Hey everyone! I’m thrilled to have K.L. Docter, award-winning romantic suspense author as my guest today! I’m presently reading her latest novel, Killing Secrets, and it’s fantastic! Wow! I hope you get the chance to grab a copy.
5 Things About Author, K.L. Docter
1. I love getting dirty in the outdoors. Two of my favorite pastimes are camping and fishing. It’s so peaceful to sit around a campsite and write. I always take my laptop with me so the minute we get settled somewhere, I find a shady spot to set up my table. Depending on where we go, I enjoy listening to the babble of a brook or the water lapping at a lake shoreline or the breeze whispering through the pine trees. It’s inspiring.
When I’m not writing, I fish…at least, whenever possible. Colorado does have places for me to fish but it usually requires a 2-3 hour drive so I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like. I’m the fisherman in the family. It’s probably the only time I can actively wake myself up before dawn without an alarm. I’m that eager to hit the water.
2. I write to music. I don’t have playlists for particular stories, like some authors. My music sets or enhances my mood. I’m both right and left brained, so I use music to signal my left brain to take a back seat to my creative right side. Otherwise, I find it difficult to get fully into writing mode. My usual “go to” music is romantic flamenco. I intersperse piano, guitar, new age, celtic into the mix, too. My favorite music to write action or dramatic scenes is Apocalyptica, Techno, and Industrial.
There are seventeen radio stations on my Pandora playlist, and I bounce around it all day depending on what I’m working on. I avoid music with lyrics, except for foreign languages. For some reason, the English words draw me out of my writing zone. If it’s in Spanish or Italian or opera – even if in English – it doesn’t impinge on me the same way.
3. I write two different kinds of romance novels – contemporary romance as Karen Docter and romantic suspense as K.L. Docter. My contemporaries are cute and spicy romances about men and women with dreams and goals that don’t allow for a relationship just so I can throw them in each other’s path…with a tickle and a smile. They’re lighthearted and fun books around 50,000+ words in length. They’re my “beach reads.” My romantic suspense falls on the opposite end of the scale. They have strong romances, too. But the dangers I throw at the hero and heroine is usually intense because a serial killer is bent on ending one or both of their lives. These books are twice as long – around 100,000+ words.
4. My desire to be a police officer as a youngster led to the launch of my romantic suspense career. When I was nine or ten-years-old, an incident happened that shaped my strong sense of justice.
Our family was coming back from a late night at the drive-in theater – heavens, I miss those fun family outings! Anyway, we were stopped at the edge of our neighborhood for an hour or two by the police. There had been a shooting. Two policemen had responded to a domestic situation that went tragically wrong. They’d settled the dispute and were leaving the scene when a neighbor, who’d been drinking and took exception to their presence, shot and killed one of the officers. The standoff lasted over an hour.
I found myself deeply affected by the situation when, the next day, I learned the details of the incident and that the slain officer left behind a pregnant wife. It was all so senseless. There was no justice in what happened. Oh, they arrested the shooter but there would never be justice for the slain officer’s wife and child.
For the longest time, I considered becoming a police officer. It’s not the direction I eventually headed but, when I began to write romances, I found quite a few suspense elements creeping into the stories. It was a natural progression toward writing pure romantic suspense. Now, I dispense justice in my thriller novels.
5. I launched my first romantic suspense series with the release of Killing Secrets, a Thorne’s Thorns novel, on April 17th. Police officer Ross Thorne, and his wife, Evelyn, had only one biological son, Patrick. But they raised him with five foster brothers – Jack, Ben, Cole, Sam, and Joe. They were all in some kind of trouble at one point or another, which is where the name “Thorne’s thorns” was born. The six brothers have become strong, sexy men, and each book in the series is about one of them, the danger that enters his life, and the woman he falls in love with and must protect. Killing Secrets is Patrick’s book. The next book in the series is Killing Proof, Ben’s story – an October 2014 release. Follow the series: http://www.karendocter.com
Some secrets are better left dead.
Rachel James’ ex-husband is released from prison determined to reclaim her and her little girl — the child is his key to controlling the James fortune. Frightened, Rachel flees to Denver with the child who hasn’t uttered a word since her daddy went to prison.
Contractor Patrick Thorne wants nothing to do with another of his parents’ charity cases. He failed his own wife so abysmally she took her own life as well as his unborn son’s. After two years, it’s time to concentrate on the bid he’s won and the saboteur trying to destroy his construction firm.
There is no room for trust in either of their hearts. But trust is all that will untangle the secrets that dominate their lives, free a little girl of her silent prison, and save them all from a serial killer who stands too close.
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Author Bio:
Karen Docter writes two different kinds of romance novels….
Contemporary Romantic Comedy w/a Karen Docter: Romance…With a Kick of Humor! http://www.karendocter.com
Romantic Suspense w/a K.L. Docter: Women hunted by killers…men who’d die to protect them. http://www.kldocter.com
Karen’s contemporaries are cute romantic comedies. She loves writing about real men and women with dreams and goals that don’t allow for a relationship just so she can throw them in each other’s path…with a tickle and a smile.
Her romantic suspense novels are also filled with romance, although the dangers the hero and heroine face are intense, usually because a serial killer is bent on ending one or both of their lives before they can fall in love. These are psychological, woman-in-jeopardy stories.
Karen’s an award winning author, a four-time Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® finalist, and won the coveted Kiss of Death Romance Writers Daphne du Maurier Award Category (Series) Romantic Mystery Unpublished division.
When she’s not saving her characters from death and destruction or helping them fall in love, she loves camping and fishing with her family, reading, gardening & cooking. If she can do most of those things over a campfire, all the better!
Links:
Blog
http://www.karendocter.com/blog/
Catch That Santa
http://www.amazon.com/Catch-That-Santa-ebook/dp/B00ACDF0EG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353766171&sr=1-1&keywords=catch+that+santa
Satin Pleasures
http://www.amazon.com/Satin-Pleasures-ebook/dp/B0078VSY6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330384089&sr=8-1
Facebook (Karen Docter)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Karen-Docter-Author/112017712223396
Facebook (K.L. Docter)
https://www.facebook.com/kldocter
Twitter: @KarenDocter
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5754902.Karen_Docter
Award-Winning Author Kim Cresswell 