Nicole Edwards Week ~ Nicole Interview Day 2

What do you do when you come down with a case of the infamous ʺwriterʹs blockʺ? ;-) I think that term should be a bad word. Because I used to write as a hobby, I didn’t really know what it meant until I decided to go about this full time. I mean, previously, I would write when the urge hit me. Now, well, now I attempt to make myself write every single day. That doesn’t happen the way I envision it on some days. I’ve found the best way for me to deal with it is to walk away from the book. Sometimes that means I can move on to another one that I am working on and sometimes it means that I have to spend my day stalking Facebook just to entertain myself. I can’t force the words on paper and I can’t make the characters do anything that they don’t want to do. They are stubborn like that. If I’m not writing, I’m reading, which is inspiration all on its own because I find myself falling in love with characters and that inspires me to want others to want to fall in love with mine. And, when none of those work, I spend a lot of time mentally hashing things out with my characters. It helps me to get a better understanding of who they are.

What’s the best thing about being an indie author? Considering I know absolutely nothing about traditional publishing or the like, it’s not like I know anything different. For me, being an independent author means I get to control the reins. I take the direction I choose to take, when I choose to take it. It’s a gamble, I’m sure. The fact that I own the process from beginning to end and have a hand in all of the decision making is probably the best part of it all. That and working with my husband.

What's the worst? What difficulties do you face? On the flip side of wanting to own the entire process is knowing that I can’t do everything myself. Publishing a book requires a lot of effort and I’ve heard numerous times that some independent authors opted to go traditional because it allowed them more time to write. Sometimes I find that there are days when I only want to write and yet I can’t find enough hours in the day to make that happen. Being independent means I (or in my case, we: Colt is very much a part of this process) own the marketing, fighting the pirates, publishing, formatting, etc.

Although I wouldn’t change anything about what I’m doing, sometimes it starts to bog down my mind. That’s the main reason I have Colt. He has taken over a large part of the process which helps to ease some of the stress.

Was it hard to write about Luke and Cole? They were very intense and that came across beautifully in the book. No, actually, it wasn’t hard. I love Luke and Cole. Absolutely adore them. Their love is so real for one another although they aren’t perfect and have difficulty showing it. They have strong minds, gentle hearts, but they are hard headed and stubborn – both of them. I was scared to death to publish Temptation, fearful of how it would be received but I think that’s because I loved it so much and I basically told their story exactly how they wanted me to.

Has there been any scene you've found difficult to write? why? The most difficult scene that I have written so far would have to be between Luke and Cole at the end of Conviction. This scene meant everything to me and I wanted to express Luke McCoy’s true nature and show exactly how caught up he was with Cole, but he didn’t know how to express it. It took me several times to get that scene the way it ended up being, and as of right now, that is still my favorite scene in all of my books.