We’re back for another day of Duck Chat! Welcome.

Dana Marie Bell is with us today. If you’re a shapeshifter fan, you’ll love Dana’s books.

Her first ebook published in April of 2008, Dana hasn’t looked back and now has a successful series on her hands while working on several others at the same time. The Wallflower is that first ebook and it introduced readers to the Halle Pumas. Sweet Dreams, Cat of a Different Color, and just recently Steel Beauty all round out the series to date. True Destiny is another of Dana’s series and the first book, Very Much Alive, released earlier this year. Her next release by Samhain on July 28 is Dare to Believe, the first book in her Gray Court series.

Dana is married and she and her husband have two sons who, she says, who “drive us insane while laughing maniacally.” I’m sure a lot of you mothers out there can relate to that! They both love to read and own more than 2000 books.  She wrote her first story when she was thirteen and later in attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts for creative writing. Be sure to ask Dana a question or leave a meaningful comment because she’s giving away any book in her backlist to one lucky winner. Now let’s chat!

DUCK CHAT: Dana, let’s jump right in and talk about your Halle Pumas series. They’re full of humor as well as mystery and lots of loving. How did the series come about? Has it evolved as you envisioned with the first book? Please give us a look at the series as a whole and then we can talk about a couple of the books.

DANA MARIE BELL: The series started out as a call for submissions from Samhain Publishing. They were looking for novellas for a cat shifter anthology, and I remember thinking, “Hmm, that sounds interesting!” So I plotted a story about a wizard who turned into a jaguar due to a family curse. He used a spell to pull his perfect mate to him. He cast the spell, went for a run… and didn’t come back for two years. Meanwhile this other kitty was knocking on my door. He told me his name was Max, and he had this story he wanted to tell me. I ignored him as best I could, but Max can be damn persuasive, especially when he wants something for Emma. Next thing I knew, The Wallflower was accepted by Samhain. I mentioned that I would like to write more books set in that world, and the Halle Pumas were born.

I pictured five books in the series: Alpha, Beta, Marshall, Omega, and one “spare” who deserved her own story. Belle’s story, Steel Beauty, would be a launching point for expanding beyond the Pumas into other shifters and possibly a series that was longer than novella length, something I’m beginning to work on now.

DC: If you could retire any question and never, ever have it asked again, what would it be? Feel free to answer it.

DMB: “Mommy, can we go to Disney World now?”
“Not yet, baby, next year.”
“Aw man.”

DC: Do you have a favorite book in the series? Tell us about it and what makes it special for you.

DMB: Favorite in the series? Hmm. I have a favorite hero, a favorite heroine, but a favorite story? Probably The Wallflower. I love Max and Emma and how they interact with each other. But that changes. Last month Steel Beauty was my favorite because it still has the power to make me laugh.

My favorite hero from the Halle Pumas? Adrian from Cat of a Different Color. My favorite heroine from the series is Belle. She kicks butt and knows the best places to shop for airhorns.

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions, or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

DMB: Max and Emma certainly did. They had a fight in the middle of a scene where they were supposed to be getting to know each other better. I tried to get the characters to move in a different direction, but every time I did, they started fighting again. I realized my subconscious was telling me to just go with it. I did, and it was the start of one of my favorite scenes in the book.

DC: Since we’ve talking about Max and Emma’s story, The Wallflower, would give our readers an inside look into their relationship and what to expect in their book?

DMB: Emma was a shy girl in high school. She had a huge crush on a boy a few years older than her named Max, but he had a girlfriend. He was nice when he spoke to her, but his girlfriend Livia hated Emma. When he went away for college, things changed. Emma went to the local college, got a degree in business, and opened Wallflowers with her best friend Becky. Max comes home eight years after leaving to find Emma is all grown up. The shy girl he remembers is a little firebrand, and his mate! He’s determined to claim her, but Livia wants him back no matter the cost.

Max and Emma are a fun couple. She’s sassy, he’s strong. I did my best to make them real people, and I think readers enjoy that.

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? Who usually wins?

DMB: The characters. If they fight me so hard on something, it usually means they’re right.

I think when a writer says “My character won’t stop arguing!” what we’re really saying is that something is wrong somewhere in the story and our inner editor is trying to point it out to our outer writer. (Or something philosophical like that. It’s more likely the Muse is just trying to beat us with a CLUE stick.)

DC: The most current book in the series is Steel Beauty, which just released in April. You’ve mated a wolf with a cat and what a match that turned out to be. Tell us about Rick and Belle, please.

DMB: Is it bad when you giggle the entire time you’re working on a book? (Okay, not the entire time. I didn’t giggle at all during the love scenes.)

Belle’s had a rough time. She was the best friend of Max’s ex and got tarred with the same brush by the rest of the Pride, never mind she had nothing to do with trying to hurt either Emma or Becky. She just loved Simon, Max’s Beta and Becky’s mate. She helped Simon when Becky became ill and was severely injured saving the mate of another Puma from being run over by a car. So when she finds out that not only is she mated to a Wolf, of all people, but that there’s another woman who wants to be Luna whether Rick likes it or not?

Well, can you blame Belle for letting loose? She’s got a huge stash of air horns and she’s not afraid to use them.

DC: What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

DMB: Kidlets. I have two boys. I shudder whenever they’re home and the house is quiet.

DC: You’ve got another series, True Destiny, which saw the release of the first book back in February. Would you tell us first about the series and then a little about Very Much Alive?

DMB: The series came about because I’m a HUGE fan of mythology, both Greek and Norse. In the Norse mythology, Loki was a fire giant and blood-brother to Odin, king of the gods. Baldur was Odin’s son and beloved of all the gods. Loki was the trouble-maker; Baldur was perfect. No one liked Loki or his children, but everyone wanted to be with Baldur.

One thing always stuck out in my mind, even when I was a kid: why did Loki kill Baldur? What was in it for him? Was it because of jealousy or something else? He had to know what would happen if he killed the gods’ favorite, right? He always struck me as the jealous type, but he never struck me as stupid. People have been known to do stupid things for the sake of jealousy, but every other time he’d been jealous, he stole something or made the person’s life difficult in some way. Baldur was the only one he tried to kill. Why?

Flash forward to adulthood, and I’m thinking of doing a series that’s a little more daring than the Pumas, something that will let me stretch my wings a bit. So I got to thinking, what about the Norse gods? They’re so different from the Greeks that they’d be something fresh. For one, Norse gods can die, unlike the Greeks. And then I remembered that nagging childhood question: why? I dug a little deeper into Bullfinche’s mythology and realized two things: first, Loki can’t fly without wearing the feathered cloak of Freya (something she’s not happy giving him at the best of times), and second, he flew away from his pursuers after killing Baldur without the cloak.

Hmmm….

Which, to my mind, meant Loki didn’t do it. If he didn’t do it, who did? And why?

That’s how Very Much Alive was born. Loki and Baldur both lived but had a rough time getting away from the one who’d actually tried to commit the murder. In modern times they go by the names Logan Saeter and Kiran Tate, and they need help breaking through the fog the real killer has around the minds of the other gods. They turn to Jordan Grey for help and realize that they’ve found the one element their relationship was missing. When Jordan gets hurt trying to save Logan, it unleashes a storm that will rock the foundation of the gods forever.

I do have to warn people: it’s my first M/M/F book, so if you don’t like ménages or M/M, then I’d give it a pass, especially since the third book in the series will be pure M/M. Like I said, this is the series where I’m stretching my wings a bit.

DC: What has been your favorite book cover from all of your releases and why?

DMB: Oh wow. That’s a toss-up. I’d have to say either Very Much Alive or Dare to Believe. I loved Very Much Alive’s cover so much I actually changed Jordan’s physical appearance during edits to the picture on the cover. I didn’t want the cover artist to change a thing. Dare, on the other hand, went through several changes before it came to the “white” cover, but I love the simplicity of it. It’s so perfect for the two characters. That little hint of sparkle on Leo’s skin just rocks, and the looks on the model’s faces are so loving it makes me smile.

How about your least favorite? Why?

DMB: I don’t really have a least favorite. I’ve been lucky with my cover artists in that they’ve been willing to make minor (or major!) changes to the covers to suit the story. They’re an incredible group of people.

DC: Your latest release is going to be July 28, Dare to Believe in The Gray Court series. I love the sound of this book. Would you give us some insight to the series and then the book itself?

DMB: Have you ever heard of the Seelie or Unseelie court? The elves of light and darkness? What’s in between? Shadow. That’s partially what the Gray Court series is about.

Once upon a time something happened that split the Courts apart. It nearly destroyed the Fae. In the end what was once a single court was broken into three courts: the White Court, or Seelie Court, ruled by Glorianna; The Black Court (Unseelie), ruled by the Dark Queen who caused the war; and the Gray Court, ruled by High King Oberon. He polices both Courts to keep the war from ever breaking out again and keeps rogue fae from both sides from revealing their existence to the humans. It’s a delicate balancing act, especially since he despises the Dark Queen.

Dare to Believe is the beginning of the series and introduces us to Leo Dunne, a White Court Sidhe (or elf, but don’t ever call them that to their faces). He’s been trying for a while to gain the attention of one of his employees, Ruby Halloway. Ruby’s scent haunts his dreams, and he’s determined to find out if she’s the one destined to be his. He finds out for certain at the company masquerade party, but when old grudges rise up to threaten his family, he’s forced to return to the family farm. He brings Ruby with him and introduces her to a world few mortals are aware exists.

The second book of the series will dive deeper into the Gray Court and show how the Dunne family will play a role in future events. That book is currently at the outlining stage.

DC: How do you feel your male or female characters have evolved over your career? Do you think you write them differently now than you did when you started?

DMB: I try and change each of my characters when I write. All of them have similar qualities (they all tend toward a bit of sarcasm, for instance), but I try and inject something different into all of them.

If anything, I think my male characters have grown the most since Max. They’re more willing to be vulnerable. Rick has a wonderful scene in Steel Beauty where he shows just how much Belle means to him toward the end of the book.

DC: You have some works in progress on your various series. Only in My Dreams is the next Halle Pumas book. Can you give us a sneak peek?

DMB: Only In My Dreams involves the Omega and Gabriel Anderson, the Marshall’s Second. I can’t give too much more than that since it’s gone through a re-write and I’m waiting to hear back from my editor about it. I’d hate to say “It’s about x and y” only to have to rework it again and wind up disappointing people who were expecting x and y but got m and n.

DC: You also have two books in various stages for The Gray Court series. Just a snippet about those? Please?

DMB: Noble Blood revolves around Duncan Malmayne, Moira Dunne (Leo’s sister) and Jaden Blackthorn. The two men are characters you meet in Dare to Believe. It’s currently in the outlining stages, but will be much more involved in Oberon’s Gray Court as opposed to the White Court.

Sing We Noelle is a holiday story set in the world of The Gray Court. It’s a M/F/M ménage Christmas novella revolving around twin brothers, Luc and Angel, and the woman they have finally decided to bond to them. Both brothers are Blades in Oberon’s Court, knights who bring down rogue fae. Noelle is their personal assistant, a human who has no clue that fae, let alone Vampiric fae, even exist. Wishes on angels and dinner under some mistletoe are about as far as I’ve gotten, and it’s half-way through the rough draft.

DC: Can I push my luck and ask about Eye of the Beholder, the next book in the True Destiny series? I know our readers really want to know!

DMB: That one is with my editor, and she’s indicated she’s got some changes that need to be made. What I can tell you is that it revolves around Travis and Jamie learning a bit more about what’s going on among the Aesir, Vanir, and Jotun, and why, and introducing Logan’s children one at a time.

DC: Is there a genre you haven’t tackled but would like to try?

DMB: Science fiction and/or fantasy. I’ve got some stories running around in my head, but I have some others to take care of first like the first full-length shifter story (Bear Necessities), Noble Blood, and Stern Negotiations.

Wait, Stern is the sci-fi book. It’s the only one that probably won’t wind up a series!

DC: What advice would you give to your younger self?

DMB: “I don’t care how much you love them, those Entemann’s chocolate donuts really ARE bad for your hips.”

DC: If you were a book, what would your blurb be?

DMB: Dana Bell found the man of her dreams, but he didn’t seem to notice her. Enter her friend L, who promises to help her for a price. Before she could say no, he asks for a dollar bill and, after receiving it, declares himself her matchmaker!

Dustin Bell has no clue what’s about to hit him!

(P.S.: That’s a true story. My husband, on our second anniversary, bought me a dollar store teddy bear in an “I Love You” bag. I think I still have it somewhere. It’s become something of a running joke.)

DC: What would be your “voice’s” tagline?

DMB: You get what you pay for, and if you’re lucky a whole lot more.

DC: If you had never become an author, what do you think you would be doing right now?

DMB: History professor, probably. I love Ancient Civ and probably would have pursued a career there if I hadn’t had my kids and started writing. But writing has been a passion of mine since I was a child, so instead of paranormals I might have been doing fantasy instead!

Lightning Round:

– dark or milk chocolate?    – Milk
– smooth or chunky peanut butter?    – Smooth
– heels or flats? Pre arthritis?    – Heels. Now? Kitten heels!
– coffee or tea?    – Iced coffee
– summer or winter?     – Fall! (Why go with the crowd?)
– mountains or beach?    – Beach
– mustard or mayonnaise?    – Mustard
– flowers or candy?    – Flowers
– pockets or purse?     – Purse
– Pepsi or Coke?     – Pepsi
– ebook or print?     – ebook

And because we still have fun with them:

1. What is your favorite word?     – Supercalefragelelisticexpialidocious
2. What is your least favorite word?     – Obnoxious
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?     – Music. It can evoke so much in so many ways.
4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Preaching. I don’t like someone telling me what my morals should be. My momma raised me just fine, thank you.
5. What sound or noise do you love?   – Giggles!
6. What sound or noise do you hate? Chewing.     – Blech. Close your mouths, people! It’s icky.
7. What is your favorite curse word?    –  Fuck. When my husband and I drop off the kids for date night the first thing I do is chant, “Fuck fuck fuck,” because you can’t do that around a five year old without getting a phone call about two weeks later from his kindergarten teacher.
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?    – None. I’m a stay-at-home mom AND a romance author. I’m good. 
9. What profession would you not like to do?    – Anything seen on Dirty Jobs.
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?    – “The dark side might have cookies, but we have chocolate.”

DC: Thank you for taking the time to spend the day with us, Dana!