Cora Blu
Multi-Genre Romance
Thank you for stopping in to check out Cora's books. She'll be around this week to answers questions and chat with readers. Click over and view her sites, then leave her a comment. She love's to meet new readers! Here's a peek at our chat this week:
Deanna: Cora, thank you for hanging out with me this week! What do you like doing outside of writing? Hobbies?
For fun?
Cora: Gardening, cooking, reading and gardening. Writing is
an obsession so I can't list that.
Deanna: I'm also an avid gardener...my characters talk to me while I'm out there. If you couldn’t be an author, what would your ideal
career be?
Cora: A professional dancer.
Deanna: How did you choose the genre you write in? I write romance because it's what I read growing up.
Cora: Friends, neighbors, teachers...I've never lived in a
one-race world. Underwater fantasy, because Twenty Leagues Under the Sea caught
my attention at a young age.
Deanna: What has been the toughest criticism given to you as
an author? What has been the best compliment?
Cora: I'm adding you to my prayer list that you never lose
your writing style. (Are you kidding me!!! So humbling)
Deanna: Is there anything that you would like to say to your
readers and fans?
Cora: Your kind and positive reviews, and private emails carry
me like nothing else. I write IR, not to highlight interracial couples, but to
highlight the fact that people live and interact inter-racially, multi-culturally.
Not all conversations are racial. Everybody's experience is different.
Deanna: Is there a message in your novel that you want
readers to grasp?
Cora: I just released book II in my fantasy Brothers of
Element series, "Blade". Researching the tsunami in Japan from 2011.
The level of heartbreaking was overwhelming. The message in the story is twofold.
Shark finning is out of control in the Pacific Ocean, and an underlying
bullying is going on between the hero and heroine. The hero will come to
realize he's unknowingly looked down on the heroine because she is Irrawaddy
dolphin and not tiger shark.
Deanna: What was your favorite chapter (or part) to write
and why?
Cora: The heroine, Miyuki Takahashi, gets into a sword fight
and it gets...messy. I cried writing that scene. And the hospital scene when
they visit a hurt child rescued from fallen debris. I laughed so hard.
Deanna: Have you ever been surprised by a controversy among
fans or reviewers - for example, you created a character without thinking too
much about what people would think of him, and found some readers loved him and
some hated him?
Cora: Mikhail from my contemporary Stranded but not alone.
He's the twin to my hero, Seth. I get requests to give him a story. From my
fantasy, I get requests to give Her'lion a book. He's the queen's personal
security. He's the color of tar and a bull shark shifter with lavender eyes.
He's one of the most feared guards, and protects the queen like a bulldog.