Leigh Morgan interview + giveaway

Help me welcome Leigh Morgan to my blog today :) There will also be a giveaway at the bottom.

Welcome!

Thank you for this opportunity to engage with you and your friends again about writing and about my most recent release, Fighting Fate.

You asked about combining my writing life with my work life and how I do both. Since June of this year I've been able to spend more time writing and I'm loving it. I try to write somewhere between 1500 and 3500 words a day consistently. Some days I can do that in a few hours. Others I write and revise most of the day. Many writers also have other occupations and seem to manage their time more efficiently, but having these rough parameters seems to work for me.

My inspiration for Fighting Fate just kind of blossomed from a trip to the Glastonbury plain. I knew I wanted to write about Jesse, Reed's adopted son from Sparring Partners, and I thought it would be interesting to throw the daughter Reed gave up for adoption as a teenager into the mix and see what happened. Then when I visited Chalice Well in Glastonbury the spirituality and magic of the place hit me and I knew I had to weave those mythic elements into this story. Fighting Fate just developed from there. It's sent me on a path I'm loving and my current work in progress, Defending Destiny takes that mythical, magical theme and carries it into Scotland and the Kilmartin Glen area of Argyll. Reed's youngest child, Daisy, is the heroine in that book and we learn more about this secret society of Finders and Bringers of the Light in Defending Destiny. There's so much magic in these areas, you can almost taste it. They're like a writer's playground where anything can happen. I hope I answered your question, sometime I seem to ramble when I'm enthused about a topic.

I choose names for my characters I either love or hate depending on their personalities. When I see them in my mind's eye, I usually get a sense of who they are and I try to pick names that evoke that image for me. I pick names I would name my children or one of my pets; good strong, often Celtic, names. If I write a slime-ball character I choose the name of someone I don't particularly like, or has hurt someone I care about. It's cathartic (evil grin). I played around with Reed's name and shamelessly tried to influence people with that one: phonetically her name is Read More...here's hoping I can keep readers reading more!

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore why people do what they do and how different people react to stressful and sometimes life-threatening situations. I observe and I get to explore motivation, my own as well as the characters I write about. I get to create worlds I'd like to live in and that is really cool. I enjoy telling stories, especially ones where flawed, likeable people love deeply and live fully.

My plan for the Dojo series, which Pen & Sword publishing has re-titled the Warrior Chronicles, is to publish Defending Destiny, book three later this fall. Then I'm going to plot a Scottish historical that will take place in the time of Somerled, about 1000 A.D. where we'll learn how the spiritual artifacts Taryn and Daisy are searching for in Fighting Fate and Defending Destiny, came to be hidden. I'm going to tie the contemporary and the historicals together, but they will all stand on their own as well. I'm really looking forward to that. The Warrior/Dojo series doesn't really have an ending point. I'll keep adding books as long as the stories are solid and people enjoy reading them.

This weekend is the Wisconsin Scottish Highland Games. I'm doing a book signing later today in the MacDonald Clan tent there. My family and I also take our Scottish Deerhounds to the games, the eldest of which is named: Somerled after the founder of our Clan.  Next weekend we'll be in Colorado for the Highland Games in Estes Park. My husband and I have a Scottish food and gear business; we sell haggis and pasties as well as hand-carved leather sporrans and other Celtic leather goods under the name Macskis Highland Foods & Gear. To say that all things Scottish influence me and my writing is like saying humans require water to survive. It's an inescapable elemental truth that is so much a part of who I am and everything I do that I don't even think about it. I love that part of who I am and I bring it out to play whenever I can in my life and in my writing. (Huge smile).

I'm happy to talk Scotland, writing, food, gear and Deerhounds (the most perfect creatures under heaven) anytime! Thanks so much for having me. Look for Defending Destiny this fall!

Much love and happy reading,

Leigh

GIVEAWAY

3 winners of e-copies of Fighting fate 

1. Open to all around the world

2. Ends Sep 17th

3. Just enter :)

    Or comment, ask a question of Leigh, or tell me anything you want.