Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, March 18, 2016

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 185 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today is bestselling author Candis Terry.  Candis Terry writes contemporary comedy romance, which is one of my favorite genres, and she also has one of those really cool, I Have Done All the Things bios, so in addition to talking about her new book and her new series and the books that she’s written for Avon, we also talk about her path towards publication, which was long and bumpy, as she puts it, and then we talk about costume designs for ‘80s hair bands, alpha male roosters, what her husband thinks of her books, and she offers some very excellent advice for aspiring writers.

This podcast is being sponsored by Jessica Khoury, author of The Forbidden Wish, published by Penguin Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  Zahra is given one chance at freedom, to be free of the curse that has bound her to a lamp.  With her future on the line, she must decide:  betray the man she loves or risk everything to be with him for eternity.  Available now!

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the podcast transcript, you can email me at [email protected].  I would love to hear from you!

And without any further delay, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  Would you please introduce yourself?

Candis Terry:  Okay, I’m Candis Terry.  I write contemporary romance.

Sarah:  So I wanted to talk to you about your new series, because you have had the really smart idea of combining romance and, and wine.

Candis:  [Laugh]

Sarah:  This was very wise!

Candis:  Yeah, yeah.  You know, ‘cause when you drink it, you’ve got to, you’ve got to come up with something.  Well, I had to get away from all the sweet stuff from my last couple of – you know, I had the Sugar Shack and the Sweet, Texas, so I thought, let’s go to something a little more adult, so it was wine.  You know, booze; I’m all about the booze.

Sarah:  You know, you can hold the wine in one hand and hold your book in the other.  It’s a –

Candis:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  – perfectly balanced activity.

Candis:  Absolutely, and if I’m reading on my tablet, I just use my thumb to, you know –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – go to the next page, so.  Yeah, I got the idea because all of a sudden in the last, I don’t know, five years, the wineries have popped up around my neighborhood, and if, if you come here – I mean, it’s, it’s a high desert, you know.  I live in the Boise, Idaho area.  It’s a high desert, so I’m like, who wants to grow wine here?  And the wines are wonderful!  And then when I was in Texas, which I go to Texas a lot, it seems like, they have that whole road out of Fredericksburg to San Antonio that’s wineries!

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  So I went down that road –

Sarah:  Wines like it dry.

Candis:  Oh, yeah, I love it!  So I went down that.  I went, when I went to the RWA there, I just rented a car, and I went down, and I went, I stopped at, like, well, not all of them, that would make me look terrible, but I stopped at a lot of them.  I do –

Sarah:  No one would judge if you stopped at every single one.

Candis:  You know, I, I, sorry, I just, it’s all about the wine.  And there’s such a difference in the wineries there, so I thought, this will be interesting, so then I started doing the research, and, and then of course, I don’t know why, I always write big families?  You know, the family saga?  I’m an only child.  Figure it out; I don’t know.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Just inventing all of your siblings that you don’t have to buy holiday presents for?

Candis:  Exactly!  Or deal with them, because my husband, there’re six kids in his family, and I’m like –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s a lot.

Candis:  – wow, you guys are all a little on the crazy side.  So it’s great, you know, I can just picture the family I really want!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Lovely!  And then invent a new one every time you start a new series.

Candis:  Exactly!  When I get tired of ‘em, they go away!

Sarah:  So your next book is A Better Man –

Candis:  Yes.

Sarah:  – which I have to say features a most excellent tush grab on the cover.

Candis:  [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah:  He has, he, this guy straight up has his hand on her bum, and I was like, way to go, Avon!  Just, just go there!  That’s awesome!

Candis:  Yeah, we wanted to go with something a little more sexy and a little more fun this time, so.  I said, yeah, grabbing the behind is good, good fun!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Well, she looks like she’s quite happy about it, too.

Candis:  Yes!  Well –

Sarah:  So this comes out March 29th, right?

Candis:  Yes, March 29th.

Sarah:  So would you tell us about the new series and about the characters?

Candis:  Yeah, I always start my, my series out with tragedies.  I don’t know why.  Somebody always has to die, and it’s really kind of sad and pathetic.  I guess that’s ‘cause I always have Criminal Minds on in the background when I write?  So –

[Laughter]

Candis:  I don’t know.

Sarah:  So some people write to a soundtrack and some people –

Candis:  Yeah, no.

Sarah:  – write to classical music, some people need silence, and you’re writing to –

Candis:  Yeah.  Murder.

Sarah:  – death and dismemberment and murders.

Candis:  Yes, yes.

Sarah:  Okay!

Candis:  So, yeah, so it’s, you know, it’s always, someone passes away and brings the family back together, and they’re, these are five brothers and a teenage sister, the Kincade family, and they’re all very different.  One is, the first one, in A Better Man, is Jordan Kincade, and he’s a hockey player, and his twin, fraternal twin brother is a financial genius.  And then we have the chef, and – you know, there’s, they all do something.  Ryan is the oldest, and he runs the winery.  And they start discovering things; there’s missing money after their parents have died, and, and now there’s, like, a mysterious, I’ve never written mystery, but there’s, like, this mysterious reason why the money’s gone and who took it and everything, so it’s been kind of a departure for me, and it’s really fun.

Sarah:  Is it a little bit less of the sweet stuff and more a little dark, or is it still contemporary comedy?

Candis:  No, it’s contemporary – it, it has a lot of more, lot more funny in it than – I, I can write dark, but, you know, that’s for another day –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – when I get older and I, I run out of the funny stuff?  I think the humor mostly comes in with the, the interaction between the brothers and, you know, the siblings.  It’s the sibling, you know, talking back to each other, talking smack and stuff, and the way that the –

Sarah:  ‘Cause siblings give each other a lot of crap.

Candis:  Yeah!  Yeah, yeah.  I, oh, I see that.  I’m like, oh, in real life I’m like, okay.  So it’s more come, the humor more comes from the characters, not necessarily the situation, but then I always have, like, there’s always an animal in my stories, and they always kind of add a little comic relief –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – and the one in A Better Man especially, his name is Ziggy, and he, he’s a dog that has a definite flatulence problem, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, I mean, there’s no, is there a dog on this cover?  Did I miss the dog?

Candis:  No.

Sarah:  You need to –

Candis:  No.

Sarah:  – put a dog on the cover, especially if you –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – could, like, Photoshop in a little cloud?

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah, that would be funny, a purple, a purple cloud.  Nope –

Sarah:  People would buy the hell out of that dog cover.

Candis:  I know!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It’s my dog!  There’s flatulence on the cover!  I need to own this book right now!

Candis:  I know, it’s actually, it’s, like, sadly, it’s, my dog, not the same kind of breed of dog, but my dog, Mattie, she’s famous for that, so it’s like, hoo!  That would be funny in a book!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, they don’t, the thing about dog farts is, they don’t dissipate.

Candis:  Oh, no!

Sarah:  Like, they just sort of hang together in a cloud –

Candis:  Oh, yeah!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – that, like, makes it way around the room, and everyone’s like, oh, my God!  And then it moves to the next person.  Oh, what the hell!

Candis:  Exactly.  And, and they’re always silent, so –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, you never hear a thing unless it’s really bad, and then you just need to run.

Candis:  [Laughs] I know!

Sarah:  See, this is what we need in romance:  we need more dog farts on the cover.

Candis:  I am totally all for that.

Sarah:  I mean –

Candis:  You know, if I go indie, I might.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – forget Photoshopping tattoos; like, that’s been done.  We need just a little –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – hint of flatulence.

Candis:  Yes.  I keep seeing, like, that lady that coughs on those new commercials, you know, where she’s got that blue cloud that goes out.  It’s a possibility!

Sarah:  I think it’s, I think cover designers who are listening should totally get on this.

Candis:  Don’t tempt me!  I’m a graphic designer, so – [laughs]

Sarah:  I’m here for this!  I’m just saying!  I’m just saying I’m totally okay with this.  So what’s, what’s book two going to be?

Candis:  Book two, we have, the title is Perfect for You, and it is Declan Kincade, and he is the fraternal twin brother to Jordan in book one.  And he’s –

Sarah:  So you can tell them apart.

Candis:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Okay.

Candis:  Yeah.  I mean, in my head they look nothing alike at all, but, you know, I try to make ‘em different enough.  They all have a, the, the family has, you know, the blue eyes and the dark hair, but, you know, it’s all kind of, they’re, they’re completely different from each other, completely.  You know, Jordan’s a total player, and Declan’s just all work, no play.  So it’s, it was quite a challenge to write somebody like that, ‘cause he was a different kind of a hero for me, but he’s, he’s a guy who needs to learn how to have fun, and luckily he runs into the woman who will show him how.

Sarah:  Well, that’s a good thing to read.  That, that’ll create dialog, which is, you know, my favorite part of a book.

Candis:  Yeah, yeah.  And it’s funny, ‘cause she works for him, and so he’s trying to keep the –

Sarah:  Oooh!

Candis:  – you know, all business, and no, you know, keeping that line from crossing it and all that, and yeah, it doesn’t work, of course, but – [laughs]

Sarah:  So I, I learned from your publicist that you have tried to write in several different subgenres.

Candis:  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  It took me twenty-two years to get published.

Sarah:  That is, that is a long time.

Candis:  Fun – yeah, I’m, I’m Scottish, so I’m stubborn as hell, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – yeah.  [Laughs] The first book I wrote was a historical, and that was way, way, way, way, way back when my daughter was, like, really tiny?

Sarah:  Uh-huh?

Candis:  She’s going to be thirty-one now.  So – [laughs] – it, I started with a historical because I just read historicals like crazy, and I thought, oh, I got this idea, and I, and then I was so proud of it, it took me three whole years to write, and, you know, I dis-, finally, after that, discovered RWA and everything, so.  Then a lot of people told me I did not have a historical voice.

Sarah:  Huh!

Candis:  So it’s like, well, that sucks, so let’s see –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – what can I do then?  So then I wrote a paranormal, which I still love and was a Golden Heart finalist.

Sarah:  Ooh, congrats!

Candis:  It’s a wonderful story, and, and I hope to someday, like, rewrite it?  But it got a lot of attention, won a lot of contests and all that, but at that time, the industry was not buying paranormal romance.  And by the time they did buy paranormal romance, my style had changed so much, so then I was like, well, okay, now what can I do?  [Laugh] So, I always read a lot of Harlequin, so I thought, well, let me see if I can write these, and I got a lot of attention, I got a lot of awards, lot of contests, a lot – I got agents out of it and everything.  Never sold.  Could never sell.  Did revisions and all that; could never sell.

Sarah:  That must be so frustrating, because especially at that time, there was that sort of prescribed route to publication.  You –

Candis:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – write the manuscript, and then you enter some quest-, contests, and then you get some finals, and then you get an agent –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and then the next step is you sell something, and you would get so close –

Candis:  Yep.

Sarah:  – and not get there.

Candis:  Oh, I got so close, so many times, and –

Sarah:  And you kept going.

Candis:  – I kept going, ‘cause like I said, I’m stubborn, and, well, I guess the thing of it is, is I love to write?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  You know, I was, you know, I was a, a graphic designer for over thirty years, and that’s a kind of creativity?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  But not like pulling those characters out of your head and everything and – I was always encouraged by teachers to write, and I just thought they were being nice, you know, or crazy or something, so.  But yeah, I just, I just kept going, and then finally one day I hit my wall.  I got two rejections in one week –

Sarah:  Ouch.

Candis:  – that were, that were five years old.

Sarah:  Five years old?!

Candis:  Yeah.  And they were two completely different publishers for two completely different books –

Sarah:  Oh, have mercy.

Candis:  I know!  I’m like, well, that’s a sign from the universe.

Sarah:  Somebody who is listening right now is cringing.  Many people are probably cringing so hard, ‘cause –

Candis:  Oh, I would –

Sarah:  – five years?!

Candis:  Yeah!  I’m like, why even –

Sarah:  Good God!

Candis:  – send it back?  Why send a, why send a, you know, a rejection after five years?  But two in one week?

Sarah:  Ouch.

Candis:  I mean, that’s like, that’s the universe telling you, stop.  You have no business doing this; stop.  And so, I was like – [sigh] – nope.  No, I’ve got to write.  I’ve got to write.  I just, I’ll do it for myself.  So I told my husband, one time, one morning we were in the hot tub talking, having coffee, and I just started crying, and he’s like, but that’s your passion.  I said, but I, I can’t do it anymore.  I can’t take the rejections.  I can’t do it anymore.  So he said, but that’s your passion, so I had to think about it, and then I said, screw it, I’m just going to write the book I want to write.  I don’t give a damn if anybody – oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t cuss.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You can totally cuss!  There’s no FCC here.

Candis:  Oh, okay.

Sarah:  C’mon, go ahead, drop as many F bombs as you want.

Candis:  I cuss a lot, so I’ll –

Sarah:  Okay, great, this is perfect!

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:   I don’t edit those out.

Candis:  Okay!  So I said, you know, I don’t give a damn who, you know, likes it, doesn’t like it.  I’ve been listening to my critique groups.  I’ve been listening to these editors that want me to revise it to their way and blah blah blah.  Screw it, I’m just going to write what I want to write –

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  – and that’s it, and so I started writing, and I found the passion again, ‘cause I kind of lost it, and then a friend of mine, Rachel Gibson, said, hey, I’ve got to go to his conference in Utah; want to go with me, road trip buddy?  I’m like, sure!  I’ll share the Cheetos with you!  So we drove to the Utah conference, and I wasn’t going to do anything.  I went to the conference just to go, just to be a road trip buddy, and I paid for the conference and everything, ‘cause I was going to eat their meals, so I thought–

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  – that was polite, and so I ran into this nice young lady who was a new editor at Avon Books, and she asked me if I was going to pitch, and I said, no, no.  I’ve only got four chapters of this book done, and blah blah blah.  And, and she talked me into it.  So why don’t you pitch?  And I’m like, I, ‘cause I didn’t come here for that.  I came here for the Cheetos!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  You know, and the food, and the free food!  [Laughs] So I –

Sarah:  Yeah!

Candis:  – I ended up pitching to her, and she’s been my editor now for five years.

Sarah:  Wow!

Candis:  So it’s just amazing, and I look at her, and I’m like, she’s younger than my daughter –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – and she’s a, one of the smartest people I know, and I, I, I g-, I appreciate her so much for the opportunity she gave me, because I was the first Avon Impulse author out of the gate –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – and then I was the first one that they moved over to mass market, so I feel very blessed at this time, but man, that road was bumpy.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That was a very long road.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So who’s your editor at Avon, and what have you learned about your writing from, from working with her?  Because I, I, I write on the internet, and we don’t have a word limit.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  We don’t have any limitations at all, so I’ve had to learn how to edit myself –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and in the process of writing three books, I’ve learned a lot from having been edited:  what my tics are, what my bad habits are, what words I need to stop using already –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and I learned a lot from being edited in that way.  Has that been true for you?

Candis:  Yeah.  I, Amanda Bergeron is my editor –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – and, like I said, she’s one of the smartest people I know.  She’s just, she’s just, gosh, she’s just so smart; she’s a brilliant young lady.  But she makes me dig deeper.  She’s, she really wants you to figure out what’s really going on, not just the, all the surface stuff, and so she makes me really take a longer, harder look at what’s really going on in that person’s head and heart, and I’m telling you, sometimes it’s not been easy.  The book that I did, Sweet Surprise, we rewrote the hero three times –

Sarah:  Whoa!

Candis:  – because we couldn’t get him right, ‘cause his heroine, he had to be perfect for his heroine.  I mean, he had to be perfect for her, and so we wrote, rewrote him three times before we were both really happy with him, and I’m thrilled with the way that he turned out, but you know, it’s just digging deeper and that, that’s the one thing she’s really taught me, you know, is to stop going just on the surface of what things should look like and really dig, because that’s where you get the emotion.  And I hate to say it, but when a reader tells me that I made ‘em cry, that makes me feel really good, ‘cause –

Sarah:  Oh, no, that’s a huge compliment!

Candis:  Yeah.  I mean, it just, you know, ‘cause if, I know if I’m crying while I’m writing it, which I have in a couple of books, that, you know, if I don’t hit the reader in the right heart spot, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not an achievement for me.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Candis:  So, yeah, so she’s really taught me to edit myself, to get rid of the extraneous BS –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – and, you know, yeah, that’s nice, but you know, we’re not just going to send them on a walk in the park, and – there’s got to be a reason they’re in the park, you know.  So that was the, that was the biggest thing I learned her, from her, and to stop listening to the outside.  So I never read my reviews, because I don’t want them to sway me for anything.  I –

Sarah:  Good plan!

Candis:   – I appreciate every single person that writes a review.  I’m, I’m very thankful for it, even if they’re a bad review, you know, which, it teaches you something.  You know, hey, not everybody loves you!  You know.

Sarah:  I, I have told many people many times in a workshop I give about reviewing that even if it is the most negative review you have ever received ever, if they spelled the name of the book and they spelled your name right?  That’s a win, because someone will absolutely read that review –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and be like, I need to put that in my eyeballs right now!  Get out of my way; I’m going to go buy it!  Every review has a use, and you are absolutely under no obligation to read your reviews.  Do, never, no one ever has to –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – read their own reviews.  I don’t read my own reviews!

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I hate logging into my author dashboard on Goodreads.  I’m like, oh, I don’t want to see that!

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Aahh!  I can’t fix that!  That’s done!  I finished that!

Candis:  Well, I used to, I did in the beginning –

Sarah:  Yeah?

Candis:  – and they started making me think differently –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Candis:  – about my writing and stuff, and I go, oh, I can’t do that ‘cause – it’s not like I can’t handle the negativity.  I really feel very fortunate, because I really get wonderful reviews, but I, I can’t, it’s not that I can’t handle the negativity in my life, but I’ve got enough in my personal life.  I don’t want it in something that I, you know, I love doing so much, so –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – you can smack me around at home, but I, I’m not going to go out and reach out into the universe and have them smack me around too, so.

Sarah:  I am firmly of the opinion that no one should have a Google alert for their own name.  That way lies madness.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because, you know, what, in a lot of ways, I personally think that the, the book and the author are two very separate things –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – which is weird when you’re the author, because your name is on the book, so in a lot of ways –

Candis:  Right.

Sarah:  – you’re very well connected to it.

Candis:  Right.

Sarah:  But from the reader perspective, I want to keep the book and the, and the writer very separate, because, you know, the writer could be the greatest person and, like, my favorite drinking buddy or someone whose Twitter feed I love, and then I read her books, and I’m like, this is not doing it for me.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And so it, it, it, it’s not, I don’t think it’s any kind of requirement that authors read or interact with their reviews at all.  If that’s a separate sphere that you don’t pay attention to?  That’s totally good.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because –

Candis:  I can’t control it, so –

Sarah:  Yeah.  The only thing you’re in control of is writing another book.

Candis:  Writing the book.

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  Exactly.  So that’s a lesson I’ve learned, you know.  I had, in the beginning, when I started writing, I had to write fast and furious.  I had books coming out, like, every couple of months and, you know, then they’d call and they’d want a novella and, and I was, like, I was in too much of a hurry to get –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – you know, anything, and my focus was on writing a good book, so that –

Sarah:  Of course!

Candis:  – that’s still, you know, it’s a lesson I learned.  Write the, write the damn book, and let everybody have their opinions.  You can’t change it, so.

Sarah:  Nope!  And, and I always tell myself, yeah, you know, you can’t go out and fix that error.  There are a couple mistakes in two of my books that make me absolutely, like, just twitchy.

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, I want to go fix them, but I can’t find every copy of that book everywhere and be like –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – I just, hi, you don’t know me?  Just, I need two minutes on your bookshelf, and maybe I’ll use your bathroom ‘cause it was a long drive to get here, but I just, I just need, just give me two minutes with this copy of my book.

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You’re never going to see me again.  I just need to fix this one – I mean, people would, I would get arrested!  [Laughs]

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s very tempting –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – because I know there’s a mistake in there, but I can’t fix it.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I just have to be like, well, let’s not make that mistake again.

Candis:  Yeah.  And you, and you do get called on from readers:  did you know there’s a typo in your book?

Sarah:  Yep!

Candis:  And I’m like, you know –

Sarah:  Darn it!  Yeah, humans, man.

Candis:  – I, I, I read the whole thing, and I corrected it, and a copyeditor did it, and we all went through it, and I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know!

Sarah:  Yeah, humans.  Humans made this thing, and we’re flawed, which sucks, and it’s totally frustrating when there is, but you know –

Candis:  Yep.

Sarah:  – it happens.

Candis:  Yes, it does.

Sarah:  So before you got published, do you know how many books you wrote?

Candis:  Yeah, I wrote nine.

Sarah:  Nine books.

Candis:  Nine books, yeah.

Sarah:  And so you wrote paranormal, and you wrote historical, and now you write contemporary.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Do you ever want to go back and try one of those books, or maybe have one of your contemporary characters be writing that book, and then you can release it as a side project?

Candis:  [Laughs] Most of ‘em, no, because my writing has changed so much, you know, over the, over the years, but –

Sarah:  I legit just stepped on my dog’s tail.

Candis:  Oh, no!

Sarah:  I’m sorry, buddy!  He’s going under the couch.  Oh, The Lady, that was mean!  I’m sorry.  Leaning out of frame to reach for my dog.  [Laughs]

Candis:  Mine are lying outside my window right now.  That’s all they do, they lie around, the laziest dogs ever.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So anyway, I apologize for interrupting, and I’m sorry that I stepped on your tail.  But you were saying.

Candis:  That’s totally fine.  Any moment my chickens could walk by, and the rooster could crow, so, you know, that would – [laughs]

Sarah:  I am all about animal noises during the podcast, so bring it on.  We haven’t had any chickens or roosters yet, so this would be a good thing.

Candis:  Oh.  He’s quite a, he’s, he’s quite the rooster.  [Laughs]  That’s all I’ll say.

Sarah:  So, when you need inspiration for loud alpha males –

Candis:  Yes.

Sarah:  – you just look there, at the rooster.

Candis:  Yeah, he would be one.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  I mostly look to my husband and my brother-in-law because my brother-in-law is a, he’s a police sergeant.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  He’s been L.A. County Sheriff, and now he’s with Boise P.D., he’s been with them for twenty years, but, and my husband.  They are the two alpha males, and, and I always go, okay, way over the top with alpha males, let’s tone it down, and that’ll work.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So you have one of the bios that I call the I Have Done All the Cool Things bio.

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  ‘Cause you have done a lot of cool things!

Candis:  I have!

Sarah:  So please tell people some of the cool things that you’ve done, and, and I’m curious if any of them have worked their way into your books in some way.

Candis:  Yeah, I’ve had quite a life.  [Laughs] I, I said, I’ve got to write my own obituary because nobody’ll believe it, you know, but –

[Laughter]

Candis:  – when I was a kid, it was all the rage, you know, for kids to learn to tap dance and all that stuff, and my dance teacher decided that I was the next Shirley Temple, and so he put me on, I was on TV.  I was on a show called The Jack Barry Variety Show –

Sarah:  Wow.

Candis:  – and I sing, and I was a ventriloquist.  I’m thinking I must have been a very poor ventriloquist, but – [laughs] – so I made a record, I was on TV when I was a kid, and I was in a rock band when I was in my late teens, early twenties.  I worked as a recording engineer in the, in Hollywood –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – and I’ve met many, many, many, many stars, which my husband and I always laugh about.  I go, nobody would ever believe I met all these people –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – but it’s true!  [Laughs] From O. J. Simpson before the murders to Charlton Heston, and I said, yes, I did say, oh, my God, it’s Moses.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’m going to guess that he would get that a lot.

Candis:  Yeah, he was so nice.  He was very old and looked very frail, but he was a very nice man.  And Jimmy Stewart, who’s always been one of my favorite actors, and –

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness.

Candis:  – my, my husband’s favorite actor, and he was, my husband was so flabbergasted that he was in the same room with Jimmy Stewart, oh, my God, it was like being in the same room with John Wayne, you know, so –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – and I go, well, go say hi to him, go – and my husband’s, he, he lets me do all the talking for him, so I said, you, you’ve got to go say hi to him!  My God, you’ll never, you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t.  So he literally chased Jimmy Stewart out the door with, and his wife, as he was leaving.

[Laughter]

Candis:  It’s like, I just laughed my ass off.  I was like, oh, my God, he probably thought, ‘cause my husband’s six-three –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Candis:  – so he probably thought, you know, this weird dude’s coming after me, but he was a very polite man, and so, yeah.  I, I, I was a hairdresser when I started out in the working world and ended up being a graphic designer for over thirty years.  It’s like, I’m one of those, you throw it my way, baby, I’m going to take that ball and run with it.  So.

Sarah:  So you worked with ‘80s hair bands.

Candis:  Oh, I did.  I was actually, my, my first husband was a heavy metal musician.

Sarah:  Ah.  You know –

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – I was listening to a podcast the other day about whether or not it’s a good idea to date musicians.

Candis:  No!  No, no, no, no, no –

Sarah:  No?  That was exactly their perspective too.  They were like, yeah, no.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  Just not, no.

Candis:  No.  No, yeah, it was, it was the surge of the ‘80s hair, and his band would play with Mötley Crüe –

Sarah:  Of course.

Candis:  – and L.A. Guns and Cinderella and Poison.  All those guys, they all played the Troubadour and the Whiskey and all of that, and I did sound for his band at that time, so I met all these guys, and the funniest thing I ever had was Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe, the drummer, crazy drummer guy –

Sarah:  Yep, yep.

Candis:  – he had gone to one of my ex-husband’s shows.  My mom had gone along with me to hear the bands, and she’s like, what’s wrong with that young man?  He’s so tall, so skinny, and so pale.  I go –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, Mom!

Sarah:  That’s just how it happens, Mom.

[Laughter]

Candis:  So, yeah, I designed costumes for them, and –

Sarah:  I, how do you design a costume for an ‘80s hair band?  What are the required elements?  Like, what do they have to have?

Candis:  A lot of, a lot of ripped crap, you know.  Lot of –

Sarah:  [Laughs] So I bought this new jacket, and I took a steak knife, and I stabbed it a bunch of times?

Candis:  tears, slashing, then you watch, watch the guys who were really big, like Van Halen.  I mean, I remember seeing Van Halen when they were called Mountain, and they played in this little dive place –

Sarah:  Oh, wow.

Candis:  – where I lived, ‘cause I lived in L, the L.A. area, and you just watched what they were doing and say, that looks good, that looks good, that sucks, and then you just kind of go on your own thing of what looks best on camera, ‘cause videos, music videos were becoming really popular at that time, so, you know, MTV was, like, the hot thing.  So you just looked at flashy, sparkly, sweaty, ripped look.  I mean, the hair was always the thing, you know, so.

Sarah:  You know, I was a child of the ’80s and ‘90s, and I tried to get my hair that big, and it did not happen.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  What was the secret?  What was, what was the secret?

Candis:  Oh, fourteen pounds of hairspray –

Sarah:  [Laughs] I thought so!

Candis:  – and I used to have these what they call rat-tail combs?

Sarah:  Yep, I have one.

Candis:  You could back-comb, back-comb, back-comb.

Sarah:  Ugh.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah, it’s not the kind of guy like we have now where you want to run your fingers through their hair?

Together:  No.

Sarah:  I mean, you could, but –

Together:  – you’d get stuck.

Candis:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, I found some snacks in here.  Let’s see what else is stuck in the rat’s nest.

Candis:  Yes, yes.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s messed up.

Candis:  So, yeah, that was a crazy time.  It was fun.

Sarah:  So for ‘80s hair band costuming – which I think should totally be in a book, by the way –

Candis:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – does it have to be comfortable and breathable or, ‘cause I have always looked at these people jumping around on stage wearing leather, and I’m like, that has to chafe.  You have to be so uncomfortable right now.

Candis:  Yeah.  Most of the time they wore Spandex –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – and it looked like leather, and it was, actually, it was really hard to find stuff in those days to just go in and buy out of a store.  There were a couple places in Hollywood, one on Hollywood Boulevard, and a lot of ‘em went to the Pleasure Chest in Hollywood, which is –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – a total S&M store, to buy stuff.  [Laughs] I mean, you –

Sarah:  Well, black leather –

Candis:  – I think Rob Halford –

Sarah:  – fringe.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.  I think Rob Halford of Judas Priest, you know, that’s the only place he ever shopped was at the Pleasure Chest, but you, you know, you just try to find the wildest, craziest, loudest things that you could find that moved with their bodies, you know.

Sarah:  Of course.

Candis:  ‘Cause they were ver-, they were very active.  It’s like now, you know, I, I love country music, but I’m like, I can’t go to the concerts, ‘cause I’m like – [snores]

[Laughter]

Candis: So I’m just used to jumping around, I guess.

Sarah:  So with, with the, with the amount of, of involvement you had with the music industry and with design and with costumes, how has that affected you as a writer?  Does it make your style, do you think, more visual?  Do you have to envision a picture and then describe it?  Like, how do those things relate?

Candis:  My, my writing, my books come to me like a movie in my head, so I’m a very visual person –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – and I actually, I do see, and I think that all, going with all those loud colors and, and movement, there was so much movement in those days of, you know, rock and roll and stuff, and so much sexuality in ‘em?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  I mean, you know, like, INXS, the lead singer, I always thought, oh, my gosh, he’s the sexiest man, and it was just ‘cause of the way he moved –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – you know.  Or Jim Morrison from The Doors.  Weirdo, but God, he was sexy!  You know, so, it, it pulls in a lot of that to me, a lot of movement, a lot of color.  I, I just always see, like, it’s a movie in my head.  Try explaining that to someone who doesn’t write, and they think you’re ready for the nuthouse, you know, but – which I probably am, but –

[Laughter]

Candis:  So I think it, I think it helped.  I’ve always written in some format.  When I was a teenager I wrote, you know, the angsty teenage poetry and all that stuff, and I did take drama.  I, I thought, well, I’ll just see what it, you know, what happens here, and my drama teacher in college, who was really good-looking guy, said your writing is wonderful, but your acting really sucks, so –

Sarah:  Oh, God!

Candis:  – stick with writing.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  And I still have the, the papers, ‘cause you had to do biographies of your characters and stuff?

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, I had to do that.

Candis:  And I still have ‘em!  I still have ‘em, and you know, I got an A++ on ‘em, and I’m like, well, there might be something to this, but then even the drama helped me see movement in everything as I’m writing, so I think it all kind of piled in, you know, and, and it really does help me.  I really do see what I’m writing.

Sarah:  When you’re starting a book, do you have, do you usually have a scene that you start with, or do you start with the research and then the characters show up in your imagine later?

Candis:  I always get a character first –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – and their problem, or their situation, and then I have to go from there.  I, when I, I don’t really write, like, some people write, like, these big long outlines and stuff for their editors?  I do kind of a, a, a quick proposal, and God knows, some of those stories have completely changed from what the proposal was, you know.

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  You know!  [Laughs] Nothing ever goes, you know –

Sarah:  Nope.

Candis:  – the way it’s supposed to, but I, I, I think that the character always presents itself first.

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  You know, whether it’s the heroine or the hero, one of ‘em always pops into my head, and then the whole story comes, comes into play, so I don’t know how it works.  You know, I’d like to.  [Laughs] I’d like to turn it on when I need it.

Sarah:  With your travels, ‘cause I know driving through Texas influenced your books, and going through wineries in, you know, in and around where you live has influenced your books.  Do you have to pull over and start writing things down?

Candis:  Oh, yeah, I take tons of pictures, and I write notes.  My husband laughed because when I was writing the Sweet, Texas books, when I first started ‘em, we were driving through this little town called Comfort?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  And we were driving through, and I look up, and there’re goats everywhere –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – in the hill country in Texas, and I’m like, what the hell is with the goats?  And so then we’re driving down the, the, the main street in Comfort, Texas, which is, you know, that big –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – and I look over, and there’s this little antique shop, and it’s called Miss Giddy’s, and I go, holy damn, I am writing a goat into my books, and her name’s going to be Miss Giddy.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  And my husband’s like, alll righty then.

Sarah:  Okay, dear.

Candis:  So I’m writing down, I write, you know, and I see what, I see Miss Giddy in my head, and I write down, I write down so many odd little things, like, my husband says that’s what he likes reading about in my books is all the little details, like what kind of birds are in the trees?  It might be only a one-sent-, sentence thing in the book, but I actually saw it.  I actually wrote it down.  There are these birds in the trees called grackles that make so much noise, you know, that you can’t hear yourself think sometimes, and, yeah, I, I write weird stuff down, but – [laughs]

Sarah:  Well, that’s sort of like contemporary worldbuilding.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s, that’s what you have to sort of add to create a realistic universe.  It’s not just birds –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – it’s a specific kind of bird.  I mean, I’ve been, I moved in December, and now that I’ve been sitting outside, I’ve noticed that the birds around me sound different –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – ‘cause I’m used to one sound, and now I have a whole different set.  You, those are the things –

Candis:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – you notice in your world.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah, we do a lot of bird watching here.  I live in a birds of prey area –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – so we have everything from golden eagles to, I have four owls that live on my property, and one’s a snowy owl.

Sarah:  That’s cool!

Candis:  It’s so cool.  I listen to ‘em at night, you know, and you can go out and – my husband and I were actually out in the hot tub one night, and there’s this white spot in the tree, and I’m like, I think we’re being watched, and it was the snowy owl, and he’s just sitting there watching us in the tree, but it, it does give me a flavor for everything, and that’s why I always have to go somewhere where I’m writing about?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  My first series was set in a fictitious town called Deer Lick, Montana –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – which, but Sweet, Texas came because my editor said, please don’t pre-, pick another freaky name like Deer Lick.  I go, but it, it’s so normal in, in Montana, you know.

Sarah:  Totally!

Candis:  Deer Lick fits.  But –

Sarah:  I mean, there’s a park called Big Bone Lick State Park.

Candis:  [Laughs] I know!

Sarah:  Deer Lick’s nothing!

Candis:  I know!  So I’m like, I have to go to these places and get the feel for ‘em so that I can write about ‘em and be, you know, real.

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  I don’t know if that makes sense, but –

Sarah:  Totally makes sense!

Candis:  Yeah.  So when I, I, I had a, an event in, in Portland last October and I, my series is set in the Portland/Vancouver area, and so I drove up there, ‘cause it’s only about a six-hour drive, I drove up there, and I drove all around, and I found these lit-, they’re all little wineries, and I’m driving down this driveway and thinking, wow!  This is like the ones at home, you know, very small.  These people are coming out, and they’re, like, looking at me like who the heck are you? you know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  And I go, hi!  I’m a writer, and I’m just, like, doing research, and they go, oh, yeah!  Well, we’re just, we’re, we’re going down here to meet some people for lunch, but go ahead on up and wander around, do your thing, and I’m like, sweet!

[Laughter]

Candis:  So I just went up and took tons of pictures and, you know, that’s how I get the flavor of things.  Sweet, Texas is really downtown Boerne and Comfort, Texas, mixed together, and you know, so it’s, it’s all very fresh in my mind, and I think that’s why I can visualize so well, ‘cause I’ve been there –

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  – you know.

Sarah:  And you’re creating basically your own story –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – visually in your head, and then describing it in text.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s very cool!

Candis:  The best compliment I ever got was from – well, several of the same compliment – that I really got Texas right in my books.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s a lovely thing!

Candis:  That was wonderful, because I love Texas.  I wouldn’t want to do it any injustice, you know, but, so that was a great compliment to me.

Sarah:  And one thing I’m always fascinated by when I travel in the U.S. is how very different culturally little pieces of the country are from each other.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, three hours out of your way and you’re in a significantly different culture in a lot of ways.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  And so to be able to write that down and say, have somebody say you got it right, that’s, that’s a huge compliment.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.  It, it real-, it, that probably made me feel better than anything, and it was like, okay, nailed it.  Whew!  You know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  Well, it’s funny, my husband and I, my, he always goes with me when I, or mostly goes with me when I go on these little travels, and it, it, we find the odd things around the neighborhood, you know, when we go.  It’s like when we went to the hill country in Texas.  We’re like, they’ve got bat caves, and my husband’s like, let’s go see the bat caves!  And I’m like, okay, only if, like, Christian Bale shows up or something, you know, and he’s like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  – no, let’s go, let’s go!  So he talks me into these weird, off kind of little things –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – that you can go see, and we’re sitting there, and there’re like millions and millions of bats coming out of this cave, and my hair was literally going like this from the win-, the wind of the – I was, like, freaking out, but only those guys in that area know about that bat cave.

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  You know, and it’s like, so you can write about things like that.  I don’t think I wrote about that cave, but you can write about things like that –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – and, and you have an authentic, you know, look out for them, because you’ve actually been there and experienced – [laughs] – the bat wind –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – coming off of your hair.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And you, and you know exactly what it feels like when the bats start going at a high velocity.

Candis:  Yeah.  Yeah.  So, and it’s like, you know, I, I, I have friends that write Westerns and stuff, and I’m like, you know, my daughter was, she was a three-time rodeo queen, and it’s like, I can write about rodeos.  I’ve seen men undressing behind the chutes, and they most of the time don’t wear underwear, and you know, it’s like bull riders –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – like, wow!  Okay!

Sarah:  Yeah!

Candis:  I can write about all of that stuff because I’ve seen it, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and yes, it was pretty good.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I was going to say, that sounds like an erotic romance waiting to happen.

Candis:  Yeah!  You know, and it’s sad because I think, oh, I’m so old, I shouldn’t be looking at those young boys, and yet I’m like this, you know, so.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Hey, there’s, I, no shame.

Candis:  None.

Sarah:  So, so you’re, you mentioned your husband reads your books.

Candis:  Yeah.  He doesn’t read.

Sarah:  What does he think of them?

Candis:  He loves ‘em.  He doesn’t read.  He reads the newspaper, hunting magazines, and now he’s getting into beekeeping, so, he, he’s a beek now?  He’s crazy; he gets all these weird things going, but he does not read at all, a book, a novel.  He’s just, that’s not him, and he reads mine, and it, it makes him mad when he has to put it down to go to work or something, you know.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s just lovely!

Candis:  Yeah, it’s so cool!  The first time I, it was, the first book that I got, or that I wrote, I caught him, I got up early in the morning, and he was sitting in his recliner, and he’s reading, and he’s laughing, and I go, oh, that was just for my benefit, you know, and he’s like, sh-sh-sh!  sh-sh!  He’s, like, shushing me, and I’m like, what?  And he’s like, I’m reading!  And I’m like, okay, yeah, well, this isn’t going to go far, ‘cause you don’t read books, you know.

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  And he has read every single one, and he, he loves them, although he does think that the guys should get their sex a little sooner.  You know.

[Laughter]

Candis:  This guy needs to get laid right now!  I’m like, no, it doesn’t work that way.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness, so he’s read every book you’ve written.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s adorable!

Candis:  Yeah, but he won’t read it until it comes out, you know, in the actual book –

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  – you know, so, which was kind of funny, ‘cause my first three books were all Avon Impulse, so it was, you know, it came out eBook first and then print, and he had to wait.  He won’t read it in, like, you know, manuscript form, so it’s kind of fun –

Sarah:  He wants the print book.

Candis:  Yeah.  He’s supported me so much all these years, you know, and, and he’s wonderful, but he really, he, he really loves the stories, really loves all the detail.  You know, I, I hear him laughing when he’s reading, but he definitely thinks the guys should get laid faster, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Now the question is, does he think that it, the, the poor man is in some way deprived, or does he just want to read the sexy parts sooner?  It could be –

Candis:  He, he says that it’s like when you’re read-, ‘cause I do both from the hero and heroine’s points of view –

Sarah:  Right.

Candis:  – and he says when he’s reading from the her-, hero’s point of view and he’s looking at the heroine, he says, I don’t know who she is, you know, but he goes, when I see him looking at her, he goes, it’s kind of a turn-on, and you kind of vicariously live through this guy, so you’re like, I’m hot for this woman.  I want it right now!

Sarah:  So he’s identifying with the hero.

Candis:  Yeah!

Sarah:  Because there’s, there’s a lot of people who think that romance readers, we identify with the heroine –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – or we take her place, or we –

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – we read symbiotically connected, and he’s identifying with the hero like, well, well, hey!

Candis:  Yeah, he’s like, hey, hot chick, let’s go, you know?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s fascinating!

Candis:  I know, so I’m like, all righty!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So does he ever give you feedback?  Or does he ever tell you what he liked or didn’t like?

Candis:  No.  No.  One time he helped me with, it was Any Given Christmas, my second book.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  He kind of helped me with that, ‘cause my editor and I were struggling for, I mean, this guy was a, an NFL quarterback, and you know, he’s a total alpha male, so I’m like, oh, what would he do in this situation?  So I asked my husband for his advice, and he actually said the thing I would never think about, you know, and he gave, he said, well, he would be feeling shame, you know, and I’m like, shame!  What?  Huh?

Sarah:  What?

Candis:  You know, and it made so much sense.  So if I’m kind of stuck with the alpha male, I might ask him a question, but that, that’s it.  He doesn’t, he doesn’t ever offer.  He just says that he really liked it.  He has his favorites, you know, heroines and heroes and all that stuff, and he doesn’t see them in his head like I do, because he kept thinking that the Wilder brothers from Sweet, Texas look like Rob Gronkowski from the Patriots, and I’m like, no!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  No!  [Laughs] I said, Chris Hemsworth, not Rob Gronkowski, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Candis:  So he doesn’t ever say anything like, oh, I liked it, didn’t like it, you know, you could have done this bet-, no, none of that kind of feedback.  He just tells me, you know, he’s just very supportive.  Keep going, he says.

Sarah:  That’s very cool!  One question I always ask people, and I told you I was going to ask this one, is what have you been reading lately that you’ve really enjoyed and recommended?

Candis:  Oh, my gosh.  Well, I’m a readaholic, which is –

Sarah:  Yes, I know that problem well.

Candis:  Ohhh, it’s bad.  I’ve actually, I can’t tell you the names of the books, but I just read my RITA books for the RITA contest?

Sarah:  Oh, you’re RITA judging!  That is a lot of reading.  You, you –

Candis:  Yeah, I got new books –

Sarah:  You are the perfect person to get that big old box of books.

Candis:  Oh, yeah, I, and I’m like, sometimes it’s hard, because there are some categories I don’t, or genres I don’t read?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  Obviously, I like things with alpha males, and I, I couldn’t write a beta male if I had to, because I wouldn’t know how.  I don’t know any beta males – [laughs] – so those are, are tough for me, although I think there are some wonderful books out there with that, but I got, I got six erotica books this time, instead of four Amish books, which I got one time, which were really hard for me to read.  They’re, I’m just not goody, goody-two-shoes enough to read that kind of – I’m sorry.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s okay!

Candis:  I’ve got the [thump, thump, thump] hot and heavy.  So I, I wasn’t really an erotica reader before?  I, I loved every single one that I read this time.  They were phenomenal books, and I –

Sarah:  Wow!

Candis:  – I, I rated ‘em very high, because not only, I mean, I don’t understand the S&M thing, but that’s okay, because it was about the characters –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – and how, and why they were into this, and it wasn’t so much the sex acts, it was the characters.  I just found them powerfully written and wonderful –

Sarah:  Oh, cool!

Candis:  – you know, so – yeah!  So, I, I, hey, I’m on board now!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s fantastic!

Candis:  Yeah, fill up that Kindle with lots of erotica.  So yeah!  It was, it was kind of a new thing for me.  I read a lot of paranormal.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  Do you have any favorites that you reread in paranormal?

Candis:  J. R. Ward.  You know, I mean, I read hers all the time, and I have Coreene Callahan, who writes the Dragonfury books.  I read hers, I’ve read hers several times over, and –

Sarah:  Dragonfury books.

Candis:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Have I missed these?

Candis:  I don’t know.  They’re wonderful.

Sarah:  It’s not ringing a bell.

Candis:  Yeah, they’re really, really, really good.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay, good.

Candis:  Yeah.  I, like I told my husband, I never thought I’d get turned on by a dragon, but hey!

[Laughter]

Candis:  So, yeah, and Kerrelyn Sparks, you know, I read her vampire books, and Sara Humphreys.  I love, I love anything Sara Humphrey, Humphreys writes, so, you know, I just, I have those, and I’ll just go back over and back over ‘em sometimes.  You know, I do that with contemporary and historical too, so.  It’s like, I reread.

Sarah:  Yeah, me too.  So do you have a digital keeper shelf, or do you have both a paper keepers and a digital keeper?

Candis:  I have one bedroom which used to be my old office.  It’s a, full-wall bookshelves –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Candis:  – and it’s completely full of books and overflowing.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Well, you get creative, you can fit a lot of books on one shelf –

Candis:  Oh, yeah, I’m like –

Sarah:  – if you double stack and two deep –

Candis:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – and up and down and –

Candis:  It’s my husband’s office now, and he’s like, are you ever going to take these out of here?  I go –

Sarah:  No.

Candis:  – where would I put ‘em?

Sarah:  No, they have to stay.  They have to be here!

Candis:  Yes.  And I have, I also read on Kindle, because sometimes when I’m reading a book and it ends at, you know, like, 1:30 in the morning and I, I’ve got to have the next book, so I – [arrow or dart shooting sound effect] –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – right to the store, so I have a ton of books on my Kindle, to – I’m just, I’m a readaholic.  I read, reread constantly, and – that’s kind of the hard part about being writer is that it’s harder to read as much as you really want to?

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  ‘Cause I, it’s like, today it’s, like, 45-mile-an-hour winds going on outside, it’s grey, it’s ugly.  I don’t want to work today, I want to just go sit and read, you know, and –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – I can’t.  I’ve got revisions to do, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I understand.

Candis:  So yeah.

Sarah:  So before we go, if you had, if you had one piece of advice to give someone who’s listening who is an aspiring writer, what would, what advice would you give them?

Candis:  I would tell you to, tell them, to trust themselves.  Not listen to everything everybody tells you is the way to get published or the way to write.  There are so many avenues out there right now to getting your book out in front of people.

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  You know, indie, I, I admire indie authors so much because they work so hard.  They not only work hard on writing the book, they have to promote it themselves, they have to get it edited, and they have, you know, they put their own money behind it.  It’s like –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  – you know, owning your own business, so –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – I would say don’t listen to everything everybody tells you – that’s one thing I, one way I went wrong – and don’t think you have to get an agent to say you’re good, because you’re good.  You just have to trust in yourself.  I went through, I, I’m right now on my fifth agent in all these times, and I had some that were big names and never did anything for me, so it doesn’t matter if they have a big name, it’s what they, they can do for you, you know, so just trust yourself, believe in yourself, and you could do it.  Just don’t listen to every single thing everybody says, ‘cause everybody has a different opinion.  It’s like, I’ve got a jar of Jelly Bellies behind me; which one’s your favorite?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Candis:  They’re all different flavors –

Sarah:  Yep.

Candis:  – you know, so we’re all different, and there’s no one right way or wrong way to, to do it or get it done.

Sarah:  That’s really good advice.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I want to thank Candis Terry and her publicist, the very lovely Caro at Avon, for hooking us up because I really enjoyed this interview, and I hope you did as well.  You can find Candis on her website at candisterry, that’s C-A-N-D-I-S-T-E-R-R-Y dot com [candisterry.com].  I will have links to her website, her Facebook, her Twitter, and the books that we mention in the podcast entry on smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And speaking of podcast, this podcast right here that you are listening to was sponsored by Jessica Khoury, author of The Forbidden Wish, published by Penguin Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  Zahra is given one chance at freedom, to be free of the curse that bound her to a lamp.  With her future on the line, she must decide:  betray the man she loves or risk everything to be with him for eternity.  Available now!

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the band Sketch from their new album Shed Life, and this song is called “Shedmau5,” but it’s M-A-U-5, as in Deadmau5.  At least I hope I’m saying that right.  If I’ve just revealed myself as the most uncool person – well, that, that’s not actually a surprise.  You can find Shed Life, this song, and the whole album on Amazon or iTunes or wherever you buy your most excellent music, and I have links to all of your options on the website as well.

Future podcasts will include me and possibly a lot of other people talking about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here.  If you have ideas, suggestions, feedback, you want to tell me I’m wrong about something, you want to make a, make a deep desperate appeal for a book that you’re dying to read and you can’t quite find, we are here for all of that!  You can email us at [email protected].

But in the meantime, on behalf of Candis Terry and myself and everyone else here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend!

[lively music]