Tuesday 23 October 2012

A Life Interrupted By Kristi Louks


 
Kristi Loucks is a Pastry Chef and Cake Designer with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu Chicago. Her writing and storytelling has always been a way to manage the day to day stresses of working in the world of restaurants and food service. Ms. Loucks currently resides in a suburb of Chicago and runs a bakery in a North Shore Suburb.
Everything seemed perfect in his life, he had love, friends and family surrounding him and his team was on the verge of putting an end to the reign of a known trafficker who dealt in drugs and women. But in one moment, the man Jared BelaForte had spent years trying to put away interrupted that life. After two years of torture and pain, Jared believed he would die in Dolenov’s ‘care’. But just when all hope is lost, an opportunity to escape presents itself.  He returns and begins to heal with the help of those closest to him, including a daughter he had not yet met. Can he pick up the pieces before the man responsible returns to finish the job he started?”
 
Want to win an ebook of A Life Interrupted? Enter at the bottom of this page.
Simply post an answer to the following question for your chance to win. 
What indulgence could you not live without?
 
Today Kristi shares with us a little bit about her writing journey.
Read on to learn more!

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR WRITING JOURNEY.
 When I set out to write A Life Interrupted, my intention was never to get it published.  I like most people who write, as a hobby just didn’t really consider it a possibility.  It seemed like an unattainable goal.  But, I had a close friend who took the next step for me by sharing my work with a friend who is in editing.  And with his advice, I started to research independent and self-publishing.  I knew I didn’t have the time to go the traditional route since I was in the process of re-locating my bakery, which at times felt like two full time jobs, so that seemed like the best route.  After a lot of research, I settled on self-publishing as I just wasn’t 100% sure that one particular indie publisher was the best fit.  Plus, I really like to have control and you do give up a certain amount of control with each person that joins the project. With self-publishing, you are responsible for cover design, editing and formatting, etc. and that worked well for me because I am definitely a hands on kind of person.  Will I always do it that way, probably not, but I like to know what is involved it helps you appreciate that work more when someone else does it, too.  The whole walk a mile in someone else’s shoes theory I guess.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT BEING A WRITER?
I really enjoy character development.  It is always a challenge to breath life into something and engage the reader using words alone.  I love the feeling of getting to the end of a book and thinking I’m going to miss the characters like I would miss an old friend that I haven’t seen in ages.  That means the author did their job well.

WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING A WRITER?
Coming up with fresh ideas.  Especially with suspense because there are so many tv shows, books and real life stories that can influence your work.  To do something totally different seems to get harder every time, but it is also the challenge that makes you want to try and figure it out.

DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS FOR NEW WRITERS?
Edit as you go a couple of chapters at a time, it will help you maintain continuity especially if you write in blocks and stop for a period of time.  Don’t stop being a reader, it helps you stay connected to your own audience when you sit among them.  Hire an editor, you can’t objectively edit your own work no matter how skilled you are, and while family seems like a good option, it is harder to hear critiques from the people closest to you and I suspect it is also harder for them to give said critiques.

DO YOU SUFFER FROM WRITER’S BLOCK? IF SO HOW DO YOU OVERCOME IT?
Of course, I suspect everyone does from time to time.  A lot of times, it is just a matter of stepping away for a bit to enjoy a movie or dinner with friends and just not think about it for a night or two.  When that isn’t effective, I like to use a tool called workflowy.  It’s an interactive outline that is web based and allows you to see items you’ve deleted or changed.  Sometimes it’s as simple as fine tuning your focus back to something that you’ve lost sight of along the way, which seems to happen when I write a bunch of chapters at once.  If that doesn’t work, I will just go back and read through the chapters and try to unlock my brain that way.  For me it is generally a game of extremes, either I have focused too hard on writing and burnt myself out a bit or I have lost sight of my original focus and need to get back to it.

HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR STORYLINE?
Oddly, I often write backwards in that I will think about the end result and then figure out how you get there.  For example, with The Rose Red Reaper, I came up with the killer and his signature and then went to work on his motivations and how he connected to the core characters and his victims.  Then I work on developing the characters before I finally start to build the story around all of this information.  It’s kind of fun for me, because a lot of times I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.  That’s always been my approach, I find if I get too rigid with the structure it shows in my writing and the characters start to feel flat.  So, I basically threw out the rulebook and did what worked for me.

WRITERS ARE SOMETIMES INFLUENCED BY THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THEIR OWN LIVES. ARE YOU?
Absolutely, it’s almost impossible not to be.  People who are close to me laugh when they read my books because I have a tendency to give at least one of the characters my twisted sense of humor.  There is almost always cooking that brings the core characters together at times because so much of my world revolves around cooking as a chef.  And in A Life Interrupted, there are also some things that were ripped from my own headlines if you will.  His broken arm was an injury I sustained a few years ago, and it found it’s way into the book though my injury was the result of an accident and not torture.  But, I also have a person in my past who was capable of inflicting psychological damage and some of that darkness comes from that part of my past.  I think we all draw on our past to bring life to our work to some extent.

WHAT IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING ABOUT WRITING/PUBLISHING THAT YOU HAVE LEARNT?
I think we all have this idea that comes from traditional publishing of hundreds of rejections, but I never knew just how much bigger the independent and self publishing markets had become until I started to really pursue writing.  It is great in the respect that people who may never have pursued writing now have the ability to do so, but it is also bad in the respect that you have to work so much harder to get noticed because there are so many more authors within each genre.  There is a lot more responsibility on the authors’ shoulders with social media, but it also presents us with the opportunity to get to know the people who read your books and other authors in your genre.  Though even the added work is a plus in my opinion, what better way to learn what readers want than to hear it from them?  It’s one of the things I love about social media, especially twitter. 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR PUBLICATIONS/AWARDS IF ANY?
Being that I am a new author I have yet to earn any awards. Though for me, I am happy just to hear that readers have enjoyed my book.  That’s really all I need.

THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES OUT THERE. WHY SHOULD WE READ ‘A LIFE INTERRUPTED’?
There are plenty of romantic suspense novels out there, how does anyone choose?  What I tried to do is assemble a cast of characters that are worth investing in, but more than that I wanted to story to tell of hope, determination and survival.  Of course, there is love and suspense as you would expect from the genre.  It is not boy meets girl; killer chases girl; guy captures the killer; happily ever after.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  There is a lingering threat, but a lot of the story is about putting the pieces back together and being able to fight as a team rather than a single knight in shining armor.

OTHER THAN WRITING, WHAT ELSE DO YOU LOVE?
I love to cook and bake, as you might have guessed considering I am a Pastry Chef and Cake Decorator.  And that is also why food will always play a role in my writing as well.  It is rare that you would ever find me without an array of colors staining my hands.  I love the holidays, decorating cookies and baking breads and pies.  To me, the holidays just aren’t the holidays without the sweet and spicy scents filling the kitchen.  I love to ski, though time doesn’t allow for that much these days.  And I love all kinds of furry creatures.  I have two feral cats that adopted me, a giant of a horse who thinks he is the size of a teacup poodle and an African grey parrot.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR AND WHY?
Really just one? At the moment I have been reading Lori Foster and Jaci Burton.  I’ve read most of their books.  I really enjoy the way they are able to create a series where the individual books can stand alone just as easily.  As far as authors that have influenced me, Sandra Brown is great at heart-stopping suspense while never losing track of the romance.  Cherry Adair as well.  Probably the first books that really captured my interest when I was younger were Stephen King and Dean Koontz.  I really enjoyed that both of them could scare you to death with things that you find in your everyday life.  I’ve never felt the same about clowns after reading King’ It. And, I wondered if every dog had thoughts like Einstein in Koontz’ The Watcher.  I guess my favorite author would vary from year to year.

IF YOU HAD A PREMONITION YOU WOULD BE STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND, WHAT 5 BOOKS WOULD YOU THROW IN YOUR BAG?
Oh the places you’ll go by Dr. Suess, The complete worst-case scenario survival handbook by Joshua Piven (You never know), The Stand by Stephen King (one of my all time favs), Any of Lori Foster’s books and something that I’ve never read before.

WHAT FIVE WORDS BEST SUM YOU UP
Outgoing, loyal, generous, driven and goofy

HOW CAN WE LEARN MORE?
Find me on twitter @LoucksKE

Find up to date info at www.kristiloucks.com


Or follow my on facebook at www.facebook.com/alifeiterrrupted

Thanks for answering all those questions Kristi. Congratulations on your debut novel. I am over halfway through this exciting story and would recommend it as a terrific read!

Want to win an ebook of A Life Interrupted? Simply post your answer to the following question for the chance to win.
What indulgence could you not live without?
Competition closes Nov 16.

 

8 comments:

  1. I already have a copy of this wonderful story but I thought I would post my answer anyway. I could not live without my tri-pillow. It is a similar shape to a boomerang and I love it because it is so comfortable!

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  2. Thanks Melissa for taking the time to put together the interview. I really enjoyed getting to know a little bit about you as well! I think the hardest thing for me to live without would be my cell phone. I keep tons of voice notes on it when I am working on a new story. If anyone ever got a hold of it, I think they'd believe I was a bit crazy though :) I'm interested to see what things everyone lists :)

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  3. Great post! I love to read what other authors have to say. Then I don't feel like I'm alone out there. lol

    Rebecca - Pit Crew

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  4. Wonderful post...thanks Melissa and Kristi! I could not do without CHOCOLATE!!! Did I mention...I LOVE chocolate;)

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  5. Girl after my own heart, Brenda. :) Always be suspicious of those who don't like chocolate!

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  6. I love reading about how other writers plot and plan their storylines. Just read Stephen King's On Writing and he doesn't believe in a plot or a plan. He just starts with a situation and his writing flows from that. I need a plan though. Great post!
    Cindy Pit Crew

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  7. I agree Cindy and Rebecca. It is interseting to hear how other authors go about their writing. I love to hear the back story of how their story came about. So Cindy and Rebecca what is you indulgence you couldn't live without ... I have to agree with Brenda also!

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  8. Chocolate. That wonderful oozing feeling of it melting in your mouth. The lingering aftertaste. Bliss.

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