Featured Interview With Linda George
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in Levelland, Texas, west of Lubbock. Since then, I’ve lived in Lubbock, then attended high school in Seminole, Texas where I met my high school sweetheart, who has been my husband for 43 years. We lived in Central Texas for 30 years, near Rising Star. Once our children were in college, we moved to Cloudcroft, NM where we spent five wonderful years before moving back to Seminole to get all of our elderly parents together for more efficient caretaking. We have a summer place near Cloudcroft where we spend as much time as possible. It’s our “little piece of paradise.” Someday, we’ll live there for probably 7-8 months of the year, then take our RV to the Austin area for the winter.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I made the decision to pursue a career in professional writing in 1979, while teaching in the elementary grades in Texas. I naturally looked for a writing teacher, and took two courses from the Institute of Children’s Literature. Many years later, I became an instructor for ICL so I could help other aspiring writers. My husband, Charles, joined me writing full time when I was getting more assignments from nonfiction series publishers than I could write by myself. We eventually wrote 68 nonfiction books for children and teens for half a dozen publishers. We “retired” from writing nonfiction in 2012. By then, I’d had several novels published. I was finally free to write fiction full time. I’ve always been an impatient person, so I chose Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing to get my novels to readers as quickly as I could write them. Since April 2013, I’ve added five romances (which include contemporary, historical, and time travel) to my Amazon “bookshelf.”
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors include those who write really well (so I’m not tempted to “edit” as I read) and those whose stories grab me immediately and keep me reading to an ending I haven’t already guessed. I read in many genres. Among my favorite authors are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Justin Cronin’s series, THE PASSAGE, THE TWELVE (and someday, I hope, AMY), almost anything by Stephen King, Cornelia Funke’s INKHEART series, the vampire and witch novels of Anne Rice, Anne Lamott, Penelope Williamson (especially HEART OF THE WEST, with a heroine with an absolutely unforgettable name), Deborah Smith, and so many others. I love haunted houses, ghost stories, paranormal, thrillers, and continuing characters.
Whenever I read my favorite authors, I’m inspired to write my own stories in such a way that readers won’t want to put the book down. I also strive to keep suspense going to the very end and to create doubt in the reader’s mind about how the problems are going to be resolved (even though romances always end happily). I want my characters to feel as real to readers as they feel to me. I once asked Nora Roberts, at an RWA Conference, if she ever got her characters mixed up, since (at the time) she’d written 50 romances. Her answer stunned–and instructed–me. “Linda, you’ve known 50 people in your life, and you don’t get them mixed up.” So true. To Nora, her characters are real people. And that’s why her books are so good. My goal is to write about real people–people who are so real to me they sometimes disagree with what I planned for them and insist on doing something different. And yes, occasionally, I have conversations with my characters and they give me exactly the information I need to write their stories.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
In July 2013, my husband and I went on the vacation of a lifetime–to Peru! We toured in Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley of the Inca, and Machu Picchu. It had been our hope throughout more than 40 years of marriage to visit Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Inca. Our guide was a wonderful man named Alex Vereau, who knew more about these incredible places–and the rest of Peru–than we ever expected. Along with the history of each place we visited, he shared stories that eventually became the basis of KISS ME, LYNN–including the story of how he’d fallen in love with a woman on one of his tours, and she’d fallen in love with him. He graciously allowed me to use his name, and also the photograph that I took of him at Machu Picchu on the cover of the book. The story of KISS ME, LYNN is Alex and Lynn’s story–a true story–but it’s mingled with the imagination of the author. It will be up to the reader to guess which parts are real and which tiptoe softly into fiction.
Some readers might refer to a book about a tour as “a travelogue,” and to some extent, that label applies to this book. I’ve included some of the places we visited (my favorites) in this book with brief descriptions of what makes them special, so perhaps the reader will get a feel for what a tour of the land of the Inca would be like. But I’ve also mingled the growing relationship between Alex and Lynn throughout the tour, so the romance is definitely a major part of the story.
I outlined this book while sitting on a stone bench at the Watch Tower overlooking Machu Picchu. Feeling I was almost close enough to touch the city made me want to include my feelings in the story, from the points of view of both characters. I spent several hours on that bench, writing a chapter outline that eventually became KISS ME, LYNN. So the book was started the end of July 2013 and finished on April 21 after careful attention to detail, historical information, and mostly to the characters of Alex and Lynn.
The title comes from the series that I launched in April 2013–the Kiss Me Series. The first book in the series was released that month–KISS ME, CHLOE. There will be more books in this series, all with the “Kiss Me” titles. The covers for these books will be similar, too–with the couple above the banner and the location of the book below.
What did I learn from writing this book? Primarily that I’ll NEVER forget my time in the land of the Inca. I loved seeing Cusco, the “capital city” of the Inca, where the kings lived, and where Pachucatec conceived of a city on a mountaintop where he and his family could go for relaxation and worship. I can still close my eyes and remember sitting on that bench overlooking the magnificent achievement that was Pacachutec’s dream–Machu Picchu–and know that someday I will go back and sit there again, and feel the wonder of the magnificent lost city of the Inca.
I’ve posted photographs of our tour of Peru on my website–www.LindaGeorge.net–so readers can see the places in the book. The places where Alex and Lynn fell in love.
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