Margo has been an amazing find and an incredible author in the Blazing Indie Collective. I’m honored to have released my novella alongside hers in the Falling in Deep Collection. In honor of her own release, Siren’s Kiss, she agreed to stop in and answer a few questions. (:
Tell me about you. What do you write?
These days, I mostly write urban fantasy and contemporary romance. However, I also write paranormal mystery and sometimes some horror, along with the occasional academic article. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of writer I want to be when I grow up—and I kind of hope I never get to the ‘grown up’ stage!
When did you start writing? When did you start publishing?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been making up stories. The first story I remember actually writing down was basically fan-fiction of The Wizard of Oz. I wrote it in long-hand in a yellow legal pad. I’ve been writing ever since. But about ten years ago, a friend suggested I join in National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org). Until then, I had always written short stories. That year, I finished the first draft of what would eventually become Legally Undead—it was my third published novel, but it’s the first one I wrote, and it was a finalist for this year’s Daphne du Maurier Award.
I ended up as an English major in college because I was fascinated by the ways stories work. And then I went on to graduate school because I couldn’t figure out what else to do. I ended up with a Ph.D. in literature almost by accident; I just never quit wanting to learn about all the stories in the world!
So now I teach literature and writing in my day job, and the rest of the time, I write, both as a fiction author and as an academic.
Has there been a progression through genres in your writing?
It’s not so much a progression as a branching out. I like trying new (to me) genres, so a lot of different ones show up in my work—everything from horror to mystery to romance! And sometimes they get all mixed up, and I end up with something that’s not quite genre-specific. Sometimes those are my favorite pieces.
What authors do you like to read?
Too many to count! Because I’m a literature professor, I have piles and piles of favorite authors. Right now, though, I’m particularly fond of Neil Gaiman, Robin McKinley, Holly Black, Ann Aguirre, Melanie Karsak, Blaire Edens, AW Exley. What I love about all of them is their ability to create such realistic worlds, to draw me in and keep me interested in the stories they spin out.
You have something coming out very soon. Tell me about that.
This has been the crazy summer of releases. I released Sanguinary (a paranormal romance) and Opposing the Cowboy (a contemporary romance) in July. The next one is Siren’s Kiss, part of the Falling in Deep novella collection and a Mythic Kiss short. And although it’s technically a paranormal romance, the story opens by telling the reader straight out, “This is not a love story.”
About Siren’s Kiss
This is not a love story.
It’s been over two thousand years since I walked these shores, and even then, the man who broke my heart was centuries gone, sailed away into death—the last journey into yet another land where I will not follow.
Truth be told, though, he left me long before he died, gone away to rejoin a wife he hadn’t seen in twenty years, to reclaim a rocky, wind-swept island for a son he barely knew.
Gone home, to spin stories about his absence like his wife spun his death-shroud—picking out the stitches at night and reweaving them anew to postpone the inevitable moment when the stories wear thin and you find the monsters have been in your home all along, posing as suitors who would win your heart.
The poets lie, you know. They say our songs seduce the sailors, draw them into the ocean to drown.
But if the ocean sings to them, it is not our doing—no more than the earth’s call to us is theirs.
And Odysseus never tried to resist.
On the cliff above the Theatre of Dionysus, the Parthenon loomed, its marble columns partially obscured in scaffolding. The last time Skyla had been here, when the marble seats of the open-air amphitheater were new, she watched the Oresteia trilogy—tragedies to the Athenians surrounding her, but too far from reality to be anything but comic to Skyla. Agamemnon had been a monster, a tyrant of a man who murdered his daughter for the joy of killing, a sacrifice to the gods of power and control. When his wife Clytemnestra killed him in return, other women did not blame her. Their house fell, but it was not of her doing.
But the memories of men are short, and the stories they share shift and change, like the ocean’s surface.
Margo Bond Collins is the author of urban fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal mysteries. She lives in Texas with her daughter and several spoiled pets. Although writing fiction is her first love, she also teaches college-level English courses online. She enjoys reading romance and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, monsters, cowboys, and villains, and the strong women who love them—and sometimes fight them.
Connect with Margo
Twitter: @MargoBondCollin
Love mermaids? Looking for a great beach read? The Falling in Deep Collection, a collection of 15 unique tales of creatures of the deep, is rolling out the first novella in their collection at the end of May.
From mermaids to sirens, Miami to Athens, dark paranormal romance to contemporary stories with steam, the fifteen award-winning and best-selling authors of the Falling in Deep Collection are bringing you mermaid tales like you’ve never seen before.
Every week beginning May 26th, 2015, we’ll be releasing one unique, never-before-published novella! Each novella will feature our favorite creature of the deep: mermaids.
The Falling in Deep Collection (May – September Releases)
Scales by Pauline Creeden
Ink: A Mermaid Romance by Melanie Karsak
Of Ocean and Ash by A. R. Draeger
Deep Breath by J. M. Miller
At the Heart of the Deep by Carrie Wells
The Mermaid’s Den by Ella Malone
How to be a Mermaid by Erin Hayes
The Glass Mermaid by Poppy Lawless
An Officer & a Mermaid by Blaire Edens
The Water is Sweeter by Eli Constant
Cold Water Bridegroom by B. Brumley
Immersed by Katie Hayoz
Siren’s Kiss by Margo Bond Collins
To Each His Own by Anna Albergucci
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Reblogged this on Kirstie Bryant.
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