My interview this month is with Charlotte Boyett-Compo.  I have to admit to a weakness for her books as they were my first introduction to e-books and such a great introduction that I am hooked for life.  No matter what direction your tastes lie chances are she has a book out in that flavor, as this prolific author’s books run the gamut from some of the best romantic suspense on the market to dark fantasy, from paranormal romance to futuristic romance and even some with a western flavor.

Charlee, I want to thank you for taking the time to share a bit of yourself with your readers.  Could you tell the readers a little about yourself?  Do you have any hobbies that you particularly enjoy, besides reading that is? 

Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts with you. 

Well, to start, I am a bonafide SunShine Cracker. That means I was born in Florida but grew up in Georgia.  I am very proud of my southern heritage. Although I was adopted at birth, I do know that somewhere I have two older sisters and a brother…possibly more, who knows?...and that my mother gave me up because my father had been killed before I was born and she could not afford to feed another child.  I didn’t find any of that out until my adoptive mother died eight years ago. It was quite a shock to discover I wasn’t who I thought I was. 

I married my high school sweetheart and we’ve been together going on 41 years now. We have two terrific sons, Pete and Mike, and two grandchildren, Preston and Victoria. We also have five cats to whom we are staff. 

I watch a lot of tv…Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, The Closer, and Nip/Tuck are my favs although I’m becoming a big fan of Brothers and Sisters… and devour certain types of movies and listen to Celtic music.  I play the piano and the guitar and crochet.  Those things keep my hands busy much of the time when I’m not writing. I dabble in poetry and song writing but I’m not really very good at either. 

Would you mind sharing with our readers one tidbit that no one else knows?  Any secret addictions?

Ooh, deep, dark dirty, dastardly secrets, eh? Stuff for the National Enquirer, perhaps? Well, I guess it isn’t that I am in horny lust with Scottish actor Gerard Butler because I think most people know that I pant after that gorgeous green-eyed hunk and write most of my books for him.  It couldn’t be that I am a compulsive hoardaholic who has all kinds of Anubis, Grim Reaper, and gargoyle statues decorating my office.  And I don’t think it would be that I have been known to bundle up in layers of clothing and sit out in the frigid Iowa winter nights to watch the Leonid meteor showers so what could it be? Let me think:  Oh, yeah!  I collect the stickers off fruit and vegetables and glue them to one of the doors of my kitchen cabinets.  Yeah, that’s the ticket. No one would know about that! 

I am also addicted to certain types of comfort food. I love Brunswick Stew and can eat my weight in it. I adore Chinese hot and sour soup, baked ham with collard greens swimming in hot pepper sauce, and fresh cherry tomatoes right off my own vines.  I also hoard chocolate covered cherries and peanut brittle and have been known to physically attack people who steal my pistachios. Hand me a York Peppermint patty or an Almond Joy and I am in hog heaven. Try to take them away from me and you’ll draw back a stump! And don’t EVEN get me started about people who drink up the last Cherry Pepsi and forget to put more in the fridge! I needs me my Cherry Pepsi in order to live. 

Most authors are avid readers.  If I was to look through your bookcase what titles would I find?

Ooh, you’d find such an eclectic group of work!  I’ve got every single book by John Sandford, John Grisham, and John Saul…my unholy trinity of Johns, Robin Cook, David Wiltse, Michael Connelly, Ken Eulo, Andrew Greeley, Stuart Woods, Dean Koontz, Dennis Lehane, Rosemary Rogers, Johanna Lindsey, Jude Devereaux, Robert Gellis, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn/Kinley-Kenyon/MacGregor, Brian Lumley, Shirlee Busbee and Mary Higgins Clark.  I’ve read most of Whitley Strieber’s work as well as Anne Rice, Janet Dailey and Michael Crichton. My TBR pile keeps getting larger as I find new authors.  I’ve started collecting all the books of Ronda Thompson, Kresley Cole, J.R. Ward and Lucy Blue. My bookshelves are starting to groan beneath the weight of my collection.   

Charlee, you are living out your own romance being married for years to your childhood sweetheart.  Congratulations on that accomplishment!  Will your readers find very much of your husband in your heroes?

Thank you but the credit goes to Tommy. He’s the one who has to live with me! Buddha Belly has a helluva terrific sense of humor and can come up with things that will make you…should you have a mouthful of Cherry Pepsi…decorate the air or, worse yet, your computer screen. My heroes’ dry senses of humor come from him. He is also one of the most thoughtful creations God put on this earth so that gets incorporated into the writing mix, too. Just recently he went to our local florist and asked them to send me a bouquet of flowers once a month on a different day each time so I wouldn’t know when to expect them. Out of the clear blue sky a lady shows up at my office door with the first bunch with these words: “Tommy says I love you.”  So when you read about one of my heroes doing something really sweet like that, it will usually have some basis in fact. 

We’ve lived through some pretty bad times and a lot of that winds up in some cathartic way in what I write.  I’ve been working on a book off and on for thirty years that deals with a particularly bad time in our lives when we were separated and he was with someone else…may she rot in the Abyss under tons of suppurating garbage and have to listen to Gilbert Gottfried perpetually singing Itsy Bitsy Spider for eternities to come...who I’m told is now working on breaking up her fifth marriage. (What is it with women like that?)  By the time the book is finished, I should have had my closure. I forgave him long ago but like other wide-load elephants I’ll never forget. Chances are the book will never see print but that’s okay. I don’t think I want it to. 

I know that your husband Tom supports your writing.  How about your sons?  Have you ever written anything that you wouldn’t be comfortable with them reading?

Yes, Tommy constantly brags about my work to anyone who’ll listen. My sons are both supportive of what I do and I believe they are very proud of me but my writing also embarrasses them…especially the erotica. THAT they both refuse to read.  My youngest son, Mike, said: “Jeez, Mom! Nobody wants to know their mother knows anything about sex!”  When reminded he wouldn’t have arrived without his mother knowing something about sex, he gave me THE LOOK that said I’d just exasperated him no end.  He shrugged and turned away, face red, fists clenched with a final mumbling under the breath parting shot of: “Yeah, but I don’t have to know you know I know you know!” 

When my first book came out, I dedicated it to my family and my eldest son was reading it on the plane as he and his Army company were flying over to Korea.  His captain walked by, saw the cover and asked Pete what he was reading.  “My mom’s book,” Pete told him.  The captain…with an arched brow…didn’t believe Pete until Pete handed him the book and showed him the dedication inside.  After looking suitably impressed, the captain demanded Pete loan him the book when he was finished with it.  For whatever reason, the book came up missing out of Pete’s footlocker. Someone in the company pilfered it…at least, that was what Pete swore happened. ;) 

I think my grandson is prouder of me than anyone, though. He’s twelve years old and lives out in Denver with his mother and sister. He and Vickie were here during the summer and he and I were off together while Vic was with Tommy.  We had gone into our local Borders for me to buy him the latest Resident Evil book (yes, I know some people believe he shouldn’t be reading that sort of thing at his age but I didn’t believe in censorship when his father and brother were young and I STILL don’t believe in it). When we were checking out, the clerk asked if we’d found everything we needed. Preston shook his head and said, “No, ma’am. I didn’t see any of my Grandma’s books here.”  The clerk looked taken aback and asked who is Grandma was. “Charlotte Boyett-Compo,” he said then pointed to me. “Oh, we carry her books,” the clerk said. “We’re just all sold out right now.”  She gave me a look that didn’t fool Preston in the least. He knew she was lying. “Well,” he said. “You should order some more don’t you think?” 

From the mouths of babes. ;) 

She ordered some right then and I’ve since done a signing at the store. 

You have had so many novels published.  How long did it take to get that first one into the hands of a publisher?

Years! I wrote the book in 1986 and it was 1996 before it ever saw print. That particular book was contracted with a subsidy publisher out of Canada. Along with a hundred other authors (one of whom was Mary Janice Davidson), we wound up entering a class action lawsuit against the publisher to have our rights returned to us. I was lucky in that I received two royalty checks from the publisher before all that happened and was also able to have about 5000 of the mass market paperbacks they’d done of the book given to me to sell on my own. You would have thought I’d learned my lesson with the subsidy/vanity route but I turned right around and contracted with another one based in Lexington, KY and wound up in still another class action lawsuit that sent those two publishers to prison. The one bit of advice I give to every writer thinking of contracting with any subsidy/vanity publisher?  DON’T, DON’T, DON’T, DON’T, DON’T!  You do so at your own peril! 

How long does it take you to sit down and actually write a book?

Generally it takes about three to four months to finish a book to the point I am satisfied in submitting it to a publisher.  I’ll go over it and do re-writes at least twice before I hand it in. Sometimes…depending upon the complexity of the storyline…it might require up to five partial re-writes before I’m happy with it.  I’ve only had one book that went out without a re-write and that one practically wrote itself. Right now, I’ve got seven new books sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to decide who I’d like to submit them to and I’m writing four books at the same time for which I’ll be looking at publishers. 

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block, and what do you do to recharge your muse?

I firmly believe there is no such animal as writer’s block.  Many things can cause a writer not to write and every last one of them can be traced back to a disruption, an interruption, or a distraction.  The dog needs to go out, the cat needs to come in=interruption.  The phone rings, someone comes to the door=disruption.  It’s too cold, too hot, the dog is barking, the cat is meowing, the significant other is babbling about being fed=distraction. Things happen to take a writer’s mind out of and away from what he or she is creating and when that happens, things fall apart. It isn’t a mental blockage. It is simply a diversion of your attention.  My family knows when I’m in my office I don’t want to be interrupted.  If I am writing, I don’t want to be distracted.  If I look like I’m deep in thought, I don’t need that thought disrupted so they leave me alone under penalty of being shaved bald, tarred and feathered and put out in the cold naked. You’ve heard of the Soup Nazi?  I am the NO MERCY FOR YOU FOR ANNOYING ME Nazi. 

Occasionally, Sean…my handsome little Celtic Muse who sits upon my shoulder and whispers into my ear…needs a little nudge.  He keeps my Reapers in line (they are more terrified of him than all the Ghorets in the Megaverse!) so he tends to be a bit arrogant about it. The power trip he’s on is intense! I’ve caught him snoozing…or sleeping off a pint…when he should be giving me character traits or plots lines and I have to shake him now and again.  He has a mean streak, though, and has been known to kick me on the cheek with his little pointy boots when I irritate him so I’m generally pretty respectful when I invoke his assistance. Slipping him some fumes from my glass of Bailey’s Irish Cream usually works well enough. 

Charlee, do you have a ritual for when you complete a book?

I clean house. Egads, did I actually admit that???  Usually when I’m writing, things around the house tend to not get done.  My office is off the back of our house and connected to the screened porch by a covered deck. I spend 8-12 hours a day out there so I pretty much ignore what’s in the house unless it looks as though Hurricane Katrina blew through (well, actually it’s Himicanes Tommy and Pete who do the most damage. Are there no men in this world who pick up things they scatter as they walk?). When a book has been turned in, I’ll gather my cleaning supplies and do a thorough cleaning, planning the next book as I work as I listen to David Arkenstone CDs. 

Now Tommy has a ritual, though.  He brings home a bottle of Bailey’s, a box of chocolate covered cherries and a little gift of some kind. For the last book, the gift was a cute little t-shirt that says: “I’m a woman of many moods and all of them are chocolate.” The one before that was a plaque that reads: “An old fisherman lives here with the best catch of his life.”  God, how I LOVE that man! 

If you were given the opportunity to write an anthology with any four authors, alive or dead, who would you pick and why?

If it was a romance anthology it would be Roberta Gellis, Rosemary Rogers, Anya Seton, and Shirlee Busbee because I admire their writing styles so much and their characters ‘speak’ to me. It was because of Rogers and Seton that I wrote my first book. 

If it was dark fantasy/SF/horror, it would be Dean Koontz, John Saul, Brian Lumley, and Stephen King because they are the very best at what they do. Koontz is such a wordsmith that I have to keep a dictionary by the chair when I read is stuff! 

If it was mystery/thriller, there is no doubt it would be John Sandford, David Wiltse, Dennis Lehane, and Michael Connelly because they kick ass with their storylines. I am in love with Sandford’s Lucas Davenport character and was heartbroken when they made a tv movie of one of his Prey novels and cast a totally inappropriate actor in that role. What a waste. 

If it was paranormal romantica, my choices would be Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, J.R. Ward, and Kresley Cole because their names sell books and people might try my story out of the antho. Just to be in the same league with those women would be a trip but I can’t get a NY editor or agent to even look at my work so I’ll never know what it’s like. 

I have done several anthologies and I greatly respect and admire each of the ladies with whom I’ve shared billing.  They are talented and I was honored to be among them. 

Speaking of books published, I have noticed that you tend to write a lot of series.  Do you prefer to write series or is it more that the characters won’t leave you alone until you share their stories also?

Writing a series is like going to visit a favorite aunt. This is the woman who makes you feel comfortable and welcome as soon as you walk in her door.  She always has your favorite coconut custard pie ready for you and plenty of ice-cold Cherry Pepsi.  Her house smells of cinnamon and is always warm and cozy in the winter and cool and relaxing in the summer. Her arms are always open when you need a shoulder to cry on and that’s the way the characters from my series’ make me feel.  I know them and they know me.  Some are real pests and demand I continue on with the story until they are satisfied I’ve told it all. Right now, Ryden Bakari, the Emperor of the Aduaidh Alliance—also known as the Burgon—from the WindVerse series has been demanding I write his story.  I’ve been working on it but since I tend to write two and three novels at the same time I haven’t been devoting as much time to it as he thinks I should.  He is sneaky and to punish me, he keeps hiding my SweetTarts and Gummy Lifesavers. <sigh>  I guess I’m gonna have to get back to his story if I want to keep on getting my sugar highs. 

All of your books, regardless of the genre, seem to be connected by the use of tenerse and some reoccurring surnames.  Are there other ways that you connect your books to each other that slipped right by me?  Are there links anywhere that show how they relate to each other thru the times?

By using familiar names and terms, I hope my readers will feel as though they are visiting that favorite aunt and will feel like they’re coming home when they open one of my novels. They will see the word tenerse and know right off exactly what it is and what’s likely to happen. The genres may be varied, the times and worlds may be far apart, but the similarities are meant to be reassuring. I’ve been asked to put together a timeline/family tree of my characters but so far I just haven’t had the time to do it. (Is there a reader out there who’d like to volunteer???) 

 I do have pages up on my website that gives the readers some information about Reapers and NightWinds and I’ll be fleshing that info out from time to time. I intend to do similar pages for Shadowlords and Amazeen as well as the WyndMasters whose stories will be told through Samhain Publishing. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do all that and write so it will be awhile before it all gets done.  I also have thought of doing a glossary of terms I use…like tenerse (which is a very potent and highly-addictive narcotic) and ghorets (the deadliest snake in the Megaverse) so I might get around to that before too long. 

Is there one particular genre that the writing comes easier for you?  How about the most difficult?

I love dark fantasy and that just seems to flow from my brain like warm honey. It is a comforting genre to me because I love to create new worlds and populate them with characters I’d like to meet personally.  I have loved the supernatural since I was a very small child and would sit at my Irish grandfather’s knee while he spun wild stories of graveyard creatures and phantom cats then leave the endings up to me to finish.  I believe that’s where my love of storytelling came from.  He always encouraged me to think logically about the ending and not take the easy way out and say: “And they lived happily ever after.”   

So far I haven’t found a genre that’s been difficult to write.  I’ve never done military/war so I would have to say that I’m pretty sure that would prove to be nearly impossible for me to write truthfully and well. That’s more a man’s bailiwick, anyway.  I don’t know of any women who write in that genre at all. 

You have so many fantastic books out there that it is difficult to decide which books to discuss.  So I think that I will instead ask some questions that relate to many.  Where did the original idea for the Reapers come from? 

The idea came from Darth Vader. There is a scene in the first Star Wars movie with Vader coming toward the camera flanked by his Stormtroopers.  Here is this mysterious man in black looking forbidding and menacing with that famous music playing in the background and it fired my imagination. I remember sitting up in the movie seat and I’m sure if I had been able to see my eyes they would have been sparkling.  With Tommy on one side of me and our boys on the other, I had been fairly bored up until that moment but from then on, I was engaged fully in the movie.  I thought Luke Skywalker was silly and Princess Lea was boring.  Han Solo was sexy as hell, Chubaka was adorable, C3PO was annoying, R2D2 amused me, but Darth just rang my chimes.  The scene in BloodWind where the Prime Reaper Kamerone Cree is walking down the corridor flanked by guards on his way to confront his rival was born the moment I saw Vader with his hoard of Stormtroopers. My Reapers are dressed all in black but they are handsome, virile men with amber eyes. Had Darth been gorgeous under that front end of an Edsel faceplate, I believe the story would have been much better but that’s just me. Hiding a disfigured face is commonplace but hiding a handsome one that belongs to an evil, evil man? Now THAT would have been memorable. Ah, I think I did that in Ardor’s Leveche, didn’t I?   

After I had the imposing black clad figure of my Reaper, I began fleshing him out as a killing machine, a galactic assassin without equal, a warrior the entire Megaverse fears. He’s part vampire/part werewolf so he has the best of both creatures within him. 

I have to admit that Viraiden is one of my favorite Reapers.  Could you share with us who your favorite is?

Kamerone was my first and therefore very dear to my heart. His son, Khiershon, was my second Reaper. Viraidan was my third but I have to admit he’s my favorite, too.  He was such a complex character to write. In his original incarnation, he wasn’t a very nice man and some of that evil still lurks in him after the blending.  He is torn between being the wicked creature he was before Sean became a part of him and the tremendous love he, too, is beginning to feel toward Bronwyn. She is changing him and he is having a hard time dealing with that change. He and she will show up…ironically enough…in two more of my novels coming out soon. They are in Hot, Georgia Wind (a contemporary erotica) and EvilWind, the last book in the WindDemon Trilogy which began with BloodWind. 

One thing that really impresses me about your writing is that you have so many books out all set in different times and on different worlds yet you never contradict yourself.  How in the world do you manage this remarkable feat?

It’s funny you should ask that because last year I came within an inch of retiring from writing altogether because my editor turned down a book I had written because she said I had mixed up my characters, timelines, alliances, etc. She took me to task and told me I needed to do a complete history of my characters and then let one of my knowledgeable readers look over the books before I submitted them so that wouldn’t happen again. I was devastated and spent several hours bawling my eyes out. Finally, I took that book apart, comparing the track changes she had injected into the edits with the huge 4” thick compendium I have kept since 1986 with all my characters, plot lines, terms, etc. in it and what I found shocked me to my very core. After closely examining the book, I realized it hadn’t been me who had confused those things; it had been her! I had taken her word for it that I had screwed up when I hadn’t screwed up at all. I wrote her to tell her. She went back through, realized I was right and emailed me an apology, but I was shaken by the incident.  

I have always been very careful to keep my compendium up to date and I even have a spreadsheet with pertinent information on it to keep things straight.  I’ve made mistakes but they have been minor and were easily caught by my editors. Believe me when I tell you I’m even more careful now.  

You are currently releasing books with four different publishers.  Is it difficult to work within so many different guidelines?  Is there some way for your fans to keep up with what is coming out soon and with whom?

I learned a hard lesson about having all my books with one publisher. You don’t want to put all your eggs into one basket. If that basket should break open, the basket carrier turn rogue and you lose your work, you are screwed. 

The guidelines are basically the same between the publishers. What is different is the presentation of the material. One publisher wants 1.25” page borders and another wants an inch. One wants Times New Roman and the other wants Book Antiqua. One insists on having … and the other demands -- while a third wants a — .  One editor does edits in track changes while another just highlights the changes in red. All that’s easily changed after you’ve written the story with the search/find/replace feature in Word.  I have a little laminated sheet with Cerridwen Press, Ellora’s Cave, New Concepts Publishing, and Samhain Publishing requirements and guidelines on it.  Whichever publisher I’m gearing a certain work for gets the work subbed according to those requirements. I really wish the requirements were standardized but it’s not hard to make the changes.   

If you go on my webpage, you’ll see a Release Calendar for 2006 and one for 2007.  I’ll be putting up release months and days on there as the dates become available to me from the publishers.  Also, I usually announce a new contract or new cover art, interviews I’ve done or booksignings coming up on my readers group and if someone would like to join it, they can go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/windlegends/join .  

Your romantic suspense works are so well written that they tend to appeal to both men and women.  Are you coming out with any more in this genre in the next year or so?

Recently Ellora’s Cave turned down Hot Georgia Winds because they thought the older woman/younger man scenario wouldn’t sell. The book isn’t really about the relationship but about what happens IN that relationship so the younger man/older woman scenario is really a moot point. It is the suspense within the tale that is the main thing. This book is perhaps one of the best…if not the best…I’ve ever written. It is a contemporary romantic suspense and I had no trouble selling it within an hour of EC turning it down. As a matter of fact, the publisher who contracted it jumped at the chance to get it and wants a sequel. I’ll be writing at least one, if not two.  I believe it will be a book that will greatly appeal to men just as Passion’s Mistral and HardWind have.  As a matter of fact, characters from both Passion’s Mistral and HardWind show up in Hot Georgia Winds because it was written as the third book in my Tropical Winds series. I honestly think Brandy and Marie will touch your heart.  To get an idea of what this book is about, you can check it out at www.windlegends.org/hotgeorgiawind.htm and don’t forget to read the poem that goes along with the tale!!! 

Congratulations on having New Concept Publishing pick up and re-release your WindLegends series.  Do you recommend that your fans who already have that series from the earlier release repurchase it due to significant changes? 

Yes, I really do because there have been new scenes added and some taken out, a general tightening of the storyline. I have a great editor, btw.  I have one fan who buys each of my books as it comes out no matter in what form. She wrote to tell me she’d just purchased BloodWind and was looking forward to it coming out in print because she had that book in CD, print, download, print again, and download again. “I do that with all your books,” she wrote.  Now having readers like her will humble you, lemme tell you! 

I know that the entire series wasn’t published the first time.  At what point in the series will the new releases start?

WindBeliever is the seventh book in the series and that is the one that hasn’t seen publication yet. The sixth book, WindDreamer, wasn’t out very long before it was pulled although it did make it to print. I am hoping NCP will make a boxed set of the books for Christmas 2007. 

Can you think of anything to add that you would like to share with your fans?

I would like to invite everyone to come over and be my friend at MySpace.  The URL is www.myspace.com/windlegends  and if they’d like to see book preview videos of some of my novels, they can find links to them off my webpage at www.windlegends.org/bookvids.htm .  I really enjoyed making the videos; they were a lot of fun.  I also have a great writer/reader resource page on my website as well as a monthly recipe page.  If you’re curious to see what Tommy and I looked like at my senior prom or what our five demanding felines look like or would like a virtual tour of my office, you can find that there, too.  Drop by and don’t forget to sign the guestbook so I’ll know you came to visit! 

I would like to thank Charlotte Boyett-Compo for sharing this time with us.  Be sure to visit her website at http://www.windlegends.org/ for further insight into this phenomenal author.

Thank you for interviewing me. I really enjoyed your questions.