Interview & Giveaway with Brooklyn Ann

To start off can you tell the readers a little about yourself? I’m hopelessly addicted to books and movies of all kinds, though my writing always culminates in romance. I used to be an auto mechanic but now I’ll be getting my English degree next month. I love to cook, fish, and play darts. I adore cats and old-school heavy metal music.

Bite Me, Your Grace is your debut novel, can you tells us a little about it and the series? Regency England is under a “vampire craze” spawned by John Polidori’s The Vampyre, which vexes the Lord Vampire of London. In his quest to save his reputation, he encounters a gothic authoress bent on ruining hers. The solution to his problem lies with thwarting her plans. He will marry her. Two more books will be forthcoming, (perhaps more) because Ian isn’t the only vampire encountering problems with eccentric regency ladies.

What is your writing day like? On my good writing days, the ones with no work, errands, kids, or other responsibilities, I throw on my robe and slippers… but no pants. I’m totally in the writers-with-no-pants camp. Anyway, I fire up my laptop, sip my Red Bull, and ask my characters, what’s up? Sometimes they’ll tell me readily, other times I have to drag it out of them. I alternate between bouts of furious writing and pacing around the house trying to find the right words. In the evening I sip hard cider and keep going. On a bad day I struggle to fit what writing I can in with regular interruptions.

When you’re not writing, what kind of books do you like to read? Stephen King is my hero. I love his writing and many of his books remain favorites to this day. I think I’ve read IT 11 times. I also love books by Shana Galen, Bonnie R. Paulson, Shelley Martin, Ken Follett, Eloisa James, JR Ward… I could go on.

What are 3 things that are "must haves" for you when you sit down to write a book? 1: My choice beverage: Red Bull by day and hard cider by night, 2.) Silence and solitude…except for a purring cat. 3.) My cigarettes. Yes, I know that’s terrible but there it is. I tried quitting last year and made it for a month… but got zero writing done in that time. I’m working up the nerve to try again.

How did you come up with your idea for Bite Me, Your Grace? Anything particular inspire you while writing? I’ve loved vampires since I was a toddler. Halloween was my favorite holiday and Count Chocula was my cereal. Louis from Interview with a Vampire was my first crush and I reveled in the vampire romance genre from the beginning. However, Regency romances were my guilty pleasure: the rules, the customs, the historical settings, etc. It’s like stepping into another world. Then one day I had a daydream about a regency debutante encountering a vampire. But I didn’t do anything with it until I discovered that the regency period was also the birth of vampire fiction.

Since becoming published, what has been your favorite part of the process? Ahh, there’s a tie with that one. One favorite part was going through revisions with my editor. Deb Werksman is awesome incarnate, I tell you. She talked about my characters as if they were as real to her as they were to me. She helped me understand them better and her invaluable suggestions made their story shine brighter. That was a powerful and magical time. My equally favorite part has been the response from readers. As trite as it may sound, readers are why I keep writing. Their delight in a story and the curiosity as to what happens next make the thought of quitting unfathomable no matter how down I get.

If you could give your lead characters one piece of advice, what would it be? To Angelica: “Look before you leap.” To Ian: “Don’t take everything so seriously.”

What's next for you? Well, my second regency paranormal romance releases this fall and third will come out sometime between next spring and summer. So from now on, I will keep meeting new characters and stories and continue writing.

BITE ME, YOUR GRACE

By Brooklyn Ann

Out Now!

LONDON'S LORD VAMPIRE HAS PROBLEMS

Dr. John Polidori's tale " The Vampyre" burst upon the Regency scene along with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein after that notorious weekend spent writing ghost stories with Lord Byron

A vampire craze broke out instantly in the haut ton.

Now Ian Ashton, the Lord Vampire of London has to run around town in the daytime, linger in front of mirrors, and eat lots of garlic in an attempt to quell the gossip.
If that weren't annoying enough, his neighbor Angelica Winthrop has literary aspirations of her own and is sneaking into his house at night just to see what she can find.

Hungry, tired and fed up, Ian is in no mood to humor is beautiful intruder.

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Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Sourcebooks

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to Sourcebooks I have a copy of Bite Me, Your Grace to giveaway. To enter leave a comment along with your email address. Open to U.S. & Canada. The winner will be announced on April 10th. Good Luck!