Garden Interview with Linda Nightingale

Welcome Linda

tell us about you and your books.

Do you plot or let the story unfold as you write? Oh, I let the story unfold as I write. The danger is that often I write myself into a corner and have to go back to square one. I’ve thrown away many a page. Usually, I do have a loose idea where I’m going with the book, but in Sinners’ Opera, the ending came to me in an odd place and quite frankly surprised even me.

Have you ever cried while writing a book? I cried at the dark moment of Sinners’ Opera when Isabeau is forcing Morgan to leave even though it breaks her heart and his to make him go. I cried in another book when the heroine was told she had cancer and a finite time to live. I’d had stage 2 breast cancer, and I’m so grateful I didn’t have that horrible prognosis.

How did you do in English as a kid? I did very well in English. Math definitely NOT, but I was in the top percentage in English in school.

Do you have trouble saying goodbye to characters? I hang on to the bitter end.

Do you research your sex scenes? Definitely. In great detail.  Just kidding.  😊

Do you have set times during the day that you write? Just whenever my Muse whispers in my ear.

What are your current projects? I’m working on a fantasy romance called Stealing Heaven. The hero is a centaur in a Dionysian society, and the heroine is a young woman from post-Apocalyptic Earth who finds a time-space portal to his planet, resulting in the rape of his civilization by humanity. I’d liken it to the invader’s treatment of the native peoples in the Great American West. I can’t share how they get together or it would be a major spoiler!

When you wrote this book, did you have an idea of how it would end at the beginning? I didn’t. I got the title from a billboard of a band, Sinners’ Opera. The ending was written on a napkin while waiting for a friend in our local pub, and, at The End, the sentence was exactly as written in that bar.

And for a little fun…

Who do you see as a hero/heroine in your life? My father. He was a champion of a man. When I was little, I used to stick my head beneath the hood with him when he was tinkering with our car. All my friends loved him. He was kind, considerate, and denied me very little.

Do you have a favorite quote? From Oscar Wilde, a quote that seems to be singularly applicable to my life: “The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”

You can erase one embarrassing experience from your past. What will it be? The night my skirt fell off at the reception desk of a crowded restaurant. My friend and I were talking with 2 handsome realtors while we waited for a table, and the elastic broke in the waist of the skirt. Down it plummeted! Luckily, because it was chiffon, I wore a slip.

Do you laugh at your own jokes? I don’t tell many jokes. My humor tends to be dry and sometimes sarcastic. I’m good ha-ha material—such a klutz.

Have you ever found true love? Yes, but it wasn’t to be. I met this dashing, charming Englishman at an English Civil War Re-enactment in Staunton, Virginia. I was riding with the Royalist cavalry, and he was a Roundhead soldier. We overcame that major hurtle pretty quickly. He was good-looking but not knock-‘em-dead gorgeous, but when he walked into a room, a light surrounded him. People loved him. I did, too, and he loved me, but, though a psychic had predicted his arrival, as I said, it was not to be. He stayed in England, and I stayed in Houston. I haven’t loved another as much.

Are you jealous of other writers? I must confess that I’m sometimes envious of other writers, particularly a turn of phrase or a book I wish I’d written, or if they get a glowing review and the reviewer pans my book. If my sales are sagging, and another’s is soaring, that’s pretty tough. I try to overcome this, but it does exist.

Where can we find you online?

http://www.LindaNightingale.com

https://www.facebook.com/linda.nightingale.52

https://twitter.com/LNightingale


Download Sinners’ Opera on Amazon and other online retailers.

https://www.amazon.com/Sinners-Opera-Obsession-Linda-Nightingale-ebook/dp/B07X3RSRXQ