This week our Feature on Author: Dani Collins. She has a new book out, Her Billion-Dollar Bump. And there's a giveaway of a signed paperback copy open international.
Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life. While she is best known for writing contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule Publishing, she also writes historical and erotic romance. When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. Dani lives in Southern BC, Canada with her high school sweetheart husband.
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What inspires you to write?
I write because I can’t not write. I’ve tried, lol. When I take vacation, I love it for a few days, but soon the stories are in my head and I’m itching to be at my keyboard.
Tell us about your writing process.
Over the years, I’ve become more of a pantser, meaning I pretty much sit down and write without an outline ahead of me.
Having said that, I usually write up 2 or 3 paragraphs of backstory about the hero and heroine.
Here’s a sample of what I wrote for Fliss and Saint:
Felicity Corning lost her parents young and grew up caring for her ailing grandmother in a council flat in Nottingham. She inherited her grandmother’s passion for lace and began designing gowns and lingerie. When her grandmother passed, Felicity moved to London, determined to work at a fashion house, but with no formal training had to fall back on becoming a housekeeper to pay the bills.
Saint *Gray was the reason his parents married. His father invented a microchip at exactly the right time to make an obscene fortune in the tech industry. His mother, a **social climber, deliberately got herself pregnant by him. They were a terrible fit. Saint’s childhood was a battlefield of public embarrassment and infidelity.
*I changed it to Montgomery
**I changed that to something less bloodthirsty. She went to LA and had a budding career until she accidentally got pregnant
Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
My characters don’t talk to me, they talk to each other. I have caught myself muttering the dialogue as I’m typing it, though.
What advice would you give other writers?
I give this advice to any new writer: If you want to write, write. You don’t need permission from anyone. The writing is always yours and no one can stop you. Do it.
If you want to publish, recognize that it’s a business. It will require compromise. Rejection doesn’t mean your writing is bad, it simply means it didn’t fit what that editor or reader or market wanted. Keep going.
What is your favourite genre to read? Is it different to what you write?
I’ll read pretty much any type of romance, but I do prefer romance.
I hinted above that Saint had a horrible upbringing. He was push-pulled between his parents and only wants to take over his father’s business because he’s had it with the man.
Fliss has had a really rough go. When she turns up pregnant, she’s happy to finally have family again, but Saint drags her into the turmoil of his own.
Something I really enjoyed when writing this book was watching them become friends, not realizing they were falling in love with each other until, Bam! It happens, then all falls apart, forcing them to figure it out.
Buy Links:
Amazon Kindle. Amazon Paperback
Giveaway of a signed paperback copy of Her Billion-Dollar Bump open international.
