Today I'm delighted to welcome Elke Feuer to my blog to answer my questions and tell us all about her book, a gripping romantic suspense, For The Love Of Jazz...
Tell us a bit about your writing – How long have you been writing? How many books have you written and in what genres?
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I got my first typewriter on my ninth birthday and the rest is history. All my books are in the romance genre: time travel, historical and contemporary. In the past five years I’ve branched out into suspense, thriller and woman’s fiction. I let the stories and character guide what I write more than the genre.
My first and only published book, For the Love of Jazz, a romantic suspense, was published in December 2012.
Where is your favourite spot in which to write? Garden? Study? Kitchen table? In bed?
Top choices are my favourite coffee shop and restaurant. They’re noisy, but I put on my headphones and start the music and it all drifts away. At home I write on the couch or in my bed, depending on where my husband is watching TV.
Do you plan a plot out in great detail before writing or start with the basics and let the book evolve that way?
I usually create a synopsis with the main plot points, do character and setting sketches for those I know ahead of time, and then start writing the story. This process helps keep me on track, but isn’t so rigid the story and characters aren’t able to evolve or contribute to the story.
Do you ever get part way through writing a book and find the characters are leading the story off in a different direction to how you had envisaged?
All the time! The ending might be the same, but the killer is different, or they’ll suggest twists in the story or a new plot point I hadn’t considered. I love that about characters! I used to argue with them that it was my story, but now I listen, nod, and take notes. LOL!
How do you create the characters in your books?
I don’t create them as much as tell their stories. I find if I try to fit them into my story or my idea of who they are they end up flat or two dimensional. People are much more interesting than that. I interview or interrogate them to get to know them, but usually I can’t shut them up.
What was your journey to being a published author?
It wasn’t a difficult one and I don’t mean that in an “I’m so talented, I got picked up right away, way” but more of an “I didn’t have expectations so I wasn’t disappointed way”. When I found out I was having my second child I decided to stop submitting to publishers. My bff talked me out of it and I agreed, after all getting a response back usually took time and by then I reasoned my daughter would be old enough that I could manage both. Boy was I wrong. I signed with a publisher days after my daughter was born and started the whirlwind ride to getting my book published. My daughter was born in July and my book came out December. A great but challenging year!
Biggest myth about being a novelist?
Your publisher will do all your marketing. I had no idea how much work was involved in marketing a book even with outside help and having a basic platform in place for over a year. It’s good to know what to expect up front so you can decide what your platform will be even before the call.
Advice to aspiring novelists?
Never give up! Don’t listen to naysayers who don’t believe in your dream. It’s your dream not theirs.
Bio:
I live in Grand Cayman with my husband and two kids. Reading, spending time with my family, traveling, and meeting people is my joy. Writing is my passion.
My first book, For the Love of Jazz, is a romantic suspense. I stumbled into writing suspense and loved it along with writing about serial killers. I write time travel, historical, and contemporary novels to even out my dark side.
To find out more about me or my latest story, Deadly Bloodlines, visit my website, or say hi on Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads. You can’t escape, I’m everywhere. ;-)
Connect with Elke:
Book Description
Restoration architect Josie Fagan takes on a project with lawyer and senator’s son, Patrick Pullman. It’s the perfect match. She needs his endorsement to save her business and he wants to restore his ancestral Chicago home. Love wasn’t part of her plan. Neither was being asked to stay at his home, haunted by ghosts, or discovering she has a claim to his home – which she adores. When she finds out his family may be responsible for her aunt’s disappearance fifty years ago, it’s a race to unearth the truth before she loses not only her business and her heart, but her life.
Patrick can’t deny his attraction to Josie and is willing to take a chance on love since his broken engagement a year earlier. Things become complicated when he learns of their family connection and her claim to the home he loves. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, or that his family is involved in her aunt’s disappearance, so insists they work together. But, when he starts seeing his uncle’s ghost, and threats are made on her life, he’s forced to confront the possibility his family could be responsible.
EXCERPT
CHICAGO 1959
Please meet me, it’s important! Lola pulls her knee length coat closer to her petite frame and suppresses the tickle of fear at the base of her spine. It’s late, but she can’t ignore her friend’s urgent request.
Cool night air rustling through the leaves is the only noise. Visitors to the park are gone, leaving behind dark empty walkways and overflowing garbage bins. Crunching leaves and strange noises in the black distant start her heart racing. This is a bad idea.
She sees her friend coming in the distance and smiles in welcome and relief. As they draw closer, there is no smile in return. Normally cool but inviting eyes shine with malice. Lola’s eyes widen in surprise when a gun is pointed at her. Before she can scream the sting and burning of flesh seize her as bullets from the outstretched gun enter her shoulder once, twice. She falls to her knees.
Her eyes fill with horror as reality sets in. “Why?”
Silent hate glares from behind the barrel of the gun and another bullet fires, this time hitting her leg.
“Help!” she screams. Her gaze shifts frantically down lonely sidewalks. No one is coming. It crushes her like the pain tearing her apart.
Another shot fires and hits her other leg and Lola knows she is meant to suffer first. She raises her hand in a frail attempt to stop the bullets. It doesn’t make a different. The gun fires again and blood pools around her and the icy ground beneath her fingertips.
Hot tears spill as she thinks of William. If she’d listened to her intuition, she could be spooned against him instead of dying in the dirt like an animal abandoned by its owner.
She doesn’t want to die and leave him or the happiness she’d found. She screams until her lungs burn with the sensation they’ll burst from the strain.
Anger boils the blood still running through her veins. She longs to take the gun and shoot back. Have them feel her pain. To feel the agony of regret: words left unspoken, unshared kisses and things left undone and fear of the unknown that lies in the darkness swirling in the distance, and the anguish of the unanswered question. Why?
She remembers the offered friendship, smiles and the laughter they shared. It was all a lie! Heartache crushes her, dulling the pain of her physical wounds. “This isn’t over,” she vows, even as life begins to drain from her weak frame.
“You’re over,” is spat back at her.
Images of the moment she met William, their first kiss, and their lovemaking flickers like a movie before her closed eyes. She won’t share the rest of this life with him, bear his children, or grow old with him, but she takes comfort in knowing she’ll see him again, love him again and no one will take it away. She clings to the hope she can wait for William until they are together again. Yes, she will wait. Silent calm seeps in as her life slips away.
Thanks for hosting me on your blog, Zanna! It's was quite, but it might be the time difference. LOL!
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