INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAYS with CAROLINE HANSON AUTHOR OF VALERIE DEARBORN TRILOGY - SELF PUBLISHED - AWESOME URBAN FANTASY TRILOGY

I would like to welcome Caroline Hanson author of the Valerie Dearborn Trilogy to Novels On The Run. Caroline has also kindly donated 3 x TRILOGY's to GIVEAWAY . Yes, that would be the set of her Valerie Dearborn ( 3 digital books x 3 winners each receiving the whole trilogy)

Woooot!!! Thankyou Caroline.

Her Trilogy is also currently $2.99 on Amazon .Now you could be a duffah and buy them individually, but that would cost a lot more than the current set for $2.99!!! Does not include the novella # 2.5.

The lovely Jenn Green put me onto this series and WOW!! I just love it! I have my reviews for Love is Darkness #1, Love is Fear # 2, Love is the Beginning # 2.5 ( wee novella ) HERE 

The books get better and better. The plot WOW!! I have my review for Love Is Mortal # 3 coming shortly.

Caroline is an author that should be published , she really brings it to the table. 

Grab your popcorn and sit back and have a read of the Q & A and then enter the giveaway . It is INTERNATIONAL!!!

INTERVIEW

Hi Caroline, thankyou for taking the time to answer my Q & A’s , much appreciated J 

Michelle:   I am a huge Urban Fantasy fan and PNR fan and I love Patricia Briggs, J.R Ward, Karen Marie Moning and I now put you into my fave author lists. What author would you like to meet and shoot the breeze with and what topic would you choose?

Caroline:  Thank you!! That’s the big girl list! I would love to swear up a storm with J.R. Ward but the ultimate author meet for me would be Laurell K. Hamilton. Her Anita Blake series changed my reading life. I have read them over and over again. I am a huge Jean-Claude fan. (Richard blows-- unless he decides to go for a threesome with JC, then he’s alright)

IMO, she laid the groundwork for where the UF genre is now. Very deep POV’s, tortured men, kinky sex and insanely long conversations where everyone’s baggage is chucked out on the table and talked about. She’s amazing.

Michelle:  Which of your characters did you find the hardest to write and why? 

Caroline:  Now there is a question! The easiest characters to write are Rachel, Jack and Valerie. I also adore writing Marion because that bitch cracks me up! The hardest to write would be Lucas and Cerdwellyn.

I think the sex scene in Love is Fear took me four months to write. 

I spent all of this time building up Lucas to be this hot-shot in bed, to have centuries of experience, and then he was going to sleep with Valerie in a calculated way. Which meant he was going to blow her mind, and I kind of felt like I wrote myself into a corner, because how the hell would he have sex? Like, what does this guy do in bed that is so amazing?

That was also a big emotional turning point for both Lucas and Valerie, so not only was Lucas supposed to be in control, uber-hot and Casanova-like, we also had to see cracks in his façade as he became more and more emotional as the sex went on. And on. I think the sex scene went on to be about 30 pages Lol.

I must interrupt here and go oh whahhhh!! Yes that was a most hot, lengthy scene,  I can most certainly see why it took a while to get it right. It felt like a lot of work had gone into it. It was rather amazing.

Michelle:  Juicy Lucas, don’t tell him I called him that, really grew on me the more I read your series. I was at times torn between Jack and Lucas. I think of Lucas as a Jericho Barrons type character from Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. 

They both are after something, they appear to use the girl to get to what they need, but does the impossible happen and they form feelings, they are both uber smexi in the bedroom department and they both know how to play the mental game with the girl.

Caroline:  Oh yeah and who doesn’t love a man like that! At least in a book. I loved the fever series, but I did not believe that Barron’s settled down at the end. Him working a barbecue? I didn’t buy it. I think the reason people loved Edward so much was because they could imagine waking up next to him two years down the road, when the sex had lost some of its shiny newness. This is a spoiler for the third book-- but I wanted my fans to believe that Lucas was the guy who would go the distance. To a certain extent, that bastard really hijacked my book.

Valerie was supposed to wind up with Jack. But for some reason, as soon as I started the second book the love triangle fell apart.

Michelle:  Do you have any other works, new series in the pipeline that you can tell us about?

Caroline:  Oh yes! I’m hoping to finish up the first book in a time travel series soon. It’s called A Lady Out of Time. Our heroine is a tough girl, born to be a soldier and she gets sent back to Victorian England and has to blackmail a handsome yet stuffy Duke who has no idea what to make of her and her modern sensibilities.

Like the Dearborn series, I think it’s a rebellion against the same tropes I had read over and over again. I love Regency romance, but am so sick of the sheltered virgin who has an orgasm the first time out. I want my heroine to be relatable and I think that is something that genre is missing.

Michelle:  Where were you and what were you doing when Valerie Dearborn idea came to you?

Caroline:  I’m a huge urban fantasy and paranormal fan, and I felt like I had read just about everything and seen the same darn things over and over again and they were really pissing me off.

I did not want to write another ‘tough girl’ book, where the heroine wakes up and shadow boxes. I was a huge Sookie fan because I wanted to lay out with her in her backyard and get a tan, maybe even go on a trip to Walmart with her.

So I tried to recreate that but from what I know—California and England. Valerie is an ‘every’ girl. She’s not the hottest or smartest chick around. She’s not making the best decisions or running 10 miles on the weekend, she’s just trying to escape her family and have a normal life.

Michelle:  I loved that Australia got a mention in this series. You are an American who lived in London, met the hubby to be and landed back on American soil. Valerie herself lands in London looking for some freedom from what her family wants her to do. Did you draw on any of your own experiences of living in London in your books?

Caroline:  Ummm, maybe. Lol. Yes, I went to college in London and Valerie’s dorm in Hampstead was my dorm. Café Rouge and the cemetery that Val passes were all places that I walked by every day. I went back to England in May and spent the day walking around Hampstead and it was very surreal to have my memories replaced with these characters.

Michelle:  What songs describes best, Lucas , Jack and Val each.

Caroline:  Oh, there are so many to choose from. I am a huge Florence and the Machine fan. I went through a phase where I could not listen to her unless I was sitting at my computer because I would instantly be back in Val’s world. In terms of Love is Darkness, Val and Lucas’ song was Rabbit Heart.

For Love is Mortal, the moment I heard Seven Devils I thought it summed up Valerie’s current situation. She had seven devils all around her and she’d be dead before the day was done.

I love this song!!

Powerful.

Whenever I hear the song Four to the Floor by Starsailor I think of Jack. There is a sort of desperate determination to it that Jack’s character embodies.

Michelle:  If Valerie Dearborn was made into a movie, could you cast your ideal, Val, Lucas , Jack and the manic Marion for us?

Caroline:  Oh I can! But I don’t know if it’s a good idea since my actors may not match everyone else’s.

The hardest person to cast, for me, is Valerie. Yeah, that’s all I got.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

The easiest one for me to cast is Lucas. In my mind, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who play’s Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones has been Lucas since book 2. I play a lot of tennis, and at first when I was writing Love is Darkness I had a crush on Robin Soderling. And he encapsulated some of the nordicness that I like.

Cerdwellyn is Roger Federer. Which most people seem confused by. For me, Roger is graceful. And he is totally self-contained. He can be winning or losing and you will never know how he is feeling. He just doesn’t let it show on his face. And I love that. You count him out, think he’s gonna lose, and then he comes back.

As for Marion, I would kind of like Florence Welch to play her.

Jack is hard. Every now and again I see a picture of Ryan Kwanten and I think—that’s him! But he’s tough.


Michelle: 10 words that describe Caroline Hanson the author. 

Caroline:  Happy, miserable, indecisive, decisive, stressed out, relaxed. That’s all I got, but I think you get the picture. Every writing day is a series of highs and lows. It’s a peculiar profession because it’s so isolated and yet the people in my head won’t shut up.

Michelle:  Have you ever people watched, sitting somewhere and that person became one of your characters?

Caroline:  No, I can’t say that I have. I guess Roger Federer as Cer is as close as it gets. But having him as the inspiration for the character actually bit me in the ass. Cerdwellyn is still an enigma to me (much like Roger Federer) and I wish he wasn’t. Usually, I see an actor later and think ‘oh that’s totally them!’ but I don’t people watch.

Michelle:  Is there a quote that describes your philosophy on life? 

Caroline: 

 Fate is a future one didn’t try hard enough to change. 

I love that. That we don’t have to be hostage to our past, we just have to keep fighting the good fight. Like right now, I’m fighting to put down a candy bar.

Michelle:  Would Caroline rather be a vampire or an empath, and why? 

Caroline:  Tricky. Probably a vampire since they seem to have more fun. The appeal of the empath, at least for my mythology, is that they can make a vampire emotional. The idea of someone very in control and losing it is sexy. That’s what 50 shades is all about, and what makes being an empath interesting. It’s fair to say that Lucas is afraid of empaths and the feelings she would evoke if he drank her blood and I think that’s a nice contradiction, that she is physically weak but could take him down.

Michelle:  Have you a media tip for the up and coming author?

Caroline:  I’m a terrible person to ask! I do very little marketing, because it makes me crazy. I suppose the best thing I could say is spend a lot of money on your cover. It’s worth it. The reader will only take you as seriously as you take yourself.

Your covers are designed by Phatpuppy and they are gorgeous.


Thankyou Caroline for answering my Q’s , I look forward to more of your works in the future J

Michelle


GIVEAWAY TIME

INTERNATIONAL

If you are an UF fan
I highly recommend this trilogy

a Rafflecopter giveaway