Helena Maeve is the author of the erotic romance novel: Feint and Misdirection
, and she took some time out of her busy writing schedule to answer a few question and tell us a little more about herself and her new book.
1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember. Wee Helena couldn’t spell all that well, but she used to jot down stories her grandmothers told her. Slightly older (but not by much) Helena wrote complicated soap opera plays, in which she starred, of course, with her friends. But from writing more or less religiously my whole life to saying I wanted to be a writer was a bit of a leap. It took admitting it to myself, first, then to my inner circle. Then finding someone willing to publish my books. For my first submission to Totally Bound I must have sent and recalled my email for a good fifteen minutes before I let it go through.
2. How long does it take you to write a book?
I have the attention span of the dog from Up! (squirrel!) so if I don’t start writing as soon as an idea has sunk its claws into my cerebellum, I’m never going to get it out. From then on, it depends on how fast I can type. I hate to talk about characters as voices in my head because it makes the process seem a lot less deliberate, but the truth is I rely on inspiration as much as any writer. Trying to write a story once I’ve already ‘told’ myself how it ends is like pulling teeth.
3: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Yoga. I practice every day, sometimes twice a day if I find the time. I’ve never been particularly sporty and every time I’ve tried to pick up a workout routine, I dropped it sooner rather than later. Yoga is a nifty compromise between meditation, which I need in order to rest my brain, and going to the gym, which I hate. Although I like to pair my practice with jazz covers or Queen, so I guess that means it’s not quite proper yoga. For whatever reason, it just works better.
4: Do you have any suggestions/tips for aspiring writers and authors you’d like to share?
Stick with it. Finish as many manuscripts as you can, even if you leave them in draft form in a drawer somewhere before moving on to the next best thing. I’m a serial starter, seldom finisher myself, so I’m very familiar with the internal bully telling me that what I’m working on is crap or this other idea that just flashed through my mind is so much better. The truth is that taking a story from point A to point Z is the only way to learn how to write good beginnings and good endings. A story has to have both. If you leap at every new idea, you’ll miss out on one or the other.
5: Tea or Coffee?
Tea,