Interview: Lynsay Sands

NRR: Can you share with us how you got started into writing?

Well I started writing as soon as I learned to string words together to make a sentence. By ten or eleven I was writing 70 and 80 page adventure stories, usually in my closet. LOL. My parents wanted me to go outside and play like normal kids, but I wanted to write, so I had a secret writing spot in my closet where I’d hide and write. They’d think I was outside and I got to write unbothered. Everyone was happy. 

I wrote my first complete novel when I was nineteen.  I sent it in and they sent me a refusal, or so I thought at the time.  They had made suggestions about the story and asked for anything else I’d written…so I think, looking back, that ‘refusal’ was actually an acceptance and had I pursued it then I would have been published by the age of twenty. I guess I just wasn’t ready to be published yet. Instead of changing it or sending anything else in I went to University and got a psychology degree.    

NRR: How were you inspired to write the Argeneau series?

It was a fluke that I even came up with them. Two writer friends and I were chatting on MSN, one of them was Christine Feehan who writes the Dark series, the other was Melanie Jackson, who didn't write vamps, but suggested the three of us should write an anthology together for Halloween. CF could do a dark story, I could do humorous and she would do her own version. I laughed and said if we did that you know my vamp would have to faint at the sight of blood or something. I threw out a couple more ideas we laughed over (I was known for humorous historicals at the time) and then we changed the subject. We never did the anthology but the ideas stuck with me and I finally had to write them down. The minute my editor heard I was writing it, he asked to see it and then contracted for the first three books.  It was easy as that.

NRR: Can you tell us what a day in the life of Lynsay Sands is like?

Uh oh… well let me tell you right off the bat that I’m not your typical writer.  I don’t do the nine to five thing and I never really have. When I’m writing, I’m writing. I get up, sit at the computer, write for 16 to 20 hours, drop into bed, sleep four to eight hours (although I’ve been known to skip sleep altogether when in the last days of a deadline) and then get up and do it again. I write in one long stream, like cramming for exams. I find it easier to hold onto the thread of the story that way. I try to avoid any and all interruptions while doing it. When I’m not writing, I’m either answering emails or doing edits or updating facebook or answering interview questions, etc.  The work is never ending. It’s just a matter of what form it takes on a daily basis.  And luckily I like my work… well except for the editing bit.  Painful!

NRR: Out of all the characters you have created in the Argeneau series, is their one that you hold as a favorite?

Lucian would be my favorite male character as I have a weakness for the crusty on the outside with a gooey center type men. And if I had to pick a favorite female character then I would have to choose Marguerite. I’d love to have a coffee and just sit and chat with Marguerite.

NRR: Have you had other jobs besides being a writer?

I have worked in many jobs and seriously considered a profession as a psychologist at one point. I was even assistant coordinator for an art center for clients of mental health facilities for a while, but I found it very difficult to not take the job home with me. In the end a writer is what I was meant to be and whether I had succeeded in getting published or not, I was still going to write.

NRR: How long does it take for you to put a novel together?

Well… once I get writing it can take as little as two to three weeks.  But again, I am not the nine to five writer.  When I write, I write and it is my priority until it is done.  

NRR: Can you tell us a little about Hungry For You (of course no spoilers)?

Hungry For You is the 14th book in the Argeneau/Rogue Hunter series.  This one is about Alex Willan, the eldest of the Willan sisters and the only one that Sam has not been able to get ‘hooked up’ with an immortal yet.  Sam can’t bear the thought of leaving her sisters behind so she has refused to be turned by her life mate, Mortimer, until she finds life mates for her sisters too.  Alex, a successful chef and restauranteur, is attempting to expand her business, but it’s been riddled with problems.  At the start of the story her most immediate problem is finding a chef to replace the one that was just poached by her competitor.  Sam wants Alex to meet Cale Argeneau, a relative from Europe, and knows the frazzled Alex won’t pay him any attention with everything else going wrong.  So Sam sends him to be Alex’s replacement chef. The only problem is that Cale is old, very old and hasn’t eaten, much less cooked anything, in centuries. The only question is how is Cale going to pull off being a chef when he can’t even stand the smell of food?

NRR: What can readers expect to see from you in the coming year?

I have a new regency series coming out in the New Year about the Madison sisters.  The first one called The Countess and the second called The Heiress were a lot of fun to write.  The ridiculous circumstances Christiana and her sisters get into are pretty funny, not to mention shocking.  On occasion I have had a reader state that certain parts of stories were unbelievable because it was just too ridiculous to believe it could happen.  Most of the time the ones they refer to are based on a true story that I either read in my research or that actually happened to family or friends.  Sometimes the truth IS stranger than fiction.