Interview with Donna Cooper- Trouble on Sugar Creek

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.