Romance at Heart Magazine Author Interview: Rowena Cherry

Interview with Rowena Cherry:

Hi Rowena. Thank you for doing this interview. It is wonderful to have you here at Romance at Heart Magazine. I would like to welcome you to the Romance at Heart Interview and Author Grilling session. *bg* We are interested to find out as much about you as we possibly can, so lets get started...

- Please tell us about your latest book.

My latest book is INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL. Like all my books, the title is a chess term. Insufficient Mating Material refers to a situation that is unwinnable, no matter how bad ones opponent’s moves might be. The title was an amusing triple pun, until I saw the cover art, and felt obliged to add a love scene in the surf. Now, in my opinion, a more than sufficient amount of mating goes on, and the title is only a double play on words.

INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL will be available as mass market paperback on January 31st 2007, published by Dorchester Publishing’s LoveSpell imprint. It’s the third in my series of alien djinn romances, but I also characterize it as a survival romance.

Why “survival”? Because the ruthless Prince Tarrant-Arragon decides to shoot down and maroon a pair of politically embarrassing royals on a deserted alien planet (because they refuse to mate when he commands them to). Eventually they realize that they’ve been trapped together like animals in a zoo breeding program.

INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL begins moments after Forced Mate ends (but it is not necessary to read Forced Mate to enjoy INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL). However, for those who have not read Forced Mate and might wish to, I probably should not disclose how Forced Mate ends.

Djetth, hero of INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL, has been sentenced to a fate worse than death, which involves life as a glorified love slave, with a new face and identity. Since no one can know that scarred, blond mercenary that he used to be has survived, he is supposed to mention all the identifying marks on his body that his former lovers might remember and recognize, but he does not. As he lies, tied down and stark naked in his enemy’s operating theater, preparing his mind for surgery without anesthetic, he is determined that no one will take a knife or a surgical laser to the distinctive, glow-in-the-dark tattoo on his penis.

As for Princess Marsh, she has always been a mischief-maker and something of a royal rebel without a cause. None of the high-handed males in her life anticipates that she might disrupt the pomp and pageantry of a royal wedding, when she realizes that they have played a dirty trick on her, and that the perfect-faced Great Djinn Prince being frog marched up the aisle for the alien equivalent of a shotgun wedding is not the scarred, low-status lover she was expecting.

This is the back cover blurb:
Fewmet!

Shot down… for failing to mate in public. Marooned on an island with the ultimate fashionista, who wouldn’t take off her wet clothes to save her own life, Djetth discovers that survival isn’t just a matter of making out.

Someone is trying to kill them…

Even in the outrageously wicked Tigron Empire, who would dare to attack a royal princess and her consort?

With the aid of two exiled empresses acting as psychic sleuths, some misplaced guitar glue and a talent for disguises, he would unmask a killer and prove this was certainly not a case of… INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL

- What can we expect from you in the future?

I’m working on a new three-books series. At the moment, it looks like my next hero will be Rhett, the diplomatic brother whom I like to think of as Dirty Harry with a sword. Nobody quite trusts him, but –like a male Cinderella- he gets all the dirty work including taking out the trash and knowing where the family skeletons are hidden.

- How do we find out about you and your books?

There are several great ways online. I like to think that the best resource is my website at Rowena Cherry.Com

There are excerpts, reviews, my bio, also an interactive family tree, interactive jigsaw puzzles, downloadable stocking stuffers, and I’d like to mention my extravagant bi-monthly newsletter, which can be found at www.rowenacherry.com/newsletter.

On my homepage there is a link to a Newsletter signup page (which links to an unsubscribe page). Past newsletter issues are archived, because some of the interviews with cover models are too interesting to delete after two months! For instance, one cover model has served as an extreme bartender –just like in the Tom Cruise film, Cocktail. Another is a knight in armor who jousts nightly at a Toronto dinner theatre. Some are or have been Chippendales dancer. One is a lap dancer! Another is an inspirational musician AND a stuntman. Amazon.com has started an Amazon Connect program, which not every reader has discovered, I’m sure. Lots of authors blog there about themselves and their books. I welcome comments on both my posts and the discussion topics there. Just use the Amazon search feature and find me either by name (Rowena Cherry) or by my books (Forced Mate or Insufficient Mating Material).

It’s not instant gratification. Where is? Seriously, I don’t visit Amazon every day, and they don’t send me notification every time someone puts up a comment or starts a discussion about my books. My Blogspot blogs are better for that. I blog occasionally, usually on Sundays.

I joint-blog with Linnea Sinclair, Susan Kearney, Susan Sizemore, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Margaret Carter, Colby Hodge at www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com That is the most intellectual of “my” blogs, and I often feel that I am the lightweight of the group. We alternate between offering excerpts and attempting to say something profound about writing speculative fiction.

My other blogs are:
www.survival-romance.blogspot.com
www.outdamnedstory.blogspot.com
www.rowenacherry.blogspot.com

I have to admit, I usually put up similar content, so it is not worth visiting all of them. However, I share the sites with different authors, so the visitors are not the same people. Out Damned Story, for instance, began as a support group for authors trying to write faster. Sometimes we put up out-takes.

I do have a yahoo group, too. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowenacherrynewsletter/. Anyone can join and chat as long as they don’t attempt to sell products of no interest whatsoever to my vigorous heroes.

- How may readers contact you?

U.S. Mail:
Rowena Beaumont Cherry
PO Box 554
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303-0554

Or, comment on one of my blogs or on my postings at Amazon etc. Since I moderate my blogs (eventually) I will know if readers want to contact me.
The one method of contacting me that is not efficient is to add comments to a sign-up for my newsletter. I’m delighted when I come across a comment, but usually I only find them when I’m weeding out duplicate subscriptions once a quarter. I used to publicize an email address, and you can find it in my newsletter if you cannot figure it out. It is my first name at my firstnamelastname dot com. I’ve stopped putting it up on interviews for the spiders to pounce on. I cannot keep up with all the spoofmail that floods me every time I do.

I’d like readers to know that I never send email FROM rowenacherry.com –unless it is to announce the next issue of the newsletter, which I do every alternate month. I get spam from rowenacherry.com. As you can imagine, I have better things to do with my time than sending myself information about how I could have a bigger penis. So, do NOT set your filters to receive mail from rowenacherry.com ... unless you want advice on how thrusting your extremities into a bees' nest will do the trick… I think there was once a maiden lady anthropologist who asked some very embarrassing questions of some south sea islanders, and I believe that they delighted her with some very unconventional answers, which she took at face value and published.

Well, that went off topic, didn’t it?

- How many readers contact you?

How many? I don’t keep count, but it’s not a lot. I’m assuming that everything with a subject line containing Hi: or Re: or Hello: or a bunch of numbers, or an attachment is spam. I apologize if I’ve missed a genuine reader comment.

I probably don’t ask interesting questions in public forums! Linnea Sinclair has that talent. I don’t. I am delighted when readers who have won one of my contests take the time to let me know that their prize arrived and that they are pleased. That always makes my day!

- Do your fans' comments and letters influence you in any way?

Of course (especially comments made to the Amazon site discussions). If people love one of my characters, I am encouraged to put him/her in another book, and I have been flattered and delighted that almost every character in Forced Mate has been the subject of such a request.

Almost. Last time I was asked this, I don’t think anyone had asked for a book about the Emperor Djerrold Vulcan V. Which is fine with me. Some characters have to be eternal bad-asses. However, I have a feeling that my editor might be interested in seeing whether I can turn him around.

One comment about the complexity of my alien Djinn Royal family led to the development of the interactive family tree, which I mentioned earlier. One comment about the complexity of my djinn family led to an innovation on my website. I’ve developed an interactive family tree.
Alien Royalty Family Tree
It can also be accessed by clicking on the Alien Royalty button on my home page. Readers can click on any of my three titles, and the major names for that particular title light up and enlarge. I think it is really cool, and I hope it will be helpful. As I find time, I’m adding sketchy character outlines as well, but I find that I have to be very careful, or I will paint myself into a corner with that.

Readers can click on any of my three titles, and the major names for that particular title light up and enlarge. I think it is really cool, and I hope it will be helpful.

- Where do your ideas come from?

Everywhere. Classical mythology, Shakespeare, educational theory, eavesdropping on glamorous and powerful people, TV documentaries –especially Discovery Channel and Animal Planet-- things I see that inspire me to ask What If, magazine articles, the things people say, trivia, injuries I’ve suffered, places I’ve been, anything that interests me…. Even my mother’s rather mischievous taste for flowers that resemble genitalia.

An example of how I’ve made use of my real life experiences is the reason I dated Forced Mate a year later than 1993. That year which was a stand out year at the Indianapolis 500 – not just because I met Chuck Yeager and Fabio, and was driven around the track in one of the corporate pace cars—but because the beauty queen was led out in a dance at the Indy 500 Ball by Fabio.

I used the information they gave me to develop a rationale for how His Mightiness Tarrant-Arragon might chance to see a photograph that included the heroine of Forced Mate in the background. Have you heard the photographers’ expression “a nostril shot”? That’s when some portion of a bystander accidentally intrudes into a posed photo of someone important.

The one thing I try not to do is read other authors whose work has been compared with mine by a reader, or who are writing in the same genre. If they have thought of the same premise that I am working on, I’d rather not know it. I don’t know how memorable or unique my quirky theories are, but Forced Mate is lightly peppered with what I think are non-mainstream ideas about evolution, sex, espionage, aliens and humanity.

For example:
One is on Smart Sperm as the solution to how aliens can interbreed with humans. My Djinn are like the primeval wolf, the mighty chromosomes of which have given rise to myriad varieties of dog...admittedly with human help in the case of dog breeding. My Smart Sperm premise was inspired by the real life Sperm Wars which have been documented in humans, and that rage unnoticed when a lady is less than strictly monogamous. Human spermatozoa specialize in different tasks; they don't all race for the egg. Some are warriors, some are defenders, and they are supposed to swim around in circles.

Since my idea is an extension of scientific reality, it is logical that other authors must have had similar thoughts. I can only claim that my thinking is independent: I've never heard of anyone else giving Super Impregnator aliens extra chromosomes (a lot more than fourteen) in their sperm and giving some of them Other Jobs. After all, if you're putting out 6,000,000 spermatozoa at a time, then a million or so of them could be colonizers, especially if your culture’s Tasmanian Devil type courtship eliminates the need for a lot of defender sperm.

My alien Royal family is on the edge of extinction, so fertility issues are an obsession, and I still have plenty to explore.

On the lighter side, a couple of years ago on CNBC I saw that someone has invented a Smart Toilet, somewhat similar to the one I envisaged ten years ago when I began Forced Mate. I wish I’d thought of having a flush that adjusted according to the volume of the patron’s output....but I don’t think I could have made a story point out of that detail. Smart toilets and issues of Big Brother going too far in invading privacy are issues that recur in Insufficient Mating Material.

If you think it is outrageous that your grocery bills and cell phone records aren’t private, imagine how you’d feel if someone studied and analyzed everything that went down your toilet..

- What kind of research do you do?

That varies, and sometimes I’ll pay a researcher to look into specific topics for me, such as explaining why the sky of a habitable planet might look green, or whether it would be possible to make a functioning guitar without access to mechanical presses.

I’ll also seek out consultants and experts to interview in person, or to read my manuscript to check that I’ve got important stuff right. One of the biggest research thrills with Insufficient Mating Material was when the Science Channel’s SURVIVORMAN agreed to be my consultant, read my manuscript to make sure I’d got the survival details right. SURVIVORMAN Les Stroud gave me some really cool tips, which I was able to incorporate.

For instance, although my hero and heroine don’t make “wilderness condoms,” they are responsible people, and they discussed barrier methods of contraception. Les Stroud advised me that rabbit guts would be a good choice, and that fish skins would not.

I like to fill my novels with nuggets of uncommon knowledge like that. Of course, I hope that something in my books could be of real use to someone someday. Djetth doesn’t just make mental lists of what is in his pockets because some authority on characterization once opined that an author should know what is in her hero’s pocket!

One of my innovations was based on The Dead Man’s hand of cards. I think it was Doc Holiday who had aces and eights in a hand of poker the day he died. I do get it right in Insufficient Mating Material, but right now, my brain cells are immersed in interesting sword fighting trivia and I can’t remember. I thought it would be really cool to create a Murderer’s Hand, so I asked my playing card consultant whether we could put together the most ominous possible hand of 13 terrible cards, with plenty of wicked trivia, and we did. It was great fun. The biggest challenge was getting it by my editor as being fascinating for people who don’t play Bridge.

I hope that the fact that I research doesn’t show, that it’s not so much the tip of the iceberg as the tip of the sea-predator’s fin. I might read five books for research and end up with one paragraph in print. It’s to do with writing convincingly, not showing off how much (or how little) one knows.

- Where do your stories come from?

I guess industry insiders have a running debate about how many basic plots there are. At the moment, I’m reading a thesis that there are two types of books. Either a story is plot-driven, in which case there is a sequence of thrilling, physical action. Or, it is character-driven, in which case everything that happens in the book evolves from some aspect of the character… his flaws, his decisions, what puts him between a rock and a hard place intellectually. By that analysis, my stories come from the characters.

- How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing?

A lot… and I’m the type of personality who—if I do not have the life experience—will go out and get the experience I need. As long as it is legal, of course.

For instance, if I need to write a love scene in the surf on a beach, OK, I’m not going to break the decency laws and actually go all the way to experience that on a public beach, but I will recline in the sea –or a couple of different oceans around the world-- and perhaps have my husband stand close by so I can experience the feel of his hairy leg against mine in cold water.

I will go to a fencing club, and interview the Sword Master, and maybe take fencing lessons for twelve weeks, and feel the burn in my thighs, and run my thumb down a blood groove in an epee. I won't go as far as to stab someone (illegal, gross), but you can imagine my intense interest when my Sword Master is able to vividly recount how he felt and what he felt, the time his rapier snapped, and he accidentally drove jagged cold steel into his opponent’s thigh.

And not so much… Every heroine is not me, not by a long shot. As for every hero, I’d like everyone to know that I am profoundly shocked by Prince Djetthro-Jason’s vocabulary. On the other hand, when I was writing Tarrant-Arragon, I spent a lot of time with lawyers and litigators—in my respectable capacity as a Residents’ Association President.

- What do you think of critique groups in general?

Good, as long as everyone remembers that it’s unlikely that anyone in the critique group is going to know exactly what any aspiring author’s target editor will want and need on the day that the manuscript thumps onto her desk. Writing can be a lonely business.

- Among your own books, have you a favorite book? Favorite hero or heroine?

Three years ago I’d have no hesitation whatsoever. It would have been Tarrant-Arragon.

Then, I wrote about Tarrant-Arragon’s ancestor Djohn Kronos who was supposed to be a villain until he figuratively grabbed me by the hips and demanded to be a hero, too. He shouldered his mighty way back to the forefront of my imagination. He wasn’t happy simply to be on the Mating Net cover, looking gorgeous, and clenching his powerful fist around a symbolic Chess King. He insists that he was misunderstood, one of these days I have to find him someone to love him. Of course, he can never marry her.

I couldn’t forget him, when I was supposed to be writing a younger hero’s love scenes in Insufficient Mating Material. Djohn-Kronos casts a long shadow.

- Have you a favorite by another author or authors?

Georgette Heyer's Duke of Avon, closely followed by his son the Devil's Cub.

- Which comes first, the story, the characters or the setting?

The characters

- What is the hardest part of writing/the easiest?

The easiest part--for me-- is characterization. That might be because I don’t generally start writing until the hero has come to life in my dreams.

The hardest part: the sex scenes.

Why are sex scenes hard for you? you might ask me. Firstly, there's the vocabulary. There are certain words one sees all the time in romance novels. I like to try to avoid as many of those words as possible.

I don’t avoid them so much in Insufficient Mating Material, because Prince Djetthro-Jason was educated on Earth. So it might be natural for him to use the F--- word. It didn’t seem reasonable that Prince Tarrant-Arragon, who had never visited Earth until he decided to abduct Djinni-vera, would use Anglo-American terminology.

So far, I haven’t had my Imperial male aliens give their genitalia “Christian” names, or poultry names, either. Djinn is pronounced Jinn with the D silent. So, that rules out “Dick” for a start.
I’m off topic here. When he is feeling particularly imposed upon, Djetth does make a nursery tale inspired joke about a Big Red Cock.
Secondly, it’s quite a challenge to find the *right* mix of having the plot advanced, having something else going on at the same time, having realistic dialogue, keeping on topic.

I’m reminded of those three-part flip books where you can mix and match to create your own monster. He might have the head of a construction worker, the arms and torso of a tyrannosaurus rex, and the legs of a ballet dancer.

Writing some scenes is a bit like that. I’ve got three revealing conversations, and three necessary and plausible activities, and my principal characters.

At some point, the heroine absolutely must ask the hero what his name is, but the “right time” could be any of three crucial spots: during open air sex, when gutting fish for breakfast, or when she catches him flashing in the woods.

- Are you in control of your characters or do they control you?

Three years ago, I would have said that I am emphatically in control, but I expanded the role of the psychics for Insufficient Mating Material. In the course of my research, at least one wonderfully generous and gifted psychic who wishes to remain anonymous told me that I channel my characters.

It seems I am a “pantser” though I might be in denial about it.

I write, and the characters take on a life of their own… in my head… and the choices they make, the paths they take, and the trouble they get into, and how they get out of it in time to Save the Day is all determined by the characters’ character.

Looking back to Forced Mate, the English mercenary, Grievous, took on a bit of a life of his own. I was surprised how much my early readers seemed to love him, so I was delighted to expand his role. I was more interested in my hero, Tarrant-Arragon than I was in Djinni-vera. She had to be made more proactive. She required an expanded role

Another surprise was Djinni’s brother, Djarrhett. Even in Forced Mate I found myself falling a little bit in love with him, even though he can never have the rampant sex drive of a full-Djinn (because he caught the human disease, mumps, when he was living on Earth, and being an alien, he lacked the necessary immunity to recover completely.)

He got a large role in Insufficient Mating Material, but was not the hero. I’m working on his story now, but so far I can’t find a chink in his emotional armor. He’s a bit of a warrior-monk, and he doesn’t want to get in bed with the sort of woman who wants to go to bed with him.

- If you weren't writing, what would you be doing?

Day trading.

- Any words of encouragement for unpublished writers?

Choose a good signature file that says something about you or your book, and how to find it (your own website url). Do not quote homespun philosophy from great thinkers of the past, promote yourself! Most lists allow 4 lines or so of tag line and moderate promotion of other types.
Join chat lists—and I have to thank EPIC president and promo genius Brenna Lyons for some of these tips, because I’m not a great chatter—look into: ebookChatters ; enchantersloop; FallenAngelReviewChatters; karenfindoutaboutnewbooks (Karen Simpson runs Coffeetime, which is a great site with some very innovative promo services and ideas, but not cheap) ; Novelspotters ; RomanceJunkiesReaders ; paranormalromance.com… the latter is the group that votes for the PEARL awards. Join before December for your vote to be counted on favorite books for 2006.

Wherever you go -- and this is my best and most delicate marketing advice -- remember that you never know who is watching you and reading your posts. You only get one change to make a good first impression.

Enter contests for the advice you will receive. Write gracious and positive thank-you notes to your anonymous judges, even if you don’t particularly agree with what well-intentioned critics are telling you.

Start your future mailing list early (always with the consent of your correspondents) so that you will have friends when you need them…when you are getting the word out about your forthcoming release.

Lock in your own name for your website before you become famous. You do not want to have to be www.theofficialyourfirstnamelastname.com.

Above all, Persist, Network and say “thank you” often and as graciously as possible.

And with that, I would like to say a big Thank You for your time and interest today to everyone reading this, and to Romance At Heart for giving me this delightful opportunity to talk about myself and about my January 31st release, INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL.

Thank you very much for taking the time with us, Rowena, and answering our questions. I really appreciate this interruption to your busy schedule. Good Luck with Insufficient Mating Material when it comes out in January or next year, and we will be looking forward to the next delightful creation from your talented imagination! Will it be another Futuristic like Insufficient Mating Material?

Yours in good reading,
Rose!

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