books in the series at once. In general, I usually write multiple books at once. So that’s normal for me. But I also do this for a living and if enough people aren’t interested in the series then sometimes I have to move onto other things no matter how much I love a certain story.  The Bound Gods books could (theoretically) go on for dozens of books. There are a myriad of incredible characters with fascinating histories and backgrounds (good and bad), which would be a lot of fun to write about. And honestly, books like Bound Gods are FUN for me to write. They are a break from the usual and let me be dirty, silly, unbelievable, and downright badly behaved, which I needed this past year, really bad.

Do you have authors that have inspired you?

Of course. And they are too numerous to name. But I probably don’t read as much as many other authors because, I don’t want to be influenced by other people’s writing. Now days when I read I usually read a genre I don’t write so I can study how a person constructed a story and what made it good, bad, whatever or I read nonfiction (usually science of some sort). I don’t even watch TV except for the occasional episode of Daredevil when my boyfriend wants to watch it or something like that. But I didn’t even have TV until he moved in. I like going to the movies. One of my most recent favorites was the Equalizer. That movie really hit me in the g-spot. I loved it so much I’ve seen it more than once and that RARELY every happens no matter how good it was. I liked Deadpool too, and while the special effects were a wet dream come true, it was the subtle nature of the special effects and their depth used in the Equalizer that made it so freaking good; how a story was told within the story without a single word ever being said, no flash backs, no long dialog explanations. It was a pretty damn deep story, and a hell of a romance if you paid attention.  I hope they don’t stop with just the first one and I hope they get better with each movie. But if they never made another I’d be okay with that too, because there was so much said and done, you can use your imagination as to what would happen next.

Can you tell us what you’re currently working on?

I usually don’t like talking about stories I don’t have out yet. I’m secretive that way. Not because I worry someone will steal the idea but because if it flops I don’t ever want someone to ask me “hey I thought you were writing about XXXX” and I don’t want to have to admit, it sucked so I tossed it. Also, some stories have to bake longer than others. I start one and get it half done then may not pick it up again until 2 years later because it wasn’t ready and I start over.

But the ones I can tell you about are Bound Gods 3 and 4 (maybe others, no promises). The Others Project Book #2, titled 13: part 1 and 2. The Other’s project book #3, titled 4 (no, I don’t know when it will be done). A contemporary called Epic—which is actually based on real life personal events although only a very small part—and a few others, which may or may not come to fruition. Both are speculative fiction, a little bit scary, a little bit OMG you did not just do that.

If we were hanging out on a Saturday in your hometown, what would you want to show me about your town, how would we spend the day?

I’d probably take you to the saltwater fish store and point out all the corals I want. I’m pretty boring really.

In the Absence of Light…. This is a special book. My son is autistic so naturally I gravitate toward these books.  Your character Morgan has severe autism. I feel like many authors should read this book because you really nail it when it comes to the spectrum. So, my question is. What research did you do for this book?

Well, it wasn’t easy. Most autism info and resources end when a person is an adult so all you have is a lot of childhood information. I also worked with the adult mentally disabled for almost 20 years and know how people treat, think, and react to them. So most of my “research” came from hands on experience.

But understanding autism happened when I realized a lot of the problems I was having myself, matched undiagnosed autism (they used to call it Asperger’s but now it is just a place on the Autism scale). Apparently I’d gone without diagnosis my entire life because I’d developed coping mechanisms and was a-typical not matching what most teachers and doctors were trained to look for. As an adult I was mistakenly diagnosed as bi-polar (after talking to the Dr for 5 minutes), but when I found a doctor who would actually take the time to dissect me, they told me what I’d already figured out (as well as people I worked with had already figured out) I was autistic, with a comorbidity of ADHD and Major Depressive Disorder. I was functional, very functional, until my mother died. Then my coping mechanism was gone and I was left floundering. With absolutely no support it was a matter of life or death getting help, which is not easy by the way, even when you do have insurance.  I regressed very badly and unfortunately still didn’t have a reliable dr. But I eventually found one. Sadly though I am looking again because the practice has changed hands. 

This is always a fun question and I’m sort of curious how you’ll answer it. Music. Do you write to music, or does it have any magic over the way you write and if so tell us some of your favorite artists or bands that have helped impact your writing?

I don’t have a favorite band, and half the time I can’t tell you the name of the song I like. But sometimes a song just creates a story in my head. That’s when I know I like it. When I listen to it, and a story is born, then that’s music I choose. For example, Bound Gods, the song Everyone Wants to Rule the World, covered by Lorde, could be its theme song. I know now it was re-written from the original by Tears for Fears for the Hunger Games, but when I first heard it I was like wow…that’s the whole premise right there. My editor sent me the song…she said it made her think of the series…and boy she was right.

How can your readers follow your career? Website, Facebook, Twitter?

However they like. I’m off and on. I don’t do well with social media. Or social anything really. I’m a one on one person and while I have a service dog who helps me get through public places now, I tend to avoid going anywhere I’m not familiar with. I have no problems talking to people, one on one, but I’m not good at screening what comes out of my mouth. And I have odd quirks and behaviors some people find strange, and they are strange, but they’re just me.

http://adriennewilder.com/

amazon author page: http://amzn.to/1QYxXI2

Goodreads author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4428962.Adrienne_Wilder

Fb: https://www.facebook.com/adriennewilder

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Adrienne_Wilder

Email: Fourpaws@windstream.net

Now it’s time for some fast fire questions…. I love this.

Coffee or tea?

 Depends. Can I have cream? Coffee. No cream, Tea

Cat or dog?

Both

Outside or inside?

Outside depends on location, time of year, temperature and what I’m doing. Inside if I’m writing or working on my aquarium.

Cupcakes or cookies?

I really don’t need either. I already fight my weight. But if I had to choose? Ice cream.

Iced tea or lemonade?

 Either or. Mostly it depends on why I’m drinking it. With or without food. To cool off or just enjoy.

Night or day?

Day time, unless I’m lying on a blanket looking at the stars.

Favorite color?

Anything that looks good on a dragon.

Favorite sound (s)?

Moving water

Favorite smell (s)?

 My boyfriend

Beer or wine?

Neither

Kindle or paperback?

 Fiction, Kindle. Non Fiction, paperback.

Okay, you’ve been amazing. I can’t WAIT to see what your brilliant mind comes up with next! Thank you.

Giveaway

Adrienne Wilder is offering a Reader's Choice ebook!

Contest will end on May 27th.

Winner will be contacted via email so please check your spam!

Thank you to Adrienne for being here today :D

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