Interview used by permission of Second Wind Publishing and the author 

Second Wind: I am joined today by Dellani Oakes, author of the historical romance novel, “Indian Summer” available through Second Wind Publishing. Hello, Dellani, and welcome.

Dellani: Thank you. I am delighted to be here.

SW: What inspired you to write this novel?

D: When I moved the Florida twenty years ago, I was overwhelmed by the wealth of history. St. Augustine, as the oldest established city on the east coast, holds an extra special fascination for me. I wanted to bring a bit of that history alive.

SW: Why the time period, 1739? I’m guessing that’s significant.

D: Yes, it is. There was a great deal of enmity between the Spanish and British in Europe and Florida gave them another venue in which to fight. The British were constantly trying to take over the fort in St. Augustine, the Castillo de San Marcos. In 1740, they very nearly succeeded.

SW: Why all this fuss over Florida? Grant you, it’s pretty country, but with the climate and the diseases the mosquitoes carried, why would anyone want such an untamed place?

D: I asked that very question too. What I found during my research was that St. Augustine was a strategic military position. The Spanish were shipping their treasures from Mexico and Central America. They used the trade routes along the Florida coast. Those waters were full of pirates as well as British warships. Imagine what the British could have done to the Spanish trade routes if they controlled those waters instead?

SW: An interesting historical twist.

D: Yes, I think I just gave myself an idea for a new novel.

SW: Now that we’ve established a bit of the history, tell us about the story itself. Was there really a Gabriella Deza daughter of the Spanish governor?

D: No, there wasn’t. I tried very hard not to pattern her after a real person and did hours of research to find a name not common to the area. If Gabriella resembles any historical person, it’s purely coincidental.

SW: Give us a brief synopsis of your story.

D: The story opens in the spring of 1739 and Gabriella is almost fifteen. After an accident injures both Manuel, her father’s confidential aid, and Governor Deza, Gabriella is staying at the hospital to help care for them. She overhears a conversation between two British spies. They are talking about an attack on St. Augustine.

SW: What does she do?

D: She runs to tell her father, but he’s unconscious. Instead, she goes to Manuel. However, after a brief and very embarrassing conversation with him, it slips her mind.

SW: How could talking to Manuel make her forget something that important?

D: He is nearly naked, very handsome, well built and charming. Keep in mind, she’s only fourteen and he is an older man. She’s so flattered that he has shown interest in her, she simply forgets.

SW: How much older is he?

D: Manuel is twenty-one.

SW: Isn’t that a little old for her? She’s just a child.

D: Perhaps by today’s standards, but back then girls married young and their husbands were often even older than Manuel. It wasn’t unusual for a girl her age to marry a man in his thirties.

SW: Does she ever remember the conversation she overheard?

D: No, but when she is sick with a fever, she reveals everything to Manuel and her father. Armed with this information, they set a trap for the spy, but by mischance, Gabriella is caught in it. She is kidnapped by the spy, escapes and is rescued by a band of friendly Indians. Now Manuel must find her and get her back. Then he has to bring the spy to justice so they can be married.

SW: I trust it all works out?

D: You’ll have to read “Indian Summer” to find out. But I will say I do like happy endings.

SW: Dellani, thank you so much for talking with me today.

D: I’m delighted to. Thank you for inviting me.

Dellani Oakes’ book, “Indian Summer” is available at www.secondwindpublishing.com It is also available at Amazon.com

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I don’t know if it’s the candy, the brisk nights, the ghost stories or the costume parties, but I love celebrating it and I love writing about it even more. That’s why I’m so thrilled to be in the new Liquid Silver Books  Halloween anthology, Halloween Treats.  If you love Halloween - or witches, ghosts, zombies and shifters - you definitely won’t want to miss this collection of erotic and spooky fun.

I’m Veronica Wilde and my story is called It’s A Wonderful Fright. Yep, it’s a witchy Halloween version of the Christmas classic, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Only my version involves hexes, graveyards, two beautiful witches fighting over the same man and some very hot male sex slaves. Read on for the titles and blurbs of all three stories….

It’s a Wonderful Fright by Veronica WildeWillow’s always been a good witch… until a bad witch hexes her sex life on Halloween.Now she’s ready to throw her old life away for the thrill of working dark magic on every man she desires. To convince her otherwise, a pair of ghostly guides gives her a taste of her life as a cruel and sexy hex mistress – a life of necromancy, debauchery and some very submissive male slaves. But when Willow falls for the one man she can’t have in her powerful new world, she realizes that her old life was a wonderful fright indeed.Zombies Are People Too by Tiffany AaronWhat’s a girl to do when she’s on the trail of the biggest news story of her life?Tarsala Jones, Private Investigator and journalist, has spent over a year searching out the origin of the Halloween zombie virus. Tarsala is sure there’s a sinister reason behind the outbreak. Before she can find the culprit, she has to deal with a libel suit against her.

Dreams. The stork. “The story idea store.” Every author has a different answer to this, but it usually amounts to the same thing: “I dunno. I just get ‘em.” For me it’s a two-part process. One day when I’m not thinking about it something occurs to me and I think, “That oughtta be in a romance novel. That would make for a good story.” And then maybe I remember it or maybe I don’t. If the idea does stick around, I start to flesh it out and see if the story is big enough to sustain a novel–and one that I would want to read and write.

The Rogue and The Rival, my newest novel, was conceived when a sentence popped into my head one day: Time had been good to Phillip Kensington, Marquis Huntley, even though he certainly did not deserve it.

The Phillip in the aforementioned sentence was the villainous twin of my debut novel, The Heir And The Spare. In an early draft of the story he died in the end. But because of that sentence, I wondered what might happen if he lived instead. Just wondered. After all, first lines of novels are hard to come by, so it seemed a shame to throw a good one away without fully considering its possibilities. All I needed was the rest of the story!

But first I needed the perfect heroine for a man like Phillip. He had, according to Lady Palmerston, the negligent chaperone of my series, ruined four girls. Wouldn’t it be a perfect twist of fate and divine poetic justice for him to fall in love with a woman who had been ruined by a different man? A woman who would certainly know better than to dally with the likes of Phillip.

And where might our villain-turned-hero find such a woman? She would probably have been cast out of society for her transgression, so he wouldn’t find her in the ballrooms of London. Perhaps she worked at inn? Or as a seamstress? Or perhaps a little cottage tucked way on the outskirts of town? Or what about an abbey? Aha!

I had the hero (a rake being reformed), the heroine (a woman learning to love again), and the setting (an abbey—the perfect place for reformation, forgiveness, and faith). There was much more work to be done—like figuring out how he ended up in the abbey, inventing her life story, and including re-writing Phillip’s death scene so that he lives.

One burst of inspiration and lots of daydreaming resulted in a novel that was a delight to write. Of course it didn’t happen as neatly I described. It involved a lot of started and abandoned word documents, a lot of scraps of paper with lines or thought scribbled on the, and a lot of day dreaming.

Do you ever come up with story ideas or did you wonder where they came from? Do you write them down?

I’ll be popping in today to answer your comments and I’ll be chatting with the Romance Junkies on November 16th and 9 pm. Stop by and say hello!

~~Maya Rodale

Who is your favorite hero/heroine? Is there one thing about a hero/heroine that you can’t stand?