Author Interview: Kelley Heckart

EQ Welcomes Kelley Heckart!

EQ: Welcome to EQ! Tell us a little bit about yourself!

Kelley: Thanks for having me at EQ. I live in Arizona with my husband and two dogs. My stories are a mix of history—Bronze Age Greece, Dark Age Scotland, Roman Britain—and fantasy/mythology and romance. Ever since I was a little girl, I have been drawn to these long ago places where magic seems possible. When I’m not daydreaming, writing, reading, working as an editor/proofreader or doing research for my next project, I make decorative crosses out of driftwood.

EQ: What are your top three guilty pleasures?

Kelley: Mounds bars, Facebook and the Lifetime movie channel. I used to make fun of the Lifetime movies and now I watch that channel more than any others. I get a kick out of watching movies with titles like The Nightmare Nanny, The Husband She Met Online, Sexting in Suburbia and The Preacher’s Mistress. Most of these movies are actually pretty good, too. The Lifetime channel ranks up there with SyFy and the CW, two more of my favorite time wasters.

EQ: What kinds of male characters do you prefer to write?

Kelley: I write non-Alpha male heroes and here’s why: Alpha males do not make good romance heroes for me. They strive for that adrenaline rush and would rather spend time with their “bros.” They aren’t interested in settling down. I like to create male heroes (a cross between an Alpha and a Beta) that can stand alone, make their own choices without having to rely on approval from their male friends and don’t have to always be proving themselves. And my heroes don’t have a problem falling in love with a strong female. I do have Alpha male characters in my stories, and they are sexy, but they don’t end up with the girl. There was one Alpha male character I created that I fell in love with (King Galan from Cat’s Curse and Beltaine’s Song) and some readers loved him too, but he wasn’t right for the heroine.

EQ: What is something nobody would guess about you?

Kelley: Probably that I used to play bass guitar in an all-female hard rock band. We even had groupies that would come to all our gigs. I was pretty wild and had some crazy experiences. I met some famous musicians like Michael Schenker and Michael Anthony of Van Halen, and also met some really weird but nice people with names like Rebel and Disease. The strange thing is when I do book signings I still seem to attract “different” people.

Other titles by Kelley Heckart:

Of Water and Dragons, Ravenwolf

White Rose of Avalon

Cat’s Curse

Beltaine’s Song

Winter’s Requiem

Daughter of Night

The Enchanted Meadow

Find Kelley Heckart here:

http://www.kelleyheckart.com

http://kelleysrealm.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/CelticChick

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kelley-Heckart/111838455604

http://www.goodreads.com/kheckart