Linnea: I've always been a writer. Or rather, I've always been someone with a thousand characters and hundreds of stories running around in her head. Thinking back, I don't doubt my being an only child had much to do with that. I was a voracious reader, and when I ran out of books I listened to the stories in my head. I first put pen - or actually, crayon - to paper when I was about four years old. Wrote and illustrated a story about a little girl and her cat living on a deserted tropical island. With the help of a multi-lingual dictionary my parents had at home, I titled the book "Le Petit Chat." Used my mother's paper punch to make holes, tied the pages together with a ribbon, and voila! Instant published author, at age four.

I grew up on the Jersey shore - Bruce Springsteen/Bon Jovi country, to those of you of the proper age to remember such things. Did my undergrad college in Indiana and grad school in Tallahassee, Florida. But my parents spent all holidays in south Florida since I was a wee kidling, so I think I always knew I'd someday relocate here permanently. So, hmmm, in some ways I've come full circle, coming back to the setting of my first "book." I'm in my tropical paradise with my cats!

Speaking of which, at the moment, there are two: Daiquri (my Maine Coon-Norwegian Forest cat mix) and Miss Doozy (a tiny tiger tabby). Both are 'saved kitties' - all my kitties (at the most we had seven) have been saved kitties. Oh, except for Fat Tammy the Slut (who crossed the Rainbow Bridge a few years back at the age of 23). She was from a neighbor's litter. All others were strays or pound adoptees. Daiquiri (aka The Daq Man) I rescued from some children abusing him in the parking lot of Daiquiri's Consignment Shop in St. Petersburg, Florida, back when I was a private detective and was working at case in that locale. Miss Doozy - who started life with the monniker of Divot, thanks to my golfer hubby - was found by that same golfer hubby in the engine of his car when he was at the Publix (Florida supermarket chain) parking lot, also in St. Pete. Our furpersons are about nine years old as of this writing, and, yes, are definitely King and Queen of the house. We'd have it no other way.

An interesting side note - about a year ago a fan who'd seen photos of Daq alerted me to the fact that he appeared to be also on author Karen Marie Moning's site. Well, don't you know, I go to the site and there's Daq's twin! I have no idea, of course, if he really is related to Karen's Moonshadow (aka Moonie the Coonie). Nor does Karen (we exchanged some wonderful emails over that fact). Karen's site shows some nice photos of Moonie. I need to get more of Daq up on my site, for sure!

Bee: How did you get your first book published? It was WINTERTIDE, I believe.

Linnea: WINTERTIDE was contracted by the Canadian small press publisher, LTDBooks, about six years ago. It was actually written about fifteen years ago, but sat while I pursued life as a news journalist and then as a private detective. I sold the detective agency in 1999 when my husband wanted to pursue a professional golf career, and, with my new avocation of Golf Widow, I returned to writing. Much to my delight, I found the Internet aglow with writer groups and critique groups (if you think writing is a solitary occupation now, try writing in the pre-Internet days!), and WINTERTIDE received some valuable input from both published and soon-to-be published writers. Feeling more confident in the story, I sent it out and LTDBooks responded enthusiastically and quickly. Within a year, it won an EPPIE for Best Fantasy and went on to garner other top spots in writing contests, and received some terrific reviews. All of which pretty much stunned me.

Then in 2004, it was re-released by Medallion Press in mass market paperback (it had been available from LTD only in trade paperback size and e-book) with a fabulous new cover from artist Adam Mock.

WINTERTIDE is a combination coming-of-age and fantasy quest story, which I think has a timeless appeal. It also has a telepathic cat who was modeled after my silver tabby, Friday (who crossed the Rainbow Bridge at age 21).

Bee: You have combined romance, fantasy, science fiction and time travel successfully. Do you find it challenging to jump between settings and technology?

Linnea: Challenging but not difficult - at least not in the sense that I sweat bullets over it. Don't get me wrong - good writing is difficult. Writing tightly, concisely, paying attention to the conflict line, to character development and adding in all the elements of science fiction and paranormal traits is a very intense undertaking. But a lot of that undertaking - for me - is an unconscious effort. My stories bloom in my warped mind rather full grown, in 'technicolor', as we used to say years ago, compete with many assorted (and sordid) nuances. If I craft a story that has romantic, science fiction and magical elements in it, it's not because I sat down one day and said, "Oh, let's put together a story combining these elements." It's because that's the way the story happened in my head. It's born with all those things already squirming around in the plot, already endemic and indigenious to the characters and setting.

That's not to say I don't study the craft of writing - I do. I'm a writing-reference-book junkie. But I use these crafting books after the fact, not before as a boiler plate, for instance.

Bee: Tell us about your new book, AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS. I obtained an ARC of it and it was very time-consuming for me!

Linnea: GODDESS is technically the far future sequel to WINTERTIDE, though both books are stand-alones and you need not read one to enjoy the other, since they do take place, oh, about five thousand years apart. GODDESS was just released December 2005 by Bantam Spectra - you'll find it (and all my Bantam books) in the science fiction shelves, not romance. Even though they are science fiction romance (or romantic science fiction, depending upon which literary camp you dwell in).

GODDESS is Captain Gillaine Davre's story. Like Khamsin in WINTERTIDE, she's a sorceress. Unlike Khamsin, she's fully aware of who and what she is, what she can do and what's she's supposed to do.

She just doesn't want to do it. Where Khamsin hungrily pursued everything magical, Gillie could care less and, in fact, feels burdened by it. So when she's accidentally thrown almost four hundred years into the future and wakes up in a sick bay in a Khalaran space station, she relishes the chance to be "just Gillie" - just an average woman who can have friends and fall in love without the onus of being a top-notch, mageline sorcercess. And without having to wonder if people are her friends just because of what she can do.

Unfortunately for Gillie, there are things worse than being a noted sorceress - she comes to find out that this accident that threw her forward in time and that may well have released her from her responsibilities has also created a new religion: one where her likeness is worshipped as the Goddess Kiasidira by a large portion of the Khalaran people! To add further fuel to the fire (that's what authors do, you know - we're required to torture our characters), the man that Gillie finds herself falling in love with is a devoted followeR of this "false" (to Gillie) goddess. Then a long-time enemy attacks the space station and Gillie has to make a terrible choice: maintain her new, innocent identity but risk hundreds being injured or killed in the upcoming attack ... or reveal the truth and assist the Khalar, knowing full well that by doing so she'll change their culture and lose the man she loves.

Like WINTERTIDE, AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS has garnered a number of awards, five star reviews and Romantic Times BOOKclub magazine gave it it's highest rating of "Gold Medal Top Pick." I hope readers find Gillie's story a fun read.

Bee: In another interview, you did a short synopsis of your books. Would you mind telling us about them too?

Linnea: You have the play by play of GODDESS above. But I'd be glad to recap my others ...

FINDERS KEEPERS: Independent trader Trilby Elliot is making some not-quite-legal modifications to her starfreighter, when an unexpected visitor falls out of space. Literally. He’s crashed onto the uninhabited planet of Avanar in a crippled ’Sko fighter – the last place you’d expect to find a Zafharin military officer because the ’Sko and the Zafharin have been at war as long as Trilby can remember.

Rhis Vanur is your typically arrogant Zafharin. But to Trilby’s surprise, he doesn’t look down on her or her slapdash ship. Still, Trilby’s learned the hard way that even though she found Rhis, she can’t keep him. She’s just a low-budget jump jockey as far as men like him are concerned. She’s not falling for his offer to help ... until Port Rumor reports her best friend missing and Trilby learns that the ’Sko are hunting both her and Rhis. Now they’re in it together for better, for worse – or till death blasts them to oblivion ...

GABRIEL'S GHOST: After a decade of piloting interstellar patrol ships, former captain Chasidah Bergren, onetime pride of the Sixth Fleet, finds herself court-martialed for a crime she didn’t commit – and shipped off to a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. But when she kills a brutal guard in an act of self-defense, someone even more dangerous emerges from the shadows.

Gabriel Sullivan – alpha mercenary, smuggler, and rogue – is supposed to be dead. Yet now this seductive ghost from Chaz’s past is offering her a ticket to freedom – for a price. Someone in the Empire is secretly breeding jukors: vicious and uncontrollable killing machines that have long been outlawed. Gabriel needs Chaz to help him stop the practice before it decimates Imperial space. The mission means putting their lives on the line – but the tensions that heat up between them may be the riskiest part of all.

WINTERTIDE: SORCERY. TREACHERY. LOVE. For centuries, the Infernal War has been waged by witches and sorcerers to control the Orb of Knowledge. The war must end. Then, at Wintertide, the Hill Raiders attack the village of Cirrus Cove.

The sea captain’s daughter is raped, and a child conceived. "If the child is to be who the stones say she will, it’s best I raise her. She will live with me." Bronya the Healer accepts the responsibility of caring for the unborn child. Having read the truth in the Stones, Bronya tends the birth and, in the midst of a maelstrom, takes the babe to her cave. Warded now by the signs and symbols of magick, Bronya keeps the child, Khamsin, safe from the Sorcerer.

On the eve of Khamsin’s eighteenth birthday, the Hill Raiders, those who wreaked havoc upon her mother, come again. They murder the inhabitants of her village, her husband and her family. Blaming Khamsin for witchery, for bringing the scourge down upon them, the survivors of Cirrus Cove nearly take her life. The enigmatic Tinker, selling pots and pans, heals Khamsin. And he accompanies her on a journey that magick omens have directed her to take.

One of them knows the truth. One of them is seeking, just as she is sought. The war for the Orb is about to end. But only love can win it.

Bee: In GABRIEL'S GHOST, there was a wonderful secondary character named Ren. Will he get his own story sometime?

Linnea: Oh, I wish he would. I've had many requests for Ren's story and do have a lot plotted out. But at the moment my publisher has indicated they're not interested in any sequels from me. Hopefully, sales figures - if they're good - and e-mails from readers might encourage them to change their mind.

Bee: In AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS, there was an interesting weaving of religion into the plot line. How did you come up with this twist and was it hard to keep the plot moving while not letting the dogma become too expansive?

Linnea: Yes and no. Great answer, eh? It's as I said in my answer to your third question: stories explode in my head rather full blown. I didn't set out to create an "interesting weaving of religion." I wrote the story as it was - now you're going to really think I'm nuts - told to me by my characters. The impetus for the story came to me during the movie release, a few years back, of the Joan of Arc story. That generated a 'what if' that went something like ... what if an ordinary woman, finding herself in extraordinary circumstances, commits an act of bravery (which is the only option dictated by said circumstances) and then later finds herself erroneously deified because of it? The story deals more with people's reaction to, and perception of, heroes (can we look at how we deify rock stars?) than with religion per se.

But see, that now sounds all kinds of heavy and clunky and esoteric and the book's really not. It's a fun intergalactic romp with a heavy dose of magic.

Bee: Tell us what you read in any spare time that you have.

Linnea: Cherryh. I adore CJ Cherryh's science fiction books, especially her Foreigner Series. She's top on my Must Buy list. I also recently discovered Lee and Miller's Liaden Series, which I find totally terrific! And I just finished Julie Czerneda's A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER, which is Book #1 in her Trade Pact series. Excellent read! Other Must Buys for me in SF&F/PNR include Elaine Corvidae, Robin D Owens, Sherrilyn Kenyon, L.A. Banks and JD Robb.

I also love mysteries (must be the retired private detective in me) and romantic suspence, and read (with delight!) PD James, Anne Perry, Elizabeth Peters and Suzanne Brockmann.

Bee: Will you be doing any book signings or convention appearances this year?

Linnea: I'm definitely doing the Romantic Times BOOKclub conVENTION in Daytona Beach in May, 2006, as I'm on several author panels, and will be part of the big book fair as well. Other than that, I don't have a schedule for 2006 yet, but all my signings and appearances are always listed on the News page on my site.

Bee: Any advice to aspiring writers?

Linnea: Oh, oodles, but primarily I tell them what one of my first crit partners told me: read (and utilize) Dwight Swain's TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER. That's a basic, simply, clear how-to, and if you do 80 per cent of what Swain outlines, I'd be highly surprised if you don't find yourself with publishing contracts on your desk.

Other than that, aspiring writers need to remember that becoming an author is part art, part craft and part business. You need excellent skills in all three areas or it's not going to happen. The art - the inspiration, the muse - isn't enough. All the ideas in the world are worth nothing if you can't put them on paper in a readable, presentable form. And knowing the craft - the grammar, the pacing, understanding conflict - isn't worth a rat's patootie without the passion, the oomph the art provides. The business skills come into play once you've mastered the art and the craft. You need to know markets, you need to understand how and why a manuscript gets sold, you need to be aware of trends, of what's selling. Your book is a commodity, no different than a pair of shoes or a new car. It must be marketable and you must understand how to make it so, or all the art and craft is for naught.

The biggest problem I see in yet-to-be-published writers (and I've judged a number of contests, local and national, as well as worked on crit groups) is they ignore the craft. They don't understand point of view or pacing. They neglect character motivation. They drown opening chapters in backstory. The craft elements of writing are the only ways you have to bring your passion into print. SELF EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (Browne & King), GOAL, MOTIVATION AND CONFLICT (Debra Dixon), and THE 38 MOST COMMON FICTION WRITING MISTAKES (Bickham) are on my reference shelf, and if you're really serious about getting published, I recommend they be on yours. But not just be on the shelf - they should be read, repeatedly, and high-light markered up for quick reference. Mine are ablaze with those day-glo colors.

I know there are hundreds of terrific story ideas out there that need to be in print. I don't consider myself in competition with other authors. Frankly, readers can read 'em faster than we can write 'em. So I encourage aspiring authors to do all they can to get published (by a reputable house) because I believe that reading is an addiction. And the more books that are out there, the more people will read.

Happy reading! and I hope to see you all around my Intergalactic Bar & Grille soon!