Welcome to Amy J. Fetzer's guest blog

Welcome Amy J. Fetzer to Love Romances and More, thank you for joining us.


Did you always want to become a writer?

No. I was a licensed cometologist for 13 years. I didn’t know I could write till I was 30. I’d read a hundred romance novels that were great, then one that wasn’t. I made the comment to a neighbor, an avid reader who introduced me to historical romance, and she challenged me to prove it right then and there. I wrote on a legal tablet while our kids played in the yard, then gave it to her to read. She loved it and if she’d said, “Don’t quit the day job,” I don’t think I’d be here now.

What is the most, and the least interesting fact about writing?

For me, the most intersting has to be that a publisher actually pays me for words I grab out of the air. The least interesting fact is that I do it in a lovely array of lounging clothes, aka Pajamas. That’s my weakness, cute PJ’s.

How did you celebrate your first release? What was it like to see your book in a bookstore? Do you have a special ritual for celebrating a book release?

I celebrated my first sale by shaking up a bottle of Champagne and drenching myself in it while doing a happy dance. I should mention it was 7 am on Okinawa and my 5 yr old was getting on a bus, watching me out the back window with an expression that said ‘mom’s lost it.’ Then I called my husband who was deployed at the time.

My first release, My Timeswept Heart was a time-travel when time-travels were rarely published. I’d been living on Okinawa when I sold my first book in a three-book contract, and celebrated with the Okinawa Wiriters Guild. The best I could scrounge was cheescake and champagne but it was fun. (Hi Priscilla Kissenger) Seeing it on the shelves was euphoric, but oddly, I’ve never seen my books on the shelves since that first time. Odd huh?
I don’t celebrate the release days much. By the time it comes out, I’m already onto the next book and can barely recall the plot. I do a little promotion, maybe a contest for my readers, yet I buy myself something when I sell a book. Often its something that represents the book to me. For that first book, (My Timeswept Heart) I have a print with a woman in a green period dress on a rocky shore. There’s a duplicate painting in the book and who painted it and the woman in it are key factors in the plot.
Every writer should reward themselves after completing a book. It’s not easy to write, and you deserve a pat on the back before you put it out there for the readers and the critics.

How did your family react to fact that you also write romance novels? Have your family read your books?

A book is a book. romance or any other genre. I never introduced myself as a romance writer because I’m not. I’m a writer. I write everything and before I was published in book form, I was published in articles in several newspapers and magazines, like Off Duty and Japan Update. One article I wrote for the Okinawa Marine has been reprinted about 10 times, the last in the Chicken Soup for the Military Wife’s Soul. First time I was paid for it too.

Most authors are also avid readers. Is this the case with you? If so, who are some of your favorites? Have any influenced your writing?

Oh heck yeah, I read. I remember a family trip, reading under a blanket in the back of the station wagon, because I knew my parents would not approve of me reading Steven Kings, Salem’s Lot. It scared me, but I kept reading, and it was really the first time I understood the power of words.
My favorites to read change, but I’m in love with Doug Preston and Lincoln Child, James Rollins and the team of Joe Moore and Lynn Scholes. Romance favs are Maureen Child, Rhonda Pollero(love Finely series ) Cindy Gerard and for historicals, Connie Brockway, Jillian Hunter, and Teresa Mederios, hands down. With those writers, I’m guaranteed a great read.
Influences… good reading is good writing. It inspires me. When I first started writing I didn’t read anything in the same sub-genre I was presently writing. (time travel) Before I sold, I studied, hard. One particular book, How to Write Romance for Love and Money, by Helen Schellenberger Barnhart, taught me how to take apart a novel, know the pieces necessary to build a story and bring it on with emotion. I still study, by the way. After I finish a book, I take a couple days off, mostly to run errands I’ve neglected, then to read a writing craft book and refresh the basics of writing. That gets my mind thinking in a new direction. Its how I empty the last book from my brain, I guess.

Your characters come to life in your books. Do you feel each of your characters live with you as you write? Do their lives sometimes take over a part of your life? Can you name an example? Do you have living role models for your characters?

I’ve been writing a long time, and have it down to sort of a disjointed science. I don’t have characters living with me, I’m living with them when I write. I’m the fly on the wall and the conscience in their head. Yes, there are a few who stick with me, and often it’s a secondary charcter that makes me want to write their story someday. That’s how one book spins into a series… because of a great secondary character, like Gabe Cisco from Perfect Weapon. He’s been sitting in the back of my mind, waiting for an interesting plot worthy of his slick NSA self.

Where do you get the inspirations for your books?

Anywhere and everywhere. The pat repsonse from most writers, I suppose. It’s always something small. I wrote an Irish trilogy that was really supposed to be only one book, but I got the idea from the title of a bath and body set called The Village Princess. Perfect Weapon came from my husband when he was on a DNR hunt to thin the deer herd in Hilton Head, SC, and children strayed into the shooting Zone. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know exactly what scene I’m talking about too. I warn people that no one is immune to being stuck in a book. If I need a name and you roll into my driveway, I’ll use it. Fair warned.
Yes, I use people I’ve met in books. In Lion Heart, the samurai protector of the heroine Aurora was created from my Shorin Ryu karate master when I studied on Okinawa. In Fight Fire With Fire, Webber, one of the heorine’s sources, is fashioned after my nieces husband Chris.

Do you find it difficult at times to write love scenes?

If I’ve laid the ground work for the relationship and that’s the next step then no, I don’t have trouble. I feel, if it isn’t working, its in the wrong place and that means pacing is off.

You have written Historical romances as well as Romantic suspense, is there another genre that you would like to give a try?

Actually I’m doing it with Dragon One. Romantic thrillers. I enjoy the heck out of writing action adventure, a complicated puzzle to solve and a cast of dangerous, sick twisted villains. With the hero and heroine, I like putting two characters at odds who have to find a common ground and work together as the romance develops. I love history and in the future I’ll have more history interlaced with the stories. Think Indiana Jones meets Dragon One.

What is your favorite book from the books that you have written so far? Who are your favorite hero and heroine, and why?


After 36 books its tough to pick one. In my historicals, I’d say it was Gaelan PenDragon in The Irish Princess. There was something about a skilled knight who longed for roots and a peaceful life, but would never admit it. The one line I recall that speaks of Galean’s turmoil is when his second in command, DeClare, reminds him the king has given him the choice to marry Siobhan and become lord of Donegal instead of taking the coin, then off to the next battle. Gaelan replies, “I am aware of my place in this life, DeClare, and it is not beside a princess.”
In a contemporary, its really hard to choose. Creating characters is easy for me, probably because I’ve lived all over the world and met a lot people. I discover new things about each member of Dragon One while I write their story. In Fight Fire With Fire, Riley Donovan is an Irishman with a rep with the ladies, which isn’t surprising since he’s the youngest with four sisters. Getting his dialogue to sound as if you ‘hear’ an accent was tricky and bringing his sister in to the story shows a different side, one we haven’t seen with members of D1, his family.

Which book was the hardest to write and which the easiest?


All of them are tough. If writing were easy, everyone could do it. But by far the fastest I’ve written a book was 9 days, and that was Wife For Hire, a Silhoutte Desire. Don’t be so awed, that was because one editor had me revise it a few times without a contract, then wouldn’t buy it. This was a familiar road with her, so I switched editors, sold it immediately, and wrote the book long before the contracts arrived. By then, I knew it inside and out, and the way I really wanted to write it.
I make it tough on myself because I feel it has to be better than the last book with more twists and surprises. When you’re reading a Dragon One, I want you to be asking questions, thinking hard, and to never expect the next twist or turn in the plot. That takes work, about 2 months to plot it out and find all the holes first. I must get all those plot ducks to line up when I usually have 3 plot lines converging.

If you could change places with one character from your books, who would it be and why?


None of them. Not one. I have a great job. I wear PJ’s doing it. And have you read Dragon One? I push those people off a cliff and then throw them a rope. =) I have to keep you entertained, wrapped tight in the story, in the characters. I want each scene to give you something as well as make you ask more questions. But to be in their shoes, running for your life, fighting a twisted villain who wants you dead in the worst way? No. Just because I’m the daughter, wife and mother of US Marines does not mean I want to be one. I’ll take the PJ’s and another café mocha, please.

If you could travel through time to visit a special time period or famous person, what or who would it be and why?

I wrote time travel, no way I’d want to actually go there. I like flushing toilets, hot water out of a faucet and mostiurizer way too much. Yes, I’ve lived for a few days with nothing while scuba diving or camping when my kids were small, but I always knew I’d go back to civilization eventually. Meet a famous person? Hum? Hard to say, I love studying history, so that’s up for grabs in any given era.

Do you listen to music while you are writing and if so what music is it?


I listen to all kinds of music, pop, reggae, oldies, blues, jazz, classical, all of it. But I don’t listen to music while I write because sometimes it works into the story. When I wrote a knight who sounded like a Georgia southerner, I knew the music had to go.

If you could choose of your books for a movie, which one would it be and who would you choose as the cast?


The million dollar question! Has to be Naked Truth and Killian Moore played by Gerald Butler, since it was Butler’s image I had while I was writing it. My luck they’d cast Bruce Willis, which wouldn’t be bad, aside that he’s about 12 years too old.

Are you working on anything right now, and can you tell us a teaser about these projects?

I’m writing the 5th Dragon One and I’m polishing up a paranormal historical set in 12th century Ireland.

Big congrats to the newest instalment of your Dragon One series, Fight Fire With Fire, can you tell us some more about the book and will there be more books in the series?

Gosh I hope there will be more! I’m writing book #5 now and I have no idea when it will be released. I’ll keep everyone posted on my web site.
Fight Fire With Fire is Riley Donovan’s story and its about a weapons designer, an ex con, who has fled the country. Dragon One is tapped to bring him back. The designer is in league with some heavy duty bad guys and has created a new weapon that’s completely untracable. The story is fast paced, rich with twists, betrayals, and a couple shocks that will keep you wondering, Can it get any worse? (yes!)
If you’ve read any of the Dragon One series, you know that Riley was born in Ireland and served in the Marines with Sam Wyatt (Hit Hard) Riley is the flirt, with a glib tongue and an easy smile. He meets his match, or rather a stone wall, in CIA field agent Safia Troy. Safia is a strong woman, very distrusting and yet equally determined to do her job, regardless of Dragon One’s agenda. All those handsome men don’t impress her, and D1 has to fight for her trust. Yet like holding onto the last rung of a ladder, she refuses to show her heart to anyone, including Riley. Well, that is until he starts pecking at her shell.
As with all my books, if you’d like to read the first chapter of FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE, and the book’s back cover, you can find both on my website, or even easier, readamyfetzer.com. If you’d like to drop me a note, you can do it from there. Don’t hesitate. Notes from readers make my days. Heck, you’re the reason I keep writing!

Thanks Danny and Love Romance and More.
Amy

Cover blurb Fight Fire with Fire

NO TURNING BACK

Dragon One operative Riley Donovan is an expert at bringing ’em back alive, but his latest assignment takes an extreme detour when his prey is captured...by someone else. Before you can say “international incident,” CIA agent Safia Troy has entered the fray. It just so happens the arms dealer Safia’s after is the same scum who grabbed Donovan’s man. If anyone can give Riley a run for his money in the kick-butt-then-take-names department, it’s Safia. Not that Riley minds: he loves to watch her work...

Safia never thought she’d see Riley again since saving his life years ago—yet here he is, hotter than ever. If she must partner up, Riley certainly satisfies all her requirements. But Safia hasn't bargained for the twisted places this case will lead, revealing secrets about her past even she didn’t know. Now, as Safia’s drawn deeper into the heart of darkness, Riley’s the only one she wants by her side...