Welcome D Musgrave

Now here's an old friend who's been around for...uh...way longer than he'd care to share I bet. LOL I've known D. for years. He's the first author who I've actually had the opportunity to meet, and what a blast it was. He's very cool, ladies. You're gonna love this!

1. How long have you been writing? What inspired you to pick the pen up one day and create characters that capture the imagination?

I’ve been writing for longer than I care to mention. From my earliest days, I remember playing out stories in my mind. Then during my teens I picked up the Edgar Rice Burroughs book, A Goddess of Mars, it quickly became my inspiration to put my stories to paper.

2.  What influenced you to get published? How long did it take? Can you tell us the name of your first published work?

I had dabbled in writing as a fun hobby for personal enjoyment for many years with no intent on publishing. Then during a college writing class, the instructor asked me if I’d ever considered trying to get published. From that moment, I took writing more seriously

I originally began writing in the mainstream genre of suspense/thrillers, but my “other” works had no home. That is until 1998 when I found a whole new world of possibilities, online Erotica. In those early days, I wrote a handful of very rough short stories and posted them on a small internet community of fellow aspiring writers. The feedback was astounding. Not only did I have the stories to tell, but people wanted to read my wicked words.

After much work at developing my voice and the skills needed to write, I got my first novel published in the fall of 2003. Trail of Seduction was and still is available at Renaissance E-books.   

3. What genre would you like to try that you haven’t yet?

I’ve been lucky enough to write stories in several genres, but one I’m currently plotting and planning is a cross genre Epic Erotica Series in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy realm. I’m a huge fan of the Sc-Fi/Fantasy genre and have often wondered if I could write something in that realm with the added flavor of erotica. For the last decade, I’ve been reading the tales of R.A Salvatore and the series of stories revolving around a character, Drizzt Do’Urden. My aspiration for the series, tentatively titled The Portal of Eros, is to create an epic erotic tale with a tip of the dual scimitars to the Forgotten Realms of Faerun.

5. Plotter or pantzer?

I’m a plotter. I have several notebooks full of notes, character sketches, and outlines for each story I work on. The reason is my mind has a tendency to jump around and I often have several different stories at various stages in creation at any one time.

In fact, I often write the final chapter or ending of a story shortly after the opening passage. It gives me a destination on which to keep the story on track.

6.  What do you do when you’re suffering writers block?

Cry. Pout. Rage.

Seriously, I step away and work on some mindless, tedious task. I’ve found that if I busy myself with things that do not require a lot of focus, my mind wanders to the story that’s blocked and I often can work out the details to get the flow restarted.

7.  What would you like to share with new writers? Any suggestions or advice?

The primary thing I would like to convey to aspiring writers is that creating quality characters that readers care about is paramount. Without strong identifiable characters, no plot regardless of twists, turns, drama, heat, or suspense will grab the reader strong enough to overcome weak, flat, and unbelievable characters. The writer must constantly ask if their characters are being true to themselves. Have people you trust to give you brutal, honest feedback. Never ask family. They have to tell you your writing is brilliant.

8. If you could be a character in any of your books who would it be and why?

I would be Jake Edmonds from Foxy! A Smoking Hot Tale of Bikers and Biker Babes. Of all the characters, that one is the closest to who I am in real life. He’s basically me amplified 10 times.

10. What do you enjoy doing with your spare time, your non-writing time? 

In my spare time, I love getting outdoors and going off the grid. I’ve found that the time away from the noise of the world recharges my batteries like nothing else can. There’s something ethereal about nature that soothes my cluttered mind and opens my creative spirit. Some of my best work has come about from handwriting in the middle of nowhere.

11. If you could change one thing that you have written, what would it be?

Easy answer for me here. My second novel, Foxy! A Smoking Hot Tale of Bikers and Biker Babes. Don’t get me wrong. It’s one of my favorite novels, but if I had it to do again, I would flesh out some of the secondary stories and turn that into a series of stories about the Foxy Cock. Maybe one day.

13. If you had one wish, would you give away? Why or why not and to whom would you give it?

If I had one wish to give away, I would. I would give the wish of health to my future mother-in-law. Simply put, there is always someone else who is in more need than I and she worked too hard for too long to provide for her family that I think it’s unfair that her senior years are a struggle for her.

14.  If you could choose one vice, what would it be and why?

Just one? Okay. Video gaming. I have to severely limit myself when I take time to relax and play video games. I grew up in a household where we had all the video gaming systems from the very first Atari’s on. My mother was an Engineer for a company that made the circuit boards for the early gaming systems and due to that she got free beta units for testing. You can guess who was part of the beta testing team. I’ve also been responsible for creating at least two generations of gamers in my family. I’m the cool uncle who has all the best gaming toys.

15.  If you found that, for one reason or another, you couldn’t write anymore, what would you like to do instead?

Ouch. That thought is frightening. What would I do? Since we’re talking in a fantastical way here, I’m going to be a little outlandish. If I could no longer write, I would like to try radio broadcasting. At the time I got interested in writing, I was also considering a career in radio. Within the last year I’ve even been asked if I’d be interested in being the host for a weekly podcast. I declined for the fact that I’d have to give up what little free time I have for writing.

17.  What are you working on now? Can you tell us a little about it?

Despite the fact that I’m plotting the epic Fantasy series The Portal of Eros, my main focus as of late has been the re-imagining of a story that was part of an anthology from a couple of years ago. The story is being reworked to the point that it is in essence a new story. The new title for the story is Jamais vu. A Love Forgotten.

Here’s the working blurb:

What would you give up to rid yourself of a haunting? Would you give up love? William Beauregard returns from WWII, only to find the visions of the death and destruction haunting him still. He can't shake them and it's pushed him away from his wife, Sheila. To rid himself of the ghosts, he must take a huge risk, one that could lose his wife to him forever.

19. What kind of comfort food do you like best?

Oh an easy question. My favorite comfort food is tortilla chips and salsa. I can eat that each and every day.

20. What is it like to be a male writer of erotica?

Thanks for asking. Being a male author of erotic romance has both its advantages and disadvantages. Fear of me using writing to attract females has come up way more often than I would have ever thought possible. It amazes me each time I’m asked if my writing has gotten me lucky. I would venture a guess that most if not all female authors have never been asked this question.

That said the primary issue I face is the misconception that due to my gender alone, I’m not equipped to write stories in the romance genre that would appeal to women. It’s a daunting challenge to know there is a percentage of readers who may have preconceived opinions that due to my being a man, I can’t, or shouldn’t,  write romantic stories.

Even though those are tough issues facing me, there are advantages in being a male in a female dominate genre. Primarily, the novelty factor can be a huge draw. This uniqueness can provide a ton of interest.

21.  What do you hope to achieve in life and when will you know that you have been a success?

Talk about a heady question to end the interview. Sheesh. Grin.

For me it will not be about money, status, and material possessions.

If at the end I can look back and feel as if I’ve mattered to the people I love, that’s all I will need to feel like I’ve been successful in life.

In other words, I want to be the person my dogs think I am. 

And, on to D's book! 

Blood Creek Haunting

By: D. Musgrave

Length: Photon (25K words)
Rating: Nebula 3 - contains scenes of F/F explicit sex

ISBN 1-59426-991-2

Blood Creek Haunting, is the story of a woman who’s being haunted by the ghost of an Indian brave. Emily discovers that not only is her house being built on the sacred ground of the Blood Creek Massacre, but also one of her ancestors was responsible for the massacre. Can Emily find a way to repay the debt? Will she survive the haunting? These questions and many more will be answered in due time.

Excerpt Rated PG-13

Her scream echoed through the valley. Emily hit the kill switch on the tiller as fast as she could. The tines slowed to a stop, but not before more bones were dug up by the plow. She jumped to the side, trying not to step on the skull that had rolled out on top of the ridge of dirt. At first, she didn't believe her eyes when she saw the first long white bone. When she saw another, then another, she knew something wasn't right. But it wasn't until she saw the human skull pop up out of the soil that she believed it was anything more than a dead animal.

All she could do was look at the skull, staring back up at her. There was a large hole in the forehead that looked as if something sharp and hard had stabbed through the head. Dirt was packed into the eye sockets and worms oozed out of the holes in the cheeks. It looked as if it were smiling at her, but that couldn't be. There was no skin or hair left on it. She reached out with the toe of her boot and flipped the skull over. The back was caved in and it looked as if something hard had bashed in the back of the head. Suddenly, she felt cold, even in the blazing summer sun. She rubbed her arms, but still she shivered.

Crouching down, she reached out to touch the skull. When her fingertips made contact with the cold bone, a loud rolling yell rang in her ears. Snatching her arm back, she fell on her backside and thought she saw the skull move. She reached out again and touched the skull. This time there was no sound.

Shaking her head, Emily climbed to her feet. She told herself that she was being stupid. Just because all the locals believed that the ghosts of the Cherokee warriors who died in the Blood Creek Massacre haunted her land, didn't make the stories true. It was just ghost stories. No superstitious story was going scare her off the land her family had owned for generations.

The e-book is available for purchase:
http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Blood+Creek+Haunting+by+D.+Musgrave

And, here's D's bio and where you can find him online:

You all have seen me. I was that kid in the back of the classroom, staring out the window. They called it daydreaming back in my time, now they would probably diagnose me as having ADHD. The truth? Even then I was working. I grew up being told more often than not that daydreaming was a waste of time. 

What a crock that turned out to be. Those wild, fanciful dreams were to one day become the fodder for the erotic tales that now flow onto the pages of my stories.

Links:

My Phaze Authors Page: http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=D.+Musgrave
My Homepage: http://dmusgrave.com
My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dmusgrave.author
The Portal of Eros Newsletter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/d_musgrave_newsletter/