Making a splash today on my blog, it's Anna Kringle! Here's a little bit about her, but please note that she is not the same Princess Anna with an ice Queen for a sister:
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Anna is a bubbly fairy princess from a small country town far, far away. 

Raised around rednecks and obsessively muddy trucks, She was faced with a strange need to fill empty paper with words. So she decided she might as well write stories. With the help of her friendly mice and other neighborhood animals, she has worked very hard to make this hobby a profession, and hopes to make the world a bright and colorful place through her works.

Anna is working on her next book in between slaying dragons and leading the children of her realm on a musical revolt against normality. 

Here are the questions Anna so graciously answered for me:

​D.R.- Dancing or singing?
Anna- Both, generally at the same time. I have a soft spot for Swing dancing though.

D.R.- Beach or woods?
Anna- The beach, I think. It's a bit chilly, but I love the fresh air off the water and the tumultuous openness of the ocean.

D.R.- Coffee or tea or something else?
Anna- Both again. I love coffee, but I have a low tolerance for it. And some days just call for the soothing warmth of tea.

D.R.- What book do you recommend the most?
Anna- Hands down, The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker. It's an impressive adventure, very well written. It's my favorite to get lost in, and inspired a lot of me favorite ideas.

D.R.- How do you get ideas for stories?
Anna- From little things and big things; it all goes into my brain, gets analyzed and cross-referenced until something jumps out. It's usually a small something: a character, or a situation. And then I have to figure out how the situation came to be, and who all affected it, and before I know it, I have a story!

D.R.- Which genres do you write and what's your favorite one?
Anna- My favorite is Steampunk, all of my books have that influence. I love the quirky twist it gives to the worlds, and the freedom to create a variety of new cultures and gadgets.

D.R.- What do you do if you see your idea has already been done?
Anna- I honestly don't worry about it to much. I know that no one has my brain, so even if our stories are similar, we'll still have unique journeys. A story doesn't have to be singular to be great. It just has to be real, and have the ability to connect people.
 
D.R.- What's your best writer's block buster?
Anna- I'm sneaky: I work around it. If I can't make progress on a scene, I jump ahead and work backward toward the block. Or if I'm stuck on the whole project, I'll jump to another one until I get the gears moving again.

D.R.- What's the best advice you've gotten about writing?
Anna- Probably “Leave well enough alone.” It's part of the creative life to always want to “fix” your creations; they never appear good enough to ourselves. I've had to train myself to let go and put it forward anyways, accepting that it's great as it is, and allowing myself to be proud of the accomplishment.

D.R.- Tell me about the biggest surprise your own character, story, or setting has given you.
Anna- Ooh, I can't tell you that... It hasn't been published yet! My characters surprise me regularly though. I have had great plans for them, only to have them choose a different path in the final draft. It's actually quite heartening. I like knowing I can be surprised by my own imagination.
 
For even more about Anna, you can find her just about everywhere on the internet. She's even on DeviantArt! Here's the rest: Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Google+, Author Central, Barnes and Noble, and her website. 

Hey, bloglet fans, here's the first interview for the tour. Welcome, Leslie Conzatti! Have a look at this gorgeous cover for one of her works right here.

Mermaids are marvelous, darling. Simply marvelous! Ahem. Okay, here are the questions Leslie so graciously answered for me.

D.R.- Dancing or singing? 
Leslie- BOTH. No, but I am definitely better at singing. But I LOVE dancing... Like watching other people dance, or wishing I could dance, or fantasizing about being able to dance like that...

D.R.- Beach or woods? 
Leslie- BOTH AGAIN. :) But probably woods more, since the beach is sort of exposed and the woods are just more peaceful to me.

D.R.- Coffee or tea or something else? 
Leslie- COFFEE 100%. I have tried to like tea, I really have. But no, coffee wins this one.

D.R.- What's the food or drink you always tell other people to try?
Leslie- Jicama—a root vegetable with the texture of raw potato but it's sweet and juicy like an apple. Not many people have heard of that one.
Huckleberry—my favorite berry, exceptional because it's rare in non-mountainous areas. They grow wild here in the Cascade mountains, so every year we head up and pick a few gallons to have. They're small and the flavor is intense, like a super-condensed blueberry. I love it.
Gnocchi—(nYOKE-key) A traditional potato pasta that is part of my Italian heritage. My grandma taught my mom how to make them, and we still make it exactly that way every year for Easter. They are dense, rich little potato dumplings, drenched in red or white or pesto sauce—molto bene!

D.R.- What book do you recommend the most? 
Leslie- I can't answer that; not because I don't have a recommended book, but because I have hundreds. I would just direct your attention to the Reader's Review page on my blog, and just pick the one that sounds most interesting to you! (All I ask is that you leave a comment telling me which one you liked, just so I know the kinds of books my followers enjoy hearing about!)

D.R.- Where is the one place you think everyone should go? 
Leslie- Not having been many places myself, I can't really say, but a dream of mine is to tour the British Isles someday!

D.R.- How do you get ideas for stories?
Leslie- There have been a few times I dreamed a scene and then woke up and made a story to go with it. Most of the time, I think like a fanfiction writer: I think about a story or an idea I like, some book that I wish existed because I want to read it—and then I write it myself.

D.R.- Which genres do you write and what's your favorite one? 
Leslie- When I write, I usually gravitate toward fantasy, either urban fantasy or high fantasy. I also do some sci-fi of the cyberpunk variety, and sometimes I'll end up with something akin to contemporary fiction, but fantasy wins most of the time, particularly if there are dragons or mermaids involved.

D.R. Perry- What's your best writer's block buster? 
Leslie- There inevitably comes a time when I am writing and then I hit a snag; but while I am writing, I allow for the times when a new, different idea crops up when I am in the middle of writing something. I let things do that, and I just start jotting down notes for the new idea, because invariably, when one project stumps me, suddenly the plot of another idea becomes crystal-clear. So I tend to jump around ideas, depending on where my mind is at. It helps, too, to read books in many different genres and watch TV shows that sound interesting to me, becomes sometimes a story I have not written can give me ideas for my own projects. Whatever I do, I don't force it out.

D.R.- What's the best advice you've gotten about writing? 
Leslie- Your first draft is never your last one. You WILL rewrite—several times—so don't get too attached to any one scene. Pay attention to the story; if the scene contains necessary information and it fits the narrative, you can keep it. If it's just a "fun part" but it really doesn't add anything, or there's a better way to say it, then the scene is just taking up space and it has to go.

D.R.- Tell me about the biggest surprise your own character, story, or setting has given you.
Leslie- That would probably be the moment that I realized that this main character in my first full-length original fantasy novel, the one with so much untapped potential, was destined to be a writer. 
It came as a surprise because I didn't know the world I created was going to have writers; there were no books to speak of, and storytelling was kind of taboo, a forbidden magic art normally used to create specialized objects like clothes, earthenware, and jewelry. It was called "Wordspinning" and I thought my main character was just going to be part of one particular "guild" out of the syndicate of four guilds. But then she showed signs of being able to interact with all the groups, and yet her skills seemed inherently distinct from them... Then I realized there was a fifth guild, a guild of writers whose job it was to write down the tales that the other Wordspinners told... and by the end of that train of thought, I had a whole series of four books planned. So that was unexpected.

Check out the slideshow to see more images from Leslie and find links to her Facebook, blog, and Wattpad! 

This week, C.A. King interviewed me! Check it out right over here!

Have you read any great books lately? If so, that's awesome! But you want to read more, right? If not, here's an awesomesauce way to find some. It's a book tour that you don't even have to leave your house for. And we're all already tired from walking around playing Pokemon GO, so we could use a nice rest with a book. 

For the next month and change, I'll post interviews from some of my fellow authors. You can click their names to see their blogs, where they'll be doing their own interviews every Monday. Here's a little schedule for you:
July 11: Opening Blog
July 18: Leslie Conzatti 
July 25: Anna Kringle
August 1: Susan Ferrell 
August 8: Kristan L. Cannon 
August 15: Guest Interview 
August 22: Ashley Nestler 
August 29: Cat Banks 
September 5: Carol Ann King 

You'll have a new author to check out all the way through Labor Day weekend. These authors write all kinds of genres, plus there's cool things to see and read about on their websites and blogs.

But you're wondering by now, "what's up with August 15th? Who in the world is this mysterious guest author of mysteriousness?" Well, you'll have to stop by right smack in the middle of the dog days to find out! Oh hey, and check out the slideshow for a look at some of the stuff you'll be seeing.