Welcome my guest,
Donna Cooper, the debut author from Siren. Her first release,
Trouble on Sugar Creek, released yesterday!
If you like romantic suspense this book should be on your virtual book shelf.
Tell me about your new, and debut, release.
Trouble on Sugar Creek is about a rural farm girl named Zane Larson. She finds out that not all
strange things happen in large cities when she discovers a body planted
in a suitcase on her farm. She falls in love with FBI Agent Tim Casey,
the investigator of the crime. At first, she thinks he is a rotten
apple, but as time goes on, she comes to realize that he is worth
saving.
Determination and courage are among the things that Tim sees in Zane
that make her uniquely different. When she refuses to give in to threats
and scare tactics, and sticks by her principles, Tim knows she is the
gal for him. He has some determination of his own, and knows he is in
love the first moment he sees her. Will Tim take a bride before he can
solve the case?
What makes a great hero?
He has to be fun loving and of course he needs to be as handsome,
but not as in a rock star handsome. He needs to have his ducks in a row and
know what he wants. I like a man who treats everyone right and the heroine like
a person, you know as in princess. LOL. Call me old fashioned but I cannot
stand a smart mouthed hero who thinks that he is better than everyone else
is.
Aren’t all women alike in that we want to know that our lover is
our hero? I’d say we all want a man who knows who he is and what he wants.
What item, or items, is absolutely necessary to your writing
mojo?
How can
you have mojo without coffee? Is there anything else?
What’s the strangest (neatest, coolest, etc.) thing you’ve ever
done?
Okay,
here goes! I danced in the middle of the
highway with a younger – much younger man. It might sound crazy and it was, but
I was so happy that I had to do something. Looking back on it, I can’t remember
if I thought he was worth keeping or if he was just a honey to hug.
Okay,
okay, I fess up! There’s more to this story, I can’t remember what made me so
happy, seems like it was that I was finally free of some major problems and
that my divorce was final.
What are you currently working on, or what’s
on the horizon?
I am
working on a manuscript now that I am going to submit (to somebody, somewhere)
in the next two or three weeks. It is also a contemporary, romantic suspense
book. The problem is that I have had so many distractions lately that I can’t
seem to find the time to finish editing it.
What do you do
when you’re not writing?
I do web
pages (write code) for a county web site and do genealogy. I also have
been studying DNA for the last few weeks and have lost myself in the massive
amount of material that I have been learning about and figuring out how to
decipher.
How can you
fans find you on the net?
You will find me on A PASSION FOR
WRITING, a blog, and my Face Book page. I am on Twitter, too.
Blog:
http://thedonnacooper.blogspot.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/donnac58
Face Book:
http://www.facebook.com/donnac58
Author Friends - Face Book:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/158668737566184/
Author Bio:
Donna
Cooper says that she remembers that her grandmother was a natural
storyteller, and that she created fascinating bedtime stories for her
when she was a child. Her grandmother's fictional characters took her
into the land of make-believe, places that she will never forget. Her
fabricated tales gave Donna a passion for storytelling and taught her
that first, one must be a storyteller before becoming a writer.
It
was not until after Donna's children went away to college that she was
able to study writing professionally. She attended the University of
Arkansas and studied in private classes as well as at North Arkansas
Community College. While attending the community college, she and a
creative writing instructor wrote a romance novel. When the rejection
letter came, Donna saw the effort as a failure, but the instructor saw
the value in it. She rewrote the story and sold it. From that day
forward, Donna had a dream to repeat the performance with a story of her
own—one that would be publishable.
Then
divorce came and that knocked the romance out of her heart. It was
several years later before she could read a romance novel, must less
consider writing one. The creative juices were not there anymore, and
since she had to make a living, she became an insurance agent. She
traveled rural Arkansas and sold health and life insurance to farm
families. During those days, she allowed her emotions to heal, but never
stopped thinking about writing.
Then
about twenty years ago, she met and fell in love with a man who thought
she should have been a writer. It is odd that he could see the
storyteller in her, even when she couldn't see it herself. He reminded
her often that she could probably write and publish a novel. Finally,
one day while wintering in sunny California, she opened her laptop and
started pecking out words. It was then, that she created the novel Trouble on Sugar Creek. The setting she chose was a place that she still thinks of as home, Barry County, Missouri.
The manuscript sold to Siren-BookStrand Publishing.
This was her first novel and her first attempt to re-enter the world of
storytelling. Publishing wasn't something that was foreign to her,
because back during her days in college, Donna published in a few poetry
magazines, and later in several historical non-fiction books, and at
least thirty fiction short stories during the late 70's and early 80's.
Presently, she writes daily, because she is the administrator and
coordinator of the Barry County MOGenWeb site. She enjoys writing
historical data and code for web pages, but she says that's very
different from storytelling.
Donna
likes writing fiction, especially classical romance stories. She enjoys
telling the story of emotional and sexual love, the kind that a woman
holds in her heart. She works hard at what she does and hopes that what
she writes isn't too spicy for her friends and family to enjoy reading.
Her stories range from the happily-ever-after romance to the naughty
side of the romantic world. She likes a variety of characters and writes
tales about people from different occupations with varying lifestyles.
Thank you so much for spending time with me, Donna.