Driftwood
Deeds,
looks like a great start to a wonderful series. How many books to
you plan to have in the series?
Thank
you so much. And thanks for having me here!
Driftwood
Deeds
is the first part of the Breaking
in Waves
series. It contains two more books (Trading
Tides
and Saltwater
Skin)
and I am not planning on adding any more, even if there are moments
where I absolutely wish I could live in Iris and Paul’s heads for
another installment.
What
do you think makes a great story?
So
many things. And not all stories need to contain everything to be
great. For me personally, the one most important aspect are good
characters, with intricate layers and a strong development arch.
Characters that breathe off the page, with convincing dialogue and a
way of thinking that resonates with the reader. A good plot is
important too, but I find myself losing interest in it, if I’m not
fully engaged with the characters.
What
inspired you when writing Driftwood
Deeds?
The
first seed of Driftwood
Deeds
was a story I wrote when I was around 19. It was neither very long,
nor very good, and not a single actual text passage made it into
Driftwood Deeds, but it was the first time, I tried to unpack what
felt like very bad and wrong desires, while at the same time making
it all about the emotional pay-off, rather than mere kink. At the
time, that story meant a lot to me in coming to an understanding and
a sense of peace with myself.
That
was the sprit I wanted to bring into Driftwood
Deeds
and the rest of the series. Parts of it are very personal, even if I
made an effort to distinguish the actual kinks from my own and make
them all Iris and Paul’s. But, the scenery of the dilapidated
beach, for instance, is a place I visited with an ex-boyfriend, so
some of the points of inspiration definitely have a personal
dimension.
What
are your ambitions for your writing career? Full time? Part time?
I
currently have a full-time job, but I wrote Driftwood
Deeds
while I was unemployed – and so, de facto a full-time writer, even
if I couldn’t pay the bills. Like most writers, I dream of being
self-sufficient in this way, of devoting so much more time to my
stories than I can now.
But
I have also learned that it is good for me to work, both for a sense
of accomplishment and security. For the moment, my goal is to bring
my writing to a point where I might be able to reduce the hours at my
day job and then take it from there.
When
did you decide to become a writer?
I
started writing when I was a kid. When we got our first computer as a
family, I spent most of my time on it in a word processor. Then the
internet came along, and I wrote a lot of fanfiction and spent time
at other writing haunts.
But
there was an actual decision to try this for real, not just as a fun
pastime. I made friends with another writer, who remains one of my
biggest inspirations to this day, and she showed me how to turn out
entire books, rather than start and then stop, and start over in an
endless cycle. At the time, I was trapped in a job I hated every day,
and I didn’t quite know what else there was out there for me.
Writing gave me hope that I could build something new for myself.
That
was in 2012, I believe. The first book I wrote from start to finish
was By
the Light of the Moon,
a fantasy romance book I am currently feeling very close to, as I am
finishing up the third and last installment in that series.
When
writing Driftwood
Deeds
did anything stand out as particularly challenging?
I
think every book is challenging in its own way. For Driftwood
Deeds,
it was probably the raunchy parts. I feel like writing sex is a bit
like I imagine filming porn to be, in the way that the end product
has to read smooth and natural and fun, but the process is oddly
difficult. Lots of stopping and starting, figuring out where hands
and legs and lips are supposed to go, and how to make it descriptive
and explicit without making it a crass and repetitive series of
movements and reactions.
How
did you come up with the story of Driftwood
Deeds?
I’ll
be the first to admit that Driftwood Deed is not very heavy on plot.
I didn’t want it to be. It is a snap shot in the lives of two
people and that was what intrigued me about writing it, to fill it
with as much life and characterization as I could.
At
the time, I struggled a little with the romance formula, this idea
that I had to write almost an entire book before my couple could be
together, when what I wanted to write about was the difficult and
beautiful things that happen after two people establish an emotional
connection. That’s why it became a series of novella-length
snap-shots. In Driftwood
Deeds,
Iris and Paul get their first taste of each other and it leaves them
wanting more. In Trading
Tides,
they overcome the distance between them – physically and
emotionally – and in Saltwater
Skin,
they make a lasting commitment to each other.
What
do you like to do when not writing?
I
work as a translator and an editor in a media analysis company, so I
follow the news a lot and think about our political and economic
climate. I read a lot of fiction, go on bike rides or to the gym and
spend time with people I care about, both online and off. Like many
writers, I don’t consider my non-writing life to be terribly
interesting. But, once I make a little more money than I do now, I
would definitely love to travel more and experience more interesting
places to put in my novels.
They
can come visit my website at www.lailablake.com,
where I list all my publish works there and try to blog about my
process and progress – as well as random ideas.