Q & A with Lex Valentine

Wow is it December already?? Boy this year just flew by. Today we have Lex Valentine as our Guest Author/Blogger, she's stopped by to answer a few questions for us.  To read more about Lex and her fantastic books, visit her website- http://www.lexvalentine.com/  She has some really yummy books to pick from.  Also stop by her blog http://www.lexvalentine.com/blog/   So let's get started with the Q&A's. 

 1. What was the hardest part to write so far in the series?

The hardest thing for me to write in the entire series was Emily’s Death Spiral in Ride the Lightning. It isn’t easy to write a suicide scene and I worried that readers wouldn’t like that Emily tried to kill herself in her despair over Vahid. Luckily, they all understood where she was coming from as a dragon and a woman and they sympathized.

2. Do you design your own covers and do you decide on the names of each book?

 At Pink Petal Books, I do my own covers, but not at other publishers. Thus far, I’ve not had any publisher change the title of a book on me.

3. Which comes first- the characters story or the idea for the novel?

Oh, I think they sort of all come together. I’ll get a germ of an idea whether it’s a scene or a character or a plot point, then I build on it in my head and it all sort of happens together. I have no specific way that I come up with a story.

4. In your series, Tales of the Darkworld, you have F/M couples and M/M couples, which do you find easier to write?

F/M usually because I’ve been there done that, but to be honest, lately, the M/M stuff comes easier. I think it’s where I’m at in my head at the time and what I’ve been reading. Lately, I’ve been reading more gay rom and less het. But I shift back and forth. I’m an equal opportunity reader and writer. Also, some characters are infinitely more easy to write. In Common Ground, Sair was very hard for me to write, but Weylyn, who is a secondary character in that book, is always easy for me to write.

5. I love how you bring in all different types of breed characters (dragons, vampires, werewolves), when you started the series did you know that you would be writing each book about a different species?

I knew. When I first came up with the idea for the Five Dark Realms more than 25 years ago, I knew I wanted to write about all the different people who inhabited my worlds. And so it’s come to be.

6. What is a typical writing day for you?

It depends on the day of the week. Sometimes I’ll squeak out a half hour in the morning before work, a half hour at lunch and that’s it because it’s a work day for me. Sometimes I can write when I get home but usually not. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t sleep and don’t feel like reading so I write. On the weekends I can do more, but it depends on if I have something going on that takes me out of the house or if my friends want to do Word Wars online. I don’t really have a typical writing day to be honest. I wish I did because it would mean I’m making enough to quit the EDJ.

Thank you Lex for stopping by and everyone be sure to stop over at Lex's blog, she is having a 30 Days of Christmas giveaway- here's the link again

http://www.lexvalentine.com/blog/