Interview with Tina Susedik and a Giveaway!

Lexi: I’m happy to introduce Romance Author Tina Susedik who has brought a giveaway! Be sure to check out the Rafflecopter below.  

Welcome Tina, when did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Tina: I’d always had these stories floating through my head, but back when I was in school, they didn’t stress writing like they do today. I never knew I could write these stories down. At one point in our lives, my husband and I moved to an area where I couldn’t get a teaching job. I was going through a magazine and saw an ad for the Institute for Children’s Literature. I decided to send in a story. To my surprise, I was accepted. That started the ball rolling for my writing. I believe I was 30 or so.

Lexi: What is the strangest thing that inspired a story for you?

Tina: There is a scene in “Never With a Rich Man,” where Cassie and Hogan are in a fancy restaurant. There is an embarrassing incident with a bottle of steak sauce. This scene is taken straight out of the first date I had with my husband. We were freshmen in college. The restaurant wasn’t fancy – we were poor farm kids working our way through school. I wore a borrowed dress for homecoming.

The steak sauce incident was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to homecoming. For some reason, Al saw more than my clutziness and asked me out again and again and again. We’ve been married forty-four years. I do have to say the scene that follows in the book DID NOT happen in real life. We were, after all, only eighteen and on our first date.

Lexi: What has been the most memorable fan comment you ever had? 

Tina: That she had my book on her “keeper shelf”. I have a keeper shelf of my own with my favorite authors’ books. To know I was on a “keeper shelf” was amazing. I think I shed a tear.

Lexi: Can you tell us your story of getting “the call?”

 

Tina: Every fall I take a week and go camping by myself. My husband, who is my best supporter, hauls our camper to the campground, leaves me for a week, then comes back for the weekend. Each year I work on a different book. I can’t recall which book I was working on in 2012, but one morning I was checking my emails and there was one with the topic: Congratulations! It was from a publisher. To my surprise, excitement, joy, etc., etc., etc., they said they wanted to buy my book. OMG. I cried. I paced up and down the camper, (which isn’t very big). I called every member of my family. I paced outside, climbed rocks, jumped up and down as I called all my friends. It was a good thing the campground was fairly empty or I think they would have carted me away in a loony truck. I later found out that a fellow author had received his email from the same publisher the night before and didn’t sleep all night. I’m glad I hadn’t seen mine until the morning. I didn’t get any writing done that day.

Lexi: Can you describe your writing process? 

Tina: I’m not sure where my ideas come from. They just seem to pop into my head. I have problems with character names. I keep coming up with the same names, so I have to change them all the time. I also lose track of which characters are from which books, so I finally created an excel spreadsheet to keep track of them. Setting comes with the story idea.

Most people have heard of plotters and pansters. I’m a panster – sort of. I do create my characters and setting. I have an general idea of what my story is about and where I’d like it to end. But from there, I just let the characters tell me what they want. I also write erotic romance under my pen name, Anita Kidesu. I had an incident with a short story I was writing for one of my publishers. I was struggling and getting frustrated with it. One day I was sitting on our back deck, when the characters screamed at me, “We want a menage!” After that, the story just flowed. I think if I plotted everything out, I’d get frustrated when the characters wanted to change the storyline and I wanted to stick to my plotline. I enjoy those moments when things become clear to me and the story seems to write itself. 

Lexi: Does your pet help or distract? 

Tina: I’ve inherited my daughter’s cat for the winter. I love the cat, but she can be a real pain. Sits on my lap, so I can’t reach the keyboard. (I write sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap.) Will try to bite my fingers as I type. Will sit on the laptop. Whines until I stop typing and pet her. She’s has even sat on the back of the couch, then lay on my head.

Lexi: Thank you for chatting, Tina.

For a chance to win an eCopy of Never With a Rich Man be sure to enter the rafflecopter below. Good luck!

Blurb: from Never With a Rich Man:

Cassie Jordan has been lied to, cheated on, and passed over for a promotion. All by men. She was tired of men. She didn't need a man, and certainly not a rich man. Then she met Hogan Wynnters, and ordinary salesman - or so she thought.

Hogan Wynnters is part owner of a family business and has the kind of money Cassie despises. He's tired of women coming on to him because he's rich. He decides to never tell a woman about his financial status until she gets to know him as a person. As an undercover FBI agent, he uses his knowledge of antiquities to find the people who are bringing stolen WWII artifacts into the country. Unfortunately, the woman he's falling for is in the crosshairs of the FBI.

Can they work through their preconceived notions and find true love?

Buy Link: Amazon 

Excerpt for Never With a Rich Man:

A comfortable silence settled around them while the waiter took away empty salad plates and set their main courses before them, along with fresh, hot bread, and a variety of condiments to accent their meals. Hogan was about to cut into his steak when he noticed 

Cassie finger a bottle of steak sauce the waiter had left on the table.

“Do you put steak sauce on roast beef?” he asked.

Cassie gave him a small smile. “No. It’s just . . .”

“What? You can tell me.”

“When I was little my parents would make steak on Saturday nights after Bess and I went to bed. I’d lie under my blankets feeling warm and secure, listening to the hum of their voices, smelling the cooking meat. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d sneak down into the kitchen and watch. My father always knew I was there because suddenly he would grab me and set me on his lap.”

“What then?” Hogan asked when Cassie paused obviously reliving pleasant memories.

“Dad would cut small pieces of steak and feed me.” She fiddled with her napkin. “One of the things he loved on his meat was steak sauce, but he’d never let Bess and I have any. He said it would grow hair on our chests, and he didn’t want any of his daughters looking like orangutans. The funny thing is, for as much steak sauce as that man used, I seem to remember he had the barest chest of any man I’ve ever seen. Redheads don’t have hairy bodies.”

Hogan pointed at her chest with his fork. “I, for one, am glad he wouldn’t allow his daughters to have steak sauce. I can’t imagine hair all over your lovely chest.” Her chest turn pink, the blush rising to her neck, then her face. The sight caused his body to perk up and take notice.

He turned his attention to slathering butter and sour cream on his baked potato, much like he would like to slather his tongue over her bare breasts. He wondered if they also blushed when she was embarrassed. He adjusted his napkin on his lap as he grew hard. Luckily 

Cassie wouldn’t see his discomfort beneath the tablecloth. Painfully, he ignored his crotch and went back to her story.

“Anyway, after he died when I was twelve, we moved in with my mother’s parents for a short time,” Cassie continued as she sliced her roast. “I don’t know, it must have been a man thing or something because my grandpa wouldn’t let us girls have steak sauce, either.”

It shook Hogan to hear her father had left when she was so young. Girls needed a father until they were . . . well, until they were old and gray. If he ever had a daughter, or son for that matter, he planned on sticking around forever. Hogan gave Cassie an encouraging smile.

“Go ahead, have some. I don’t think you’ll start growing hair on your chest at this point in time.”

Cassie laughed and picked up the bottle. “I can still hear the smack of the bottle hitting the palm of Dad’s hand when he shook up the steak sauce.” She picked up the bottle and jerked it upward.

About Tina:

Tina Susedik has been researching and writing books for over twenty years. She has five history books, two military, and two children's books in print, as well a romantic mystery and a several short stories in anthologies. She also ghost wrote a military book. Tina also writes under the name Anita Kidesu for the Wild Rose Press.

Tina belongs to the Romance Writers of America, Wisconsin Romance Writers of America, and the Wisconsin Regional Writers' Association. In 1996 she established the Chippewa Valley Romance Writers, which will celebrate its twentieth anniversary in October of this year. She is a member of the Published Authors Network with the Romance Writers of America.

Besides writing, Tina gives talks to schools and organizations, judges writing contests, and helps in the business she and her husband own. She lives in northwestern Wisconsin with her husband of forty-three years. She adores her five grandchildren and loves to camp, hike, bike, scrapbook and, of course, read, read, read. 

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