We would like to welcome Catherine Lievens as our first featured author. Catherine has graciously answered questions about her writing and books.
What genre do you write and why? I write male-male romance, mostly paranormal. I like paranormal because it’s a genre that makes everything possible. Mermen? Of course. Demons? Why not? Doing research is always interesting, and writing is a blast. As for the male-male part, it’s helped me realize some things I would never have found out about myself, my gender, and my sexuality. I also like to think that writing in this genre has made me more open-minded and accepting and that I’m passing that on to my son.
Tell us one fact about you that might not be generally known? English is my third language. I grew up in Belgium and speak French, and since I’ve been living in Italy for the past twenty-one years, I speak Italian, too. I never actually speak English, I just write, listen, and read it, which makes dictating my books fun because I never know if I pronounce words the right way!
How much has the world of publishing changed for you since you started writing? It hasn’t been that long for me, five years this October. It’s not so much the world of publishing that has changed for me but rather the way I write. I do a lot more self-edits than I used to, and I feel that working with eXtasy has helped me becoming a better author and has bettered my English.
What was your favorite book as a child? I can’t actually remember having a favorite book as a child. I started reading my mother’s Agatha Christie’s books when I was nine or ten, and I still read them. The books that have made a lasting impression on me was the Harry Potter series, though. I’m still obsessed!
What do you have planned for future releases? I know my readers love my Whitedell/Gillham world, and I do, too. I’m still going to write the series that are connected with it, but I’m branching out, coming up with new creatures and different shifters, like in my Demons Hearts series, or my Vikings series. Shifters are fun, but demons and draugr? They’re a delight to write!
What is your favorite story? It’s a draw between Like Storms and A Demon’s Salvation.
A Demon’s Heart - It was my first book with demons and imaging the demons that inhabit that world and researching them was fun and different.
A Demon’s Salvation - Imagining a demon who was possessed by another demon was fun (poor Caelan, though!) and pairing him with a human detective who is wary of demons made everything more difficult and entertaining to write.
Like Storms - Researching draugr and Nordic mythology was great (can you tell I love research?) Draugr have an incredible array of powers, and I wish I could have fit all of them in this book. I also enjoyed creating Cecil, with his hag origin and the powers that come with it, very much.
About Catherine
Catherine lives in Italy, country of good food and hot men. She used to write fantasy as a child, but it was reading her first gay erotic romance novel that made her realize that that was what she really wanted to write.
After graduating from college in English language and translation, she divides her day between writing, reading, taking care of her son and reading some more.