Make-Believe Mondays With Vonna Harper

Today on Make-Believe Mondays our guest is Vonna Harper.

Vonna, first, tell us a little bit about the manuscript you’re working on now.

Vonna: A BIT OF BACKGROUND BEFORE I ANSWER THAT. I HAVE A MULTI-BOOK CONTRACT WITH KENSINGTON TO WRITE EROTICA FOR THE APHRODISIA LINE WHICH IS WHY I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF AN 80,000 WORD STORY. GOOD OR BAD, I DIDN'T OUTLINE MUCH BEFORE PLOWING INTO UNTAMED. I'VE SPRINKLED IN EQUAL PARTS SHAPE-SHIFTING, BONDAGE, PSYCHIC POWERS AND THROWN MY CHARACTERS INTO A STARK, REMOTE ENVIRONMENT WHERE THE ANCIENT ANASAZI ONCE LIVED. OTHER THAN KNOWING HOK'EE AND KAI WILL SURVIVE, I'M NOT SURE OF ANYTHING.

Debra: Well, that's writing by the seat of your pants!

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Vonna: I WAS A HUGE FAN OF TARZAN SO EDWARD RICE BURROWS TURNED MY CRANK. NO WIMPY GIRLY BOOKS FOR ME, GIVE ME KILLER SNAKES AND A HUNK WITH A KNIFE.

Debra: You can keep the snakes. Though the hunk would be nice. ;-)

If there were no categories for books, no reader expectations to meet, and you could create the wildest work of imagination that you could think of what kind of story would that be?

Vonna: HANDS DOWN IT WOULD BE A MAN (OR WOMAN) AGAINST NATURE STORY. ONE OF THOSE, YOU'RE GONNA LIVE ONLY IF YOU MAKE IT THROUGH THE STORM, EARTHQUAKE, FIRE, WHATEVER, TALES.

Debra: Life and death. It doesn't get much more dramatic than that.

Is there anything else you would like to add about the role of imagination, and dreams in creating fiction? Any other message for our readers?

Vonna: I REVEAL ALL AT WWW.VONNAHARPER.COM AND BLOG AT WWW.THEBRADFORDBUNCH.COM

Debra: Thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers.

Vonna: THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME THE OPPORTUNITY.

Debra: My pleasure.

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Debra's news/Debra is watching:

This weekend I attended the Heartland Writers Conference in MO. It's a one day conference, only three hours from where I live, but I went up a day early to have dinner with friends. My husband came along, and Saturday we celebrated my birthday. The conference had excellent speakers and I enjoyed making new friends. I took along my laptop to work on line edit approvals which had a deadline of the 10th.

The editing process on your first book is such a learning experience. One of my issues was eye color changes. Bobbi Smith gave me a great idea to prevent that problem in the future. 3 x 5 cards by the computer with those details to refer to. This is going to be really helpful because I usually have more than one book going at a time and I sometimes switch from working on one to working on the other. So it is easy to mix up the people in my books when it comes to eye color.

One nice thing about working with an editor is you start to see where your problem areas are. So I'm sure the more experience with this, the cleaner your writing will get. It's such a wonderful and exciting experience all around.

Now that I've been all the way through the process I can safely say I love working with an editor on my books. And my editor, Beth is awesome.