Please help me welcome Pamela Aares to my blog today. She’s given me a wonderful interview and it giving one commentor a dopy of her book Fielders Choice.

Can you please share with us a little about yourself?

I write contemporary and historic romance. I live in the coastal wine country just north of San Francisco with my husband and two rascal cats. Most of my life I lived in cities so the organic garden feels like a small farm on most days and country life is still very new to me.

How did you get started writing?

I’m lucky to have had a family that loves stories. My great-great uncle James was a famous American poet and the love of language and storytelling stayed in the family. I wrote my first play in grade school and fell into the power of story. I went on to write and produce documentaries for PBS and National Public Radio. I also wrote grants and ran national and international campaigns to improve the lives of wild animal and their habitats–story is at the heart of any good grant proposal–it’s the stories of the animals and their lives that grab people’s hearts and create change for the better. I moved away from writing documentaries and started writing romance in 2004. In some ways romance picked me–I’m convinced that love powers everything in the universe!

What is your most interesting writing quirk?

I love heroes and heroines that walk off with the story and who challenge each other so strongly that by the end of the book nothing can pull them apart. As far as personal, writing craft quirks? I make story maps. My walls look like something out of the film “A Beautiful Mind– papers taped to the walls, yellow and pink and green stickies all over the room. Sometimes guests walk in and their jaws drop. They’d never imagined the craft that lives behind a good book.

How many books have you written? Do you have a favorite?

I’ve written seven books. My favorite is always the one I am writing at the time. Well, except I have a Victorian saga, it crosses two continents and is set in 1851– that story is always lurking, waiting to be revised. It placed in the Heart-to-Heart Award at SFARWA last year and readers who know about it keep asking for it! I want to finish the first six books in the Heart of the Game series first, though before I go back to revise it.

Tell us about your current series/WIP.

I’m putting the finishing touches on Love on the Line, the fourth book in the Heart of the Game series and I’m in the second draft of middle of Aim for Love, book five in the series. The Heart of the Game series features All-Star, alpha male athletes and the strong and fascinating women they come to love. It’s based around the All-Star heroes, their Major League Baseball teammates and one family, the Tavonesi’s. I love that readers appreciate the heroines and their strengths.

In the first book, Love Bats Last, the heroine, Jackie Brandon, is a world-class marine mammal vet. She takes enormous risks, rappelling down cliffs to rescue whales, jumping out of boats to free sea lions caught in nets. She’s amazing. And very, very allergic to athletes due to a bad experience in her past.

Chloe McNalley, he heroine in the second book, Thrown by Love, inherits a baseball team when her father dies and she finds herself smack in the middle of the tough, male-focused world of Major League Baseball.

In the third book, Fielder’s Choice, Alana Tavonesi, a young and carefree heiress, inherits her grandmother’s internationally famous organic olive ranch. Think Green Acres with a twist!

What inspired your latest book?

In the 5th book, Aim for Love, I was gripped by the excellence of Japanese athletes. A teammate of my husband managed the team that won the World Series in Japan. Then one thing led to another and I found myself fascinated by the Samurai masters who can draw a sword and slice a 2mm ceramic BB shot at them from 72 feet before it hits them. If I hadn’t seen it in slow motion, I might not have believed it possible. So the hero in book five is a sixteenth generation trained Samurai, but he’s also an American, a peach farmer, and one of the hottest young pitchers to ever throw from the baseball mound.

Do you have any words of inspiration for aspiring authors?

Write. Don’t get pulled off course by social media. Stay focused on your manuscript. (Advice I need to heed during these hectic pre-release and launch months!)

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

Characters show up and won’t go away. I do use very careful outlines, I have enormous respect for story structure, but the characters rule. I believe that a writer’s life influences the trove of creative possibilities that can show up. It’s one reason that having a full life experience can make for great books.

What was the deciding factor in self-publishing your book(s)? Did you decide on ebook or print only or both?

I had interest from New York agents and publishers. I was tempted. At a crucial moment, one of the authors in my writing group, a writer who has had great success with self-publishing, told me to resist the temptation to go with New York to start out. She advised me to self-publish my books and then if I wanted to do print deals down the road, that option would be open. I’ll always be grateful to her for her timely advice.

What advice can you offer to anyone deciding to self-publish?

Be ready to work very, very hard. And for those just starting out, enjoy the time while you are writing your first book– that’s the honeymoon. After that you’ll have all the production and marketing competing with your time and energy and unless you’re disciplined, those activities can eat into your writing time. And make sure to join a couple of the excellent self-published author loops, those are extremely helpful.

What’s your favorite part of writing? Least favorite?

I love the process of revising the fourth draft after my professional editor had read it and given me revision notes. My least favorite? The second draft; I find that’s the hardest for me. But really digging in to the motivations, conflict and the deeply held beliefs of the character is crucial to having a great book in the end, so it’s worth the hard work!

Do you or have you belonged to a writing organization? Which one? Have the helped you with your writing? How?

When I first started out, ten years ago, I had been in a writing group. Most of the other writers were non-fiction writers and I was producing The Earth’s Imagination at the time. I learned so much from their dedication and seeing their work evolve, but because of the film works, I wasn’t actively writing.

When I began drafting my first romance novel, I was going it alone. Then I spoke with Catherine Coulter. Hers was the first romance I ever read (Midsummer Magic). She told me about RWA. And I will be forever grateful. The workshops, magazine, on-line loops and face-to-face get meetings with other authors made such a difference as I worked to improve my craft. Film writing is very different from novel writing. The structure is similar but the craft of writing is very different. I’m also fortunate that my local chapter of RWA, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter, has many experienced authors who are generous and share their experiences and wisdom.

Where can readers find your books? Print/Ebook?

All of the books in the Heart of the Game series and also my historical, Jane Austen and the Archangel, are available at the on-line stores in both print and ebook. And my website, http://www.PamelaAares.com has a complete listing of my books.

And I’m giving away a gift copy of Love Bats Last, the first book in the Heart of the Game series to one of your readers who comment on your blog today.

Thanks for having me, Cindy!

Blurb: Fielder’s Choice

When love’s the game, you can’t play it safe…

All-Star shortstop Matt Darrington has more than a problem. His wife died, and now he’s juggling a too-smart-for-her-britches six-year-old and the grueling pace of professional baseball. Worse, his daughter is mom shopping. When they explore a local ranch, she decides the beautiful, free-spirited tour guide is premium mom material. Matt thinks the sexy guide looks like Grade-A trouble.

Alana Tavonesi loves her cosmopolitan life in Paris. But when she inherits the renowned Tavonesi Olive Ranch, she has to return to California and face obligations she never wanted. Selling the place is her first instinct, but life at the ranch begins to crack her open, exposing the dreams hidden inside her heart.

On a lark she leads a ranch tour, where she meets Matt Darrington. His physical power and a captivating sensual appeal fire her in a way no man ever has, but he has a kid—and being a stepmom is a responsibility Alana will never be ready for. Still…she can’t keep her mind or her hands off him.

When Matt’s daughter goes missing from a kid’s camp at the ranch, Alana organizes the search effort, knowing from experience the areas a bright child would be drawn to explore. As she and Matt work together to search for the little girl, Alana discovers that father and daughter have won her heart. Yet it may be too late for love…

About the Author

Pamela Aares is an award-winning author of contemporary and historical romance novels and also writes about fictional romance in sports with her new baseball romance book series titled Heart of the Game.
Her first book, Jane Austen and the Archangel (Angels Come to Earth, #1) was released in 2012. Midnight Becomes You, the second in the series will release this year as will the celebrated historical romance novel, The Lady and the Patriot.
Her popularity as a romance writer continues to grow with each new book release, so much so, that the Bay area author has drawn comparisons by reviewers to Nora Roberts.
Pamela Aares writes romance books that she loves reading, particularly those that entertain, transport and inspire dreams while captivating and tugging at the heart. She takes her readers on a journey with complex characters in both contemporary and historical settings who are thrown in situations that tempt love, adventure and self-discovery.
Before becoming a romance author, Aares wrote and produced award-winning films including Your Water, Your Life, featuring actress Susan Sarandon and NPR series New Voices, The Powers of the Universe and The Earth’s Imagination. She holds a Master’s degree from Harvard and currently resides in the wine country of Northern California with her husband, a former MLB All-Star and two curious cats.
If not behind her computer, you can probably find her reading a romance novel, hiking the beach or savoring life with friends. You can visit Pamela on the web at http://www.PamelaAares.com.

Fielder’s Choice
amazon: http://amzn.to/1hUV3no