We’re celebrating the release of Beyond Pain (Beyond #3) with an interview with the authors!! You’ve probably seen our recent flaily reviews of Beyond Control and Beyond Pain and I quickly begged asked Donna & Moira if I could send them some interview questions and they kindly entertained me! Check out what they said below and then go get these books!! One lucky person is going to win an ebook of Beyond Pain too! Make sure you enter the rafflecopter below!
Maybe not everyone knows this, but Kit Rocha is actually two authors! I’m always intrigued by authors who can write well together. Bree & Donna, you’ve been doing just that for some time, how did you find each other, and how do you make it work so well?
Donna: We met online! Possibly while writing dirty fanfiction about Wolverine. Ahem.
Bree: If by “possibly” you mean “totally and absolutely”, though at that point we weren’t writing together. Just bouncing ideas off each other and sometimes writing sequels to each other’s work.
Was it a change for you to jump from Paranormal Romance to Erotic Romance? What kind of changes did you have to make to your writing style if any?
Donna: I think the biggest difference is the heightened focus on character thoughts and emotions. There’s less action (not THAT kind, okay?) in erotic romance, even in something like the Beyond series, where the O’Kanes keep getting shot at. LOL
Bree: We’ve always written books with their fair share of dirty smexing, but I feel like the Beyond books helped me grow into focusing on the internal conflict and the romance arc. Our PNRs were often about couples fighting together to survive, the Beyond books are about people fighting to survive together.
How did you come up with the Dystopian world in the Beyond Series? Did you always have plans to make this a series?
Bree: Sometimes we’ll write throw-away vignettes with characters in different settings, just to play with ideas and to get to know the characters a little better. We had an apocalyptic one and a paranormal prison colony one, and they sort of merged and spat out the Sectors.
Donna: We love series. One of our favorite things is knowing that awesome character in the background will have her time to shine!
Can you briefly introduce us to Bren and Six who are our couple in Beyond Pain?
Donna: Bren is a former military policeman from the city–their version of a Green Beret, SWAT officer, and Navy SEAL all rolled into one. He was framed for a crime–sort of, LOL–exiled, and wound up with the O’Kanes. And he has never looked back, except when someone needed killin’.
Bree: Six is a girl who’s lived through a few different versions of hell, but has never stopped wanting to help people. She joined forces with the previous leader of Sector Three because he convinced her he wanted a partner who would clean up the Sector. Unfortunately, they had different ideas of “clean” and he left her with the scars to prove it.
Who is your favorite character you’ve written and why?
Donna: That I’ve written? Thus far, that’s got to be Lex. She has so much attitude that it could easily turn into a situation where she’s just a jerk with something to prove. But she cares too much for that.
Bree: Ace. I can’t help it. Ace gets to say the most ridiculous, insane, outrageous things. Sometimes I think I should be drunk while coming up with them. But I also know how much heart he has under all that bluster…which I can’t wait to show off.
Are there any plans to write some prequels? (*cough* Maybe something about how Declan came into power? *cough*)
Bree: I won’t say I’ve never considered it. 😉
Donna: I wouldn’t mind doing a series of shorts where we show some of these people meeting for the first time.
How many books will we get to drool & flail over can we expect in this series?
Bree: We don’t have a set end point yet, since there are so many parts of this world we’d love to explore. But we did recently post the titles for books five, six & seven, so you’ll at least have that many!
Donna: I could write them forever, so… LOL
What is the one thing about each of you that readers would be surprised to learn?
Bree: I think people know most of my dark secrets. Though the one that still shocks people is that I was a Girl Scout for thirteen years.
Donna: I don’t have any tattoos. I think I’m gonna change that soon, though.
You guys self-publish. Do you find that this works best for you? What kind of advice would you offer to someone looking to self-publish?
Bree: I love self-publishing, but it is a lot of work. I’m not one of those people who thinks publishers don’t give authors anything. There are a ton of less-than-visible things that go into the publication process: editing, copy-editing, proofing, covers, blurbs, formatting, metadata, and none of that is including all the research you have to do to make sure you’re in touch with the market and its trends and the latest changes in epub standards and distribution channels or all the marketing that comes with it.
But having said that, I do love it. I think the current conflict in publishing isn’t about what publishers can do–I think we should all admit that they can do a whole hell of a lot for an author when they put their mind to it–but what they’re likely to do. I may not have impressive resources, but I’m going to put all of them behind every book I write.
Which is my advice–don’t self-publish unless you’re willing to invest your blood, sweat, tears and money into it. If you’re not confident you can earn that money back, you may not be ready to self-publish.
What authors do you fangirl over?
Bree: Kelley Armstrong. Meljean Brook. Anne Bishop. That is my current holy trifecta.
Donna: Stephen King. Sharyn McCrumb. Tessa Dare.
Bree: OMG, Tessa Dare. Yes. I’m stealing that one, too.
Are you currently working on anything that you can tell or tease us about?
Here’s a snippet from the first chapter of Beyond Jealousy. The whole chapter will be posted on our website after Pain comes out.
The space between them was too precise not to be deliberate. He should be touching her somehow—an accidental bump of his hand, his chest grazing hers when she dragged in a breath—but the prickle along her skin was pure anticipation.
He let her hang there forever before closing his eyes. “Maybe I don’t want to hear you say how much you hate me again. Once a night is all my wounded, delicate heart can handle.”
His words should have sparked her temper again, not a tiny frisson of guilt. “I meant it. But not the way you think.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “My mistake. It’s the good kind of hate.”
“The frustrated kind.” He always found a way to hide behind his joking words.
Exasperated, Rachel reached down and grabbed his belt buckle, curling her fingers beneath the warm metal. “I know what sorts of games you and Cruz are playing these days. How come you two haven’t knocked on mydoor yet? Think I can’t handle it?”
“And what do you think you know?” Ace demanded, his eyes snapping open. His hands hit the wall on either side of her head, caging her. Trapping her. “Don’t skimp on the filthy details. You know how I love dirty talk, angel.”
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