Hi Leigh! Welcome to Fallen Angel Reviews! Thank you for taking time out of your busy holiday schedule to visit with us. I know that I appreciate this opportunity to visit with you as do our readers.

First, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi Jessica! Thanks for having me here at Fallen Angels.

I’ve been writing now for three years, although I’ve been telling stories to myself and anyone who will listen for as long as I can remember. I went to graduate school and earned a Masters in business administration and went to work in the corporate world, but kept wanting to write a book. Finally I did. That book was TRUE SEEING, my first novel.

Looking back, was there a certain event or person that inspired or motivated you to send in that first story in an attempt to become an author?

My sister and I have had, like most siblings, a rocky relationship, but one summer when we were living together, she found a rough beginning of a story I’d written. Since that time, she kept asking when I was going to write that story. I give credit to her and my very supportive parents for pushing me into taking that first step.

When you received your first contract or made your first sale, can you remember where or who you were with and your reaction?

I was right here, at my desk. I heard from Liquid Silver Books that they were buying my story, and ran down to tell my husband. I still smile thinking about it!

Do you tend to write on a schedule or as inspiration hits?

Ooooh on a schedule. I think that’s really the drag of being an author. You can’t write just when you feel like it or you’ll never get through the hard parts of a story. Lawrence Block once said that as bad as writing can be sometimes, not writing is much worse. And so I sit down every day and bang out pages. Very rarely do I find these pages are bad, although they may feel bad at the time. Writing a novel is a long process. Most authors write 5-10 pages a day, so you can do the math and figure out how long that takes. That time doesn’t include pre-plotting, which I do more and more of now, nor editing the final manuscript. It’s a long process, but a fulfilling one. I’m really blessed to be doing something I love fulltime.

In Heat and In Ice are both unique and straight to the point titles. How do you come up with the titles and character names for your stories?

Ah, well, in the first book, IN HEAT, the two main characters are literally in heat, so that came naturally. Then because I was writing a series, I wanted to keep the titles similar to each other. Since IN ICE takes place on an ice planet, that name came to me right away.

As for character names, that is a discussion I’ve recently had with another group of authors. We all seem to pick names differently. Some people can’t write a story without the characters named first. Some use a place holder until they know the character well enough to give them their name. Some pick names at random. I start every book with a scene. I don’t know these people at all, but I’ve seen them do something in my mind, like a movie, and I write it down. Then I think about who these people are. Because I write stories on different planets or worlds, I have the luxury of picking unusual names. I’ll often pick a name that goes with the character’s traits. So in one book, my hero is a protector, fighting evil and sacrificing himself for his people. I named him Garron, which means guardian. In another recent book, I named my heroine Ilandere, which means moon woman. She’s remote and distant, having lived her adult life alone in a crowd, her past weighing so heavily down on her, she’s incapable of close relationships. I thought it fit her.

Among your list of books, you have a new release, Secrets Volume 12. I also see that you have an upcoming release, Secrets Volume 14. Both of these are in the form of an anthology. What was it like to work with fellow authors to create these?

Actually, for Secrets, all the stories stand alone. But in two past anthologies, we all worked together to create a concept for the reader. The hardest, and I think best of these was RESOLUTIONS. Four authors, Jasmine Haynes, Vanessa Hart, Dee S. Knight and I all came up with an idea of having a book where four friends made secret resolutions for the year. Spaced between stories, they are eating New Years’ dinner together, talking and laughing. In the last scene, they all introduce their men. Readers seemed to love this book and it was a joy to write. Sometimes collaborating can be a nightmare. Authors are by nature solitary creatures. But this anthology went smooth as ice and we really had a great time.

On your website, there are quite of few review ratings for your story, Secrets Volume 12. I see that Secrets Volume 12 has gotten some wonderful reviews. Congratulations on that. As an author, what is your favorite part of receiving a review and how does it benefit you?

I love receiving good reviews because reviewers are readers. Every reader who enjoys my stories makes all this work worth it. I live for the reader email that says, “when are you coming out with another story?” I spend my days toiling so I can hear things like “There’s just something about Leigh Wyndfield’s writing style…something visceral and seductive.” I got that review the other day for my Secrets Volume 14 story, which came out last month. These kinds of reviews are worth their weight in gold in terms of word-of-mouth to readers. What matters to me most is that I’ve written a story that makes someone fall into another world, whisks them away into a fast-paced adventure they can’t stop reading until they hit The End.

Do you have a favorite character that you would be interested in going back and creating a sequel or follow-up story for?

Ah, good question. I think for me every story I’m writing is about my favorite characters. Right now I’m writing a series about men who have given up everything to fight evil. The first story led to the next. A huge, hunky man walked into my current story I’m writing the other day and knew he was the hero for the third book. Books take a long time to write (for me at least). I have to be so captivated and enthralled with a hero that I can spend months with him, all day every day, and not lose interest.

Per your website, I have noticed that your first story, True Seeing, has been re-released. Can you give us an idea why an author would choose to re-release a story? If you were going to describe this story to someone that has not heard of it, how would you as the author summarize it?

TRUE SEEING is a story based in Richmond, Virginia about a psychic who sees flashes of the past, but unlike other psychics, she sees the pieces of a person’s past that shape them most. It has made relationships very hard for her. When she “sees” a murder, she’s dragged into a murder investigation with the hunky hero. TRUE was my first novel. I made some mistakes there that I wanted to fix. For example, I opened with the hero and heroine jumping into bed, but never explained WHY the heroine chose that day of all days to finally act on her feelings for the hero. I knew why, I just had never explained it to the reader. I also added a sex scene and fixed some craft issues. It’s still the same story at its heart, but now it’s better written and more complete. When I grew as an author, these issues kept nagging me and so I approached the owner of Liquid Silver to see if she’d let me rewrite. She said go for it and I did.

Do you base any of your characters based on real life people? Or are all of them parts of your vivid imagination?

You know, I try to stay away from people I know, but sometimes they just slip in. Harlequin’s new Spice line is interested in a novel called SECRET OBSESSION. It’s a straight erotic contemporary set almost entirely on a fictional island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. But an old boss of mine made a cameo appearance as the heroine’s boss. I couldn’t help myself. This guy was just too good not to fill that role. He and his wife were National Roller Skating Champions. Heehee. He decorated his office with pictures of himself in polyester powder blue jumpsuits skating. His license plate said “SK8” – I swear I am not making this up! He needed to be in a book and in he went.

Most authors are avid readers. Do you have any favorite authors/books?

I read everything and anything I can get my hands on. I read a lot of SF/Fantasy and a ton of romance. Anything paranormal will do. I think my favorite authors are the same as anyone’s who reads the genre – Christine Feehan, Laurel K. Hamilton and the like. But really, any story that holds my interest makes me happy!

Is there something that you always have with you regardless of where you go?

I wish I had a snappy answer for this, but I don’t. If I have time to kill, I spend it thinking about my stories. Before bed, waiting in line at the dry cleaners, you name it. I think about their childhoods or places I’m stuck or what I’ll write the next day. I make up stories about everything around me if I’m in the edit phase of a book. That guy who is yelling at the waitress just got dumped by his wife because he’s unable to communicate his feeling. Now he can’t stop communicating. He can’t help it, though. His mother died when he was twelve and his grandmother made him dress up in her old frocks and play tea party with him. Poor thing.

What TV show or movie that you have to watch every holiday season?

Wizard of Oz at Thanksgiving and Rudolph at Christmas. I love that dentist elf. LOL!

If you had to pick just one holiday to be your favorite, which one would it be and why?

I love fall. It’s not a holiday, but I love it anyway. The crisp air, the rattle of dried leaves in the breeze, the dark clouds foreshadowing snow. I was walking to the mailbox the other day and I knew somewhere someone was stirring a cauldron of witches brew. Magic was in the air. Nothing spurns the imagination more than the changing of the season and Fall has just the right amount of foreboding for my paranormal heart.

Do you have a personal goal for this upcoming year?

Write more books and actually sell the ones I’ve got written. I’ve made a change from small press to larger publishers and it’s why my stories haven’t come out as fast as they once did. New York publishers are slow.

Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

I love email – so send me some at leighwyndfield@yahoo.com. Visit my website at www.leighwyndfield.com and see my weekly blogs at http://leighwyndfield.blogspot.com/

My next story, NIGHT HEAT, came out in December in Secrets Volume 14. You can buy it at Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon.com!

Thank you so much for stopping by Leigh. For anyone looking for a sizzling, erotic tale, look no further. Stop by the Leigh’s website to see what you don’t want to miss. It has been a pleasure talking with you.

Interviewed by: Jessica