Danielle Rose-West is in the Romance Author Spotlight

I would like to welcome Danielle Rose-West into the author spotlight.  Danielle is the author of The Fairy Tale Match series.  She joins us this evening to discuss her latest project entitled Phoenix Rising - The Fairy Tale Match Book.  Welcome Danielle.  How did you begin your writing career?

I have always wanted to be a writer. My imagination was always on overdrive, right from when I was a child. I tried to write a book so many times in my life, I’ve lost count. I never thought I would be able to do it. Then one day my husband bought me my own laptop and told me he believed I could do it. He’d read some of my previous attempts and heard my ideas and he thought I had what it took. I just lacked faith in myself.

I realized that if he believed in me that much, I had to believe in myself and really push through my doubts and fears. I started writing Wild Fire. It took a lot of grit and determination, but there was no feeling like it when I came to the end of the book. I wept with pure joy. I had finally done it. I haven’t looked back since. The writing bug has well and truly got me in its grasp and I know it won’t ever let me go!

You are lucky to have a husband who supports your dreams.   I’m happy you overcame the fear of sharing your writing.  How did you come up with the title for your latest book?

It came from one of the characters. The story is all about Rhys and his past. He was my main inspiration for the whole book. When I first dreamed him up, he felt very special. I could picture him so clearly in my head. I knew he had a tattoo on his shoulder of a phoenix rising from the ashes (which is there for a reason). Suddenly the title sprang out at me. Phoenix Rising was so apt to describe the book and Rhys. It was just perfect.

How did you come up with the idea for this book? 

It was inspired by someone I know. He had a terrible childhood and was caught up in gang life from around the age of twelve. His family don’t even know he’s been through these terrible experiences. It was horrifying to realize what he’d been involved with and what he’d done during his years with this gang. It was like listening to fiction and hard to imagine he’d really been through this stuff. Thankfully, he’d extracted himself from the gang and lives a normal life now, but it has affected him nonetheless.

His story inspired Rhys and his background. I also wanted to highlight the dreadful things families go through when gangs are a part of their life. So many children are killed every year on the street because of gangs. It is a huge problem. This is what created the backdrop for the entire story. Rhys has a background of being involved in gangs and the heroine, Taylor, is facing these kinds of problems with her half siblings, for whom she is the guardian. It is a very emotional story which winds around real life situations, despite the fairy tale and magical element to it.

The synopsis is compelling! What can you tell us about your main characters?

Rhys Spencer is a man on a mission to save a charity he has set up for kids involved in gangs. It is so important to him. He feels he needs to atone for his past. He requires a trust fund his grandmother has withheld from him, until he proves himself responsible. In her mind, this means being in a stable relationship. Rhys decides to fake one, as he doesn’t have much time in order to save his charity. This is the reason he goes to The Fairy Tale Match, a dating agency run by fairy godmothers, but of course he doesn’t know that!

Rhys is an honorable man with a past. He hates being judged by the wealthy family that he comes from. Rhys wants to be seen for who he really is. Boy, did he give me plenty of problems to find his character and write about him! He really made me work hard to capture him. It was a labor of love.

Taylor is the heroine. She is the guardian to her two half siblings since her father and their mother died in an accident. She is strong and independent, but she is also buckling under the strain of keeping two rebellious teenagers in hand. The last thing she wants is romance, especially after a past betrayal, but her friend enters her in a competition for a dating agency and to her horror she wins a match as a prize. The man is due to stay with her in her own home for three weeks. She is determined to kick him out, but Rhys won’t let her order him around.

Taylor certainly goes through a huge amount of change that Rhys inspires in her. Neither one likes the other too well when they first meet, but as their lives are entwined, it soon changes and they are drawn to each other.

Flo and Lotta are the fairy godmothers that are assigned to Rhys and Taylor. They run through the entire series The Fairy Tale Match. Lotta is a straight laced, by the book fairy godmother, while Flo is more flamboyant. She drives Lotta wild with her crazy schemes, yet the two work together so well. What one lacks, the other makes up for. They are such a great team. I love writing about them.

Of course, there is a whole cast of supporting characters, each extremely rich, colorful, and add texture to the whole book. I won’t go into all those now, but I loved every one of them so much. I still miss them.

I understand.  The characters we create are a part of our heart and soul.  It’s difficult to part ways once the book is completed. Would you tell us about other books within this series?

 It is the third book in my The Fairy Tale Match series, but it can be read as a stand-alone novel. The series is all about fairy godmothers that run a dating agency. They have had to adapt to the modern world in order to still help their charges to find their true loves. Females are given magical gifts when they are born to help them in life. The fairy godmothers found that the gifts didn’t work so well for males, so they haven’t been given to male babies for generations. It just so happens that Rhys was given one by mistake!

I love this series and Flo and Lotta, my two fairy godmothers that run throughout the books. I have one more planned for this series and then two spin offs that take Flo and Lotta down a different route. I am so looking forward to penning the first in the new twist on The Fairy Tale Match. It’s promising to be great!

 I would like to write a mystery novel, yet I continue to write romance.  Do you have any interests in writing other genres?

I love romance at the heart of all my books, but I do delve into other kinds of stories. My Haunted by the Past series are mysteries with a paranormal twist. I like doing things that are unusual. The new series I am working on has a time travel and magic twist. I also have a lot of ideas for other series. I will always end up putting romance in the books, but it isn’t always the main focus. Often with my mystery series, it’s the mystery and the danger that is center stage, with romance wound up in it on the side. I love writing and crafting those. I have been pleased that so far nobody has said they guessed the end of either book. For me, that’s a job done! I am toying with maybe drifting into an adventure series. I have one in mind….

It sounds like your writing plan will keep you busy for years. Do you need visual media to describe people or places? (Some authors use pictures out of magazines)

I don’t usually use visual media to describe people. I can normally see my characters very clearly in my head. However, I do use it quite often for places or processes. It can be a real help with something I’ve never seen before, but is part of the book. For example, in Forever You, the hero Darius owns an olive farm. I wanted to involve the heroine in his problems with the farm and in part of the book he takes her on a tour of his facilities and describes how oil is made. I’d never been to one, so I watched a video on YouTube to see how they made the oil and where etc. It added a lot of texture to the scene.

I also used a blue print for a Georgian house when I wrote Hidden in Shadows, which is the first book in my Haunted by the Past series. It helped me to picture the house and place the rooms within the structure of the building. I love to see visuals of buildings I use or to watch a video about something I am unfamiliar with. I believe visual aids are amazingly useful. You can’t beat a picture for making it clear in your own head. It then becomes so easy to find the words to paint the picture in your reader’s head. I also learn quite a bit through this kind of research. I am especially using it for a time travel novel I am currently writing. Films also help a lot with that book, so I can picture the clothing, castle etc.

Do characters invade your head the moment you stumble on a new writing idea?  If so, how long did you fear that you’d gone insane before realizing this is the norm for writers?

They certainly do. They live with me throughout the entire book. I am always working with them and finding out how the next piece of the plot will unwind. I have always found this normal. I wanted to be a writer for so long and always dreamed up stories and ideas my whole life. It’s just got worse now that I complete my books! My family is used to me drifting off into what they call ‘book land’. The number of times they give up speaking to me because I have that glazed look about me, are too many to count.

How long did it take you to write your current novel?

On average, it takes me about two months to complete a new book. Phoenix Rising was the most difficult and the easiest book I ever wrote. I actually tried writing it before I wrote Shadow of Suspicion, but I could not feel the characters at all, especially Rhys. I wrote forty five pages and I hated everything I’d written. It was all wrong. The dynamic between Taylor and Rhys was awful. I decided to leave it alone while I wrote the other book.

I came back to Phoenix Rising and binned the whole of what I’d previously written. I changed the role for some characters and the slant of the story. The main bones of it remained the same. What I ended up with was a story that simply flowed from my head to the page. It was like Flo and Lotta had waved their wands over me. I have never written a book quite so fast or with such flow. It was amazing. That book holds such a special place in my heart. I loved every word of it.

Do you have specific techniques you use to develop the plot and stay on track?

My imagination! I work through every part of the book like a film in my head. I will also research on the internet aspects of the story that I want to be completely accurate and authentic. If something doesn’t work, I chuck it out and keep on thinking until I find the way the characters and story want to flow. Sometimes the most amazing things have happened in a story that I didn’t see coming, but they fit perfectly. It’s like magic.

I love when characters run the show.  I started writing a suspenseful novel where the boyfriend was the murderer. Halfway through the manuscript, we (the voices in my head and me) decided it had to be someone else.  I guess we can create our characters, but we cannot tell them what to think.  :}  What else are you working on?

I am currently working on the third book in the Haunted by the Past series. The story follows Jade, who was introduced in Shadow of Suspicion. She has no memory of her past before the age of fourteen. She was found with blood all over her, but nobody could find out what had happened to her and nobody came to claim her. Ten years on, she suddenly finds her past catching up with her and someone is manouvering her and forcing her to recall the events that took place all those years ago. She is terrified to learn the truth of what happened. The hero, Slater, gets wrapped up in her troubles when he is hired to find her. It’s a great mystery and one I am really enjoying writing. This one is quite spooky!

I am also writing a time travel novel that is the first of a new series and involves magic. This is quite a challenge for me, so I don’t know when it will be finished. I do love the concept and the challenge, so I will keep working away on it. I have a lot of other ideas for new series too and I still have more to come for Haunted by the Past and The Fairy Tale Match. I never want to be without new ideas to bring my readers and explore myself.

What tools/methods have you employed to promote your book? What advice would you give to writers regarding promotion? 

I use a number of different promotion methods. I work with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and blogging. I have also done some paid advertisement, but not expensive stuff and not very often. My budget is not huge, as is the case with most writers.

I would say to any writer, be generous to other writers. I help other authors promote their work and they help me. Don’t be selfish. We all need to work to support and assist each other. If you aren’t a generous person who will donate time to help others, they notice and won’t help you back. I have made a lot of author friends who are so lovely and helpful. We share our ideas and promote each other. Writing is lonely if you only care about yourself.

A professor once told me that an author who does not support other authors has a short career. If someone came up to you and wanted to tell you about an idea or a book they were writing, what would you do? Or what advice would you give?

I would tell them to believe in themselves and not give up. There were so many times I let my doubts stop me over the years. I wish I hadn’t done that. Who knows how many books I’d have written or where I’d be now if I hadn’t talked myself out of writing for so long. If you keep writing every day, soon you have a book. It takes practice and discipline.

When I first published, I felt like a fake. I couldn’t say to people that I was an author. It has been a huge learning curve and I have met some wonderful people that have become dear friends along the way. (Musketeers, I salute you and love you all!).

Writing is exciting, terrifying, wonderful, scary, and so many other things, but it is the best thing I have ever done. I achieved a life’s dream. That is an amazing feeling. Now I love it more with every passing day. If writing is in your blood, do it. You will always get great reviews and bad ones. Don’t let the bad ones hold you down. I love supporting new authors and helping them as others have helped me. I wouldn’t want anyone to be a frustrated writer that never completed a book.

Is there anything else you would like to say to your readers?

Thank you for your support. I truly hope you have all enjoyed the books and I am especially thankful to those of you who have taken the time to write to me or review my work. When an author hears how much you love their story, it makes all the hard work so worthwhile. I hope you enjoy my new series and the continuation of my current ones. I love writing for each and every one of you.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me.  I am pleased to meet you and wish you the very best.  I hope readers will check out novels written by Danielle Rose-West.  Below please find links to locate her:

Email: danielle.rosewest30@gmail.com

Blog: http://daniellerosewest.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Danielle-Rose-West/451370021626958

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DRoseWest

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/daniellerosewes/pins/

Amazon Author Page US: https://www.amazon.com/author/daniellerosewest

Amazon Author Page UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Danielle-Rose-West/e/B00EF5GXSO

If you would like to learn more about Phoenix Rising - The Fairy Tale Match Book, please check click over to my blog at www.writergirlkatie.wordpress.com .  Authors wishing to step into the Author Spotlight can reach me, Katie McKnight, on my website (www.katie-mcknight-author.com) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/katiemcknightauthorpage).  Until next time, happy reading!