Tena StetlerAuthor of Paranormal Romance/Suspense & Cozy Mysteries With Magic Spark!

What defines you as an author? As a person? Are they one in the same? Do you daydream? What about? Glorious beaches? Umbrella drinks? Hot weres? Cool vampires? I daydream about spaceships, laser guns, aliens, and adventure. I just get to daydream on (virtual) paper. So maybe wish fulfillment defines me as an author. What defines me as a person? That’s harder. Fairness, maybe. Justice. Standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. I’m in animal rescue in Florida, where pets seem to be a commodity to be thrown out for reasons unknown and incomprehensible to me. (There. I can be a little judge-y when someone is mean to an animal. That defines me, too.) I help manage a feral colony, locally, and do foster work. Someone dumped a litter of kittens at our feral colony in September last year. They were 10 days old. I bottle fed them. When one of them turned out to be special needs, my husband and I foster failed those kittens. They are still with us. One of them nurses on my earlobe every night before he can go to sleep. So. Are these things one and the same? I think they feed into one another. I usually have dead bodies in my novels. I assure you that every single one of them is someone who dumped an animal or hurt an animal. It’s the only legal way for me to act out what I wish I could do in real life. Some of the most grotesque deaths in my books may or may not represent political figures who shall not be named. Like I said. Wish fulfillment. Cheaper than therapy.

What inspired this particular story? A friend’s husband served two tours of duty in Iraq several years ago. He came home with a raging case of PTSD. He could only sleep in the bathroom floor with the shower running. It was his only sense of safety. That image struck me straight through the heart and stayed with me. You actually see a tidbit of a scene in the book that’s in tribute to that. As I sat with the emotions surrounding having your sense of safety so shattered, I wondered what would happen in a romance where the hero had to actively get in the middle of the heroine’s trauma and push a few of those buttons as a means of getting what he believes he needs. (PS. The young man who could only sleep with the shower running sought treatment and is doing very well.)

What secret do you use to blast through writer’s block? Is there one??? DANG IT. Why didn’t anyone TELL me??

Who is your favorite character of all of the books you’ve written and Why? Edie. She’s the heroine in Enemy Storm. It’s because she emerged from a massive multi-player online roll playing game. I played for a very, very long time. The character I created in game was a toss off, intended for comic effect, but she took on a life of her own through game play and interaction with other characters. She’s snarky and dangerous and fun. When I started looking for a heroine to spark off of the hero in Enemy Storm, she volunteered. The game itself died out, as most games do, but I still get to hang out with this beloved character who’s had to morph pretty radically to make the transition from computer game to novel.

What inspired you to write? A movie with an ending that deeply offended my twelve-year-old sensibility about what was RIGHT. So I sat down to rewrite it and fix it. It took a lot of years, but now that I think about it, Enemy Within is a pretty strong candidate for having finally fixed that movie. Man. I thought I’d moved on decades ago. Guess not.

How long have you been writing? Since third grade when I made up a story about one of my cats stealing and eating a whole chicken. The incident never happened, but my teacher was so highly entertained, the light went on in my head and never shut off.

Did you tell friends and family that you were writing a book? Or did it take a while to come out and tell friends and family you were a writer? If we ever meet for tea or lunch, we’ll be chatting and having a good time, and you’ll see my gaze wander off to focus on some distant point. It may be seconds. It may be a minute. Eventually, I’ll blink, blush, and meet your gaze with a sheepish, “Sorry. Idea.” I am a writer. I can’t stop being a writer even when there’s no paper, pencil, or computer around. It really defines how I perceive and filter the world, I suspect. So I generally tell people I’m a writer to explain away the moments when my attention gets snagged by the juicy conflict conversation three tables over that would really fire up my WIP. What I don’t usually do is talk much about the books I’m working on unless it’s with other authors.

Do you see yourself in your characters? Good heavens, yes. See wish fulfillment, above. My characters are usually people I wish I could be. Smarter. Stronger. Braver. But their emotional core is a generally a mirror of mine with some extrapolation – if only because my emotional core is the only one I can ever really know. I can *think* I know what someone else is feeling, or I can look at action and reverse engineer what emotion must have driven that action. That’s the extrapolation part. So yes. I feel like my job is to be an actor stepping into a role – looking at what the character wants, why they can’t have it, and then, I have to ask, “What if that were me. For real. How would I go at that?” This may be a reflection of the fact that my degree is in acting.

What do you want your readers to take away from your books? My fondest wish is that readers come away with hope. Entertained, too! I want my stories to be a roller coaster (in a good way). I just want them to end on a sense of possibility. If anyone wants a taste of what and how I write, I have a hot novella serialized on Radish called Enemy Mine. The first few episodes are up now. You can find it by title, or you can search on my name. The story is set in the same world as the novel Enemy Within. In fact, you meet the hero of Enemy Mine in Enemy Within.