Interview: Teri Anne Stanley

Pens and Peonies is super pleased to welcome author Teri Anne Stanley to the blog!

 

Teri Anne Stanley is the evil writing twin of Tracy Hopkins. She grew up reading Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown, but always felt there was something missing.  When she hit her teens, she shifted to romance, but still...something was missing. When she discovered romantic suspense, her reading life was complete.

Teri  authored several scientific articles, and a recipe column or fifty, but wasn't allowed to write sex scenes for them--so she's decided to write what she loves to read: Romantic Suspense that doesn't take itself too seriously.   She's also worked as a fashion designer for female body builders and a sex therapist for rats.

In her spare time, she and the most awesome Mr. Stanley, along with a variety of teenagers, and dogs, enjoy boating and watching farm runoff flow past their weekend estate, Camp Swampy.  Teri lives in Northern Kentucky, near the Ohio River and her beloved Interstate-75, with its lush rolling semis and musical rumbling tires. 

Her first novel, Deadly Chemistry, will be coming from Entangled Suspense later this year. You can find Teri wasting time on Twitter @teriannestanley, on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TeriAnneStanley or blogging at http://teriannestanley.blogspot.com.

 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing career.

Well, I'm in the process of bursting on to the writing scene. Maybe not bursting, but hopefully I'm not just dribbling onto it.  I've been writing off and on for my whole life, but I didn't actually sit down to start something with a goal of finishing it until a couple of years ago.  I took a couple of online plotting workshops, started blogging and hanging out with other writers, and here I am...just a couple of months from the release of Deadly Chemistry!

What is your writing schedule like?

I work full time, and I have three teenagers and a husband who travels for work...so I write in the cracks of my day. Breaks at work, at stop lights, in the evening...my kids are old enough to ignore me, so I get a fair amount of time at night.

What do you think makes a good book?

I love that "oof" feeling that I get when one character bares his or her soul to the other. I don't know how to define it, or how to do it...but that's my goal--to make readers feel something. And to make them laugh.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

Getting the committee in my head to shut up. You know the one, the group of voices that tell you you should probably make blankets for homeless cats, that noone is going to want to read that, and if they do, it will only be to make fun of it on Goodreads.  But somehow, I manage to get through to "the end", and when I go back and re-read what I've written, sometimes I even think it's good.

How long does it take you to write a book?

It took me three years to finish the first one, which I'm revising now to submit soon. The second one, Deadly Chemistry, took six weeks. It was a NaNoWriMo project. I sold it to Entangled when it was only 3/4 written. After I got "the call", I spent another two weeks finishing it. Sitting on cloud nine helped a bit with that. I suspect that the next book will fall somewhere in between six weeks and three years. Hopefully closer to the six weeks!

Do you have an agent? How did you get published? Share with us "The Call" story.

My story is a little bass-ackwards: I wrote Deadly Chemistry during NaNoWriMo as part of the Savvy Authors website's Bootcamp Smackdown. Basically, writers joined teams and competed to earn the right to submit their manuscript at the end of November. My imprint, Suspense, won the smackdown, so I submitted my unfinished, barely edited manuscript, along with about forty other hopefuls and tried to forget about it.

I got a call from Nina Bruhns, the managing editor of the Suspense line in January, telling me she wanted to offer me a contract. I don't really remember much after that...

A couple of days later, I told my friend Jessica Lemmon that I'd gotten a call, and she suggested that I query her agent, Nicole Resciniti, of the Seymour Agency. So I submitted the same unfinished, unedited manuscript to her. She must have been drinking the same left over eggnog as Nina, because she called me, too, and I signed with her shortly afterwards.

THEN I finished the manuscript.

Do you buy books based on the cover or the blurb?

The cover might move me to pick it up, but I buy based on the blurb.

What were the last three books you read?

My reading is all over the place. The last three books I read were After Hours, by Cara McKenna; Red, by Kate SeRine; and Heir to a Desert Legacy, by Maisey Yates.

What do you do when you're not writing?

We have a boat that we keep at a little trailer parky campground near the Ohio River, so most summer weekends find us floating around or slapping at mosquitos. I also like to knit and stuff...I got a spinning wheel a couple of years ago, so sometimes I like to get it out and pretend I'm Ma Ingalls. I can't get Mr. Stanley to dress up like Michael Landon, though.

Fast Facts:

Coffee or tea?

Yes, please.

Morning or night?

A little of each. I'm an early riser, but it takes me a while to get moving.

Rivers or oceans?

Either

White wine or red?

Neither

Champagne or liquor?

Seriously...I drank my lifetime allotment of all of the above a few years ago, so I stick to Diet Coke these days.

Cupcakes or ice cream?

Oh, come on. Is that even a fair question? How can you--I'm not going to answer that.

Laptop or desktop?

Laptop! Finally, something I can be definitive about!

Casual or couture?

Casual all the way

Ponytail or headband?

Well, my hair's pretty short now, but when it wasn't, I'd have to say "ponytail."

Shower or bath?

Bath

Summer or winter?

Summer

Motorcycle or bicycle?

Jet ski

 

Isn't she awesome?!? Be sure to check out her Romantic Times Hangover post!

 

I love her bass-ackwards story of how she joined The Seymour Agency and snagged Nicole!

 

xoxo ~Marisa