Coffee With Terry Spear

Oct 4, 2017 | Blog, Coffee With, October 2017, Terry Spear

Rae: Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

Terry: Thanks for having me, Rae!!

Rae: If we were meeting at a coffee shop I’d be drinking a spiced latte with Coconut Milk. 🙂 ! What would you order?

Terry: White Mocha latte (peppermint mocha when in season–sometimes some places will even have it out-of-season! I love those places. )

Rae: As fall is underway, do you have any traditions? Do you decorate the house with the change of season?

Terry: Yes! I decorate for fall. Love to do that, and then for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July. 🙂 I usually decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, but since my son and his girlfriend are coming, I’ll decorate for Christmas before they arrive. My daughter and son-in-law and now baby, always get together for a special Halloween.

Rae: For those who are not familiar with your work, your backlist includes Highlanders, Shifters and stuff in-between, please tell us a little bit your series. Where do you find your inspiration?

Terry: I’m an eclectic reader so I’m an eclectic writer. I write everything from straight romantic suspense to historical romance, shifter romance, vampire, romance, and teen paranormal romance.

My Highlanders were a result of my love of all things historical–books, movies, and we have Highland heritage, both MacNeills, Campbells as the main Highland Scots. So I was doing a lot of genealogy on them, and they were inspired by the Duke of Argyle’s daughter running off with a commoner MacNeill (family history).

With the wolf series, I had started out with vampires: everyone needs to be loved. And I felt the same way with werewolves. I had also loved reading Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London and loved the wolves when I was a kid. So I wanted to create a world where the werewolves were born that way, or turned, but they were wolves like the real ones, not monsters, yet still had their human sensibilities, and as humans, their wolf senses. Jaguar, cougar, and polar bear shifters have followed, and they’re like that too–I try to pattern their behavior after their wild animal, but at the same time, their human counterpart tends to override certain of their characteristics. For instance, wolves live in packs, Jaguars, cougars, and polar bears don’t. So to make it work they need to rely on their human half to be more family oriented.

I also have a popular teen fae series. If you have any trouble at all, blame the fae. They’re probably at the root of it. I have vampire teen romance also, but haven’t had enough time to write more sequels, but it’s on the agenda. 🙂

Rae: How do you keep all of your characters from crossing over into other books? Do you have a series “bible” or do you have files of notes?

Terry: I have a bible, but don’t keep up with it well enough. I either have to do find and searches, or I have a wonderful critique partner and good friend, Donna Fournier, who helps to keep me straight. I had just finished a book, she and others had proofread it and in the middle of the night she woke to remember one of the female operatives (wolf) was pregnant, and I couldn’t have her chasing down villains in the jungle. Oops. I had to write other characters and a bunch of new scenes to change that scenario, but she is an absolute godsend! lol

Rae: When you are writing a book, do you plot it out page by page, chapter by chapter? Or, do your characters guide you?

Terry: Absolutely my characters drive me. It drives me nuts when they go silent on me. If I try to force them to talk, it doesn’t work. And when they do, I have to hurry and write because they’re not going to repeat what they have to say.

Rae: What can we expect to see on the bookshelves in 2017? Do you have any new series in the works that you can give us a tease?

Terry: I’m hoping to have My Highlander available this year. Dreaming of a White Christmas is coming in October, and I hope to have another polar bear shifter story by Dec. But that’s a lot of writing and I’m running out of time. 🙂 I’m finishing up writing Billionaire Wolf Christmas for next October (2018), and I’ll be getting more edits on the other two books that are finished: All’s Fair in Love and Wolf, and Flight of the White Wolf.

Rae” You are a fabulous photographer posting images on social media, what do you use to take them? Your cell phone or a digital camera?

Terry: Thanks so much! I use my cell phone and a Nikon D750. I love taking photos!!! It’s like with writing. If I don’t get to take pictures every day, and write, I feel like my day isn’t complete! I’m not fulfilled. 🙂

Rae: It was so much fun having you here today!

Terry: Thanks so much for having me, and the mocha was delicious. 🙂

** All photos taken by Terry Spear and posted with permission

**** Tasty Tidbits ****

1. What is a must read book and why? I’m reading Tinderbox by Rachel Grant. I was in the military and the heroine is dealing with the military while she’s trying to collect fossils in the volatile region of Ethiopia. I love action, and she’s got plenty of it.

2. What is one place that I should see if I visit your hometown? They have the largest urban park in the States. You can walk it for miles. I love nature preserves and hikes.

3. Do you take-in or cook? If so, what is your “go-to” dish? Cook. A good steak and boiled potato and broccoli. M&Ms to top it off.

4. What is one thing readers would be surprised to know about you? I love playing RPGs. I’m working on Divinity: Original Sin, love the quests, the fights, solving puzzles and mysteries, and righting the wrongs. 🙂

5. Hard Rock or Classical? Favorite Band or Artist? Movie theme music, Game of Thrones

6. If you had an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world for research, where would you go? I would go to Scotland for a month. 🙂 Absorb everything, see all the castles (I’ve seen about twelve, a few a couple of times), and then be able to sit and write by a babbling brook. 🙂

7. What is your guilty pleasure? Chocolate

8. What are you afraid of? Heights (Did rappelling, mountain climbing, slide for life, rope drop, but heights get to me)

9. Tats or No Tats? If tats, how many and what did you choose for your first one? No tats

10. Organized or Free Floating? * Organized!

11. Binge watcher or weekly viewer? Which show(s)? Binge watching then don’t watch anything for a long time, concentrate on writing. The Walking Dead, The Last Ship, The White Queen, Game of Thrones, Quantico.

12. What’s on your playlist? Movie themes like the Bourne series, and game themes like Halo and others. I like the adventure, suspense music for mood when I’m writing.

13. What play or musical do you want to see next? Nutcracker

14. Are you a crafter? Award winning teddy bears!

15. What’s your favorite TV show and why? I loved The White Queen and hated that it only had the one season. Adventure, intrigue, paranormal, historical, romance, it had it all.

16. If you could pick a book you’ve read and make it into a movie, which book would it be (besides yours 🙂 )? Karen Moning’s The Immortal Highlander.

17. What’s your favorite movie of all time and why? Romancing the Stone–he was so cocky and she was such a fun character, a romance writer who had fans even among the bad guys.

18. Would you rather see a movie in the theater or at home on DVD and why? I have Netflix now, yay! Where I lived before, we didn’t have powerful enough internet. But I LOVE to see movies with my kids when we can do it.

19. What is the one thing you can’t live without? A computer and internet

20. If you could invite 5 people to dinner (not friends and family – that’s too easy) who would be at your table? Christine Feehan, Karen Marie Moning, Sandra Brown, Sean Connery, Gerald Butler

21. If you could try any career for a day, what would it be? I had the hardest time with this. And then I thought it’s the simplest thing ever: A world class photographer!

22. Person you admire and why? Stephen King. He threw Carrie in the trash and his wife retrieved it for him. He’s an excellent writer and speaker. One of the scariest movies I ever saw was The Shining, and I’m going to see that hotel when I go to the conference in the area.

Rae: Thanks again for hanging out! Time for another spiced latte 🙂

Terry: Thanks again, Rae!

Rae: Happy Reading Dear Readers. Happy Writing Terry

Author Info: Bestselling and award-winning author Terry Spear has written over sixty paranormal romance novels and four medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered high praise and hit the USA Today bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in Spring, Texas, where she is working on her next wolf, jaguar, cougar, and bear shifter romances, continuing with her Highland medieval romances, and having fun with her young adult novels. When she’s not writing, she’s photographing everything that catches her eye, making teddy bears, and playing with her Havanese puppies and grand-baby.

For more information, please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/terry.spear. And on WordPress at: Terry Spear’s Shifters Terry Spear’s Shifters