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~ LORI HANDELAND ~~
Spotlight Interview with Tracey West ~
In October
2004, Lori Handeland’s paranormal suspense story, BLUE MOON will be
released
from St. Martin’s Press.
Having read Blue Moon and
enjoyed it so much, it’s an even greater
honour to interview the author who wrote such an outstanding read.
Let’s get a
bit behind the scenes with Lori Handeland and discover what makes this
author
tick and how Blue Moon was created and molded into one of the best
paranormal
tales in this decade…
Welcome to
The Road to Romance Lori!
TW – Who is Lori
Handeland? When did
the dream of being a writer begin?
Lori - I’ve
been married for 18 great years to a contractor. We
have two sons, 16 and 13, and a very hyper
yellow lab named, Elwood.
I decided I
wanted to be a writer when I was ten and realized people actually wrote
those
books I loved so much.
TW – How long did it take
for you to
have your first book published?
Lori - I
was lucky enough to get the first book I wrote published.
I think it took me about two years.
TW – Your October 04
release, Blue
Moon, a paranormal suspense is an intriguing and riveting story.
What can
you tell readers about this book?
Lori - Blue
Moon is the beginning of a
series of books for St. Martin’s
press that
deal with a group of monster hunters called the Jager-Suchers or
Hunter-Searchers. Each book is written
from the first person point of view of a female Jager-Sucher.
TW – Blue Moon is
set in the
town of Miniwa,
Wisconsin and is full of secrets
that are
about to be uncovered. I found this aspect of the book very intriguing
and
addicting…the unanswered questions, the pull from the characters, etc. How do you get that passion/mystery into your
writing to hold a readers attention?
Lori - I
love these books and the concept so much, writing them was great fun. To me, the first person viewpoint made the
books more immediate and more suspenseful.
The reader only knows what the heroine does, and
sometimes, that isn’t
much.
TW – How would you
describe your
lead characters in Blue Moon – Officer Jessie McQuade and Will
Cadotte? Who was the biggest challenge
to work with? Who kept threatening to take over the whole book?
Lori - Jessie
is a no nonsense gal. She doesn’t
believe in woo-woo nonsense, until she has no choice.
I wanted her to be like this so that the
reader, along with Jessie, was pulled into a world where nothing was as
it
seemed.
Will’s just
hot. What woman wouldn’t fall for a
tough guy with a gentle soul. A martial
arts afficianado who loves books and wears wire rimmed glasses.
My biggest
problem was getting over Will. I had to
keep him from being a hero in the next two books. Luckily,
I found some extremely sexy guys who
helped me solve that problem by making me love them, too.
TW – What do you think
readers will
love about this book? I know I enjoyed
the intrigue and the intensity of the story overall, and the characters. What do you hope readers take with them
and/or feel, about you and about Blue Moon when they are done
reading
it?
Lori - I
hope the readers love the characters and want to visit them again and
again. Jessie and Will do show up in the
next two books, but in a lesser capacity.
I hope when readers finish Blue
Moon they are as impatient as I am for the release of Hunter’s Moon in February.
TW – What is it about the
paranormal
genre that you love to write about? Is it the chance to work with myths
and
legends and make them your own?
Lori - Absolutely. I love the paranormal genre--the mystery and
the magic. Being able to take the true
Ojibwe legends and twist them in my own way was almost as much fun as
creating
Jessie and Will.
TW – How long does it
normally take
you to write a story? How long did it take to write Blue Moon?
Lori - It
can take me from 3-6 months to write a book.
Blue Moon came out in a
rush in about 2 months. I had been
thinking about the book for so long, I coudn’t wait to get it on paper.
TW – Was there any
writer’s block or
just bad days during the writing of Blue Moon?
Lori - Not
this book. It was magic from page one
for me.
TW – Where did the idea
for Blue
Moon originate? What brought you to
your desk to write it?
Lori - I
wrote a book years ago called Full
Moon Dreams, which was about a werewolf in the 19th century in
a
traveling circus. I enjoyed writing that
book very much and wanted to write more like it.
My agent
asked me to write a contemporary single title proposal.
I’d played around one day with the first
person and sent her those few pages. She
insisted I write the book.
TW – What comes after Blue
Moon?
According to your website -- http://www.eclectics.com/lorihandeland/ you have other paranormal releases due out in
2005, Hunter’s Moon and Dark Moon.
Are these in any way related to Blue
Moon? If so, how – which characters will
we see?
Lori - All
of the Moon books are connected, bringing in members of the
Jager-Sucher
society.
In Hunter’s
Moon you will meet Leigh
Tyler, a young woman whose family was wiped out by werewolves so she
had turned
to hunting them. She is assigned to
train Jessie as a Jager-Sucher, but before she can a Weendigo, or
Ojibwe
werewolf, arrives. Along with Damien
Fitzgerald, a hunky Irish drifter with secrets of his own.
In Dark
Moon, you’ll get the story
of Elise Hanover, the second in command of the Jager-Suchers. When J-S headquarters are blown up, Elise
must handle an outbreak of witchie wolves- or ghost wolves who protect
the
graves of desecrated warriors. She gets
a little help from Dominic Franklin, an FBI agent who has come to
investigate
the Jager-Suchers--the man she once loved and left behind.
TW – Another book with
Moon in the
title is the Stroke of Midnight Anthology, to hit shelves in November
2004,
featuring your story Red Moon Rising. Is this related to Blue
Moon at
all? What can you tell us about this
story, your next release?
Lori - In Red
Moon Rising, Jager-Sucher
Clay Philips must save novelist, Maya Alexander from a Navajo
skinwalker bent
on killin gher.
TW – What is The Full
Moon Club that
you have on your website? What exactly is this club for and/or about?
Lori - The
Full Moon Club is for people who are
interested in the mystical, in full moons, in wolves, like me. There’s a montly newsletter, with different
lore, and merchandise from cafepress.com that has moons, wolves etc. Just a fun little club to play around with.
TW – You also write
contemporary
romances with Harlequin SuperRomance.
Which genre, paranormal or contemporary, do you find
to be the biggest
challenge? Which do you feel more
comfortable
with?
Lori - I
love them both. It’s a great help to me
to be able to write between the genres.
I feel the change keeps my books fresh, interesting
and new to both me
and the readers.
TW – To let readers know
what is
next from you in contemporary romance, what can you tell us about your
latest
SuperRomance, The Husband Quest, which is a September 04 release. It is part of The Luchetti Brothers series
correct? What can you tell us about
these brothers?
Lori - This is the
third Lucheti brothers book and is the story of Evan.
All five brothers are very different, though
they share a love for each other and their family.
Aaron (The
Daddy Quest) once wanted to be a priest and ended up a farmer. Colin (The
Brother Quest) is a forign correspondent.
Evan (The
Husband Quest) was the
Luchetti family gigilo. He travels to
Arkansas to
change his
life by restoring a haunted 19th century inn.
When he meets the owner, Jillian Hart, a
self-proclaimed golddigger, his
new vow of chastity becomes very hard to follow.
I have just
turned in A Soldier’s Quest,
which is Bobby Luchetti’s story and will be released in Sept. 2005. Then I will write Dean’s book--The
Mommy Quest, and I’ll be out
of Luchettis. Oh-oh.
TW – If readers would be
shocked to
discover one thing about you, what would that something be?
Lori - Probably
that I’ve sold 30 books. I’ve written in
so many different genres, it’s hard to keep track.
TW – Do you have a large
family
Lori? What do you do in your spare time?
Lori - I’m
an only child with 2 son, so not a large family for me.
Although my house always seems full of
kids. <g>
In my spare
time I like to read, watch my sons play sports and crochet if I get the
chance,
which isn’t much these days.
Some fun…
TW – What is your
favourite movie of
all time?
Lori - Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
TW – If you could pick
one song, of
any genre, to describe you, what would that song be?
Lori – “All
You Need is Love”-the Beatles
TW – What is the first
thing in the
morning that you think about?
Lori - What
book do I get to write today and for how long?
TW – If your husband had
to describe
you in three words, what do you think he would use to describe you?
Lori - Loving,
energetic, organized
TW – Where can readers
write to you
Lori?
Lori - Online
they can reach me thrugh my website at:
www.lorihandeland.com
by snail
mail at...
PMB 215
3900 W. Brown Deer Road
Milwaukee
WI
53209
TW – To recap, what
stories do you
have coming out next?
Lori - The
Husband Quest-Harlequin
Superromance 9/04
St. Martin’s Press:
Blue Moon-10/04
Hunter’s Moon-2/05
Dark Moon-6/05
Stroke of Midnight-”Red
Moon Rising”-11/04
TW – In
closing Lori, might we have a brief excerpt of one of your books,
preferably Blue Moon?
~~~~~
The summer
I discovered the world was not black and white-- the way I liked
it--but a host
of annoying shades of gray, was the summer a lot more changed than my
vision.
However, on
the night the truth began I was still just another small town
cop--bored,
cranky, waiting, even wishing for, something to happen.
I learned never to be so open ended in my
wishes again.
The car
radio crackled. “Three Adam One, what’s
your 10-20?”
“I’m
watching the corn grow on the east side of town.”
I waited
for the imminent spatter of profanity from the dispatcher on duty. I wasn’t disappointed.
“You’d
think it was a God damned full moon. I
swear those things bring out every nut cake in three counties.”
My lips
twitched. Zelda Hupmen was seventy-five
if she was a day. A hard drinking, chain
smoking, throw back to the good times when such a life style was
commonplace
and the fact it would kill you still a mystery.
Obviously
Zelda had yet to hear the scientific findings since she was going to
outlive
everyone by smoking Camels and drinking Jim Beam for breakfast.
“Maybe the
crazies are just gearing up for the blue moon we’ve got coming.”
“What in
living hell is a blue moon?”
The reason
Zee was still working third shift after countless years on the force? Her charming vocabulary.
“Two full
moons in one month makes a blue moon on the second course.
Very rare.
Very powerful. If
you’re into
that stuff.”
Living in
the north woods of Wisconsin,
elbow to elbow with what was left of the Ojibwe nation, I’d heard
enough
woo-woo legends to last a lifetime.
They always
pissed me off. I lived in a modern world
where legends had no place except in the history books. To do my
job, I needed facts. In Miniwa, depending on who you talked to,
facts and fiction blurred together too closely for my comfort.
~~~~~
TW – Thank you very much
Lori for
taking the time out of your day to do this interview.
Readers can
learn more about Lori Handeland and her books at her website http://www.eclectics.com/lorihandeland/
The Road to Romance
wishes Lori
Handeland the best of luck today, tomorrow and always.
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