Every now and then you meet someone online that has so much in common with you it's crazy. One of those persons for me is Lynn Townsend, we have so much alike and yet we are very different people.
I'm very happy she agreed to answer a few questions for me and so without further ado here is Lynn!
What was it that got
you into writing?
I've been a reader as
long as I can remember, but it never occurred to me that writing was
a thing I could do as a profession until I was in 5th grade. We did a
book project in 5th grade where we wrote a short story, edited it,
made a blank book and then copied the story into the blank. Most of
the kids in my class hated that project; I remember particularly
listening to my best friend in class, Layla, complain for the entire
two weeks of the project. I... loved it.
Yes, I still have my
book... no, I won't let you read it. But it was fully illustrated
with my uber bad drawings and had a blue cover. I wrote short stories
and whatnot after that -- had a few of them "published" by
the school's literary magazine when I was in high school.
Unfortunately, for a
long time that's where my interests stopped. I wrote, shared with my
friends sometimes, but that was all. I rarely submitted anything
until I was in my late 30's.
What was your first
piece of published work?
I started in erotica
with Cleis publishing. Through some social contacts at my local
coffee shop, I met Kristina Wright and helped her set up a book
signing at the coffee shop. A few months after that, she drew my
attention to her call for submissions, knowing that I was into
Steampunk. I wrote a short story, Golden Moment, for that call and
sent it in. I was so stunned when I got the acceptance that I
actually had to have my husband come over and read it out loud to me
so that I could be sure I saw what I thought I saw.
That was May of 2009.
Since then, I've published over 30 pieces, including seven novels,
with contracts for two more.
Has the genre you
write in had an impact on your everyday life and relationships?
No one important has
completely disowned me; I write both erotica and LGBT romance/erotic
romance, and I refuse to shut up about it. I'm not ashamed of what I
do, and this has made me slightly less popular with some of my more
conservative relations. I can't say that's a bad thing, the ones that
are highly offended, I didn't particularly like to begin with, so
there's that. I've had one super-big fight with a person I gamed with
(MMO type gaming, so no one I know in meat space) and one meat-space
friend who doesn't talk to me anymore.
That being said, I'm
highly political, an LGBT activist, a Black Lives Matter supporter,
and a feminist. There are people who disown me for who I am, not just
what I write. I'm kinda controversial anyway, before you add my job
into the mix.
On the other hand, one
of my daughter's teachers reads my work and loves it, so you never
know where you're going to find supporters.
What was the first
thing you did this morning?
Well, school starts up
for us next week (yeah, I know, we start REALLY late around here) and
so we're still in practice mode. My daughter (and husband) are
natural night owls, so during the summer, she gets herself on this
2am - sometime after lunch sleep schedule, and we've been having to
roll back through the last few weeks. So today, I got up at the
"normal" time, woke her up, and we went through our
"pretend we're going to school" routine. I think she fell
asleep in the recliner, so I'm not sure this is helping any...
If you become stranded
which one of your characters would you want to be stranded with and
where would you be stranded?
This may sound odd, but
I think I'd rather be stranded without a character. The main
male character from my fantasy novel-set (two books, A Marked Man and
A Wanted Woman) is Bastian Hooke. I first wrote a short story about
him... maybe back in the 8th grade? Quite a long time ago, at any
rate. He moved into my head back then and he's never moved out.
Seriously, the guy camps out in my brain and comments on my life.
Given that Bastian is a thief and an assassin, he's not exactly the
safest, sanest person to be giving me advice. I am 43 years old now,
which means I've been living with an assassin for about 30 years.
I'd really like him to
shut up. Just for a while. That'd be great!
What are
you working on now?
NOTHING! YAY!
I just wrote The End on
book three of my urban paranormal romance series, Sins of Angels,
yesterday. (publication date, March, 2016)
Technically, that's not
true, but I'm always a little gleeful when I can put a project to
bed. SoA will be in sleep mode until the end of the month. In
October, I'll take 2 weeks to run through my draft and make any
changes that I can see, then ship it off to my beta readers...
Book three in my LGBT
collection comes out Sept 2, so I've been working on blog tours and
some marketing for that...
In the meanwhile, I'm
working on editing a collection of short stories about weird shape
shifters for a charity anthology that I'm showrunning this fall.
(Coming Together: Strange Shifters, probably out Oct 30th). I just
sent out acceptances yesterday. I also just got the list of
anthologies that Torquere Press is hosting for next year; so I'm
eyeballing those and trying to decide which ones I want to do.
I'll be starting work
in October on my next LGBT contemporary novels; All That Jazz...
And I have several
other projects that are in various states of pre-planning, including
a series of young adult space opera stories, a steampunk romance, and
a contemporary western LGBT novel.
But Today, TODAY I have
the day off!
What got you into
writing your current genre?
My best friend,
Elizabeth L. Brooks,
http://everyworldneedslove.blogspot.com/
is also a writer and editor. About 10-12 years ago or so, we used to
write stories for each other's entertainment. We... sort of
accidentally wrote 2 and a half novels with an m/m/f poly
relationship at the core -- they are terrible and we both wish that
we had time to re-write them because the story is quite good, but we
really had no idea what we were doing at the time. Neither of us had
any idea that this sort of work had a market, at the time...
And then Liz sort of
stumbled onto Torquere's stuff. So, that happened, and now we're both
rather joyously writing stories about hot guys boinking. And getting
paid to do it.
Coffee, Tea or Hot
Chocolate?
Coffee.
Coooooooooooffffffeeeeeeee.
I hate tea. Tea tastes
like weed water.
What's the most
valuable piece of advice you've been given about writing?
You can't edit the
words that aren't written.
I used to have the
worst time making progress; I'd write and rewrite the same three
pages over and over again, striving for perfection.
These days, I've been
known to put a note in my novel, midway through -- PLOT CHANGE, go
back to chap 1, 3, 7, 8, and 9, and fix this... because truthfully,
editing is also hard work, but it's not as hard as filling in that
blank space to start with. You can always, always fix things.
What's the worst?
Write what you know.
It's so limiting. What
most of us "know" is television shows and hanging out with
our friends at the Applebee's, and stupid cubical hive jobs. Do your
research, talk with experts in the field (you'd be surprised how many
people will talk to you if they know you're a writer and you're doing
research. I've talked to an officer working for Scotland Yard, three
scientists, a doctor, several nurses, a few people who lived in
Bangkok, a mixed martial arts instructor, an auto-mechanic, a farmer,
and the dean of a college -- I actually had to sign a non-disclosure
agreement with that source, that while I could use the information
provided, I am not allowed to disclose the university where that
person works.) and add in little personal details.
I have a little
note-taking program on my phone, and I have a disconcerting tendency
to start scribbling notes whenever someone says something
interesting. Sometimes it's things people say that I want to
transcribe. "Ah, watered down Jack and Coke... tastes like
college." or sometimes it's just stuff they know... I wrote down
almost three pages when my cousin was telling me about Bogota and how
the triangle of official government, drug cartels, and rebel
guerrilla forces interact. (He was down there a few years ago,
adopting some children) I don't know if I'll ever have a use for the
information, but I've got it, just in case.
Where can readers find
you and your books?
Bio
Lynn Townsend is a
geek, a dreamer and an inveterate punster. When not reading, writing,
or editing, she can usually be found drinking coffee or killing video
game villains. Lynn's interests include geek comedy music, romance
novels, octopuses, and movies with more FX than plot.
Social Media Links
Twitter: @tisfan
One of the many things we have in common is our love of the Coming Together series of books. We have both edited and sent out into the world books in that series. Every story in a Coming Together anthology has been given for free by the authors so its all about authors coming together to do good!
Thanks so much to Lynn for dropping by! Don't forget if you would like to be interviewed and feel up to answering a few questions for my blog shout out!
