Anniversary Shenanigans: Author Visit and Giveaway - Heidi Cullinan

WOOP WOOP!  Today we have the kinktastic Heidi Cullinan visiting with us!  Did she reveal any of her dirty little secrets?  I guess you'll just have to read on to find out.

BMBR: What are your favorite M/M themes?

Heidi: Hmm. I don't know that I have a favorite, but I'm loving new adult/college stories a lot right now, both to read and to write. I'll try about anything, but I don't like overly sad, emo without hope, horror, and I'm a very hard sell on mystery.

BMBR: What books do you consider Desert Island Keepers?

Heidi: For gay romance? When I'm low, I reread everything by KA Mitchell. I lean hard on the Bad in Baltimore series. For books in general, Terry Pratchett. Favorite book in the whole world is Going Postal.

BMBR: What's your go-to tasty beverage?

Heidi: Coffee, but I also love mineral water, flavored and plain. I'd take a San Pellegrino over alcohol any day.

BMBR: Do you have any secret talents? Inquiring minds want to know.

Heidi: Sometimes I can find things no one else can, even from thousands of miles away, and every now and again I'm a baby bit of a medium. Can't talk to ghosts, or even know they're around, but I can see people's loved ones/spirit guides. Like, it's not uncommon for people to post Facebook status updates especially of loved ones passed and pets passed/about to pass, and I get messages. Sometimes they won't shut up until I pass them on. But I actually don't really want to be a medium, so I shut that stuff off as much as I can. Which means I'm kind of a crap one because I don't practice.

BMBR: If you had to choose to be one magical beast, what would it be and why? (you don't have to say unicorn...but we won't say neigh either)
 

Heidi: Oh, unicorn. And I'd ask it to please visit my daughter, because she's the one who would want to see it.

BMBR: Who's your favorite porn star?

Heidi: You know, I really don't have one. Hate to be boring.

BMBR: Do you have author envy? Whose words do you read and think, "GAH, I wish I wrote that!"?

Heidi: Nobody's. I only want to be me, for better or for worse. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are my heroes, but I don't envy them. I want them to be there so I can enjoy them, and if I were them it would just be more work.

BMBR: Any new projects you're currently working on?

Heidi: I just finished Lonely Hearts, Love Lessons #3, and it's out to betas before being turned in to my editor. I'm starting Minnesota Christmas #3 right now, Winter Wonderland, which so far has a May-December relationship and a snow penis. After that I have to finish Clockwork Hearts, which is a steampunk thing which exploded out of me post-surgery in August. Then I'm working on Nowhere Ranch #2 and a standalone new adult which is kind of a gay Pygmalion. All this is supposed to get done before May, which is why I'm staying home as much as possible and working all the time. Which is how I'm happiest, so it works out.

BMBR would like to thank Heidi for stopping by. And she most graciously left a prize behind for one lucky winner - a free ebook copy of her latest release, Sleigh Ride. 

About the author:

Heidi grew up in love with story.  She fell asleep listening to Disney long-playing records and read her Little House On The Prairie books until they fell apart.  She ran through the woods inventing stories of witches and fairies and enchanted trees and spent hours beneath the lilac bush imagining the lives of the settlers who had inhabited the homestead log cabin and two-story late 1800s home on her family farm.  She created epic storylines for her Barbies until it wasn’t satisfying enough to do so any longer (age ten), and then she started writing them down.  Her first novel, The Life and Times of Michelle Matthews, was published when she was twelve in the school anthology and took up nearly half of it.

Though Heidi continued to write novels through high school (and still has the Rubbermaid tub full in her bedroom), she stopped in college, deciding it was time to grow up and do something meaningful with her life. When the specifics of that didn’t pan out, Heidi ended up in grad school to become a teacher, and through one of the courses rediscovered her love of romance novels. She began to write again on the side, continued to do so while she taught seventh grade language arts and reading, and when she quit teaching to have her daughter, she took up writing with more seriousness, both as a stress relief and as a potential means of bringing in money.

Many million pages later, Heidi has learned a lot about writing, more than she ever wanted to know about publishing, and most importantly, finally figured out that writing IS the meaningful something she wants to do with her life. A passionate advocate for LGBT rights, Heidi volunteers as often as she can for One Iowa and donates with her husband as a monthly partner to the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal. She encourages you to support your own local and national LGBT rights groups, too.

Heidi enjoys reading, watching movies and TV, and listening all kinds of music.  She has a husband, a daughter, and too many cats. Heidi is an active social networker, updating on Twitter, Facebook, Blog, and of course has good old-fashioned email.

Website

To enter to win one ebook copy of Sleigh Ride please leave a comment on this blog post and let us know your name and a means of contacting you (e.g., email, Twitter handle, link to Goodreads account, etc.) 

The giveaway is open until 10:00PM (Pacific time) on 11/29/14. Shortly thereafter, we will contact a winner whom we will select using a highly scientific "names in a hat" method (or, you know, an internet randomizer). Please respond to the winning notification within 48 hours or we will choose another winner.

Good luck!