An Interview & Giveaway with Dianna Hardy

Releasing the Wolf (Cry of the Wolf #1) by Dianna Hardy

Lydia Martin has always had dreams, the weirdest and hottest of them all involving a faceless, muscle-bound man that speaks like sin and smells like sex. Like any sane person, she always put the dreams down to an overactive imagination, coupled with a higher than average libido.

One night, however, instead of their usual, erotic encounters, she finds him in her dream, chained to a wall and screaming in pain. Not only that, but she thinks she recognises the building he's being held captive in as one that's just a few streets away.

Awaking with an irrepressible need to save her fantasy lover, Lydia decides to humour her dream self and head on over to where she thinks he's imprisoned.

What unfolds is beyond even her wildest imaginings, as she's sucked into a dangerous and deadly world she never knew existed ... and it turns out that the man who inhabits her darkest fantasies, isn't the only one that needs releasing. You can read my review here

 Cry of the Wolf (Eye of the Storm #2) by Dianna Hardy

The full moon is a week away, and although Lydia is as excited as it gets to run as a wolf for the first time, she is also fighting to keep her independence while trying to understand her role in the lives of the three males that have come to rule hers: compassionate, tender Taylor; impetuous, fun-loving Ryan and distant, cold Lawrence.

There's also a fourth man in Lydia's life. Brendan, her previous "friend with benefits", is tirelessly searching for her. He's about to uncover things that should be kept hidden.

However, the testosterone surrounding her is the last thing she should be worrying about. Her family bear truths about her heritage she's not ready to face ... she may not have a choice, because the greatest danger to them all comes from within. The past never stays buried for long, and among the shadows of their species it is rising with a vengeance, threatening to tear their pack apart for good. You can read my review here

Author Bio

Dianna combines a titillating mix of paranormal romance and urban fantasy into her writing, to bring you stories that are action-packed, fast-paced and not short of heat, with the focus on both character development and the plot. She writes both full-length novels and short fiction. She has also written poetry and esoteric books and articles.

Although quite active online, Dianna is a self-confessed hermit, preferring the company of nature and animals to the hustle and bustle of people. She loves anything paranormal (she doesn't really consider it "para"), organic food, walking barefoot, the smell of the woods after rain, and summer days.

 However, she is also sustained by coffee, chocolate and the occasional vodka.

She lives in the UK with her partner and their daughter, where she devotes her time to parenting, publishing and writing.

Links

Website: www.diannahardy.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authordiannahardy
Twitter: www.twitter.com/thewitchingpen
Amazon: www.amazon.com/Dianna-Hardy/e/B003AGRHFC
Google +: www.plus.google.com/u/0/110398750519005724804/posts
The Witching Pen website: www.thewitchingpen.co.uk

Interview

Can you tell us a little bit about the Eye of the Storm books (for those that haven't read the first book)?

Hi Carly! Thanks so much for having me on your blog :D

In a very small nutshell, the Eye Of The Storm series is about werewolves, and when animal urges battle with the human higher mind. It’s about lust and control, and sorrow and change, but also with a hefty plot that takes all of these themes through two or three mythological structures.

Where did the inspiration come from to sit down and start the series?
 
I’ve wanted to write something as blatant and ‘rough around the edges’ as this series since before I wrote The Witching Pen, but at the time, being a new author, I strongly felt that I had to stick to the ‘rules’ of writing within a genre – namely romance. So, I didn’t. With Eye Of The Storm, I finally decided to break out of those rules.
 
I knew that I wanted to write about ‘control’, and that this would come in many forms: sex vs. romance, nature vs. genetics, beast vs. man, love vs. lust, pain vs. pleasure, and so on. It immediately came to me, to make the series about werewolves – I mean, what a conflicted beast the werewolf is. If any creature is going to have control issues, it’s going to be the werewolf!

Tell us a little bit about your writing process?
 
*DRY LAUGHTER* Bitch about not having enough time to write; squeeze in a 1000 words of an evening; bitch more about not having enough time to write…

Okay, seriously? Ummm … I think of an idea, if it gets under my skin, I start to write it and see where it goes. Sometimes it goes nowhere, or it takes a long time to go anywhere, and other times it just takes off.

With Eye Of The Storm, for both books, the writing came fairly easily considering the personal chaos that was surrounding me at the time, and I used a mix of music (see playlist) and images (see book trailer) for the series to motivate and inspire me.

How many books are planned for series?

At this stage, I would say at least four, but possibly more.

Obviously I know this is a tricky one & you know I'd pick Lawrence, but who is your favourite male and why?
 
No, no, no. I swear, I can’t do that, and it’s not me being awkward, I promise! I really can’t pick one of my guys over another – they are all such a pleasure to write in different ways. The two favourites seem to be Lawrence and Taylor, probably because they’ve both got the whole tortured hero thing going on (albeit in very different ways). But don’t rule out Ryan. He wasn’t just a character for a catalyst in book one. His story hasn’t been told yet, but an element of it was hinted at, oh so briefly, in Cry Of The Wolf. And there’s also Amil, who I know isn’t up there on people’s yummy lists, but he truly is one of my favourites to write. His soul has been touched by true evil. What does that do to a person? He is the murkiest character. He is so corrupted, but also with the potential to be healed. You can’t really have a werewolf story without some ‘Beauty and The Beast’ facet coming into play. Amil and his story is the embodiment of that, and I love him to bits as much as Lawrence, Taylor and Ryan.

Do you have a song(s) that you think could be Cry of the Wolf's soundtrack?

Hands down, it’s Bad Moon Rising, by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Your writing is very raw (that's why I love it) but do you think it's for the faint hearted? What would you say to those that are a little wary?

I would welcome my readers to chip in here and answer this for me, as I think they’ll do it much more objectively!

I find it really hard to judge my own writing. Where one person finds it raw and intense, another person thinks it’s disjointed and rushed. Some readers have said that I write dark scenes, and dark stories, and although I do go through very dark moments when I write some of my story arcs, I don’t know if my stuff is really that dark – I think I’ve read much darker.

If you are a wary kind of reader, start with The Witching Pen because it’s free, and also because it’s the most mild and the most ‘romance’ of all my books. It’ll break you in gently :)

What I will say, is that if you’re looking for clear-cut romance, stay away from my books. I don’t give you that. Yes, there’s romance, but it’s not clear-cut, and my ‘happy endings’ are in the eye of the character, not the reader. No matter how much sex or romance I put in my books, I am writing for the story, NOT the romance.

Could you give us a character profile for Lydia?

LYDIA
Hair: red, shoulder-length, likes to wear it in a ponytail
Eyes: violet-blue
Height: 5ft 8”
Build: slim and athletic
Cheeky smile, twinkling eyes, quirky sense of humour and always the optimist. But she does have a tendency to run from emotional attachments. She’s a strong lady who knows what she wants if it concerns the smaller things in life, but she’s still trying to find her way around what she wants out of life itself (in the ‘meaning of my life’ kinda way).

Who could you see playing the parts of Ryan, Lawrence, Taylor on screen?

Eeeshk! Don’t hate me if you see someone totally different, okay? Ryan looks, facially, like a cross between Jon Bernthal and Jean Claude Van Damme, but bulkier, taller and with more scars. Lawrence looks a little like a cross between Josh Holloway and Alexander Skarsgard (yeah, I get why everyone likes Lawrence, lol), and Taylor … aw … Taylor. He’s kinda like Armie Hammer. And they all have British accents in my head, by the way. My werewolves are British :)

Could you give us a little sneaky peek of what you’re working on at the moment?

The Last Dragon. It’s what happens after The Witching Pen trilogy, and it is very much an urban fantasy (again, despite any detailed sex and / or romance in there). It’s about an apocalypse and unfinished business, and how to heal old wounds so that you become whole again as the new ‘you’ that you are now. It’s pretty intense writing it. It’ll be interesting to see how readers take to it.


Here’s a little exclusive excerpt – never seen before…

She no longer felt immortal, even though no weapon, nor time, could kill her. Immortality was measured by your strengths, and all she’d felt recently was weak. “You don’t know—”

“I know he’s the greatest sin-eater ever known to any world. His food was weighed by the beating hearts of mortals, his drink was their life-blood – the blacker it ran, the more nourished he became – and his household was every murky soul between Heaven and Hell. The only difference now is that there is no Heaven and Hell. Do you think he would love you, Morgana? He loves nothing because he can’t. Every dark place he visits, he is bound by duty to devour.”

She shook at his words – at the anger they instilled in her; at the humiliation they mustered in her. Was she that transparent? She never used to be… “He is no longer bound.”

“You’re a fool if you think he can be the angel he once was. Some sins are ingrained so deeply, the taint will never wash – not my words, but his. He’ll find your dark places, Morgana, and he’ll eat you up and spit you out, unless… ” his eyes darkened impossibly, because they were already coal-black to start with… “that’s what you want.”

She turned away from his void-like gaze, but he gripped her chin and turned her to face him. Stupidly, she let him – because Morgan le Fey was weak now. “Is that what you want, my Goddess?” He trailed the tips of his fingers down her chin; down her neck … down… “Do you want him to find your dark places, eat you up, and spit you out?”

Copyright © Dianna Hardy, 2013. All rights reserved. Excerpt is subject to change upon publication.

Giveaway

Now, Dianna has very kindly offered up A signed "Eye of the Storm" quote postcard and a "Fangs and Fur" fridge magnet - cool right? It's open internationally, so everyone can enter! Just fill out the Rafflecopter below guys!


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