Author of the Month Interview & Giveaway with Kim Dare

The lovely Kim Dare is our October Author of the Month.

Henceforth, she shall be known as Daisy Bonny Hooves:

the author who put ❤ into 

kink.

Essssited Unicorns are essssited!

Flashdance essssited.

And now for the question and answer portion:

1.  You always seem to choose the most perfect words to show the reader what is happening. There isn't a lot of excess wordage. Do you work at that, agonizing over which words to write, or does it come easily to you? 

It’s probably somewhere between the two. I tend to write first drafts reasonably quickly without second guessing myself over individual words. (On a good day, I draft over 2000 words per hour.) My natural style is quite sparse, so I usually under-write and have to go back and add in a lot of details when I edit—that’s when it becomes about trying to find the right word for a particular situation and a specific character. 

When it comes to excess wordage, I try not to tell the reader things that I think they can work out for themselves. Sometimes I misjudge it and things get complicated, but when that style works, I think it has the potential to work very well.

2.  We loved your Loves Landscapes contribution, any chance you'll be writing more about Xander and Malone? Oh please oh please oh please?

I didn’t originally intend to write anything else about Xander and Malone, but I do have one or two ideas that it could be fun to look into. Maybe I’ll try to fit in a short story or two between my bigger projects  

3.  What projects are you currently working on?

My big project at the moment is a novel called Axel’s Pup. It’s a Male/Male, Human/Werewolf, BDSM erotic romance. It’s far longer than any other project I’ve worked on (it’s currently about twice the length of Duck!), so there’s a bit of a learning curve involved for me. While I love all my characters, I have to admit this one feels special to me. I don’t know if it will prove to be popular, but I do think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. It will probably be released early in 2015.

In the meantime, I have two short stories due to be released in November. Hard at Work is a Male/Male, BDSM, office romance. It’s a cute little story that was really fun to write and it will be released through Resplendence Publishing on November 12^th. 

There’s also a free short story called Tony’s Move that catches up with Tony and Donovan from Worth a Shot that will be posted up on November 2^nd*. It was great to catch up with them and see how things had progressed for them.

4.  For someone as young as you, you're quite prolific. What inspires your work?

I’m not sure about inspiring my work, but the reason I’m prolific is probably an odd one.

I’ve had M.E. (sometimes referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) for over 17 years. For big chunks of time, it’s been toward the more sever end of the spectrum. 

When things are bad you’re caught in a difficult place. You can’t do anything because you’re exhausted, but you can’t sleep because you’re in too much pain. You can’t read to take you’re your mind off it, because you can’t tolerate the light on, and even if you could your vision is too blurry and you’re too exhausted to move your eyes from one end of the line to the other. Even music and audio books become impossible because you can’t tolerate any kind of sound. 

So, all you can really do is lie by yourself in a dark, silent room for days, weeks or even months at a time. 

You can’t think about yourself and how ill you’re feeling, because that’s just depressing. You have to find something else to think about. 

My solution was to make up stories—lots and lots of stories.

5.  What experiences have shaped you as a writer?

I don’t think about it so much as experience, but I think that being aware that there are some people who might need a little extra help finding their happy ending has shaped a lot of what I write.

If the world was a fair and just place, when someone like Ori was being taken advantage of at the nest, someone like Reynard would notice and step in to look after him. 

If things worked the way they should, when someone like Donovan is struggling to put himself back together after surviving an abusive relationship, he wouldn’t be written off as a “pathetic little woobie”, but he’d meet someone like Tony who is willing to take the time to understand and help him.

It’s not always easy to fix big problems in the real world, but in the books you can make sure that each character gets what they need to find their happy ending. I like that.

And I like to be able to write stories where the characters who find their happy endings are people like me. Kinky people, and people who aren’t straight, should be able to live happily ever after too. That’s important.

6.  Do you enjoy, in some sadistic way, writing shorts that leave your readers craving more?

The short answer is no, lol. The long answer is, well, longer.

There’s a few different reasons why I’ve done so many short stories. Some are purely practical. A lot of calls for submissions for particular projects have specific word counts attached to them. And, if certain publishers are only interested in receiving stories of a certain length from you, that’s pretty strong incentive to focus on stories that length. 

Sometimes, a particular idea or scenario simply doesn’t lend itself to a long story. Short stories require less conflict and that can make them fun to write. 

The other reason, and the one I find most difficult to deal with, is that sometimes I just haven’t been physically capable of writing longer works. The longer the story, the more information you have to be able to hold in your head at the same time, the more important it is to be able to work in sustained blocks of time. 

The maths is quite simple. Longer books take stamina, and when you don’t have that stamina, you can’t write long books—no matter how much you might want to. 

Rapid fire questions:

Waffles or pancakes?

I think American pancakes are a bit like what I’d call pikelets. I like those with butter and jam on them 

Coffee or tea?

Tea, always. But hot tea—never understood the logic of the iced version. 

Chains or rope?

Chains. Love the sound they make and they’re far less fiddly than rope. 

Tennis or soccer (football)?

Not a huge fan of either, but I do love the rainbow laces campaign that’s taking place in UK football at the moment. 

Beads or plugs?

Plugs.

Sour candy or sweet candy?

Both 

Floggers or crops?

I prefer the sensation of a flogger, but like the marks left by crops—especially ones with shaped toppers. 

Glitter or tinsel?

Glitter.

Warming lube or flavored lube?

Applied to me or to someone else? Warming for the former, flavoured for the latter.

Unicorns or… some other mythical creature?

Werewolves. Love werewolves. Also partial to avian shifters, lol.

*gasp*

Alright. Werewolves need love too and they have that whole KNOTTING thing going for them so… we unis won't take it personally.

Daisy is a very clever horse with deep, mysterious eyes. She is bonny and bright as the breeze, and she likes to tap dance on rooftops. 

Huge Unicorn thanks to Ms. Dare for agreeing to participate in our glittery, rainbow, fluff filled shenanigans.

And we have a giveaway! One lucky responder (please include your email in the response) will be entered to win both Worth Waiting For AND Worth a Shot in ebook form. If you've already read both, Ms. Dare has graciously offered up her backlist!

Awesome author is awesome.

*This short will initially be released on Amber Kell's blog then on ARe.