Love What You Write!

When I sold Heart of the Wolf, I had no idea it would make Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the Year, 1 of 5 mass marketed books that made it.

I didn't know that I would now have 8 contracted books in the series, that I would be featured in a Portland, Oregon newspaper where I went to college, or in the alumni magazines for Monmouth University in NJ, and West Texas A & M, Portland Community College in Oregon, or have an interview in a French online magazine.

The Portland Community College article was just released/click download on the picture to the write and I'm featured on Page 5!!

http://www.pcc.edu/about/magazine/documents/communities-10-summer.pdf

I didn't know that I would be invited to contribute to Make Love Like a Romance Author, a nonfiction book from the maker of the Chicken Soup series, which includes several NY Times Best Selling authors. I didn't know that the first 3 books in the series would sell out and are already in their 2nd printing!

What I did know was that I loved writing Heart of the Wolf, and it came from the heart.

But then my editor asked what else I had written. I'd started series works before, and hadn't sold them. So I had stopped writing series--no sense in writing 3 books and not selling any of them. And though Heart of the Wolf had had a lot of favorable interest, it hadn't sold yet, so I started Destiny of the Wolf, same world, different characters. Except for Leidolf. He was the mystery wolf in Heart of the Wolf and he became the one character I included in each of the first 4 books.

But my editor hadn't bought Destiny of the Wolf by the time I needed to get started on another story, just in case. Same old dilemma. I didn't want to write a sequel to a book my editor might not buy. So I wrote To Tempt the Wolf. Again, new set of characters. And the 4th book, Legend of the White Wolf sold on proposal. Then I was able to revisit characters from earlier books. Book 5 is Leidolf's story, Seduced by the Wolf.

And Book 6, Wolf Fever, is Carol's story, from Destiny of the Wolf.

Heart of the Highland Wolf, Book 7, is also a new cast of characters, but the romance author, Julia Wildthorn, mentioned in many of the books, is in this one.

And Book 8, Dreaming of the Wolf, the current book I'm working on, is Jake's story, from Destiny of the Wolf.

So writing from the heart has resulted in 8 well-loved books, but that's not all. When promotion time comes for the new releases, we must love the book all over again. We write about it--what makes it different from the others in the series. What makes it different from other books in the genre. What inspired me to write it???

And all have inspiration in one form of another. In To Tempt the Wolf, I absolutely love the scenario where a man or woman is "shipwrecked" and doesn't remember who he or she is. I've read various romance versions and so came up with my own.

When I was trying to come up with a new angle for book #7, a coworker said I didn't have any "poor" werewolves. :)

At the time, I'd been dying to write about a Highland werewolf clan because a lot of my mother's ancestors were from the Highlands. So I incorporated some of my true story in with the fictional, made a "poor" Highland hero, and had a blast with Heart of the Highland Wolf, due out Jun 2011. :)

Will there be more wolves on the horizon? You bet! :) I'm currently working on Dreaming of the Wolf, Book 8, and have proposed two more.

So remember, when you "pick up that pen" to write, it might just be your mainstay and you'll need to love it to write more, to promote, to share your love of the world and your characters with readers and fans all over the world.

When you write that first book, it's only the beginning! :)

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com