Hanging Out With Dianna Love!!!

Ceud mìle fàilte! A hundred thousand welcomes to you, TLN'ers!

No need to go looking for rainbows, I got your pot o' gold right here!

Please help me welcome DIANNA LOVE and her soon-to-be released SILENT TRUTH to the TLN Hot Seat!

We're definitely sitting rich in luck, my friends. Not only is the lovely Ms. Love dishing up some smokin' hot advice, she's giving away an autographed copy of either PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT or WHISPERED LIES and an "I'm in a BAD mood"T-shirt to TWO lucky commenters!!

Talk about finding a four leaf clover!

So, grab yourself an Irish coffee and a wedge of Guinness Porter Cake! Let's get this party started!

1) If you were a book, what would your blurb be?

For Dianna Love, life is an adventure to be lived with passion in every moment. She’s always liked to do things big, spending her days 100 feet in the air creating three-dimensional advertising projects for Fortune 500 Companies. Gravity was her biggest challenge until the fateful day she came face to face with her muse while painting a billboard.

Now Dianna has signed on for the ultimate adventure—teaming up daily with her muse to write big romantic thrillers and urban fantasy. Powering through life with a high-energy drive, Dianna will stop at nothing in the epic battle to write her best book every time, tell the story that’s true to her characters, and give readers the ride of their lives.

2) Using three words, describe your voice.

Intense, emotional and exciting

3) What has been the biggest obstacle you've had to overcome in your writing career? What's been the highlight?

My biggest obstacle is the constant worry of “is this the best this story can be?” I always think there’s a way to twist it again or deepen the emotion.

As for highlights, I’ve been very fortunate to have had some wonderful moments that help balance out a few really low times along the way since deciding to write that first novel.

Winning a RITA® and hitting the NYT best seller list are hard to top, but there are two times that will always stick with me. The first one was when I won a Golden Heart® award [the highest award given by Romance Writers of America® in different categories for an unpublished manuscript] with the first book I wrote, because my husband was there to see me win and it was at that moment I started thinking I might get published. The second moment was when Sherrilyn Kenyon asked me to collaborate with her on a high concept romantic thriller series. Those are moments you don’t forget because they are so personal.

4) If you had to start all over again, what's the one thing you've learned that would be the most beneficial?

If I were to do this again, I would be more judicious about balancing volunteering and my free time. I believe in volunteering and giving back to the organizations that helped me get started, but I allowed myself to be too heavily committed for a couple years. Even when you’re unpublished, you owe it to yourself to hold firm on your writing time. I just made myself crazy meeting all my commitments and getting my writing done. It would have been nice to get a little free time along the way to allow my muse to rejuvenate.

5) What's been the best writing/career advice you've ever received?

Trust your voice and protect your writing. Critique partners are the best – bless those who have been so much help to me over the years. But they are of far greater help once you gain enough experience to know your story and your strength/weaknesses to be able to utilize their advice and feedback without damaging the magic in a story.

6) Give us a little sneak-peek into you writing process. Pantser or plotter?

Since I developed the Break Into Fiction® Power Plotting program with Mary Buckham, I have to weigh in as a plotter. That being said, I am actually what I think of as a hybrid. I believe in a writer figuring out their “process” for creating a story then sticking with it – regardless of what that process is called.

There are many variations of plotting and pantsing [writing by the seat of the pants]. We created Break Into Fiction ® for both types. Once I have an idea who the characters are in a story, I like to write a chapter or two to get a feel for the world, the emotions, anything that anchors me into that story deeper. Then I start plotting.

I tend to plot very complicated and twisted stories so once I know where all the threads go I feel free to write at will. Just because a plot point might be that the protagonist finds X that creates a question about Y that will lead him/her a step closer to stopping the villain – there are a hundred ways to write that scene.

I don’t want to spend days writing 100 pages I might have to throw away because I went down the wrong rabbit trail. That would ruin writing for me. BUT – that is part of the process for a pantser and knowing in advance what will happen often ruins it for the pantser. Neither process is right or wrong…just different.


7) (This is for the fan and the angler in me!) What's the biggest fish you've ever landed and where? What sort of rigging do you favor? Do you have a certain species you like to catch above all others?

I love, love, love to fish. Don’t get me started. I grew up in Florida with a fishing pole in my hands. I’ve caught bull reds [largest of the redfish family] that weighed over forty pounds and a tarpon years ago that went over a hundred (did not mount it) and some hefty sharks, but I love light tackle fishing.

I really enjoy using a spec rig to catch speckled trout or a redfish rig to catch the slot size redfish. I love to fish with a bobber, too. If the wind picks up and it’s a good place for some big reds or other drum fish, I like to use a Carolina rig (just like you rig for fresh water bass fishing). That’s all saltwater fishing.

If I’m bass fishing I really love to watch a bass hit a top water plug. We limited out on specks by noon one day last November when my husband and I were saltwater fishing down in Delacroix, Louisiana at the camp of some dear friends who live in Biloxi near my family. That was a lot of fun and we’re still eating on the trout.

8) What can Dianna Love followers look forward to this year? Dish up the good news!

Silent Truth is the latest romantic thriller in the Bureau of American Defense series coming out April 20, 2010. Here’s a quick peek at Hunter and Abbie:

“Do you have some aversion to traveling like a normal person?” Abbie shouted at Hunter over the retreating helicopter that was turning into a speck of light in the moonless night. Didn’t the pilot wonder about dropping two people in the middle of nowhere?

In the middle of freezing ass nowhere.

Really. This place might not have a zip code for another decade.

They were in mountains and she’d seen snow-tufted trees all around this open patch when the spotlight under the helicopter had swept the frozen terrain right before they landed. The temperature had to be around low thirties or upper twenties.

“Move over here.” Hunter’s voice came through the dark quiet as a spirit, but with the bite of a general’s order.

“Like I can see where you’re talking about?” She couldn’t see the frost that had to be coming out her mouth.

His fingers cupped her arm.

She jumped. And screeched.

“Who’d you think had touched you?” He held onto her arm, but didn’t try to move her.

She would not let him know how close she was to losing it. There were scarier things in life than fear of being alone in the dark and almost getting killed twice in one night, like not seeing her mother alive by the time Abbie got out of this mess.

Hunter tugged a little to get her stepping forward then hooked his arm around her waist to guide several more steps. How could he see anything? “Be careful. Don’t move or you could fall and hurt yourself. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.” Maybe she should let him know she had a limit when it came to terror and hers had been pushed over the top too many times in the last twelve hours. “Don’t leave me in the middle of the woods in the dark. Something might attack me.”

“Not unless it’s deaf. Could you hold it down some?”

“Who could possibly be here?” she shouted. Was he serious?

The quick shush of air that blew past her ear sounded like a irritated sigh. Maybe a tired sigh.

She’d never been a nag and didn’t care for coming across like one now, but it was damn cold and pitch-freakin’-black. “Sorry, I just can’t see anything.”

“That’s why I told you not to move.” He said each word carefully, as though she had stepped on his last good nerve.

Her patience had been ground to bits over the past hour and a half, too.

She’d fallen asleep on the jet’s sofa while waiting on him to return from the cockpit so she could demand he tell her the truth about having met her somewhere before.

He was lying. She didn’t remember meeting him and had never begged a man to take her home for a night.

How would any woman not remember sleeping with Hunter?

Besides, even if she was the kind of woman who habitually jumped into the beds of strange men Hunter might fit her physical criteria, but he was cold as a stone inside.

He hadn’t even come back to finish their conversation before landing, just sent the flight attendant with this gargantuan flight suit and orders from Hunter to put it on.

When Abbie hesitated, the flight attendant had given her the last of his message. “This is your ten-minute warning to get dressed. You’re leaving in whatever you’re wearing when we land.”

The jet touched down at a small airport with one hangar, a single-level brick building and a barely-lit runway. In less than a minute after landing, Hunter rushed her from the cozy jet to a waiting helicopter that was one-degree warmer than a refrigerator.

The same helicopter that dumped her in this godforsaken hole.

“Abbie?”

She might be cranky, but who wouldn’t be at this point? “What?”

“Are you going to stand still when I leave you?”

“What country am I in?”

He muttered something that sounded four-letter short. “United States.”

“What city?”

“TMI for now. The sooner you let go of me the sooner we’ll get out of here.”

She didn’t realize she’d been clutching his arm. She let go and tried to stick her hands in her pockets, but those were somewhere around her knees. “Why can’t I go with you? Where are you going?”

“To. Get. Our. Vehicle.”

If his face looked anything like his voice sounded he was grinding his jaw muscles.

Transportation. That raised her comfort level. “Okay, I’ll wait...maybe. Unless I hear something.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Do you have matches or something that lights up, like maybe a key light...or...something?” she asked, her voice trailing off in the silence. She hated to feel afraid. Just pissed her off.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Southern Illinois.”

“On a farm, right?”

“Yes. What of it?” She hadn’t forgotten his snobbish “no” when she asked him if he’d owned a farm.

“Isn’t that out in the country?”

She saw where he was going with this and cut him off. “A farm is not in the wilderness with bears or mountain lions or whatever lives here that have teeth big enough to rip a person to shreds.”

Another sigh. This one parted her hair.

They were getting nowhere arguing. Someone had to make peace.

“I’m sorry, I’m just...” Her teeth chattered. Her head felt like an explosion waiting for a fuse. She hugged her middle ready to make another stab at convincing him to take her with him.

His fingers curled around her arm again, but this time he pulled her to him and wrapped her up against his chest.

Yes, yes, and oh hell yes.

Well, hey, hey! Nothing like a little snuggle from a hottie with a naughty body to get your motor running! Wowza! Sign me up for that trip!

I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Dianna for taking the time out of her busy schedule to hang out with the novices today!! Another thank you goes to the awesome Cassondra Murray for all of her help and patience. If you'd like to learn more about Dianna Love, please check out her website: http://www.authordiannalove.com/!

THANK YOU, TLN'ers!! I hope your St. Patrick's Day is a blast! Go enjoy some Corned Beef and have a pint or two of green beer! To get you in the mood for a rousing good time, here's THE DUBLINERS croonin' THE BLACK VELVET BAND! (one of my personal favs!)

Tabhair aire --Stay safe, take care-- and we'll meet ya back here next week!

Psst: Don't forget to leave a comment to be entered to win. The TWO lucky commenters will be announced Thursday AM! Cheers!