Interview and Giveaway: Robin Kaye

Please join me in welcoming Robin Kaye to Debbie's Book Bag today. Robin is her to talk about her book, Wild Thing. The publisher is sponsoring a giveaway for one copy of Robin's book, see details at the end of the post.

DEB: Robin, tell us a little about yourself?
RK: I’m a coffee addict, a mother of three teenagers, and I’ve been happily married to a domestic god for twenty-two years. I married very young.

DEB: Tell us a little about your book, Wild Thing. Is this a single title or part of a series?
RK: In my new book, Wild Thing, whitewater-rafting guide, Hunter Kincaid, lands his dream job—guiding sportswear models through Idaho’s rugged wilderness for a weeklong photo shoot. When he meets Toni Russo, the Goth New York manager of Action Models, there are enough sparks to start a forest fire.

When Hunter finds Toni’s book on how to marry the man of your choice, he studies it as a joke. Before long Hunter realizes he’s never cared enough for a woman to bother working this hard to get her. But the last man in the world this city girl wants is a Survivor Man wannabe…

Wild Thing is a single title and part of the Domestic Gods Gone Wild series but can definitely be read as a stand-alone.

DEB:What was your inspiration for this novel? Is white water rafting something you've always been interested in or a new passion?
RK: I moved the series from Brooklyn to Idaho because I was home sick. I’ve been going to Idaho since I was a little kid and always planned to move there when I grew up. When my husband and I married, we honeymooned in Sun Valley and we moved to Boise about nine months later. We lived there for ten years, had all our children there, and can’t wait to move back. We moved away eleven years ago and I’m still desperately homesick. I thought that if I couldn’t be in Idaho, writing about it was the next best thing. Unfortunately, it just makes me more homesick. As for whitewater rafting—I always like it, but I’m more into hiking and skiing.

DEB: What kind of research did you have to do to make this book come alive?
RK: Not a lot. But then I grew up going to Stanley and Sun Valley. My husband and I spent as much time in the mountains as we could. I looked at a map every now and again, and refreshed my memory by downloading maps of Ketchum, but that’s about it. I’m basically a lazy writer—I’m a big believer in writing what you know, and I know and love Boise, Ketchum, and the Sawtooth Recreation Area.

DEB: What is your normal writing day like? Do you have to have specific things in order to write comfortably?
RK: I have three teenagers so there’s no such thing as a normal day. I’m forever picking someone up or dropping someone off, going to meetings at school, running them to doctors offices (we’ve been fighting strep for the last month) and writing whenever I’m not running. When everyone is home, I pack up my computer and go to Starbucks. I have no problem ignoring strangers, but I can’t seem to ignore my own family. If they’re home, I have my mommy ears on. Even though they’ve gotten much better about not interrupting me, I’m much more productive when I’m away. Plus the coffee at Starbucks beats my coffee at home any day. It’s also nice to get out of the house sometimes. In a perfect world, I try to work on blogs and business on Mondays and Fridays, and do nothing but focus on my work-in-progress Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It hasn’t been working lately. Three sick kids while in the middle of a blog tour just tends to put the best laid plans on hold and places me firmly back on the hamster wheel.
  
DEB: What was it like when you found out your first book would be published?
RK: It was amazing! I was at RWA Nationals in 2007, which was in Dallas. Romeo, Romeo, the first book I had written toward publication was a Golden Heart Award finalist at the time. That alone was almost too much to take in. Thank God I had just bough the new iPhone (yes, I’m a mac geek who stood in line on the first day they went on sale) so I was able to get the email from an editor from Sourcebooks saying she was one of the Golden Heart judges, and had read Romeo, Romeo and “LOVED IT!” She asked to meet me to discuss it. When I met Deb Werksman, my editor, she pulled me into a hug, and started quoting lines from Romeo, Romeo verbatim. I had never heard of Sourcebooks, they were new to romance, and I had never heard of an editor who was so excited about a book. I wondered if she was for real. She made me an offer, gave me revision notes, and sent me out to find an agent. I didn’t think the conference could get any better, but I was wrong. Romeo, Romeo won the Golden Heart for best single title contemporary.  By the next conference, I was signing my advanced readers copies. I was very lucky!
 
DEB: Do you have advice for new writers?
RK: Write, write, and then write some more. Take Margie Lawson’s courses—I still say she’s the reason I got published. She taught me more about writing than all the other workshop instructors put together, maybe with the exception of Michael Hauge—he taught me how to plot. I recommend them both highly—I take their courses over and over and over again. I’m sure they both think I’m a stalker.

DEB: When you aren't writing, what kind of books do you like to read? Do have a favorite genre or author?
RK: Lately I’ve read mostly romance or craft books. I used to be a book-a-day reader and read just about everything, but now I’m writing for two houses—three or four books a year while doing copy edits, revisions, galleys, and book launches/blog tours, so my reading time has diminished considerably. I find I barely have time to read my good friends’ books—I’m just glad that they’re all excellent writers. I’ve been reading Grace Burrowes, Christie Craig/C.C. Hunter, Gemma Halliday, Diane Kelly, Amanda Brice, Angie Fox, Kathy Bacus, Kyra Davis, Jana DeLeon, Leslie Langtry, Maureen Child, Marilyn Brandt, Kristina McMorris, Susan Donovan, Rachel Gibson, Susan Elizabeth Philips…the list goes on and on.

DEB: What are you working on right now? 
RK: Right now I’m writing the first book of my Bad Boys of Red Hook series for NAL and I’m awaiting the copy edits for Fisher’s book, Call Me Wild, which follows Wild Thing in the Domestic Gods Gone Wild series. I’m having a great time jumping back and forth between writing about two of my three favorite places, Brooklyn and Boise. Now if I could only come up with a series idea that takes place in Florence, Italy, my life would be perfect.

DEB: Tell us one thing that readers may not know about you?
RK: I used to work as a bouncer at a dance club/restaurant called Swampwater Al’s. I weighted all of a hundred twenty pounds at the time. The owners thought that if they had a girl working the door, men wouldn’t be inclined to start trouble. Unfortunately, they were wrong—I knew every cop in the county. As you can imagine, my mother was so proud. 

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

The publisher is sponsoring a giveaway for one copy of Wild Thing by Robin Kaye.

~ You must be a GFC follower or an e-mail subscriber to participate.
~ US and Canadian Addresses only (Publisher Request).
~ The deadline to enter this giveaway is Midnight EST January 2nd.

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