Author Interview: Azriel Hope

About the author:
Azriel is a best selling author of several romance novels she has written as a ghostwriter for other pen names as well as a writer of young adult novels under her given name.

An adoptive mother to two almost three gorgeous girls, Azriel balances her time between exciting or exotic places her mind takes her and scary things like elementary school, middle school and soon preschool for her teen, tween, and eventual toddler. She also spends a lot of time playing with her kids, dreaming and drinking wine.

When she and her family aren't dancing, creating, or water fighting in the yard, they are on an adventure around the world. Come take a journey…

What inspires you to write romantic fiction?
I love love…I know that sounds cliche but the world is so complicated and so loving also becomes complicated. I think it's fun to get lost in the fantasy of romance. Yes there is conflict and challenges, but those big overwhelming feelings of love are fun. It's like the first time every time….I think that's the best part of writing romance is giving the reader that first breathless heartbeat again and again and again….

Tell us about how you write.
I get out of bed, feed my children and write all day. I listen to a soundtrack of songs I pick out and use images I search the web for as inspiration for the story. If I get stuck I do a pomodoro which is a timed method that keeps me grounded and committed to working through the places that stump me. I love writing, it's my Neverland.

Do you listen to or talk to to your characters?
Yes, all the time. As soon as my characters materialize they are a part of my life. They show up in the car, in my dreams, while I'm washing the dishes…They haunt me until they're free to live their lives. Whenever I re-read a book I've written I'm always surprised by them and their beauty. 🙂 Its' sometimes like the first time I've read the book as strange as that might seem. I really love visiting them again after the books have been written.

What advice would you give other romance writers?
Just go with your gut. I think the worst thing a writer can do is censor themselves. Romance comes in so many different forms, write the romance you want to write. Then do the tough work of having Beta readers read it and sift through the feedback to hone your work till it shines. I think also as soon as you think you've got the story to its point of completion and most of the feedback you are getting is favorable, positive and supportive, (and use a diverse range of readers) than you're done. Put it out there and sometimes people will be insane for your story and other times people will want to publically execute you and when you've gotten to that glorious pendulum of extremes, you've written the perfect book. 🙂

How did you decide how to publish your books?
Well, I publish in a number of different ways. I have a traditional publishing path for my YA stories. I also have a traditional publishing path for some of my romance novels. I have written a Hallmark Christmas Romance movie with my writing partner, and I ghostwrite for a famous romance author. BUT the stuff I really love and really have fun with is my own work that I publish under a pen name where I just go to town and write what I love and self publish it. So the moral of this tale is…write wherever, however, and as ever as you can. 🙂

What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think that it's going to become more independent. Like YouTube for writers. With the upsurge of places like Wattpad, people are just writing. They don't give a hooey about punctuation, grammar, spelling and honestly some of those raw, weirdly formatted, cringy errored stories are AMAZING. So you get an editor in there to clean it up and voila you have a book. Traditional publishing is the opposite of self-publishing. In self-publishing, you get your work out to readers in 72 hours or less. In traditional publishing, it's going to be at least TWO YEARS. So, what you're trying to do is get eyeballs on your work and build your reputation, increase your sales, and entertain with your stories. Seriously, that can be done in both traditional and self-publishing forums and so I think we're going to see even bigger shifts toward author managed content, marketing, and sale of their work and that means movies, series, etc. Authors will become their own production houses for their work, thus retaining rights and royalties where they really belong. Paying a portion of sales to appropriate people for their work is one thing, but taking the author's rights has always made the author a slave to whoever publishes the book…so it's time to take back the creative control. I mean without the author's creativity, there is no story.

Which romance sub-genere(s) fit your stories best?
Fantasy usually, I like to write sexually fluid characters and I also like a little color in my cast 🙂

My books are available in the following formats:
eBook