Interview and contest: Kristine Grayson - Wickedly Charming

Today I have Kristine Grayson over for an interview. And the end of it there is a giveaway of 2 copies of her new book Wickedly Charming.

Welcome to Mur-y-Castell!

Tell us something about yourself, so we can get to know you better…
KG: I love to read and I love to write.  I have too many cats.  I travel a lot, but I’m really quite shy.  So writing is the perfect job for me.

Your latest release is called Wickedly Charming; can you tell me what it is about?
KG: In it, Prince Charming, newly divorced from Cinderella, falls in love with Snow White’s “evil” stepmother at a Los Angeles book fair.

How did you think of the idea to write about fairy tale characters?
KG:  I’ve been writing inverted fairy tales for years.  I figure nothing is ever quite as it seems—not even fairy tales. So I have a lot of fun with this.

Will we see more fairytale stories from you soon?
KG: Next, Sourcebooks will reissue Utterly Charming, my first fairy tale novel, in which Sleeping Beauty’s Prince Charming falls in love with Sleeping Beauty’s lawyer.  Yep.  My brain isn’t quite normal. 

Who is your favorite fairytale character and why?
KG:  I love the princes charming.  I really do.  They are the Perfect Man for every woman. Or maybe I just watched too many Disney movies as a kid.

You also write under other names. How is it to write in different genres and to use different names?
KG: I didn’t even know what genre was until my friend Kevin J. Anderson (who now writes the bestselling Dune books) told me when we met in college.  Since I don’t really “see” genre, I don’t notice when I’m crossing into a new one.  But as a reader, I have learned that I like some books by certain writers and not others. For example, I love Barbara Michaels, but don’t like Elizabeth Peters—and both are pen names for the marvelous Barbara Mertz.  So I took a leaf out of her book and decided to put my very different books under different names.  My Grayson books are sweet romances. My Kristine Kathryn Rusch novels are all over the map and can sometimes be dark.  My Kris Nelscott books are noir mysteries set in the 1960s.  And I’ve just started a new pen name, Kris DeLake, which will be steamy sf romances.  I’m having fun.

Could you tell me about a little about all the other books you have written?
KG:  If I told you about all the other books I’ve written, we’d be here for weeks! I’ve written about 90 novels.  Many are mysteries, like my Kris Nelscott books. But I’ve also written some mystery/sf crossover novels.  I have a detective series set on the Moon, called the Retrieval Artist. That’s under Rusch. And so are the novels about my kick-butt heroine, Boss.  She appears in Diving into the Wreck and City of Ruins, with more to come.  And then there are the DeLake books, upcoming from Sourcebooks. And I do romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter.  And there’s more. But that’s the shorthand version.

Any advice for aspiring writers?
KG: Write a lot.  Have fun.  And learn the business.  More careers die because a writer doesn’t know business than for any other reason.  A bad book won’t kill you, but failing to understand contracts and copyrights will.  (I write a blog about this every Thursday at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com)

Thanks for stopping by!
KG: Thanks for asking me!

GIVEAWAY

2 winners: Wickedly Charming

1.US and Canada

2. Ends May 29th

3. Just enter or if you wanna make it fun:

comment on the book/interview, or tell me your fav fairytale or anything :)

Winners: Mocha Latte and Melanie

WICKEDLY CHARMING BY KRISTINE GRAYSON – IN STORES MAY 2011

He’s Given Up on Happily-Ever-After…
Cinderella’s Prince Charming is divorced and at a dead end. The new owner of a bookstore, Charming has given up on women, royalty, and anything that smacks of a future. That is until he meets up with Mellie…

But She Might Be the Key to Happily-Right-Now…
Mellie is sick and tired of stepmothers being misunderstood. Vampires have redeemed their reputation, why shouldn’t stepmothers do the same? Then she runs into the handsomest, most charming man she’s ever met and discovers she’s going about her mission all wrong…

It’s only natural that sparks fly and magic ensues when these two fairy tale refugees put their heads—and vulnerable hearts—together…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before turning to romance writing, Kristine Grayson edited the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and ran Pulphouse Publishing (which won her a World Fantasy Award). She has won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award and, under her real name, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the prestigious Hugo award. She lives with her own Prince Charming, writer Dean Wesley Smith, in Portland, Oregon. Her next book from Sourcebooks Casablanca, Utterly Charming will be in stores in October 2011. For more information, please visit www.kristinegrayson.com/ and www.sourcebookscasablanca.com