Blue Nebula - Interview and Giveaway with Diane Dooley

Please welcome multi-published author Diane Dooley to the blog, with a cool giveaway! 

Please tell us a bit about yourself:

I’m a genre hack writer and proud of it! I write romance, science fiction and horror. I often find these genres bleeding over into each other as I write and a lot of my stuff is imbued with dark humor. I’m from the Isle of Jersey in the Channel Islands originally, grew up in Scotland, and currently live in the United States. I’ve got two very naughty children, an equally naughty husband, a menagerie of animals and a farmhouse that is always in need of repairs. Life is good!

Tell us about your new release, Blue Nebula:

Blue Nebula is the sequel to Blue Galaxy, a science fiction romance novella told entirely from the point of view of its hero, Captain Javan Rhodes. Blue Nebula continues the story from the point of view of the heroine, Sola de la Vega, and veers from science fiction romance into a science fiction love story.  Both are available from Carina Press and all the usual online booksellers. 

Sola de la Vega is on a mission to save the galaxy, and nothing will sway her. Not even the pleas of her beloved husband, Captain Javan Rhodes, to keep herself and their unborn child safe.
Fitted with a series of technological "enhancements" entwined with her central nervous system, Sola is not fully human. Her father is the undisputed leader of Earth, and Sola is driven to put an end to his genocidal rule--before he can follow through with his plans to consolidate power over the universe into the hands of the aristocracy.
Despite Javan's fears for her safety, and coping with a difficult pregnancy, Sola's quest has become an obsession she cannot control. Compelled to choose, duty must come before her love for Javan. And when Sola joins forces with Destin Grady--her father's sworn enemy--in a plot to execute the dictator and seize power, she soon uncovers secrets from the past that have her facing a future she never could have imagined...
32,000 words

Falling in love is easy; staying alive long enough to enjoy it just might be impossible.

Javan Rhodes, the hard-drinking, disreputable captain of space freighter The Kypris, took a mission to save himself from hitting the bottom of the food chain. Transporting Sola, a beautiful young aristocrat, from Earth to an unknown destination on the outer rim of the colonies is lucrative, but also highly illegal.
As tough as it is to evade both the law and the lawless, the hardest part of the job is not falling in love with his irresistible cargo. Just as he decides that he will never be able to hand her over to the warlord she must marry, he discovers that Sola has been playing a very dangerous game—one that could not only cost them their lives, but could also affect the balance of power in an increasingly dangerous universe.
22,000 words

What inspired you to write this particular story?:

Sola did. This is her story. It’s very much about her journey, both psychologically and emotionally, as well as the events that take place as she travels between space stations and Planet Earth. Sola is such a strange character and was fascinating for me to write.  Readers can expect the unexpected, along with lots of twists and turns in the story. Blue Nebula is a fast, intense read.

Which comes first for you – a character's looks, personality or name?:

None of the above. What comes first for me is a backstory. Blue Galaxy was born from a line of a song and then me wondering: what if a woman with a horrible past managed to escape her life  and journey to the stars?  I guess I start with a character and a motivation, then start fleshing it out from there.

Any tips for aspiring authors?:

Don’t just talk about writing a book one day. Sit down, with your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard, and actually do it!

Questions for fun:

If you had the power of time travel, is there anything you would go back and change? Why/why not?:

Heck, yeah I would - to hell with all the paradoxes. I’d go back and personally end the lives of as many rotten examples of humanity as I could track down. I’d start with Hitler.

What super-power would you choose?:

I’ll take the ability to teleport please.

If you could have three wishes, what would they be?:

Good health for my children, long life for my husband, and a bottomless pot of money for me!

Coffee, tea or wine?:

All three! Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, wine in the evening.

What is your favourite book? (aside from one of your own!):

I have lots of favorites, but the one I’ve read again and again and again and again is ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov. The writing is exquisite, the story is heartbreaking, the characters are perfectly drawn - it’s a masterpiece. I can read it over and over and still find new wonders and layers in it.

Favourite genre and why?:

Ooh, too hard. I particularly write romance, horror and science fiction, but I read in a lot more genres. For pure relaxation and enjoyment I’d have to plump for poetry as my favorite. Because I don’t and never will write poetry I can experience it purely as a reader, without the writer part of me interfering with my fun.

Favourite colour?:

Blue. I decided that when I was a small girl staring upwards at the sky on a perfect summer day.

Upcoming news and plans for the future?:

I have a contemporary romance entitled That Night, releasing from Wild Rose Press on December 12th of this year. I also have several works in progress.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us!

My pleasure! I am giving away e-copies of both Blue Galaxy and Blue Nebula to one of your readers. To enter the giveaway leave a comment about your favorite color and contact information. I’ll draw a winner at random, three days after this post goes live. Thanks for having me, Pippa!

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Diane Dooley writes romance, science fiction and horror - sometimes all in the same story. You can catch up with her on her  blog, Facebook or Twitter. She also blogs regularly at Contact: Infinite Futures and is a regular contributor to The Galaxy Express.

Riding the Wave

Several things have happened over the last couple of days that have really hit home the reality that I'm a soon-to-be-published author. After three rounds of edits, Keir feels like a whole new book, and much stronger for it. The essence is still there, the heart of it still intact, but it's been polished up and revamped. The flaws have been smoothed out. It's a good feeling.

But Sunday I got a wonderful new present delivered to my inbox. My cover! Oh, it was a shock at first. I had to stare at it for a while, leave the computer, have a little wander round and then come back. And then I knew. I loved it! It was dark and brooding, like my MC. It was clean and simple. Perhaps not the Keir I had in my head, but the guy on the cover is very...er...VERY nice, and I can see him as my MC. He is missing his tattoos, but there are limits with photo stock images, and I understand that. As soon as I got permission to flaunt it you can bet I did just that! Here it is -

But it's not just the fab artwork. It's seeing the title in lovely, flowing script. The tag lines that I came up with stamped on the cover. And most of all, it's seeing MY NAME on it, with the publisher's logo. It makes it real in a way that the contract didn't. That even the edits didn't. This isn't just some picture that I've put together in my spare moments for a bit of fun, or a poster off the internet. This is the real deal, a proper book cover from MY publisher, with MY name on it as author. It's a beautiful symbol of all the work I've put in, all the tears and moments of doubt, all the voices inside and out saying I couldn't do it. I have done it, and the cover is there to prove it.

And then there was more! Tuesday morning I got a tweet from Lyrical Press. My gorgeous cover was up on their 'Coming Soon' page for all to see. Not only that, but my name and author bio are up on the site too. I'm officially and publicly Pippa Jay, author of Keir, with Lyrical Press Inc. Oh, man, that's such a great feeling!

There's still a long way to go. More edits. More forms. More steps along the way. I've been compiling lists of useful information for the lead up to release day. I'm doing a New Year blog hop and a guest post on the 18th. I just got my first author interview too! As the year draws to a close, I know the first few months of 2012 are probably going to be the most hectic so far. Would I have it any other way? Hell, no! :D

I Haz a Kindle!

So, I've finally entered the e-book club. Well, actually I've been there for a while, by downloading and reading digital books on my computer, but there is definitely something to be said for having an e-reader at last. For one thing I'm hoping it won't make my eyes hurt quite as much! And I have to admit that holding it is a little exciting ... TMI? :-P

When I first started looking into publishing, the Kindle was a new and rare thing. E-books were just starting out, and self-publishing via e-formats and POD services were something that had become available to almost any author. With my own book due out in May next year (and with no definite date or eligibility for a print version) I stopped looking at an e-reader as an expensive toy I didn't need. Instead it became an essential piece of kit for me to have. After all, there's not a lot to be said for having an e-book out and not having the means to read it myself, is there?

This is my new (and first) Kindle. I got the one without the keyboard (and without the adverts. Okay, okay, I've been told the adverts - or 'special offers' as Amazon insists on calling them, sheesh - aren't that annoying, but with the amount of constant advertising we get thrown in our faces, I saw the extra expense of having the advert-less kind very worthwhile. I was rather surprised to find that there is an on-screen keyboard which you can navigate with the 5-way controller button - not much use to me in terms of writing, but an unexpected bonus (um, yeah, I didn't read up the specifications THAT well. ). The only annoyance for me was that I don't have a wireless connection. I thought (silly me!) that I'd just be able to download the dozen e-books I had sitting on my pc (including my own scifi short story), but nooooooo! You have to register the darn thing first before it lets you do anything other than charge it up! D'oh! Luckily for me, a quick trip to the local library with my Kindle to use the free wifi soon solved that one. Registration was dead simple (once the library wifi decided it was going to stay on - their problem, not one with the Kindle!).

I have no idea how this compares to other e-readers, or even to the other Kindles. I know there are Kobos and Nooks and Sony e-readers, but those few people I know with e-readers either have Kindles or iPads. I have no idea how it compares to the older Kindles either, so you're not going to get any technical kind of review here (sorry!). I knew what one looked like. It was slightly heavier than I expected - I'm assuming the weight is probably down to the battery. The manual said it takes three hours to charge, but it worked out at less than that. It came with its USB cable for connection to the pc which surprised me - I swear the blurb says you have to buy one separately, and I'm glad I didn't do that! The driver software set up automatically on both my old main pc and the newer notepad, so if you have any issues with yours, I'm afraid I'll be no help at all! I had a little trouble loading the e-books from my pc to the Kindle (for some reason it didn't put them into the documents folder on the Kindle so I had to cut and paste them in) but once I'd done that, it was simple.

So here is my new toy ... er ... I mean essential piece of equipment. With my own free scifi short story loaded up of course ( <cough> blatant self promotion <cough>). :-P

Here I must say a very special thank you to Liz Culver and Becky Thompson. Ladies, I am most sincerely in your debt. :)