Monday Author Spotlight

or re-introduce you to an old favorite.

Kresley Cole was recommendation from my younger sister Kim. She had FINALLY started reading romance novels about a year ago, and Kresley Cole was one of the first authors that she read, and that got her hooked on romance. After trying for years to get her to read romance I had to check out this author that she loved. So on my next trip to the library I checked out what they had for her and I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of her books. From that moment on she has become an auto-read if not an auto-buy.

When I decided to highlight Ms. Cole for today, I asked my sister if she wanted to do it, but she couldn’t as she was in the middle of getting her pre-school ready for school to start this week, plus having a sick kid, so I am going to do it, but I did tap her for some reviews later on.

From her website I got the following blurb about her….

Before becoming a New York Times bestselling author, Kresley Cole was a world-ranked athlete, coach, and graduate student. While earning her Master’s degree, she spent much of her time in the research library, gathering background information for what would eventually become award-winning historical and paranormal romances.

Since her first novel was published in 2003, Kresley has sold a total of fifteen books and two novellas and has seen her releases translated into over a dozen foreign languages. She has traveled over much of the world and draws from those experiences to create her memorable characters and settings. Two of her favorite places to visit include the rain forests of Central America and the Far North Queensland area of Australia (where, by the way, she would not recommend swimming outside of the shark and stinger nets–at night).

I however wanted to know more about her so I searched the internet and found this article about her by Colleen Cusick….

In some ways, kresley cole learned to write at sea.

Though her family had always insisted she’d be a great author, she was more interested in spending time on the water than in front of a computer. “When I was in high school, I had a fleeting thought that I might as well just cave and apply to a creative writing program,” she recalls. “Then I learned I needed a fiction portfolio of 50 pages. ‘Fifty pages!’ I thought. ‘Well, forget that!’ All my life I’d done everything I could to avoid unnecessary writing.”

That love-hate relationship with creative writing continued, even as she graduated from the University of Alabama, pursued a master’s degree in English from the University of Florida and drove boats and coached water-skiing for a living.

It wasn’t until years later, when she finally gave in to her need to write and shackled herself to her desk to work on her first novel, that she realized how well her days on the water had prepared her for a career as a romance novelist.

As competitive waterskiers in Florida, Cole and her husband, Richard, were all about training, competing and winning. “We never took our eyes off the prize,” she says. “We had blinders to anything that wouldn’t help the skiing, then charged forward with everything we had. You know the saying, ‘When the only tool you own is a hammer, everything begins to resemble a nail?’ That seemed like a great plan to get published too.”

I then went back to her website and did some digging and found these questions from some readers that I liked…

• Are any of your books autobiographical?
• Yes, I’m a nineteenth-century redheaded virgin who loves to sail. Kidding. But seriously, the books aren’t, but the details in the scenes may be. Except the love scenes. And we’re not going there.
• Why did you choose to set your IAD series in New Orleans?
• Because I’d never heard of a paranormal series set in NOLA. Joking. Actually, I have a lot of ties to the Crescent City. I still have family there, and I grew up less than two hours away, so I spent a good deal of my childhood there. Some of my earliest memories are of Saints games and music and singing in the streets (not my singing—I’m not cruel).

  I also chose New Orleans because an Immortal could blend in there. It occurred to me that Lore creatures could go about undetected on Bourbon Street as long as s/he were bipedal (and I’ve actually rethought that particular), because people go in costume all the time. So, as long as folks masquerade as otherworldly beings, then immortals can masquerade as humans masquerading.

  Plus, if anyone saw something that appeared strange to them (like a Valkyrie swiftly ascending to a roof), they’d likely blame the booze. My friends and I have seen things there that absolutely couldn’t be right, but we simply chalked up any visual or auditory hallucinations to potent mixed drinks in plastic containers….
  Sighting: three-eyed, talking alley cat.
  Explanation: Hand Grenade.
  Case closed.

As you can see she has a great sense of humor, and her books are amazing. If you haven’t yet checked her out below are some of the books that she has written, with links to her website and these particular series.