Interview with Loreth Anne White and a MANHUNTER giveaway

Please welcome Loreth Anne White to our blog today! Loreth has lived many places, and her books are always filled with adventure, suspense, and romance. Loreth is giving away a copy of MANHUNTER. Anyone who posts is entered in the drawing.
Welcome, Loreth!

Thanks so much inviting me, Hope! It’s a pleasure to be here.

Loreth firing a .303 calibre rifle as a Mountie watches

HC: Your latest book, MANHUNTER, is in bookstores now. What prompted you to write about the far north?

LAW: I have always loved larger-than-life adventure, suspense, and romance in books, and to me the vast wilderness North of 60 inspires all of that.
As I mention in my reader letter at the beginning of MANHUNTER, the North tends to attract a free-spirited and disparate sort. It’s wild country, a last frontier – a harsh and beautiful place where temperatures can plunge to -58 Fahrenheit. It’s a place where inhabitants must endure long periods of endless darkness and a sense of isolation from the rest of the world, along with a culture foreign to most of us.
Those who weren’t born to the north are often lured above the 60th parallel in search of something – gold, silver, meaning. Adventure. Themselves.
Others go to escape – the law, past relationships, bad mistakes.
But although the area is vast, it’s not an easy place to hide. The inhospitable weather bonds unlikely allies, and the social circles are in fact small. Mistakes often mean death, and the loneliness forces people to look inward, to dig deep, and to find the true mettle of what they are made. I don’t think one can really hide from oneself in this sort of environment. You either leave, perish, or you survive and come to love it.
And I think that journey is what I am trying to tap into with my Wild Country series … tales of people who learn to love in this vast land, and the larger-than-life character it shapes along the way.

HC: I understand that MANHUNTER is the beginning of a new continuity series, with an online prequel, TO THE EDGE, being presented chapter by chapter at eharlequin.com. How many novels are planned for the series, and when will the next one be out?

LAW: If the series resonates with readers, I have no end of stories to tell! The next Wild Country book is tentatively slated for October next year -- I took a bit of time out from writing the Wild Country series because I was invited to contribute to a Silhouette Romantic Suspense continuity -- Love In 60 Seconds -- that launches in spring next year. All set in Las Vegas, hot and sexy My book, HER 24-HOUR PROTECTOR will be out in August.

HC: I love the wounded Mountie, Sergeant Gabriel Caruso. What was your inspiration for this big-city guy who ends up asking for an assignment at the back of nowhere?

LAW: It’s always interesting to try and figure out where one’s characters actually come from. Gabe had been lurking in my mind for a long time. He grew out of an idea I originally had for an Italian-Canadian cop in Vancouver – a man who had lost his fiancée to a serial killer. But then in March 2005 there was the tragic Mayerthorpe incident in rural Alberta, Canada, that saw four rookie Mounties on the doorstep of career criminal James Roszko. Less than 24-hours later, they were all dead, including Roszko who had turned his gun on himself. It was the worst massacre in the RCMP’s history. And the series of events and news coverage following it moved me to tears.
I wondered what would happen if there’d been a more senior officer had survived, and one of the dead had been his fiancée. And I wondered what would happen if he blamed the whole thing on himself
And Mountie Sergeant Gabriel Caruso was born.

Loreth attending a gun instruction course

HC: Silver Karvonen, the half-Finnish, half-Gwitchin tracker, is a fascinating character, too, with her own secrets and pain. What prompted you to choose her as the heroine?
LAW: I was looking for strong match for Gabriel Caruso. Someone who could challenge him on every level. I needed someone who knew the North, and someone Gabe, a big-city cop, would be forced to turn to for help in catching a survivalist ex-special ops killer who understood wilderness. I also wanted someone who would embody the North in every way possible – and Silver came to me, dogs and guns and all …a strong and beautiful woman, but afraid of the police because she has a dark secret of her own …

Loreth learning to track, looking for man prints

HC: I love the setting for your Wild Country continuity series! What do you like about the North Country?

LAW: All the things I have mentioned above, really. Plus I personally live in a place of big, ragged, snowy mountains, wild weather and larger than life characters … and plenty of bears. And, well, ‘they’ do say you should write what you know. I also did man tracking and shooting workshops to get a better feel for Silver. (I think I am hooked on tracking now!)

HC: With so many wonderful northern territories, what made you choose the Yukon Territory as the perfect setting for the Wild Country series?

LAW: The Yukon is just one the settings for my Wild Country series. The online prequel, for example, is set in the rugged Bush region of Alaska, and Book 2 in the series is also set in Alaska, this time a small coastal mining town.

HC: Your life sounds as fascinating as anything you write. I know it gives you an edge on writing realistic backgrounds for your books. Is there any one thing that stands out in your life that you would cite as what prompted you to be a writer, or are there more than one?

LAW: LOL, good question. Most writers say they have been writing since they were, like two years old. But I think for a good part of my life I perhaps tried to avoid writing while seeking other ‘real’ professions. I started university thinking I was going to be a psychologist – I had (and still do have) a specific interest in abnormal psychology. But I naturally gravitated to the English lit courses. From there I got a job in newspaper advertising, but was very (and I mean very) quickly moved from the ad to the editorial department (I spent waaay too much time writing ad copy for everyone, and selling far too few ads ) I then spent the next 16 years writing and editing for various newspapers and newsmagazines in both South Africa and Canada, before the call of fiction finally lured me over.
And I do come from a family of writers. My mother had a children’s book published when I was 14, which I illustrated. And my father, who started out as a chemical engineer, discovered journalism through his passion for orchids. Goodness knows how, but this led him into a career as a gifted financial journalist, and then editor.

HC: Thank you so much for joining us on the blog. Happy writing!

LAW: Thanks for having me Hope. It’s been a pleasure.

"Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it." Oswald Chambers.
November 2008's MEMBER OF THE MONTH!
JuNoWriMo: 436 words + 713 pre-JuNo = 1149