The Moonlighters Welcome Kathy Lyons
Please welcome Kathy Lyons into the Moonlight. Kathy is the author of Taking Care of Business, which was recently released.
Now, it's time to create a little mayhem and get to the good stuff and reveal all of Kathy Lyons's deepest darkest secrets in the moonlight. LOL So, grab your favorite wicked drink, sink your teeth into something decadent, sit back, relax and enjoy getting to know author Kathy Lyons.
MLM: The holidays are fast approaching and things always seem to get busier during this time of year. Do you have a relaxing technique that helps you de-stress? If so, please share, because this is advice we all need!
KATHY: I work out. A lot. Mostly, I play racquetball. There’s nothing like whacking a little ball to help with the stress. Especially when whacking it good and hard ends up making me win a match!
And one more thing. Actually two more. I have two cats who luuuuuvvvvv me. One sits on my lap and purrs loud enough to be heard a room away. The other plays at my feet. Unless, of course, I am late feeding her. Then she puts her claws in my feet.
MLM: What, if any, Thanksgiving traditions (decorating, gathering with friends and family for a meal, etc.) do you have?
KATHY: I eat. I like to eat. I enjoy eating…a LOT! Someone else cooks. (I watch the kids while better people work in the kitchen!)
MLM: What was your most memorable Thanksgiving and why?
KATHY: My first Thanksgiving with my boyfriend’s family. We were dating seriously. I eventually married him. But I was 19 years old and went to Thanksgiving with him where I met his family. All 26 of them. I panicked and spent the first 45 minutes hiding in the bathroom.
MLM: What is a must have food at your Thanksgiving dinner table?
KATHY: Chocolate cheesecake. Forget what the pilgrims ate. I want cheesecake!
MLM: Tell us 3 things you are thankful for this year, please.
KATHY: My family and friends are the obvious choice. Love them! Oh, and my cats! But I’m especially thankful for the sale to comics. Dragonborn will be going to graphic novel late next year! Woo hoo! And I love, love, love working with Kate Seaver and Berkley Books.
MLM: Just for fun, if you could be among any of the original members of that first Thanksgiving, who would it be, the Pilgrims or the Wampanoag (Native Americans)? Why?
KATHY: Wampanoag. I’ve become very spiritual in my old age. And I feel more closely aligned with the religions of the native Americans than the Catholic church.
MLM: NaNo is popular among authors each November. Maybe it's so popular because it helps self-motivate so many of us during the encroaching holidays. Did you commit to NaNo this year? If yes, do you have any advice how to make NaNo a success? If no, what was your driving motivation to stay strong and avoid the month I've deemed "crazy NaNo"?
KATHY: I don’t do NaNo because I’m doing it all the time. I have a page count that I write to every day. Approximately 10 pages a day. This is my full time job. I do it every day and often on weekends. But I’m a fast writer who has spent a long, long time learning about story structure. NaNo writers are great for blurping the story out on the page. But if you haven’t written the underlying structure correctly, you’re going to blurp junk or get very stuck. Learn story structure. Then writing because…well, not a breeze, but certainly a ton better.
MLM: Swashbuckling pirates like Johnny Depp are sexy—Argh!—but e-pirates are not! How do you handle e-pirates in your writing world? Do you have any advice or wish to share any experience with other writers? Anything you wish to say to e-pirates in general?
KATHY: E-pirates suck. That’s all I can say. I make less than a first class stamp on some of my books. After 30 published works, I’m still struggling to pay the bills. So stop stealing! How do I deal with it? I sent the info to my publisher and I prevent my kids (and hopefully their friends) from being pirates.
MLM: Now, let’s get to know a little more about your writing, Kathy...What genre do you write and what’s the draw for you?
KATHY: Jade Lee writes historical regency SEXY. Kathy Lyons write contemporary, funny SEXY. Do you sense a theme? I’m of course working out my own sexual fantasies on the page. And, it turns out, I’m pretty good at it! LOL
MLM: If you could describe your writing with a word or phrase, what would it be? What do you want readers to take with them when they've finished reading your story?
KATHY: Well, if you look above, it would be the word “sexy”. But that’s marketing. In truth, my people—er, I’m supposed to say characters, but they’re people to me—face tough choices and end up in the right place. It takes a while, but they get there. So the one word for me is “good”. Seriously, just a good, deep, emotional read (with lots of hot sex!)
MLM: If you could describe your writing with a word or phrase, what would it be? What do you want readers to take with them when they've finished reading your story?
KATHY: Well, if you look above, it would be the word “sexy”. But that’s marketing. In truth, my people—er, I’m supposed to say characters, but they’re people to me—face tough choices and end up in the right place. It takes a while, but they get there. So the one word for me is “good”. Seriously, just a good, deep, emotional read (with lots of hot sex!)
MLM: Imagine for a moment you're granted ONE wish with regard to your writing. It can be anything you want—besides becoming a national bestseller, because what author doesn't want that, right?—your imagination is your only limit here! What would you wish for?
KATHY: This summer, I wrote a YA with my 18 year old godson. We’re about to put it into submission. Hopefully everyone else will love it as much as I do. It’s a fabulous story!
MLM: What do you dislike the most about being an author? What do you like the most about being an author?
KATHY: I make my own schedule. (That’s the answer to both questions). It’s awesome that I pick my time and workload. It’s terrible that I pick my schedule and workload. I’m either too lazy and think of myself as a slacker or I’m writing 24/7. I’ve done both and it’s hard.
MLM: Who decides what you write about, you or your muse? What kind of influence do you have over your story, or is the muse always the one basting the turkey?
KATHY: We work together. And we both let someone else baste!
MLM: Have you ever based a character on a real-life person? If so, why? Was it simply to immortalize them or was there more to it than that? If you can, tell us who this person was without revealing their identity! We’re all curious here!
KATHY: Everyone I write is based on some aspect of someone I know or myself. Often myself, just different flavors. I guess I’m schizophrenic that way!
MLM: If you had the opportunity to meet just one of your characters in real life, who would it be and why? Which of your characters would you never want to meet under any circumstance and why?
KATHY: The heroine Scheherizade in Wicked Surrender is such a fully realized woman, that I desperately want to sit down and hang out with her. I’d love to talk to her about her life with a stage troupe and the joys of being pursued by two hot guys. I’d love to hang out chatting with her. As for the guy I never want to meet, I had a villain in Desperate Tigress who was cold, calculating and beyond evil just because he had no empathy. It wasn’t that he was at core evil. He had his goals, his beliefs, and everyone else was no more important to him than the chair he sat on.
MLM: Thanks so much for joining us, Kathy! It's been a treat getting to know you better!
Jade Lee and Kathy Lyons hotspots on the web:
http://www.jadeleeauthor.com/
http://www.kathylyons.com/
BLURB:
Office Fantasies! By Jade Lee/Kathy Lyons
One night, my fiancé had a huge project due at work that required a ton of data entry. Because I loved him, I agreed to help. We finally got it done at 2 a.m. when, flushed with elation, we realized that we were alone in a huge office building. And given that he worked in an electronics firm, my mind quickly danced through a zillion gadget and gizmo fantasies.
I will never tell what exactly happened that night, but suffice it to say that I had much more imagination than stamina. I will also confess that we did not resort to raiding the lab. Turns out there’s a lot you can do in an office that has nothing to do with high end electronics!
So there you have it. My deep, dark secret: I have office fantasies. Thankfully, I was able to put some of them to paper in Taking Care of Business. It helps that I modeled my hero after my own special geek of a husband, a man with more integrity than sense, more heart than he-man.
I’ve confessed, now it’s your turn. Do you have a secret office fantasy? Just give us a hint and one lucky commenter will get a copy of my new blaze under the name Kathy Lyons. Taking Care of Business.
KATHY: This summer, I wrote a YA with my 18 year old godson. We’re about to put it into submission. Hopefully everyone else will love it as much as I do. It’s a fabulous story!
MLM: What do you dislike the most about being an author? What do you like the most about being an author?
KATHY: I make my own schedule. (That’s the answer to both questions). It’s awesome that I pick my time and workload. It’s terrible that I pick my schedule and workload. I’m either too lazy and think of myself as a slacker or I’m writing 24/7. I’ve done both and it’s hard.
MLM: Who decides what you write about, you or your muse? What kind of influence do you have over your story, or is the muse always the one basting the turkey?
KATHY: We work together. And we both let someone else baste!
MLM: Have you ever based a character on a real-life person? If so, why? Was it simply to immortalize them or was there more to it than that? If you can, tell us who this person was without revealing their identity! We’re all curious here!
KATHY: Everyone I write is based on some aspect of someone I know or myself. Often myself, just different flavors. I guess I’m schizophrenic that way!
MLM: If you had the opportunity to meet just one of your characters in real life, who would it be and why? Which of your characters would you never want to meet under any circumstance and why?
KATHY: The heroine Scheherizade in Wicked Surrender is such a fully realized woman, that I desperately want to sit down and hang out with her. I’d love to talk to her about her life with a stage troupe and the joys of being pursued by two hot guys. I’d love to hang out chatting with her. As for the guy I never want to meet, I had a villain in Desperate Tigress who was cold, calculating and beyond evil just because he had no empathy. It wasn’t that he was at core evil. He had his goals, his beliefs, and everyone else was no more important to him than the chair he sat on.
MLM: Thanks so much for joining us, Kathy! It's been a treat getting to know you better!
Jade Lee and Kathy Lyons hotspots on the web:
http://www.jadeleeauthor.com/
http://www.kathylyons.com/
BLURB:
Office Fantasies! By Jade Lee/Kathy Lyons
One night, my fiancé had a huge project due at work that required a ton of data entry. Because I loved him, I agreed to help. We finally got it done at 2 a.m. when, flushed with elation, we realized that we were alone in a huge office building. And given that he worked in an electronics firm, my mind quickly danced through a zillion gadget and gizmo fantasies.
I will never tell what exactly happened that night, but suffice it to say that I had much more imagination than stamina. I will also confess that we did not resort to raiding the lab. Turns out there’s a lot you can do in an office that has nothing to do with high end electronics!
So there you have it. My deep, dark secret: I have office fantasies. Thankfully, I was able to put some of them to paper in Taking Care of Business. It helps that I modeled my hero after my own special geek of a husband, a man with more integrity than sense, more heart than he-man.
I’ve confessed, now it’s your turn. Do you have a secret office fantasy? Just give us a hint and one lucky commenter will get a copy of my new blaze under the name Kathy Lyons. Taking Care of Business.
I used to have a fantasy of dating my teacher in college, but I did that.
ReplyDeleteI used to have these very vivid sexy dreams of the the maintenance man at my work. He was good looking and very nice! All the girls liked him but he was happily married. So was I. YIKES! Everytime he came through the door I would blush so bad. I never told anyone about this! He does not work there anymore so I'm safe!!! Thanks for sharing today!
ReplyDeleteevjochum@aol.com
Nice to meet you. Oddly enough, chocolate (gluten free) cheesecake was one of my happiest Thanksgiving delights, just after I'd gone gluten free.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...dating a teacher. All of my professors were crusty old farts, so I have to admit that that has never been my fantasy. Hot maintenance men, on the other hand...oh yeah!
ReplyDeleteAs for gluten free cheesecake, yes, you've named one of the reasons I like cheesecake. My sister-in-law is gluten intolerant, but it's a dessert we can all enjoy. Especially if you add chocolate to it! (of course, everything goes good with chocolate. Including, apparently, chocolate covered bacon which a friend of mine says is delicious. I'm dubious, but what the heck. Eating strange foods brought by weird relatives is part and parcel of the holidays.)