We are so excited to
be here with one of my personal favorite authors, USA Bestselling Author Deborah
Cooke. Deborah sold her first book, a medieval romance
which was published under the pseudonym Claire Delacroix, in 1992. Since then,
she has published over fifty romance novels in a wide variety of subgenres,
including historical romance, paranormal romance, time travel romance, fantasy
romance, contemporary romance, fantasy with romantic elements and paranormal
young adult with paranormal elements. She
makes her home in Canada with her husband. When she isn't writing or reading,
she can be found knitting, sewing or hunting for vintage patterns.
Scherry: Welcome Deborah! Thanks for joining us here at The Novel
Lady. Tell us a little about yourself
and your background?
Deb: Well, I love to tell stories, and my stories
are often about people falling in love. :-) My books often reflect my interest
in fairy tales and also in medieval history and legends. I live in a house full
of books (and knitting yarn) and am happily married. I sold my first book to a
publisher in 1992, then in 2012, after selling 45 books and a number of
novellas to New York publishers, I decided to go indie. Being my own publisher
been a fabulous experience - it’s a lot of work, but I love it.
Scherry: What do you do when you’re not writing? Do you have any hobbies or guilty pleasures?
Deb: I knit a lot, but I also sew and quilt. I
like playing with the textures and colors. It seems to exercise another part of
my brain and helps me to solve plot puzzles. I also like to cook and to garden.
Scherry: What were you like at school?
Deb: I pretty much always had my nose in a book. I
read all the time and was called out for doing it in class when I was supposed
to be listening. :-) I would even read the dictionary if there were no fiction
books around. I’ve noticed that a lot of writers were avid readers as children,
and believe that reading widely is the best foundation for becoming a writer.
Scherry: When and why did you begin writing?
Deb: Because I read a lot, I was always writing
stories and poems. My first attempt at writing a book was in high school when I
wrote a murder mystery. (I was in an Agatha Christie phase at the time.) I was
always told, though, that writing was better as a hobby than a career choice.
After college, I had a number of jobs but none of them really thrilled me. The
last one was so frustrating, actually, that I started to write a book to
entertain myself. I wanted to lose myself in a fictional realm! I decided to
try to write a romance, since it seemed that the market was really large and
diverse. I dove right in without learning much about reader or publisher
expectations, and while I learned a lot writing that book, it was never
published and is best forgotten. Ultimately, I had three book manuscripts in
rotation. One was a medieval romance, which is the book that ultimately sold.
One was a long contemporary romance with paranormal elements and a mystery,
probably closer to a women’s fiction book and undoubtedly beyond my abilities
at the time. It never sold, but I have thought about digging it out and
revising it because I liked the story. The third was a short sexy contemporary
romance targeted at Harlequin Temptation, which never sold either. I’d revise
one book and send it out to agents and editors, then revise the next, etc. By
the time I finished revising the third one, the rejection letters for the first
one would be coming in. In those days (the early 1990’s), it was more common
for editors and agents to send long rejection letters that were really
critiques. I learned a great deal from my many rejection letters - I think the
file was about an inch thick by the time I sold my first book. My first editor
was the one actually who came up with my pseudonym, Claire Delacroix. Harlequin
Historicals was my first publisher and ultimately I wrote eleven books for
them.
Scherry: That’s great information for any aspiring
writers. We readers are so glad you didn’t give up! Learning from those rejection
letters was the right way to go, because that knowledge made you the kind of
writer you are today. Along that route,
which writers inspired you?
Deb: I admire writers who have built enduring
careers and also those who surprise me. I read established and favorite authors
like Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, J. R. R.
Tolkien, Minette Walters, and more, as well as always looking for new authors
(or new-to-me authors). I really liked Paula Hawkins’ Girl on the Train and also
David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks because they both surprised me, in different
ways.
Scherry: Your Dragonfire series is immensely
popular. What inspired you to write that
first book in the series, Kiss of Fire?
Deb: I’ve always loved stories with paranormal
elements. Maybe that’s because I was such a fan of fairy tales as a kid. Heroes
with a little bit more are particularly intriguing. In 2008, I wasn’t writing
medieval romance anymore because the market for historicals had shrunk, and I
was looking for another opportunity. There were a lot of vampire books
available then, but vampires aren’t really my thing. I read some wolf shifters,
I wrote some fallen angels, then I thought it would be really cool if the hero
could become a dragon. I’ve always loved dragons and thought this would be an
ideal combination. At the time, there weren’t any dragon shifters in the
romance market and it was interesting to see editorial reactions. One editor,
though, who had edited my Claire Delacroix books at Bantam, loved my dragon shifters
and bought the series. I think there were still doubts inhouse, but the first
book did really well. I have so much fun with my dragon shifters. While
Dragonfire is a complete series now, I’m currently working on a series called
DragonFate which continues the story of the Pyr
after the end of Dragonfire.
Scherry: Oh! I
will definitely be keeping an eye out for that one! I’ve also enjoyed the Coxwells books and the
Flatiron Five series. Gosh! I love them
all! Just curious… Have you ever based
your book or characters on actual events or people from your own life?
Deb: I’m so glad you enjoy my books!
Hmm. That’s a tough
question. I never deliberately model a character on someone I know or have
known. They’re all residents of my imagination, although they seem very real to
me. (I talk to them, and even argue with them.) I do think it’s important that
characters have emotional truth as that’s what allows them to step off the
page. So, I can write about someone with a totally different background and
nature than mine, but if that character is grieving, for example, I can draw on
my own experience to make that reaction have more emotional truth. I believe
that characters with emotional truth are the ones that readers find resonant.
Deep down inside, we all have a tremendous amount in common and I think fictional
characters should share those commonalities.
Scherry: Can you tell us a bit about your most recent
release?
Deb: I wrote some short stories in my existing
series and published them this fall. Part of the reason was that I’d like to
get better at writing shorter, but also, there were events happening in each
series that didn’t fit neatly into any book. So, in Flatiron Five, Going to the
Chapel includes two weddings as well as the birth of Ty and Amy’s son. It
happens between Cassie’s book (Some Guys Have All the Luck, #4) and Theo’s book
(Bad Case of Loving You, #6). It ended up being longer than I expected (of
course! I always write long!) but publishing it as a separate story was a good
solution. In the Coxwell Series, Christmas with the Coxwells brings us to the
present day with the kids all grown up, and catches us up with what’s been
happening in that world. That came out of a suggestion from a reader that I
write about the next generation, so we needed a bridge between the original
books and the new ones coming. Those novellas were a lot of fun to write and I’ll
probably do more of them.
On the Delacroix side, my most recent release is The
Runaway Bride, which is Ross’s story. Ross is the eighth sibling of the family
introduced in The Beauty Bride (The Jewels of Kinfairlie #1) and readers have
been asking about his HEA for a long time. Once again, there was a big reunion
at the end of that story, as all the siblings came for the wedding - with their
spouses and their kids. There were a lot of people to keep track of but it was
very satisfying to revisit them all again.
My next release in
April is Theo’s book, Flatiron Five #6. It’s a second chance romance and a
secret baby story and has been a bit of a fighter. There were so many elements
to juggle (plus Lyssa and Theo were both somewhat stubborn) that it took a bit
for this one to come together in a way that satisfied me. The result is quite
emotional, at least to me, and I hope readers like it.
Scherry: If you had to write this one all over again,
go through the whole editing and publishing process from the beginning again,
is there anything you would do differently?
Deb: I’m going to take a break from second chance
stories for a bit. As much as I love them, I’m ready for a couple with a more
straightforward story! McKenna and Aidan meet for the first time at the
beginning of their book and immediately challenge each other’s expectations. I
love when that happens, so am looking forward to writing their story.
In terms of my
writing process, I’ve settled into a routine that works for me. I don’t work in
drafts, but am always refining what I have before I move forward. So, I’ll
start my day by reviewing and editing what I wrote the day before, then write
the next scene or two. When I have a bigger change, I have to go back to the
beginning and work it through the story before I can go forward. That’s the way
I’ve always written and I doubt that will change. It feels sometimes as if I
get mired down in the middle, but the great thing is that when I write the last
scene, the book is pretty clean.
One thing I’m trying
to improve is my publication process. I’d love to get more ahead of myself, so
that there’s a longer period between finishing the book and its publication
date. In traditional publishing, that’s usually a year, although that year also
includes the editorial process and packaging. I’d like to get to the point that
each book was finished and loaded to the portals six months before publication.
Scherry: How much research did you do for your latest
novel?
Deb: Theo’s novel is a challenge for me, as he’s
black and I’m not. He’s also British and I’m not. So, I’ve been doing a lot of
research for his background, and I have a sensitivity reader lined up to make
sure I get the details right. One of the other fun details about Bad Case of Loving
You is that it starts at Christmas in Manhattan. The first time I visited New
York City was at Christmas and I found it absolutely magical. It’s probably
part of the reason I love the city so much. So, it’s been fun to research the
things I did there over the holidays, all those years ago, as well as find some
new ones for Theo and Lyssa.
Scherry: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever
researched for one of your books?
Deb: I did a lot of research on radiation
poisoning and nuclear bombs when I was writing the Prometheus Project series of
urban fantasy novels - plus motorcycles, alternative fuels, and fallen angels.
It was a strange mix, but fascinating.
Scherry: How long does it normally take you to write a
book?
Deb: It depends on the length of the book,
although most of my stories to date have been close to 100,000 words. It also
depends whether I’ve written in that world already - for the first book in a
given series, I need to build the world, which takes longer. Once the world is
established, though, it usually takes me 3 months to write a full-length book.
Sometimes it’s faster, depending on how cooperative the characters are. And the
last book in a series always takes longer, because I have lists of characters
to revisit and ends to tie up.
Scherry: Thinking about the characters in your books… Do you have a favorite? Which one would you most like to go have a
beer or glass of wine with… or wake up next to?
Deb: Oh, I wouldn’t mind meeting any of my heroes.
:-) I have a particular fondness for Merlyn in The Rogue (my editor and I
called him “mmm-mmm-Merlyn”), as well as Erik in Kiss of Fate (and also leader
of the Pyr throughout the Dragonfire series). But then there’s Rafferty and
Donovan in Dragonfire, and I think it would be fun to go for a beer with
Thorolf, too. I love James in Double Trouble, and currently, I’m completely
smitten with Theo in Bad Case of Loving You.
Scherry: What is next for you? Do you have any scheduled upcoming releases
or works in progress?
Deb: In the Flatiron Five series, after Theo’s
book (Bad Case of Loving You), I have another release in that series planned
for July (Some Like it Hot). In the Secret Heart Ink series, which is set in
the F5 world, I’m hoping to finish Chynna’s story, Under the Mistletoe, before
we end up having Christmas in July. Her story is a little bit tangled with
Theo’s so I had to finish Theo’s book first. I’m also working on Here Be
Dragons: the Dragonfire Companion, and there are boxed sets of Dragonfire being
published this winter. I have a medieval romance release in the spring, One
Knight’s Return by Claire Delacroix, and then, I’m going to write DragonFate,
the next paranormal romance series featuring the Pyr. There’s always a line in
my office!
Scherry: Looks like we have a lot to look forward to
with all of these upcoming books! I, for
one, am super excited about that! How
can fans contact you/learn more about you?
Email: deborah@deborahcooke.com
Website: http://deborahcooke.com (This site has everything.)
http://delacroix.net (This site features my Claire Delacroix titles.)
http://dragonfirenovels.com (This is the site for Dragonfire.)
http://dragonsofincendium.com (This is the site for the Dragons of Incendium series.)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorDeborahCookeFanPage
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorClaireDelacroix
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cooke_Delacroix
Scherry: Deborah, thank you so
much for joining us here at The Novel Lady!
Deb: Thanks so much for inviting
me!
Readers, if you haven't experienced Deborah's writing yet, here's a little hint...
Book #1 of her Flatiron Five series, SIMPLY IRRESISTABLE, is currently a 99cent
read at all portals. Or delve right into one of her newest adventures.
Check out the books listed below!
Bad Case of Loving You (Flatiron Five #6)
Theo knows what's possible...
Because he's learned the hard way what's not. The internationally successful
supermodel known as Angel stole his heart forever when she was Lyssa Monroe.
There's never been another woman who could compete—even though her life proves
that the Lyssa he knew was just an illusion. When Angel makes an appearance at
F5, Theo’s sure he won’t see her again for another ten years. When she kisses
him at midnight, Theo can't say no to temptation—even though he knows a night
together will just make him hope for more all over again.
Lyssa has tasted
forbidden fruit...
And she can't forget it, no matter how hard she tries. Theo's love is a
touchstone for all that is pure and good in the chaos and solitude of her
high-octane life. She’s determined to start fresh and repair the mistakes from
the past, but the secret she’s kept from Theo could turn him against her forever.
How much will she sacrifice to ensure that her son knows his father—and how far
will Theo go once he discovers the truth?
Coming April 16
Pre-order available at all portals!
https://deborahcooke.com/deborah-cooke-books/flatiron-five/bad-case-of-loving-you/
Some Like it Hot
(Flatiron Five #7)
Aidan Connaught has
a dream…
He’s spent his whole life working for his big
acting break but time is running out. His plan is to win the contest at
Flatiron Five to be their next billboard model for visibility, then to ace the
lead role in an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet. He hopes the
combination will catapult him to success. But when he discovers that his
director doesn’t even believe in love, Aidan knows he has to change McKenna’s
mind, no matter what it takes…
McKenna Singer no
longer believes in dreams…
Being abandoned at the altar once is enough to
teach anyone that love and romance is for other people. McKenna’s all about
making a difference, so she’s seizing the chance to turn Romeo and Juliet
upside down and inside out—until Aidan Connaught’s audition casts a spell over
the entire cast. If he thinks seducing the director will encourage McKenna to
compromise, she’s is more than ready to surrender. It’s just a fling and a
play—at least until McKenna has to step into the role of Juliet, and realizes
she wants so much more.
Coming
July 31!
Download
a free sample from BookFunnel. Pre-order available at some portals.
https://deborahcooke.com/deborah-cooke-books/flatiron-five/some-like-it-hot/
One Knight’s Return (Knights
& Rogues #2)
Knight and crusader Quinn de Sayerne vowed
never to return home while his villainous father drew breath. Twenty years
after his departure, he is notified of his father’s death and summoned by his
liege lord to claim his family holding. But his overlord has a stipulation:
Quinn must wed Melissande, the beauteous heiress of neighboring Annossy. Quinn
hoped to make a match based on more than mutual animosity, but he is resolved
to win the heart of his lady wife, at any cost.
Melissande cannot believe that her liege lord
has not only compelled her to break an old betrothal but wed her to a
ruffian—and granted the seal of Annossy to him, despite her expertise. It is
the dream of Quinn’s father brought to fruition, for the holdings will be
merged just as he long schemed. But her overlord cannot be defied and she finds
herself the chattel of this rough knight, despite her every protest.
Can Quinn win his lady’s reluctant heart? Or is
he doomed to lose Melissande forever when her betrothed returns?
Available April 26
Pre-order available at some
portals
https://delacroix.net/sayerne/the-sayerne-series/one-knights-return/
