Lila Munro : The Author Interview

Welcome Rebel writer Lila Munro!

Lila Munro currently resides on the coast of North Carolina with her husband and their two four-legged kids. She’s a military wife with an empty nest and takes much of her inspiration for her heroes from the marines she’s lived around for the past fifteen years. Coining the term realmantica, she strives to produce quality romance in a realistic setting. Her genre of choice is contemporary romance that spans everything from the sensual to BDSM and ménage. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading everything she can get her hands on, trips to the museum and aquarium, taking field research trips, and soaking up the sun on the nearby beaches. Her works include The Executive Officer’s Wife, Bound By Trust, Destiny’s Fire, Salvation, Three for Keeps, the Force Recon series, the Slower Lower series, and the Identity series. She’s a member in good standing of RWA and Passionate Ink. Currently she’s working on sequels to several series to be released throughout 2012. And has a brand new line scheduled for winter 2012-13. Ms. Munro loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted via her website,  Facebook, Pinterest, Goodreads. You can also contact her via email at lilasromance@gmail.com

How long have you been writing?

Since before I could read or knew how to spell. I was making up stories as early as I could form a thought past I want a cookie or Is it naptime. I recently did a fun blog for Melissa Keir that was a Lila Timeline of sorts and looking back at it I was reminded how many times I finished a work only to have it tossed in a dumpster because I didn’t believe in myself enough to go further than the nearest trash can and deposit said work.

What/ who inspires you?

Everything and everyone. I’m a sponge and so many times I’ll be out with my husband eating dinner or shopping and he’ll touch my arm and ask me where I am and what’s going on up there in that big brain of yours. I carry notepads with me everywhere I go and everything in my path is in danger of being jotted down as potential story fodder.

What is your creative process like?

It’s like a circus meets the carnival, throw in some Boones Farm and peanuts and we have a party up in here. (Actually my tastes have refined over the years and I now enjoy a good tumbler of crown, but don’t tell my muses—they think they’re still sixteen.) Seriously, I’m a very deliberate person and have notes everywhere on characters, timelines, plots…I love Post-it notes and they’re usually scattered about in spite of my best friend’s efforts to convert me to notebooks. Somehow it all comes together and I’m able to find the exact information I need even if no one else understands “the system.”

What do you struggle with as a writer?

Commas. I know I hear Elizabeth screaming at me clear from Indiana when edits roll around. Although, I’m getting better. The last round only had a few instances, so it’s possible she is breaking of my bad habits slowly but surely.

How do you prepare to write? What do you do to get in the right frame of mind?

Oh, I really don’t have any control over that. My muse decides when and where and how. I do control how long though. I’ve recently restricted my hours for family and health reasons and when the egg timer dings, that’s it. Some of my characters are none too happy when that happens in the middle of the big O, but hey, sometimes things lengthened are things savored. ;)

What genre of writing would you love to try?

Someday I’d like to give historical romance a go, but until I have the resolve to do the research involved that will remain a pipedream.

What do you enjoy about blogging?

I like that through that medium the readers can get to know me, the real person not just the invisible woman behind the book. I think readers enjoy that as well, knowing that there is someone actually writing and the words aren’t just coming auto-type from some super genius computer somewhere. I think they like to know I enjoy digging in the dirt and growing veggies and I have two elderly dogs that keep me on my toes. When I get a chance to talk about me, I become human.

What's your guilty pleasure?

Vera Bradley purses and bubble baths. I also have an extensive jewelry collection per my husband who believes it’s his duty to shower me with baubles and shiny things.

What are you totally obsessed with right now?

The fact that I’m on the back slide of my husband’s time at home between deployments. He’s only been home a couple of months and will leave at the end of June again for another year. I work like my butt’s on fire during the day trying to keep up so I can make the most of our time together in the evenings and on weekends.

Tell us about how the Identity series got started and where you are with it now.

Well, in all honesty, the Identity series was never supposed to be a series at all. I have a few friends in the know who practice less than vanilla lives and when coupled with a nosey broad like me who holds a degree in psychology and one in sociology, well, it’s a mixture for natural curiosity blended with an urgent need to grasp it all. Identity Crisis, book one, was supposed to be a stand-alone novella designed to scratch my itch. Needless to say, the itch didn’t go away and book two came along, True Identity. Knowing the rule of three, I figured I had to round out the series with a third, but in the middle of Assumed Identity, Dante—a very stern Dom—informed me that the story wasn’t in any way, shape or form finished and he wanted Julie no matter that I’d coupled her with Mason and what was I going to do about that exactly? Gulp! Yes, Sir? So, my most recent release was born, book four in the series, Assumed Master. I was writing the final scenes of that story and a character that had already appeared in two books started asking why I’d not given him a mate yet and threatened to flog me if I didn’t rectify the situation. Geeze! What is it with these dominant men? Fine, Master Allen. I called E and asked how she felt about yet another installment to the series, told her which character was talking and how he had wrangled himself a lollypop lovin’ gal. Of course she agreed and I’m not knee-deep in book five, Assumed Calling, which should come out late summer.

Assumed Master blurb and excerpt:

We may be born to the lifestyle,

Julie Stevens and Dante Larson always knew their tastes were a bit more eccentric than those of the average person, but acknowledgement of their chosen paths came at different times. While their lives have run parallel for the last twenty years, destiny always came knocking at the wrong time. Julie was a closeted edge player and before Dante could pull her free of her fears, Mason came along and dragged her kicking and screaming from her self-inflicted darkness, leaving Dante wanting. Although Dante’s been in love with Julie since the day he first laid eyes on her, he's happily married to Blake. But the tides are turning.

But Lady Fate dictates how it should be lived…

Still mourning the death of the only Master she’s ever known, Julie finds herself forced to live with the one man she’s been terrified of for years, Dante. While she has to admit something between them feels right, just as many things feel very, very wrong, starting with the fact he’s married to her gay best friend. Before she even has time to sort out her current predicament, another man catches Julie's attention. But after losing her mother, her sister, and her husband, can Julie come to grips with the fact that Keegan D’Amate jumps out of perfectly good helicopters for a living, rescue diving for the Coast Guard? And where exactly does that leave Dante, who knows for sure he needs a woman to complete his unconventional marriage? Quite frankly, he's tired of waiting.

***

"Where are you going?" Dante stood and almost went after him, but realized he couldn’t very well be two places at once and right now he was needed right outside this door.

"To pack her a few things." Blake started upstairs without looking back. "I think I remember how to do that much without being told."

Dante didn’t have time to analyze Blake’s words or their meaning right now. A brat was the last thing he needed at the moment.

A half hour later Blake returned with a rolling leather suitcase in tow and a matching overnight bag draped over his shoulder. Without so much as a sideways glance in Dante’s direction, he marched across the foyer and out the door. When he came back in, he took up a seat next to Dante, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands over his knee.

"Has there been any let up at all," he asked curtly.

"No, none at all," Dante answered, wondering how long this might go on. There were only so many things in the damn room. Sooner or later she’d run out of things to throw.

"You have ten minutes," Blake informed him. "If you don’t go in there after her, I will."

"You'll do what I tell you to." Dante tamped down his anger at Blake’s contradiction, chalking it up to sorrow.

"I will not," Blake clipped. "She needs you and if you don’t go in there, I will and damn the consequences. Whatever punishment you see fit to mete out later I’ll gladly take without regret."

It was then all fell quiet on the other side of the door. Dante sat forward and Blake uncrossed his legs and stood. Before either could go to the door, the muffled sound of Julie reciting William Blake over her sobs filtered through the mahogany barrier between them.

"I was angry with my friend. I told my wrath, my wrath did end," she hoarsely mumbled. "I was angry with my foe. I told it not, my wrath did grow."

Dante took a deep breath and moved for the knob, knowing full well the words were directed at him and Mason. The woman could conjure the most appropriate verses even in the midst of chaos. It unnerved him. When he pushed the door open, the sight before him was shocking in spite of the constant noise he’d heard for the last hour.

Not one book remained on the shelves. They were strewn over every square inch of floor amidst various trinkets and statues. The plants lay haphazard, some half in and half out of their pots, their roots exposed and their leaves crumpled and wilting. The desk was cleared of everything. It was all in a heap on the floor between Mason’s chair and the wall.

In the middle of the mayhem, Julie sat holding her arm and rocking, still repeating lines from Blake which Dante knew Mason would be reciting himself if he were here. That was one of the ways Mason soothed her. Too bad Dante didn’t know a damn thing about literature and couldn’t offer anything more than a few stanzas of a nursery rhyme starting with Hey diddle diddle.

It was while he stood there stunned, his heart cracking at the sight of someone in so much grief, he noticed the slow trickle of blood running down her arm and falling off her elbow in fat plops.

Find Lila's works on Amazon.com and All Romance Ebooks

Thanks so much to Lila for stopping by! Be sure to check out her work!