Kinky Vanilla Romance is pleased to share Love on the Run by Dean C. Moore, a romantic comedy action/adventure available now. This interview post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. I hope that you'll find the interview to be as interesting as I did.
Dean will be awarding a $20 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn winner via
rafflecopter during the tour, and a $20 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn host.
Love on the Run by Dean C. Moore
Husband and wife thieves are on a mission. Just not the same one. He’s out to pay for her cancer therapy–at any costs. She’s out to humanize him, and make him less of a self-absorbed jerk.
The fast-talking, fast-acting, adrenaline seeking duo pick up a few on-again off-again sidekicks along their way, despite staunch protests from Zinio. But with all they’re up against–not the least of which being one smart, hound-dog of a lady detective–the question is: Can love conquer all?
“The story is smart and funny.” R. D. Hale,
Sky City:
The Rise of an Orphan
“For the booklover that doesn’t like having his or her time wasted.” Jack Heath,
Remote Control
“This would make a brilliant movie or TV series.” Demelza Carlton,
Ocean’s Gift
“Reminded me of
The Thomas Crown Affair, down to the whip-cracking humor, the snazzy plot turns, and the character dynamics between the leads and the hotshot female detective on their tales.” Rhys Jones,
The Whispering Void
“Only if you want an action packed read with fully developed and interesting characters.” Victor Longshanks,
One Big Problem
EXCERPT
“Any big ideas, bright guy?” Delaney said, holding the broken rearview mirror in her hand to check out what was going on overhead, to avoid giving those inside the chase helicopter the satisfaction of her looking up.
“Just drive straight into the ocean.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Why would I be joking at a time like this?”
“Okay, fine, I’m sorry for picking on you so much. I know you’re doing the best you know how. There, I said it. You happy?”
“I’m not depressed, Delaney. I just need you to drive into the ocean.”
“A psychotic break? Is that it? You picked now for a psychotic break? Why not all those times I chewed off your male appendage, metaphorically speaking—not to make myself out as a man-eating black widow?”
“You dragged along the equipment I asked you to, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you get it now?”
“Yeah, duh. God, that just makes so much more sense in context.”
***
Kerry looked up from the photos of the couple to the big screen again. Her jaw dropped as she watched Delaney drive the convertible Thunderbird straight into the ocean. They made no attempt to get out of the vehicle; they let the sea swallow them up along with the car.
“Are we finally rid of them?” Carter said.
Kerry started chuckling slowly. The guffawing grew into a geyser of loud laughter, which finally subsided. “No, Carter, not yet.” She glanced back up at the screen. “God, that’s clever.”
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
What came first for LOVE ON THE RUN, the characters or the story itself?
Neither. Scenes started popping into my head involving stylish, high profile bank and casino heists. From these I started to get a sense of my characters. So the characters definitely preceded the story, but they did not come first. I had to get a sense of Zinio and Delaney through their actions, their dialogue, their interactions with one another and the world around them, and of course through their personal chemistry. The more the picture of the two of them came into focus, the more the rest of the story followed; the latter you could say arises naturally from the conflicts between Zinio and Delaney and their inner and outer demons.
What about your characters surprised you while writing?
Despite all their chemistry, wit, and charm, Zinio and Delaney can’t maintain the sizzle on their relationship without a focus on the outside world every bit as great as their focus on one another. They seem to need to champion the downtrodden; they need their social causes and a sense of working for the greater good to keep from self-destructing. As intense as their love is for one another, if they kept that love bottled up without it bleeding into the rest of the human condition they would simply implode. As to why that is, I leave that for the reader to discover. It’s a subject I meditate on to this day.
What answers I’ve come up with are partial at best.
Is it because they are larger than life, and their higher power refuses to have them take themselves off the gaming table of life when there are so many people hurting simply to create an island oasis about themselves, oblivious to the desert that surrounds, when that much psychic energy could be put to more important ends? Or is it that only by balancing romantic love with brotherly love do they become larger than life?
As characters that are so spontaneous and in the moment and who live life more fully than the rest of us, do they need to leave some trace of themselves that’s more permanent for fear there might otherwise be no record of their ability to raise life to the level of art?
Just what drives them exactly?
Do they feel like they have to do penance for the parts of themselves they can’t forgive, the actions, thoughts, and deeds they’d just as soon forget?
Have they found a formula that allows them to integrate the dark and light sides of their nature worth emulating by all of us, or have they instead found a shorter and quicker path to ruin?
Am I even asking the right questions in attempting to probe into what drives them? I guess in the final analysis it’s for the reader to decide.
What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?
The first bank robbery that Zinio and Delaney go on, which was initially the hook chapter, but is now chapter two. In the middle of the heist of the century they’re also having the marital spat of the century. I had to take frequent breaks from writing the sequence because my eyes were welling up from laughing so hard I could no longer see the page. Of course, my sense of humor might be different than yours and I might be a lot funnier in my own mind. Feel free to reassure me neither of those is the case by using my “contact me” form on my website and requesting to get on the email list to find out the instant the sequel is available.
The first two chapters set the tone of the story and put one in mind of the movie,
The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan. Chapter one introduces the female FBI profiler that will be hounding our heroes throughout the story. But it’s in chapter two that we find out why they’re worth her while and ours. In short order, Zinio and Delaney demonstrate what is actually more stimulating about the two of them than downhill skiing; why the latter is actually that much less of an adrenaline rush.
What scene was the hardest to write? Why?
There are a few contenders for this one. But getting out of the bed on the side I did this morning, my choice is for the prison scene, when they’re thrown behind bars and the key locking the door is happily destroyed (well, proverbially speaking anyway). It is painful to see these two colorful, Scarlet Macaw personalities encaged, as all birds should be set free to do what they do, take to the air. And the thought that they can no longer be what they’re meant to be is gut wrenching enough. Add to that the fact that Delaney’s cancer is flaring up and each day she’s trapped in that cell she’s one step closer to death’s door. They say these scenes are hardest for actors to act, but I can assure you, they’re no easier for writers to write. Intense emotions of any kind are never easy to render on paper or on screen, but they’re an essential part of good storytelling.
If you could cast your characters in the Hollywood adaptation of your book, who would play your characters?
George Clooney and Julia Roberts definitely came to mind for the leads, Zinio and Delaney, as did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The latter couple paired up for
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which has some of the flavor of
Love on the Run. Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock would also make the shortlist, I would think, considering their pairing in
The Proposal. Whoever’s chosen, they better start their jaw exercises from now, because keeping up with the whip-cracking humor throughout this novel and the fast-paced banter in general is not a job for out-of-shape tongues and inelastic jaw bones.
They say comedy is one of the hardest genres to write in because what strikes one person as hilarious might not even get a rise out of someone else. While I don’t think writing comedy-dramas like
Love on the Run is any easier, the hats off, in my opinion, definitely goes to the actors, as the precise timing required to get the scenes to play necessitates that only A-list actors need apply. What’s more, there’s a hefty dose of romance in
Love on the Run; in my experience, that kind of screen chemistry can’t exactly be faked either. The last couple that had as much on-screen-chemistry as Zinio and Delaney have on the page was Dick Powell and Myrna Loy of
The Thin Man series.
What character from LOVE ON THE RUN is most like you?
Zinio and Delaney are both exaggerations of a couple facets of my personality. In real life I’m a fairly decent strategist, but only in my wildest dreams am I the master schemer that Zinio is. And like Delaney, I have numerous human rights causes I champion, but I tend to do so through my writing, whereas Delaney puts herself right on the front lines, the way the Occupy Movement protestors do every day. I guess that by living through Zinio’s and Delaney’s escapades in Love on the Run, I’m conditioning myself to take the next step in being all that I can be.
There are a couple senior citizen couples in Love on the Run that are among the on-again, off-again sidekicks accompanying Zinio and Delaney on their journey to evade the FBI long enough to do some social good. I would hope when I’m the ripe old age of these septuagenarians that I can deal with getting old with the same sense of heroism and self-deprecating humor. You only have to spend five minutes with them to know that any challenges faced even by superheroes in Marvel comics pale by comparison. So I guess you could say that Zinio and Delaney’s sidekicks, too, are idealizations of me, and the kind of person I’d like to grow into.
As to the young Marty, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, he’s me in my next life. I’ll leave you to read the book to figure out why.
What’s your biggest challenge as a writer? How did you overcome it, or how are you working to overcome it?
I would say my biggest challenge as a writer is balancing quality with quantity. When you’re not part of the top one percent of writers who get all the huge marketing and promotional campaigns, then you pretty much have to sell more books to eke out even a subsistence living. When you think of what they pay Steven King, does he even ever have to write a second book? But do the math at our end of the spectrum, and at least a couple books a year are probably required just to keep us well stocked on canned beans and rice. So then, how do you be more prolific without sacrificing quality?
There is no one easy answer to that. I have more tools in my carpenter’s tool box to that end than a seasoned journeyman. For one, I’ve been writing consistently for over a decade, and as with anything, practice makes perfect, and the more you do something, the faster and better you get at it. I also type a 120 words per minute, which helps me to maintain a prodigious output without getting bogged down in the simple act of re-typing that comes with editing. Of course, technology has played its part as well. Computers and software are godsends to a level of productivity that would have been unimaginable in the days of typewriters, paper, and ink.
But I have many other tricks up my sleeve. I’ve trained myself over the years to enter a meditative state at will, what peak performance athletes refer to as “the zone.” This all but eliminates writers block and keeps my output humming along at top speed while actually increasing the quality, as we can only do our best work from within the zone.
I’ll share just one more trick with you—I don’t want to give away too much, pending the book, entitled, “How I overcame Writer’s Block to go on to Become One of the Most Prolific Writers in the World”—and that’s my tendency to edit several books in parallel. Since you need cold, detached eyes to look at a draft you just finished, and that usually requires setting it down for a couple of weeks or more before coming back to it, moving on to editing another story in the meantime all but eliminates any downtime. The only downfall of this system, as I’ve bemoaned elsewhere on some of my earlier guest posts, is that several titles come to fruition at once instead of one at a time. Harvesting the fruit of the vine in this manner might be great for farmers but is a nightmare for undiscovered indie authors. It’s hard enough to get one book recognized, let alone several at once. As soon as I figure out the solution to this Catch-22, I’ll let you know. Here’s hoping these virtual book tours are part of the answer of how to rescue myself from obscurity!
Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
My most rewarding experience since being published is being published. I predate the internet revolution and the renaissance happening in the arts. In my day, if you weren’t lucky enough to be part of the top one percent of writers, which is more political and less based on merit than you would imagine, you pretty much saw your manuscripts stacking up in the closet without any hope of an outlet. At least painters can make a living if they just have one fan willing to buy their one painting and they’re willing to pay enough. With novels you need to be just a little more popular than that. So the self-empowerment, indie-author tools were a revelation. These days I’m proud to be a child of the renaissance movement in the arts, which is helping to wrest power and control from the gatekeepers who want to limit what people have to read based on their own hidden agendas. I can’t imagine that I could ever be tempted by mainstream publishing in lieu of the added creativity and quality standards that accompany putting art first and politics second, if not scratching the latter off the list altogether.
If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title of the book should be? Why?
Full Moon Rising. “Full Moon” was my nickname in college. And it wasn’t always used fondly. I have a certain intensity that never waxes or wanes that makes me great fun in small doses, but probably more than most people can handle for longer periods. I’d like to think aging has mellowed me, but that’s hardly for me to decide. When you consider my formula for maintaining prolificness as a writer (mentioned above), that might be one clue that I haven’t mellowed all that much. Back in my IBM-correcting-Selectric typewriter days (for those who can remember back that far), when I also lived communally in Berkeley, CA, people would pass the closed door on my bedroom, hear the typewriter, and duck. They thought they were under machine gun fire.
Living communally, on the other hand, that did mellow me quite a bit. I miss those days. I’m hoping to turn the country acreage I’m currently on into an artist sanctuary for writers someday. As it would not only help me to get out of my head to interact with people more, but nature itself is very calming and grounding. So with some concerted “social engineering,” who knows, the moon may actually begin to wax and wane finally.
Characters often find themselves in situations they aren't sure they can get themselves out of. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was hard to get out of and what did you do?
Funny you should ask. The situation I’m in now is one of rescuing myself as an indie author from obscurity. Simply getting the word out that my novels are out there and something people might well enjoy, particularly if they’re into sci-fi, paranormal fantasy, and action-adventure, all with a healthy dose of dry wit and strong female leads, is no small feat. I hear that 400 books get published a day at last count. I can’t say I’ve mastered the art of getting heard above all that noise, but I’m definitely on the road to find out just how to do that. Moreover, as I believe I have a lot to offer, not just by way of delightful escapist fantasies, but with helping people to become the types of heroes and heroines they’ll find in my stories in real life. I’ve made a lifelong study of helping to procure that alchemy in myself and others, and now I slip that learning into the magic of storytelling with its ability to transform us all from an altered state far more readily than sitting in a lotus position and meditating for years on end.
When it comes to building a loyal fan base, I’ve come to accept that it might just take a little longer in my case for reasons that are under my control versus the reasons that aren’t (as cited above.) For starters, one of the things I enjoy about being an indie author is the freedom it allows me to follow my heart wherever it leads me, and if that’s into other genres that I’m not known for, so be it. Love on the Run would never have been written weren’t it for that tendency to stray. Asides from being one of my favorite projects, about the only thing it shares with the bulk of sci-fi and paranormal fantasy that I write is a thirst for action-adventure, smart banter, and a distinctive narrative voice that follows me most everywhere, which I’m told is a rare and precious gift. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more of a curse than a gift, as it seems enviable to me to be able to disguise one’s narrative voice from one project to another. But I guess those folks are actors first, and writers second, the kind of writer that would be great say doing episodes of a TV series actually piloted by someone else. Indeed, they make a whole lot of money, so, while I’ll take the praise and the free PR concerning the distinctive narrative voice, in my mind, I sometimes wish I were more of a chameleon in that respect. But for those who enjoy the comedy-drama tone that accompanies much of my writing, the good news is, if you don’t traditionally read in all the genres I write in, you should find yourself enjoying tagging along for the ride all the same.
The other arguably self-sabotaging thing I do is release several books close together instead of releasing one at a time and focusing on marketing that one for say six months straight. As discussed in my answer to one of the above questions, I release more than one title at a time because I write, edit, and polish more than one title at a time, and I do that as a way of minimizing downtime. It’s really not advisable to try and do another draft of something you’ve written until you can get some distance on it. Rather than be unproductive during that two week cooling off period, I will move on to editing another book. Again, this method is great for productivity without sacrificing quality, but when it comes to marketing, it makes an already prickly situation that much more pointed. So, do me a favor, if you sample one of my books and enjoy it, do read them all and help me to get the word out. Maybe that way you can help me to overcome my own nature as well as marketing realities that stymie the best of us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I write sci-fi, fantasy, action-adventures and thrillers, or some combination thereof—usually with a strong vein of dark humor. Though, my works are dramas first; the humor is there to take the edge off as with the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Transformers, and Jurassic Park franchises.
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I wrote screenplays for a while, and while enjoying them, I found them a bit confining. After a while you just need the extra page count to flesh out characters better and do additional world building, especially when considering doing anything epic in scope. I also took a run at future forecasting and trend tracking, being as I always had my head in the future, things like Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. I also relished this, and can certainly see myself releasing a few titles accordingly in the nonfiction area. But since delving into novels, short and long, I’ve definitely found my home and my voice. For the first time I feel the restraints have been taken off of my imagination. I suppose all mediums have their limits, so I may end up doing a mix of things, but I suspect I will continue to spend most of my time with novels. Series add an additional dimension, allowing for even more depth and development both in the character and world building departments. But I remain at heart a divergent thinker, so, no surprise, I seem to have more series going than follow up installments at this point. That too may change over time; we’ll see. Until then, it may be best to just think of these books as one-offs if you’re fond of my writing style and some of the themes I work with.
My current catalog of twelve books represents a little over five years' worth of work. I'm currently averaging a couple books annually. Of my existing franchises with multiple installments, The Hundred Year Clone books can be read in any order, while the 5 books of Renaissance 2.0 must be read in sequence as they form part of a singular story arc (much as with A Game of Thrones.)
I live in the country where I breed bluebirds, which are endangered in these parts, as my small contribution to restoring nature's balance. When I'm not writing, or researching my next book, I may also be found socializing with friends, or working in my organic garden.
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