What kind of books did you grow up reading? Did you ever dream of becoming a writer someday?
Black Beauty, The Wind in the Willows, Bobbsey Twins, then Edgar A. Poe and right into ghost stories. In high school my composition teacher always read my stuff to the class.... he would read his favorites back to the class without giving our name and that made me feel good without being singled out.
Nancy read Cherry Ames, Student Nurse and anything with horses. She became a fan of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Judith McNaught. She actively took seminars with the goal of writing full time.
Where did you both meet for the first time? How did the collaboration happen?
In 2008, Nancy and I met through a fan board for a television show, we liked the same aspects of the show and commented on the same fanfic stories. When there was a convention in London, UK, in 2009 we made plans to travel throughout England together. Amazing that you can arrange to meet a 'stranger' in a foreign country and travel with them and begin a partnership.
We went to Hampton Court and I felt I had been there before, like a reincarnation situation. I woke up with inspiration about a Tudor experiment for immortality that Henry VIII commanded for a child. Nancy had written a romance book in the 90's, but we decided on writing scripts and we developed a pilot script with a three-year story arc and about 8 scripts for the first season of the one hour drama. We pitched in Los Angeles, competed and placed in film festivals, wrote more scripts for different films and got within sniffing distance of being affiliated with the Lifetime Channel.
In 2014, we switched to a paranormal romance and shopped small publishing houses. We released RISE in May 2015 and had decent success. Sadly, Forevermore Books closed and we got our rights back. We shopped more publishers and signed with Torrid Books. We polished RISE and re-edited it to Blood Rising and decided there was a trilogy there.
What inspired you to direct your love of storytelling towards romantic fiction? Ever thought of a solo writing career?
It is far easier to work with our cover artist and produce a book that sells than it is to sell a script. I have incredible ADHD and Nancy is the stabilizing disciplinarian in the team. I would wander too far off the path if I wrote alone. Nancy has done it, back in the day when it was typewriter and paper. She has the chops.
How did you come up with your pen name, Amber Anthony? Do you have arguments at work?
It was at the beginning of the alphabet, we thought it would be easy to remember. We have discussions, sometimes heated, but we each realize collaboration is compromising. We were friends before we were collaborators. If one of us gets too silent, the other catches on. Then it's time to talk it out, pros and cons.
What are your individual roles in the process of writing a book? What kind of atmosphere do you prefer while you are working on a novel?
Once pitching scripts in Los Angeles, we were offered the chance of being the subject of a reality series based on two writers who sat across the continent and wrote together. We told the producer it would be boring because our process involves us sitting at our computers for hours, creating frightening search histories and each of us typing the novel.
Back in the day, we both used SPRINT because we could talk free unlimited. We wear headsets and write 4-6 days a week from 12:30EDT-4:00EDT and then again at 8:00 pm EDT-10:30EDT.
When we are together we make notes in the car. You don't even want to think about how trips to Disney have influenced vampire romance.
It is truly a collaboration, sometimes we end each other's sentences. We plot, structure the chapters, write it and then 'color' it. Then we edit it with SmartEdit and Grammarly, run it by proofreaders and beta readers before we put a fine point on it.
We are in the process of getting our print rights back from our ebooks and I took on the challenge of formatting them for Ingram Spark. I'm no genius, but I figured if other folks could paginate and place headers, etc., I could do it. Talk about forming a fast friendship with the Microsoft people! I nearly lost my mind, but now I am totally comfortable with formatting books. Nancy is my cheerleader.
How do you build the human and emotional connection in the age of excessive technology? Who is more addicted to social media?
Nancy is not a social media fan. I have a background in newspaper and web advertising, copywriting and sales/public speaking presentations. I do not go anywhere without my laptop, e-reader, iPod, and iPhone. Nancy would use a Blackberry, the old one with the buttons if she could.
We both mentor Writers who are coming up behind us. We are members of Romance Writers of America.
How do you think your experience in film and television scriptwriting has helped you shape into an author? Who came up with the idea for your first book?
We believe it gave us a basis for strong dialogue, active plotting, and more vivid characters. Even in our scorching romances, we have drama, external conflict, and humor. We generate plot-driven reasons for the scorcher scenes that move the story along.
We were so weary of not selling the scripts! We saw publishing was moving from Agents and big contracts to self-publishing. We had a screenwriting agent who wasn't effective so we went directly to small publishing houses. We were in our late 50's and didn't have ten to fifteen years spinning our wheels. I brought it up and Nancy said, why not books?
What, in your opinion, are the most important elements when working in collaboration? How long have you been writing together?
2009, it was summer, after we returned from London. Being organized is key. Recognizing key points, cutting the waste and communicating a clear vision is vital.
How do you come up with the titles to your books? There must have been times where you both came up with different endings to a story, how do you decide whose idea is better?
Our first paranormal romance was RISE, because Matt Brenner chose to 'rise' above his defeatist attitude about being a vampire. We were going to conjugate the verb for a trilogy and that didn't work with plotted stories. We toss ideas, sleep on them, look at trends and make a decision from there.
When we re-released Rise as Blood Rising we felt 'Blood' would identify it as a vampire romance.
When we wrote the second book about an ancient vampire with a legend of a curse we elected to use Blood Emerald. Initially, a time-traveling paranormal woman Marshal was going to come to Rick and reveal his danger. We slept on quite a few pages and said.... "nope'. It was funny because we returned with the same idea to bring back a character from Blood Rising.
When we finished the trilogy with a story of a shape-shifter living with vampires after being exiled from his shifter clan, we named it Blood Dragon.
What is the most surprising thing you discovered while writing your book, "Blood Rising?" What was the inspiration for the story?
Who really expects to get inspired to make things up? Who really expects to get the chance to re-write vampire mythology that thrusts creatures of the night into daily commerce and turn them into people you might know? We were tired of the blood-thirsty violence that came with vampire dramas. Vampires, at their origin, were considered the standard for seduction. Something ugly can't be seductive in our hearts. We figured there were undead with some real people problems. (Finding love, not becoming bored with that coveted immortality, old enemies, etc.)
What were the key challenges you faced when writing the book, "Blood Dragon?" What was the highlight of writing this book?
Wondering if our vampire fans would welcome a cocky Dragon Shifter was the first concern. The highlight was the focus of the Las Vegas swindler and how the aggregate cast of vampires came together to save Adam's clan after they called him home to Scotland.
SPOILER> Nancy is a former equestrienne, so introducing a Pegasus shifter was a special treat for us. We took a decidedly firmer turn into the aspects of BDSM with our shifter couple, they operated on a kinkier level than our vampires.
NONE of the characters that engage in BDSM are sadists and we emphasize the consensuality of their involvement. BDSM requires trust and we like to emphasize that.
If you had to describe Rick Hiatt from "Blood Emerald" in three words, what would those three words be? Who decided the name of the characters in the novel?
If I had known how much I'd come to love Rick Hiatt, I probably would have suggested another name. My first husband was a Rick and he was nothing like the five-hundred-year-old vampire. It was Nancy's turn to name a character and she liked the 'commonality' of Richard. You will never pick up one of our books and find names that look like alphabet soup.
Rick is royalty, confident and snarky. He grabbed immortality by the lapels and never looked back. Anna was a character from the first half of Blood Rising. She was described as "too innocent' to feed vampires by Matt and cast out of the donor ranks. We decided she was the right person to return in Blood Emerald to warn Rick about a new threat.
We do take turns, we keep a list of names that are approximate to their era. We take a long time using the name to see if it 'rings' for the dialogue and the image.
If you could change one habit of each other, what would it be? And why?
I wish I could be more consistent for Nancy, she is the steady as she goes ship heading for the north star. I am the ADHD dragonfly that she has to wrangle with a butterfly net. We've been together longer than some marriages because we give each other space and self-care time. We travel together when we can for fun and 2019 is the year we are beginning book conventions with a signing appearance in Savannah in July.
How many plot ideas are just waiting to be written? Can you tell us about one?
We have quite a few works in progress listed on our website and we surprised ourselves that we actually stepped out of paranormal to write Becoming Gabriel, an urban tale of personal redemption for two very different young people. That debuted October 29, 2018.
We are currently writing Roman's Revenge, an adventure romance that will be at least a trilogy. The character Jax Roman is a Navy SEAL leading a joint DEA task force in San Diego. His antagonists, Isabel Huerta, the drug czar's young widow and 'Pollo' Phoenix, her lieutenant are a ruthless and bloodthirsty duo. Through unfortunate circumstances, Jax's life is saved by Dr. Kameo Alana, whose father was severely tortured by Phoenix fifteen years ago. An ensemble cast of fascinating men and women will be woven through the trilogy. A surf-riding US Marshal, Gideon Sullivan, a sharpshooting FBI agent, Ms. Jett Hunter, FDA consultant Ms. Dana Kelly and Police Detective Franco 'Flint' Tomas will bring their personalities out to right the wrongs cast their way.
The second book is Roman's Rules. Jax's long lost father, Kirk Roman returns to Jax's life. Jax, the newly retired SEAL begins a career as a security consultant on Oahu while adjusting to his 'happily ever after' with Dr. Kameo Alana.
The third book is up in the air in the 'dartboard' stage of planning.
Who handles your social media accounts and your promotions on them? Have you had a positive experience with AllAuthor so far and would this be a platform you would recommend to others?
I handle social media accounts. To date, AllAuthor has been the easiest asset in our social media experiences. The graphics are top shelf, the promises made are kept and the website operates with great ease. The hardest issue in being an emerging Author is consistency in growth. I have used Twitter programs that did not reach our target market. AllAuthor hits our target market.
