Angela: I live in upstate South Carolina with my handsome cop husband and my twenty-year-old son. I was a reporter for thirteen years, but now that my career is taking off – MASTER OF THE MOON is on its third week on the USA Today list, as of this writing – I have quit my Stupid Day Job.

Bee: Your bio notes that you were first published through Red Sage. How did you find them - or rather, how did they find you?

Angela: I was at the Moonlight and Magnolias conference, and had just been sent packing after a disastrous editor interview with a Harlequin editor. I found a flyer for Red Sage, which was trying to get the Secrets line of erotic romance anthologies off the ground. Well, I knew I could write sexy, so I submitted a proposal. Alexandria Kendall loved my novella, and I’ve been writing for her ever since.

My sixth novella in Secrets will appear this December. It’s called SOUL KISSES, and is the sequel to my Red Sage novel, FOREVER KISS. The heroine is Beth Chase, the sister of the FK heroine.

Bee: Since you were originally in newspaper as a writer, do you miss that type of reporting since you seem to be enmeshed in romance?

Angela: Yes and no. I enjoyed the adrenalin rush of covering breaking news, but I hated having to try to interview a murder victim’s family. That was always just horrible. Romance carries all the adrenalin rush without quite as much angst.

Bee: You mentioned your new book, MASTER OF THE MOON. Tell us about the series and that particular book.

Angela: The Mageverse series starts with the idea that Merlin (as in King Arthur’s Merlin) was actually a dimension-hopping alien out to save humankind from itself. He tested Arthur and his court, and those who passed were given immortality and vast powers in the hope of guiding mankind through its childhood. The knights became vampires, and the women powerful witches. The potential for developing these powers was passed to the court’s mortal descendents. However, the descendents only come into the full powers through sexual contact with the Magekind – the vampires and witches. The Magekind live in an alternate universe called the Mageverse, where magic exists, along with dragons, fairies, unicorns, etc.

MASTER OF THE MOON is the second book in the Mageverse series. Llyr Galatyn, the king of the Sidhe from MASTER OF THE MOON, has come to a small town in South Carolina looking for one of the evil vampires who escaped at the end of MASTER OF THE NIGHT. This evil vampire, a woman, is murdering young men and feeding off their life forces.

Llyr teams up with the city manager of the town, a woman named Diana London – who, it just so happens, is a werewolf. Diana is a volunteer cop who moonlights as a police K-9 while in wolf form. She is powerfully attracted to Llyr, and vice versa, but neither of them think it will go anywhere because he’s king and she’s – well, a werewolf. As Llyr’s grandmother often moans, "My grandchildren would be puppies!" Well, no, but you get the idea. I just hope the readers enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it!

Bee: What gave you the idea to blend Arthurian legend, vampires and a bit of science fiction? This also happened in FOREVER KISS, a blending of a western and vampires with a little Medieval swordplay thrown in. Was there an "AH HA!" moment?

Angela: Well, I have been writing vampires since 1997 for Red Sage. My Red Sage vampire universe is science based (vampirism is caused by a virus), so to keep things fresh, I decided to do magic-based vamps for Berkley. That was a good decision, because by bringing in magic, I was able to bring in all these wonderful magical elements. I grew up reading Arthurian legend, so I decided that would be the perfect playground to play in. And it was! I love knights and swordfights, and this allows me to have lots of fun.

Bee: What other romance writings have you done other than the Mageverse Books?

Angela: Well, there’s my futuristic Warlord universe, which you saw in JANE’S WARLORD. In September, Berkley will publish the sequel to that story, a novella called “Warfem” in the KICKASS anthology. In the Warlord universe, which is set 300 years from now, genetically engineered warriors with computer implants struggle to protect a planet of female pacifists from their violent neighbors.

Bee: E-books seem to be becoming more and more popular. Do you have any thoughts regarding electronic vs. traditional publishing?

Angela: I seriously suspect that e-books are the wave of the future, because the overhead is so low. Print pubs must go to the huge expense of printing, warehousing and shipping books, whereas e-pubs just produce files. An e-publisher friend of mine told me the other day that a print pub spends over $10,000 to print and distribute a book, whereas it costs an e-pub about $250 to sell the same book. The math is obvious.

Bee: I always like it when characters from past books are brought through a series. Will this continue to happen? Your website mentions a novella of Beth’s story from Red Sage ...

Angela: Right, and yes. I love recurring characters too. With "Soul Kisses," Beth gets her happy ever after with not one, but TWO heroes. I wanted to see if I could do a stable, believable ménage with two alpha males, and Alexandria Kendal told me to go for it. I’m really delighted with the results!

Bee: When is your next Mageverse book coming?

Angela: April, 2006. It’s called MASTER OF WOLVES, and it’s about Diana London’s brother. Jim London’s best friend, another werewolf, has been murdered, and Jim believes crooked cops were involved. So he decides to go undercover – as a police drug dog! His handler, a beautiful cop, is in for quite a surprise.

Bee: What advice do you have for aspiring romance writers?

Angela: READ ROMANCES. Read the heck out of the genre. Join RWA and go to the yearly RWA conference, if at all possible. It’s pricey, I warn you - $350 plus the cost of the hotel and the flight. But it’s more than worth it for the four or five days of panels and classes in writing, plus the chance to pitch to editors and agents. If you can’t go to RWA, there are smaller regional conferences like Moonlight and Magnolias in Atlanta, which is where I discovered Red Sage and kicked off my career. So conferences can pay off. So can writing for e-pubs, which give you the chance to hone your storytelling skills until you can tackle New York

Bee: Whom do you read when you have time?

Angela: EVERYBODY. Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, Laurell K. Hamilton, Christina Dodd, Linda Howard, Lois McMaster Bujold, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher ... I could go on and on.

Bee: And my traditional last question: Do you have any preferences for the ReBeL wallpaper?

Angela: I like Rob Ashton and I also think John DeSalvo is really yummy!