I love and adore Landra Graf, and she was so kind to do a guest post for me today! If you caught it on the blog tour, her, um, fem dom Victoria was kind…er…nice…no…well. Victoria interviewed Anabel. I am giving away a copy of one of her books, your choice of What You Need (which stars Victoria) or her new book (WHICH HAS THE BEST TITLE EVER) With This Kilt, I Thee Bed.
So without further ado, here’s the lovely Landra Graf!
Why I Never Use the Word Never
I may have covered this on my own blog at some point, but I want to re-state this because it’s important.
Never and I do not get along. For the mere fact that every time I invoke it’s existence in a sentence never will rear it’s ugly head and remind me that every time I use it I usually end up doing whatever I said I would never do.
Case in point, I vowed to never write a zombie book because I HATE zombies. Can’t stand zombie movies or the Walking Dead. I believe the best zombie is a dead zombie, except I wrote a fairy-tale re-telling involving zombies (never published, but still).
I’ve said other things like, I’d never call into work without a good reason (like being sick or sick child). Yet calling in to take a day off for a book release would not be listed under my definition as a good reason. Telling myself I’ll never forget a friend’s birthday. Ha! Or that I’d never forget to pay a bill. The list can get as long as Pinocchio’s nose during an interrogation.
Leading me to my latest ‘never’ blunder, and one I don’t regret. In a conversation with one of my closest friends (she’s known me since I was 12), we discussed books with Highlanders and I professed with great fan fair to disliking books with Highlanders. I couldn’t stand the language existed as the only main reason Highlander stories threw me off. I was against ‘canna, dinna, ken’ and would therefore boycott all Highlanders and their books.
Then came Nicola Cornick and her highland heroes who didn’t use the canna, dinna, ken triple threat combo. Followed by Jennifer Ashley and her ‘brogue in sound, but not verbiage’ Mackenzies. Alas, I was proven wrong. Highland heroes did exist to tempt me without language barriers. On a cold, November night the story of Rafe and Elise came to me. Followed quickly by his brothers, Innes and Hamish, I had to write these short, erotic tales with a sprinkling of verbal brogue. A few lass and if’n’s here or there naturally flowed. Before I knew it critique partners were reading these stories and telling me I had to publish them some way, some how.
My ‘never’ came back to attack me with a vengeance because not only did I write this story, but I’ve got another, much longer story, planned for next year. This one will feature a pair of female Highland twins, and I’m really excited about this one. Ha! Who’d have ever thought Landra Graf would write historical romance with Highlanders to boot? Not this gal, that’s for sure.
Also don’t try to get me to use ‘never’ in a sentence because I’ll… oops, almost did it. I won’t do that.
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