Carole Mortimer Q&A

 1 – I believe 2015 is the year you are going to celebrate the publication of your 200^th book?

To be honest, when I wrote that first book I never imagined I would write even ten more let alone 200. But the storylines just keep coming, and so I just keep writing them. I used to tease my kids and tell them they would have to pry my laptop from my fingers before they could nail down my coffin – bit macabre, I admit, but it was a joke! – but nowadays it would have to be my iPad.  The 200^th book? I still find it incredible, but exciting too. And I still have so many more stories to tell!

2 – How do you feel about the explosion of self-publication?

 The choice nowadays for readers is tremendous and I personally love that. I read every form of romance I can download onto my Kindle, from paranormal, fantasy, historical, contemporary, erotica, anything with romance in I’ll read it. And having so many new authors has to be a good thing. New voices, fresh new ideas. Just wonderful.

The fact that I have recently self-published my own Alpha series probably answers how I feel about Indie. I love being a part of it and I love reading it. Many of my now favourite authors are Indie. Yes, when self-publishing first boomed in 2011 there was a lot of awful stuff out there, but as readers we’re very discerning, and pretty soon those badly written and published books were ignored by readers and the quality was allowed to shine through. I am still writing my romances for HMB but I love doing my Indie stuff too, and have lots of ideas for more books in my current Alpha series, as well as several more, including a Regency novella series I intend to publish later in 2015. I believe self-publishing is here to stay, and whilst I enjoy writing for an established publisher I also love the freedom of self-publishing, and I’m so much enjoying being a part of it.

3 – Can you tell us about ALPHA, your new Indie series?

The ALPHA series is quoted in the book blurbs as being ‘stories of dark and compelling men, who are used to taking what they want, and the strong and determined woman who have no intention of being taken. Unless it’s on their own terms.’

They are also quoted as being ‘sizzling contemporary romance with an added dash of danger’.

I would like to add here that there is also an Authors Note added to the Alpha books – ‘The ebook novellas and full-length novels in the ALPHA series have sexier situations and more adult language than my other books’.

All of those things are true of the stories in the ALPHA series. The men are very Alpha, the women are strong, there’s a dash of danger in each story, the language is adult, and the sex is hot, hot, and hotter! The characters in the books are also connected, can be read as standalone stories, but the series would be enjoyed more if read from the introductory novella Christmas Alpha onwards, where you will meet the heroes of the next two books, Dark Alpha and Shadow Alpha. The hero of the fourth book, Midnight Alpha, appears in Dark Alpha and Shadow Alpha and so on and so on. I’ve always loved reading and writing books that are connected, with characters that know each other, and so give later insights into what is happening in the lives of previous characters in earlier books in the series.

A quote from Desere Steenberg’s review, in Adult Delights blog, writes that Dark Alpha has ‘sex that sets the pages on fire and a mystery with so much dark reality it will leave you in awe of this author’s amazing writing skills’. Desere also writes of Dark Alpha ‘passionate off the chart sex, a mystery better than Sherlock Holmes ever faced, and a journey of romance overcoming the dangerous of the past. A thrilling dangerous romance, Carole, bring us more!’

And I’m going to do just that, have at least another four books lined up in the ALPHA series, one being published every two months through 2015.

I’m thrilled with that review by the way.

And it’s true that the sex is hot, the danger is very real, but the stories are primarily contemporary romance, and always always with a Happy Beginning – I like to think of my hero and heroine starting their life together as their beginning rather than an ending.

So if you like your stories very hot and sexy, with a dash of danger, then ALPHA is the series for you!

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Carole Mortimer is a USA Today Bestselling author, a Recipient of the Romantic Times Pioneer of Romance Award 2014, and was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for ‘outstanding service to literature’. She began writing for Harlequin Mills and Boon in 1978, and has now written 197 books for them, in the contemporary romance and Regency romance genres, and has sold over 100 million copies of her books worldwide. 

She has also now written and published two ebooks in her own ALPHA series. The introductory novella to the series, Christmas Alpha, was published on November 8th, and the second, full length novel in the series, Dark Alpha, is published on January 18th. The third book in the series, Shadow Alpha is now available for pre-order, to be published on March 15th.