The Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers Welcome Author Kathye Quick

Let's welcome author Kathye Quick!
Kathye has three new books coming out with Avalon Books coming out in September, December and early next year, they are Amethyst, Sapphire and Citrine.
She also has a book out now with The Wild Rose Press called Cynthia And Constantine.
Check out the blurbs here. Please forgive me for not being able to put a copy of the book up. I just couldn't do it!

CYNTHIA AND CONSTANTINE
BLURB

Lady Cynthia of Abertaine is trapped. Not only has her fiancé. Sir William Leyborne, not been back to the castle for over ten years, but she’s also not a titled Lady. Lord Simon of Cowell, a renegade warlord aligned with Mordred against Arthur and his Knights, has declared himself sovereign over Leyborne Castle and everything that once belonged to Sir William - including Cynthia. Sir Constantine, Knight of the Round Table, has come to the shire to give Cynthia the news that her fiancé has fallen in battle. With him is William’s oral will giving all he owns to Cynthia as though they had been wed. But when he finds Cynthia and discovers that the shire under the control of an evil warlord, he knows he cannot leave without first driving Simon and his soldiers from the land. Drawn together by an attraction older than time, Cynthia and Constantine soon discover that though a vow made by a knight’s honor has brought them together, it may just also cost them their lives.

Contemporary Romance series
Coming fall 2009 from Avalon Books

GRANDMOTHER’S RINGS

Widow Tess Archer, a 55 year-old mother of three who is not willing to abandon her flower-child roots, has decided she wants to be a grandmother. After all, all her lady friends have grandchildren! Deciding that her children need serious help to find their perfect mates, she calls a family meeting and gives each of them one of their Grandmother’s Rings.

AMETHYST (Book One) – promotes calmness and is given to the oldest, Somer. Somer, a newspaper reporter, must tackle her disconnected side in order to have the career she always wanted. Little does she know that in order to do that, she first has to tackle the problem of Nick Daultry, a New York police officer who has come to New Jersey as part of a Homeland Security initiative that allows rural police officers to train in the city while the city officer trains in a rural setting to help understand the differences between city and town situations. While cops and reporters are natural enemies, Somer and Nick find out that they can’t solve the problem of local home invasions without each other; she has the local knowledge, he has the resources. And along the way, they also discover that they need to solve the problem of their growing attraction and admit that they just might be made for each other.


Let's talk to Kathye and find out a bit more about her. We are so glad you joined us Kathye.

How do you define success? If I have to ask questions I might as well start with this one.

Success for me is small daily victories like just sitting down and trying to write a few pages.
For us mid-list writers, we don’t have the luxury of being able to make a whole lot of money from our writing. Most of us still need a full-time job or another source of income that seems to take up a lot of our writing time.
Factor in family and there isn’t a whole lot of time left. We do have to sleep sometime, too.
And at this very moment, I just found out my flash drive failed and won’t read on my desktop. Add in the fact that I was too lazy to save the files to my hard drive and success for me will be my teckkie recovering three chapters of a book I was writing.
If not, I guess it was God’s way of telling me that the story wasn’t very good anyway.

How did you first get published? Always a story there isn't there.

Ah,. I remember the call. 1999. It came the day after Hurricane Floyd it and I lost the rear foundation to my house and had 4 feet of water on the first floor. The phones worked only because the phone company ran the line in from the pole through the attic. I got the call from the owner of q unique new venture – an E-book publisher – Starlight Publications. Ebooks had just been born and were never expected to survive, but that call was my lifeline. I was pulling up wet carpeting and found out my book was going to be published. It was like a rainbow.
Now here’s the weird part. That particular book began with the heroine in the middle of a hurricane. Now if I though I was gong to be so prophetic, I would have started the book with the heroine winning the lottery.

Any family history or traditions you'd like to share with us? My families is eating and holiday gluttony.

Actually, it’s a not a family tradition as much as a family laugh fest. When we were cleaning out our grandmother’s house getting her ready to move in with my mom and dad, we (the granddaughters) found a black, pillbox hat in a hat box in her attic. It wasn’t a Jackie Kennedy type hat, it was a 1940-ish type; small, round and about five inches high. Each of us took turns trying it on and needless to say looked hysterical in it. I secretly took it knowing I would find something diabolical to do with it.
And I did.
That Christmas, I put it in a Victoria’s Secret box, wrapped it and gave it to my middle sister in front of the family at our annual Christmas Eve brouhaha. We made her ear it for the rest of the night and she vowed revenge. Cleverly, she didn’t return the favor the next year, but waited until she was sure we’d forgotten about the hat, which we did when two years later, I do it back properly decorated with Christmas greens and tree ornaments. Of course, I had to wear the hat the whole time during our Christmas Eve gift exchange.
From then on it was on. The hat was been passed around for over 20 years now and no one in the family is safe. We include children and cousins in the scheme. It has gone through some amazing and artsy transformations and now resides in South Jersey with my niece.
It hasn’t surfaced in two years, but we know it’s alive and well and just waiting to rear its newly decorated head!


What's the scariest thing that ever happened to you? I've always wanted to ask that one.

I looked in the mirror this morning and noticed I wasn’t 35 any longer. When did that happen and where did all these wrinkles come from?

Have you always been an avid reader? Reading has been a big part of my life, it took me places I always wanted to go.

I first started reading as a passion by reading my mom’s TRUE STORY magazines when I was about 11. That was in the ‘60’s and at the time, I thought every word was absolutely true. They fascinated me. I was a starry eyed-prepubescent and starting to discover boys, so the romance in them was very storybook to me. The short stories were a bit purer and idealistic back then.
When mom found out she had a fit. It took me about a month to find out where she hid them. I carefully put them back so she’d never know I found her secret hiding place. I did that for years until I was 16 and she decided I was “old” enough to read True Story and True Confessions and then began to share them with me,
Although I haven’t read any lately, some of my friends write for the Confessions Market. But what they write, I think the modern Trues are a bit racier and involved.
I can attribute these short stories to my entrance into romance and reading. As I gold older, ancient now, I found I loved knights in shining armor, paranormal and contemporary romance. When I began writing, I gravitated to these genres.

What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

I lived in a small coal mining community in Pennsylvania. My grandmother’s house backed up to a mountain with a ravine that the town used as its dump. Now back then a dump wasn’t considered evil as it is today. Monthly, after the town dumped its garbage or people came and tossed their appliances down the ravine, the town would come and backfill the area used with dirt. There was about 500 feet from the rear of my grandparents’ property to the ravine, and I really never noticed odors or anything. I was just happy to play in her backyard.
One of my favorite things to do was walk along the property to get to the side of the ravine and then look for fossils. Since the town was in the Slate Belt area, there were plenty of opportunities for this. My sisters and I would see who would be the first to find rock with beautiful fern imprints in them. Somehow, probably by way of some digging and blasting by the town, these fossils worked their way up to the surface.
Some of the happiest times I remember were walking with my grandfather to look for them.Hey, maybe there is a book in that. Little girl hunts for fossils by herself one day and finds the entrance to a cave that is actually an old portal through time. Too bad I don’t do time travel. Maybe, though, it could be a paranormal!

Were you a geek or popular girl? I was a geek for sure.

Pure geek. It wasn’t called that back then. In fact, I forget what we were called. But you could find us at a back lunch table in the cafeteria. We didn’t have all the right clothes, most of us wore glasses, but we were all on the honor roll. We weren’t Cheerleaders or on the Pep Squad or a Majorette. We did things like the newspaper, the year book and Future Teachers of America.
From that, though, because I was on the newspaper – the Blueprint to be exact – I learned journalism and how to write. My friends were really friends and not just the friend-off-the-most-current-fad or because my dad and mom had money.
But we evolved and did okay because being geeks made us tough. Most of us are pretty hot these days as well as being successful and the popular girls; not so much. Living well is the best revenge.

How was your high school prom? I never got to go. I didn't want to go with the only guy who asked me. What about you?

It sucked because no one invites me to go.
I made up for it years later after I outgrew the geeky-thing by dating a professional football player for a few seasons. Take that Laura!!!! (She was the popular girl who always treated me like Human Services project).

Who did you dedicate your first book to and why?

I dedicate all my books to my mom because she became an angel before she ever got to read one.

Thanks Kathye, I've listed the links you mentioned. We loved your interview and wish you the best of luck!


Links - website - www.kathyequick.com
blog - www.kathyequick.blogspot.com

publishers - www.thewildrosepress.com
www.avalonbooks.com