Diana Laurence Romance Fiction - Coffee Time Romance Review 2007

(reprinted from the September 2007 Coffee Time Romance Newsletter, "I'm Diggin'")

Diana Laurence, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Diana, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I guarantee you I am a pretty odd duck for a romance writer. In high school I read science fiction rather than Harlequins! And while I started out as a kid writing more fantasy/sci if type stuff--I had a fantasy story published in 'Teen magazine when I was thirteen--as I got older I found myself more interested in writing about love and sex. I cut my teeth on Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, and those will make a romantic out of anyone! LOL And my favorite books include Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Gone with the Wind, long with the Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. I have always been fascinated by romantic attraction and intimacy. In my thirties I studied the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and learned a lot about the psychology of romantic love. I have certain convictions about how and why we fall in love and also the importance of romantic fantasy to a healthy psyche. I feel strongly that reading romantic fiction is good for you, and when I write romance--whether erotic or less graphic--it's important to me to treat the medium seriously. There's always some significance to what I'm writing about, beyond it simply being entertaining. And I do still love to work in the imaginative genres like paranormal, fantasy and sci if! Most of the stories in my collections have those themes.

Have you always wanted to be a writer and when was the moment that made you decide to go for it? How did you get started? What did you do before you were published?

Like I said, I was first published at thirteen, so if you want to go back to the beginnings, we're talking grade school! LOL I did indeed want to be a writer from about the age of ten, when I wrote my first poetry and short stories. In the fourth grade I even wrote a little musical puppet play called "Soggy Wheat." Yeah, don't ask! But my point is, from the time I could hold a pencil I loved writing fiction. After getting my English degree I began freelancing seriously and wrote everything from magazine articles to novels. I sold things from time to time but never got a big J.K. Rowling type break (and how many of us get those?). So I made a little money and collected a lot of rejection slips through the 80s and 90s. I finally sold a full length book to a publisher in 1997, only to have them go out of business before it was printed. So in 1998 I started a little publishing house and did short print runs of that book and my third novel, which I still sell to this day. Then the Internet arrived, and I discovered it was possible to find an audience without a publisher. For four years I published a weekly ezine called "Hockey Snacks." Yeah, don't ask! But anyway, I loved finally having readers and fans, it was a blast. Then in 2004 I wrote a piece of Star Wars erotic fan fiction and posted it online. The deluge of praise it evoked made me think about writing erotic romance for publication. Meanwhile, a whole new industry of independent publishers had sprung up, thanks to epublishing and print-ondemand. I had not one but two publishers in a matter of months...it was incredible. And thus was born Diana Laurence and her "erotica with soul" brand of literary erotic romance. Since then I have published six anthologies in my "Soulful Sex" series, along with a novel called Souls' Embrace , a deck of romance fortune telling cards, and the guidebook Do-It-YourSelf-Publishing. Speaking of, two years after my debut, my publisher went out of business. Having experienced this twice, I decided it was time to take control into my own hands. So I republished all my titles myself and have been my own publisher ever since, which is working out wonderfully in every respect.

Sure, Karen--it's a very unique project that I am SO thrilled about. Back in January, I was thinking about what to write next, and I really had a craving to do something different, something that would involve readers in a whole new way. I realized with the technology we have today, it's possible to use things like email, Yahoo Groups, online surveys, and such to enable fast and convenient interaction. So why not recruit a bunch of readers and fans to help me write my next book? I ended up with 63 Partners, folks from all over the world. They chose the genre, point of view, sensuality level, and plot of the book, and named the main characters. They helped critique the book as I wrote and assisted with plotting decisions. A subgroup of Reader Partners even helped me edit the entire manuscript! The resulting book, Bloodchained, is what I feel is my best work to date, thanks to all the help I received from these great people. And they were all recognized in the Acknowledgments in the book, which was just released in paperback and ebook formats. I couldn't be more amazed and pleased at how the Project transpired, and I think the Partners had a great time too.

How do you meet the demands of promotions of your books and still make writing a priority? Do you have a writing schedule? How many hours per day, per week, etc.?

Well, I am very blessed in that my "day jobs" for the past couple decades have been in marketing, therefore I have some skill and experience in that field. My dad worked in advertising, so since I was little I also played at designing ads and doing other entrepreneurial stuff, and that's nearly as fun to me as writing is. When something is fun for you, it's not a chore. I tend to just naturally spend time writing and promoting, without needing to force it. I'm also fortunate in that my husband does a lot to maintain our home so that I have more free time, because I do have a 40-hour-a-week day job to handle too. But on most days I write for a couple hours at least, and probably spend nearly that much time on promotion.

Do you write by the seat of your pants or plot everything out before you begin to write? Do you plot out the conflict and sexual scenes before writing the book?

Depends on what it is I'm writing, but I always at the very least have to start with two strong characters in mind, and a conflict. I can build off of that pretty well with varying degrees of preplanning required. But this question seems to be a good prompt for me to talk more about my new book, Bloodchained. The Partners chose for me to write a third-person, somewhat sensual, paranormal fantasy, and ended up picking the plot synopsis that had vampiric themes. Since the story was about a sister and brother who run an inn that is visited by three mysterious travelers, I had to write a book that was far more suspenseful than my previous works. It quickly turned into a suspense thriller of sorts, in fact. I used a lot of flashbacks as a means of revealing various plots twists and turns. That meant some complicated plotting. Meanwhile, I was inventing a new race of blood-drinking beings--one more morally complex than your traditional soulless vampires--and there was a lot of detail to that too. So I quickly discovered I had to create an actual timeline and make lots of notes to keep the continuity correct! There honestly were times I thought my head would explode, juggling all the plot elements. It was all worth it in the end, though--the advance readers all tell me they couldn't put the book down! I love that. :-)

Bwahaha! Naughty Karen. :-) Well, I'm not saying my love life with David isn't splendid, but as I told my mom once, nobody in real life has sex like these characters. That's what fantasy is for. Nevertheless, I do research them in a way, in that I play them out in my head, sometimes a dozen times and more. What a hardship, huh? No, seriously...I have to, to make sure they are interesting. Honestly, nothing is harder to make interesting than sex, particularly when you are simply writing about it. You have to get the reader invested in the characters, build a real yearning for consummation, before you deliver, or else the thrill is just not there. And even then, you need the Big Love Scene to have some unique aspect to make it entertaining. I practice in my head because if I can't get it to turn me on, it won't do a thing for the readers.

I spent about six weeks editing Bloodchained and it's nice to have that completed. The editing of this book has brought out the best in me, as I feel I have 63 people depending on me to make our book the best it can be. So now I'm working on getting the word out: I'm currently doing an extended Virtual Book Tour promoting the book all through the fall. (So if you'd like me to appear on your website or blog, folks, just email me at dianalaurence@wi.rr.com!) Meanwhile, I'm having a chance to get a little artsy-craftsy. I recently created a replica of a bracelet that appears in the book--well, two of them, one for me and one for a prize in the near future. I also did portraits of the eight main characters; I created a website for the book at www.bloodchained.com and needed some fun graphics for it. I'm even thinking about doing models of Gilder's Inn and the Temple of Love, if I get really ambitious! So, I cannot wait to find out how Bloodchained is received. I'd love to do a sequel if the readers like it as much as I do! That's my dream right now.

The pleasure was all mine, Karen! And I invite your readers who'd like to know more about my work to visit some of the following fun destinations: My website:www.dianalaurence.com The Bloodchained site (including buy links): www.bloodchained.com Publisher site: www.livingbeyondreality.com (visit the READ FREE page to download free ebooks of mine!) My blog, "Erotica with Soul": www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com The Soulful Sex Partners blog: www.soulfulsex-partners.blogspot.com Thanks so much for featuring me, and keep up the great work at Coffee Time Romance! You guys rock.