Guest Blogger: Author Christiane France

Please welcome my friend and fellow anthology partner, Christiane France. I hope you'll ask her a lot of questions and check out all her books. Be sure to enter her contest.

1) Please tell us how you came to move from England to Canada. Please tell us if there’s a big difference in the two countries and what they are.

When my husband was demobilized from the Royal Air Force, work was hard to find in the UK. Our chances seemed better in Canada, so dh got a job here and we came over. We lived first in the Ottawa Valley, the small town of Renfrew, but once his contract was finished, we went to Montreal and lived there for ten years. Then, a work-related issue brought us to Hamilton in the Niagara Escarpment where we're only 40 miles from Niagara Falls and the US border and Buffalo.

There are, of course, many differences between the UK and Canada, but we've been here so long now, I don't think about them much any more. One thing I do recall is that I hated Canadian chips--I thought they tasted like salted paper, because, for those who're familiar with Miss Vicky's chips, that's how they were in England. Also, fruit and veggies in North America (and that's both Canada and the US) do not have the depth of flavor of their English counterparts. It apparently has something to do with dampness over there.

2) What is your normal day like? Do you have a writing routine?

Now that I'm officially retired, my days are anything but routine. I envy people who do so many pages or hours of writing per day, but that's not me. I have to make myself write and that's not always easy. So, I get up when I feel like it, have breakfast, play with my 2 kitties, check my e-mail, and then I do a little housework, or I go shopping, or some days, if I'm on a deadline, I go straight to writing. And then there are those days when I just hang out.

3) What do you do to relax when you’re not writing?

Read, knit, shop, watch TV.

4) Which do you prefer to write? Mysteries or erotic romance?

I really prefer to write mysteries, but there's not much market for them at the moment, unless you're with a NY publisher and your books are in the bookstores, so I'm happy thinking up romantic entanglements for all my imaginary characters.

5) What are you working on now?

My next erotic romance is due out in February - Double Delicious is a menage story about an out-of-work radio host and announcer who meets her two very hunky and handsome neighbors, can't figure out which one she likes best, and then, joy of joys, discovers she can have them both.

March will see the release of Sabotage - another erotic romance, but this time the setting in WWII England and the main characters are an MI5 agent and an Italian prisoner of war.

I then have five more erotic romances contracted for this year--one will be a regular contemporary romance and the other four will be gay m/m. The one I'm working on right now, involves a a gay man twisting between some very conflicting emotions--guilt for starting an argument which he feels contributed to his partner's accidental death, self-directed anger for giving in to instant attraction and not realizing the man was playing him, and fear at the thought of moving on with his life in case he repeats his mistakes.

6) Do you have any tips for new writers?

Yes! Competition is fierce, but you need more than a well-written, exciting story to achieve your dreams of publication. You need to put a smile on the acquiring editor's face and to do that, I suggest you use your spell check--and if you use M/S WORD pay attention to any green underlining which identified grammatical problems; do your research--do not assume because you don't know something the reader won't either; try to learn the difference between "telling" and "showing"; watch out for too many passive sentences, e.g. "He/She was walking/driving/running etc." or "They were..."--too many passive sentences slows the story down to a crawl. And finally, before you submit your story to a publisher, go through the manuscript very carefully, figure out how many times you used the word "that" and take out at least half of them.

7) What are your goals for the future?

To win the lottery. Make the NY Times best seller list. I don't know, I just try to take each day as it comes and be grateful for what I have--a wonderful husband, a good life, two wonderful kitties aka The Boys, and a total of 18 published works.

Cool mysteries and hot romance - http://www.chrisgrover.ca
Latest Release: INSEPARABLE - http://www.amberquill.com http://www.myspace.com/185513895
http://chrisgrover2.bebo.com/

CONTEST NEWS: I'll give away a download--reader's choice. I'll pick one name from those who contact me.

Thank you, Chris, for being my guest blogger today. I enjoyed chatting with you. I hope you’ll come back. Good luck with your many books.

Ashley

Please read the following excerpt by Christiane.

Inseparable
by Christiane France
ISBN-13: 978-1-60272-134-0 (Electronic)

When Alison Palmer flees to England to escape the financial mess left by her late, philandering husband, she is, to use her own words, plain flat on her ass. With no money and no job training of any kind her future looks pretty grim—until she gets a job house-sitting Foxton Hall and meets handsome Nick Berringford and his deceased, identical twin brother, Nathan.

Nick and Nathan’s parents once owned the Hall, and the twins were planning to buy it back. But before that could happen, Nathan was involved in a freak accident and died. Now, rumor has it Nathan’s ghost not only haunts the bedroom where he died, but the ghost is gaining a reputation for making love to any woman who happens to sleep there.

At first, Ali thinks she’s having sexy dreams about the live twin, Nick, until Nathan introduces himself, and Ali realizes she’s as much in love both the ghost and his twin, and the trio are quickly caught up in a ménage a trois.

Nick knows Nathan’s spirit is trapped in the Hall and that’s why he’s also never left the village—he won’t desert his brother. They are, in fact, inseparable. But what will happen if Nick’s bid to buy back the Hall is successful? Will Nathan’s unfinished business cause him to disappear out of their lives for good?