Hi and welcome to my blog, Lou Sylvre. Please make yourself at home and grab a drink from my hunky cabana boys, Zeke and Jake.
To get us started can you tell us a little about what you are working on or have coming out?
Before I get into details, thanks for having me Raine! Also, thanks Zeke and Jake—that drink is a little stronger than usual, but the service is impeccable.
To answer the question, I’m excited at the moment to have several projects in the works, and I’ll talk about a few that are moving along. I am still working on Vasquez and James, with the final book in the suspense/romance series in the queue for the publisher to review it and give it, hopefully, a thumbs up for a release later this year. Luki Vasquez and Sonny James will return in a story that’s not part of the suspense story, loosely following on the events in the novella, Yes. They’ll find themselves thrust into a parenting role!
I’m also working on a co-writing project with New Zealand author Anne Barwell—it’s a departure for both of us, in that it’s a Scottish historical, set in 1745 or thereabouts. There’s a fair amount of magic involved. Our characters, Ian MacDonald and Robbie Elliot, seem to be falling much harder for each other than we originally planned.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Possibly Quebec. Or Santa Barbara. J
How do you get yourself in the mood to write?
I don’t have to, really, I almost always want to write. But it does help if, when I sit down at the keyboard, I do some reading or editing/revising of yesterday’s work, or something else that’s recent. I guess I also consciously choose to daydream about stories and characters, for instance before I go to sleep or when I have coffee in the morning. I think best about stories when I’m in motion, though, so I pace a lot.
If someone hasn’t read any of your work, what book would you recommend that they start with and why?
They should start with Loving Luki Vasquez. When I started out to write the Vasquez and James series, I wanted to write books that stand alone, and in once sense they do, but it definitely has turned into a continuing story with each book. So start at the beginning—Loving Luki Vasquez.
Is there something special you do to celebrate when one of your books is released?
Oddly, I go on a bit of a book-buying binge.
Could you tell us a couple of favorite books that inspired you to write?
Wow, there are so many! I’m going to narrow it down to more recent inspiration, things that prodded me toward writing suspense. I should mention that Luki and Sonny brought themselves and their love affair into being in the process of writing something completely different, but I didn’t really know what to do with them. I think what moved me toward the mystery/suspense aspect is my love of that genre in general. I had been reading some rather classic detective novels and mysteries—Dick Francis, Anne Perry, and even Robert Parker, and then there were also Diana Gabaldon’s Lord John stories. I also think urban fantasy reads like Butcher’s Dresden files and Tanya Huff’s bisexual vampire Henry were in the mix.
Is music a factor for you while you are writing? Do certain songs put you in the right frame of mind to write certain stories?
I don’t look for music to feed my muse, in fact I rarely listen while I’m writing unless I have something specific in my mind. I do find there are songs that need to be mentioned in my books. In Loving Luki Vasquez, Luki discovers that “At Last” as sung by the wonderful Etta James becomes a bit of a theme. Then, in the beginning of Delsyn’s Blues, Sonny puts Alice in Chains “Would” on his Mustang’s CD player.
What is the strangest source of writing inspiration you’ve ever had?
Under a different name, I wrote a short story, which was published in print and audio, that started with a news story about a deer that wandered into a nursing home.
If your muse were to talk behind your back, what secrets would they tell?
That I’m fickle and have the attention span of a housefly. That I write in my ratty bathrobe. That my cats don’t really help—not at all.
Are your characters able to love or do they need to be taught?
What an interesting question! I guess I think everyone is able to love, except sociopaths (people with antisocial personality disorder), and those people unfortunately can most likely not be taught. But I do think some people have to learn to express and/or accept love. Sticking with Luki and Sonny, I’d say both of them, to differing degrees and in different ways, have trouble accepting love, and Luki really has no practice expressing it. He wants to, but it scares him, and he begins to learn because Sonny listens, doesn’t judge, and doesn’t gush. With the physical aspect, however, sex, the tables are exactly opposite, and I don’t think anyone could ask for a better teacher than Luki. J
Do you have a book that was easiest to write or one that was the hardest?
The book that was easiest to write was also the hardest in a different way. The novella Yes, which takes place five years or so after the suspense series and centers on Luki’s dx of advanced lung cancer, demanded to be written, and once I gave in and started writing it was non-stop, no blocks, no hurdles. Except, at the same time I was an emotional wreck the entire time I was writing it! If we don’t count that aspect of difficulty, I’d say my most recent release, Finding Jackie was the hardest, mostly because I was feeling a bit discouraged, I think. But I did have to force myself to stick with it. Afterward, I thought it was horrible until I read it through.
Thanks for coming. Is there anything else you want to add?
Well, all my Vasquez and James releases can be found in one location at the Dreamspinner Store: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/index.php?cPath=551
(The books are also available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, All Romance Ebooks, Rainbow Ebooks, and a number of other stores in the US and internationally.)
My blog (and soon my website) is at http://www.sylvre.com . I do post news of my own there, but I also love to feature other authors, and participate in hops, etc.
I have a new author page on facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLouSylvre?fref=ts and I’d love to have some more “likes.” As I get the page more established, I hope not only to have more news updates, but also there may be special offers and other interesting things!
I am on Twitter, @Sylvre.
Readers can email me at lou(dot)sylvre(at)gmail(dot)com .
Finding Jackie
Sequel to Delsyn’s Blues
Vasquez & James: Book Three
Luki Vasquez and Sonny Bly James finally have their Hawaiian wedding, and it’s perfect, almost. But their three-phase honeymoon is riddled with strife. Luki’s status as a working badass spells discord for the newlyweds. A former informant from Luki’s days with ATFE brings a troubling message (or is it a warning?) from a Mob hit man. When Luki’s sixteen-year-old nephew, Jackie, is lured into capture and torture by a sadistic killer, the honeymoon is well and truly over.
The couple put aside their differences and focus on the grueling hunt, which takes them from leather bars to dusty desert back roads, and calls on Sonny’s deep compassion as well as Luki’s sharpest skills. Their world threatens to fall apart if they fail, but their love may grow stronger than ever if they succeed in finding Jackie—before it’s too late.
Adult Teaser:
“We could fuck here, if we so desired, which I do.” Sonny actually looked hopeful, as if he was a little afraid Luki would say no, or maybe scoff.
Luki wasn’t about to do either one. Sonny was the most beautiful, lovable, eminently fuckable person on the planet, and Luki wasn’t about to fail him. As he’d explained to Sonny just the other day, fucking Sonny happy was his personal joy. He licked his lips. “Come here, baby.”
Sonny more or less slithered up Luki’s body, dragging his weight over Luki’s flesh until he’d brought his lips even with Luki’s. He stopped, offering his slightly open lips, but waiting for Luki to take them. Luki did, starting with a suck and nibble of Sonny’s lower lip, then licking with just the hard tip of his tongue along the underside of Sonny’s upper lip. He kept it up, nibbling, sucking, licking, lingering at the sensitive corners. Sonny made a move to kiss back, but Luki pulled away, and answered Sonny’s widened eyes by kissing them. He smiled, biting his own lip, made sure Sonny saw the expression, then whispered in his ear. “Just let me do whatever I want to you, baby, okay? It’ll be good, I promise, and when I want you to kiss me back, I’ll tell you. Okay?”
“Oh!” Sonny’s breath puffed out; then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Yes, Luki. Okay.”
The water, hot and ever so slightly silky from the bubble bath, made touching—running his hands along Sonny’s back, over his ass, down his legs—a little bit different than touching had ever been before, for Luki. And by different he meant, damn, that’s nice! And Sonny, who was never, ever still unless specifically instructed, kept squirming and rocking, moving his body side to side over Luki’s. And the water lifted him just a little bit so Luki felt little weight on him, only a teasingly sweet, achingly light friction.
He pulled his lover tight against his chest. “Sonny, baby, you are so damn sweet!”
Sonny was not very coherent. “Mmm, mm… ooooh! Luki!”
Luki chuckled. He couldn’t help it. Then he took hold of Sonny’s forelock and tilted his head back until he was sure he had Sonny’s eyes, and he said, “Stick out your tongue.”
Sonny did so, a little, and said, “Aauuh?”
Luki smiled. “More.”
When Sonny obeyed, he said, “Yeah, like that.” Then he laid his own tongue alongside it, teased it, licking at its tip, and finally closed his lips around it and sucked it into his mouth, meanwhile invading Sonny’s mouth with his own tongue, and touching every part of Sonny he could reach with any limb, and rocking Sonny over him, cock to cock, chest to chest. At some point he said, “Okay, kiss me back, Sonny.” Finally, after a long interval of bliss, or else torture, Luki asked the question he almost always asked when they made love. “What do you want, baby?”
Unlike his earlier efforts at speech, Sonny answered clear and concise. “Fuck me.”
Daughters of the Sea cobbles together via legend my multiple trips to the paradises of the South Pacific. The island folklore creates the impetus for the book and set me up to later write travel articles. The legends make good blurbs describing visual scenes without disorienting the readers. (An impatient retired military reviewer said the plot was too slow, too much detail.) Fortunately, other reviewers enjoyed basking in the sun and believing in the magic of Polynesian myths.
