Featured Interview with $25 Giveaway: Untamed Hearts by Colleen O'Connell

Interview with Colleen O'Connell

1. What's your daily routine when you are working on a book?
   My ability to be more creative occurs in the evenings so I tend to do more writing at night. Like any writer, there are times when the dreaded, ‘writer’s block’ takes hold. Those are the times I take a break knowing it is useless to fight it. To minimize the potential for the block, I try to end my writing for the day by stopping when I know what the next sentence or scene is going to be. It helps if I can pick back up the next day with a quick start without the need to stare at a blank page as though waiting for it to talk to me.
2. Have you always aspired to be an author?
   Writing was always something I enjoyed, but it wasn’t as though I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was a child. It developed naturally out of my love of reading, thoughts of how I would have made changes in the plot after finishing a book and then ultimately attempting to see what I could do if I tried my hand at developing my own stories. Once I starting writing, I knew this is what I wanted to do.
3. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome to get to where you are now?
   The biggest challenge was pushing through the rejections of work submitted. After all the hard work of actually completing a manuscript and then the seemingly endless process of trying to send it out for consideration only to receive the generic rejection letter was certainly frustrating. It seems trite, but it is true that persistence pays off. What I learned was that each rejection (after a few disheartened tears) only strengthened my resolve to work that much harder to make the story better. I had continually received positive feedback on the storylines I submitted. It was a matter of fully understanding the technique of writing.
4. What keeps you passionate about being an author and continuing to write books?
   I constantly have plots filtering through my mind. I may only have an idea about a general storyline, but I love creating the characters that will bring the story to life and finding out how the story will develop as I write. There are times I’m writing a scene and suddenly an aspect of a character will surface that I hadn’t considered. Even as the writer, I find myself surprised with the different turns the story takes from my original conception. That is what holds my interest-the anticipation of what comes next.
5. If there is one thing you can tell readers on why they should pick up this book, what would it be?
   I believe readers will find a few unexpected twists. I don’t like when plots are too predictable. I keep that in mind when I write. When I’m reading a book, I like being pleasantly surprised when I anticipate something occurring in a scene and then it takes a different direction. I know it makes me want to read more. I hope readers experience the same with Untamed Hearts.

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