Interview with Susan Laine ^-^

Hey Y'all I have the fabulous Susan Laine with me today. She's here to answer a few questions and share her upcoming release in the Two Tickets to Paradise Anthology from Dreamspinner Press!  P.S. Thanks for coming out Susan! <3

XOXOXO

      Can you tell readers a little bit about yourself?

      What could I tell that I haven’t already told about myself on my website or in other interviews, like that I’m Finnish and an anthropologist? The one thing about Finland is the whole sauna experience. It might seem weird for me to go into a steaming hot room naked and beat myself with a birch whisk, but there I go. Every summer in my family’s cottage, every day, several times. In between hopping into the lake for a swim. Love it. Nothing else quite like it. Except maybe doing the whole sauna experience during the winter but instead of whipping myself with branches and dashing into a lake I run out into the snow and jump in—yes, still naked. From hot to cold and back again. It’s awesome. That’s Finland—and me—for you.

      Was writing always a big part of your life?

      I’ve been writing since I was kid, yes, but writing in English is a recent change, same as becoming a published author. I used to write fantasy and sci-fi, with a multitude of characters. Nowadays I write gay erotic romance, and writing is fun again. When I was kid my writing was atrocious and all over the place, but my stories imaginative. I’ve had to learn to keep within the limits of genres and to follow the rules of good writing. It’s a learning process, still ongoing.

      Sunlight on Water releases from Dreamspinner Press on February 20^th. What do you hope readers take away from the story?

      This short story, coming in the anthology Two Tickets to Paradise, is set on a tropical paradise island and it’s a basic feel good story. Hope, happiness, and sensual buzz are the main goals here. Also, one of the heroes has a Finnish ancestry, so a few cultural references there.

      Who inspires you professionally? Who are some of your favorite authors?

      Romance authors who I admire are aplenty. Z.A. Maxfield, Marie Sexton and Josh Lanyon are excellent contemporary writers, each in their own way—Maxfield with her variety of stories, Sexton with her clarity of writing and Lanyon with his quality of writing. All of them have compelling characters. Rowena Sudbury writes excellent historical romances, and Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy paranormal detective series is fascinating, but my favorites are the historical Judge Dee murder mysteries by Robert van Gulik. Of the recent new authors I have to go with Damon Suede and T.J. Klune who have written amazing first-time stories.

      You write both in paranormal and contemporary settings. Do you find you enjoy one more than the other?

      I have no preference. Mood is everything. Just like at times you feel like you need to write conversations and other times sex scenes, the same is true with genre. One day I want to write magically, other days realistically. That’s the benefit of writing in more than one genre. It keeps my interest level high and inspiration sparked.

      Is there anything you must have or do before you can write?

      Check emails first and chew bubblegum during, my fave is pear-licorice.

      Have you ever dealt with writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it?

      After I’d gotten several books accepted for publications and two books had come out, yes, I got a bit blocked. I sat in front of the computer, but words didn’t come out. I couldn’t get into the right headspace at all. Two things helped. Reading books for a while instead of writing them was the first. The second involved talking with a fellow author with whom I wrote a small story in one day, I one sentence, she filled another, and so on. By the end of the day we’d gotten maybe one page’s worth of text, crazy and playful and imaginative. Those two things sparked my imagination again, so my humble general advice is doing something else for a while.

      In your opinion, what are 3 of the sexiest words in the world?

      Goodness. That’s not one of them, just a comment J Hmm. In Finnish there are two words I consider sexy: Polte which means heat, burning, ardor, passion, fire, fever, fury, lust and desire among other synonyms in the same context. It’s a wonderful, useful word. The second word is rakastella which means to make love and to have sex. In English the sexiest word is cock. I know, it has several connotations, one of them from the animal kingdom. But as a writer of M/M erotic romances I’ve come to prefer and adore that word over other phrases for the male sexual organ. Gets me all hot and bothered.

      Can you give us a one sentence preview of your current work in progress?

      This sentence is from my WIP book, the third in my Cowboys of Snow Lake series. Clayton shook all over and melted against that massively huge chest behind him, his back tickling when Jesse’s chest hairs brushed against him—and then he felt that cock he’d fantasized about in high school nestled between his bare ass cheeks, in a similar state of arousal.

      What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any hobbies?

      In the winter I do slalom and walk, in the summer I swim and play badminton. I also play stealth computer games and their mods.

      Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you?

      I’m a natural blonde who wishes she were a redhead, and I prefer to dye my hair copper red whenever possible.

Here is where you can find Susan's fabulous short for purchase:

Title: Sunlight on Water
Buy/pre-order link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=55_561&products_id=2770

- Blurp: "On his first trip anywhere, Armas “Ari” Aalto meets a gorgeous stranger, Ryan Knight, on the beach of a tropical island paradise. Sparks turn into flames as they plunge into a sensuous affair. But their happily-ever-after is threatened when first a misassumption and then a lie lead to a revelation of the worse kind."