Giveaway & Interview with Author Carrie Butler

Welcome to the Strength Book Tour and Giveaway featuring an interview with paranormal romance author, Carrie Butler. 

In celebration of her new release Strength, she is giving away several awesome prizes so be sure to enter below!

About Strength

When college student Rena Collins finds herself nose-to-chest with the campus outcast, she’s stunned. Wallace Blake is everything she’s ever wanted in a man—except he can’t touch her. His uncontrollable strength, a so-called gift from his bloodline, makes every interaction dangerous. And with a secret, supernatural war brewing among his kind, there’s no time to work it out. To keep Wallace in her life, Rena will have to risk a whole lot more than her heart.

Where to Buy Strength

Stength is Available at:

Amazon ~ Kindle
Barnes & Noble ~ Nook

Meet Author Carrie Butler

Carrie daydreamed her way through college—until they thrust a marketing degree into her hands, slapped a summa cum laude seal on the corner, and booted her out into a less-than-stellar job market. Instead of panicking at the prospect of unemployment, she used her Midwestern logic to steer into the skid and point her life in the direction she really wanted to go: writing out those daydreams.

Connect with Carrie Butler

WEBSITE  |  BLOG  |  PUBLISHER  |  TWITTER

  FACEBOOK  |  GOODREADS  |  GOOGLE+  |  LINKEDIN

Interview with Carrie Butler

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

Writing is something I've always enjoyed, but I didn't realize I wanted to pursue it as a career until January of 2011.

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

I wanted to be a secret agent, undercover as an artist. Seriously. LOL

How long does it take you to write a book?

It took me three months to draft Strength, but I was able to give that manuscript my undivided attention. The sequel is proving to be a little more difficult...

What is your work schedule like when you're writing? 

Oh my goodness. I work at the most ridiculous hours. Sometimes, I get a good pace going after midnight, and I keep writing until I crash—which could five or six in the morning.

(Thankfully, the fatigue makes for fewer inhibitions!)

My days are usually dedicated to blogging, freelance projects, marketing, etc. They're not nearly as exciting.

Do you stick with a schedule or just write when you feel like it?

I used to keep a loose schedule, but things are a bit hectic at the moment.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

I love to watch hockey, create digital paintings, and go to the shooting range. :)

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books? 

How easy it is to get wrapped up in a story! Sometimes it's hard for me to come out of the writing zone, especially if there's a sudden interruption. I have that moment of disorientation before I can process the reality around me—almost like I've been woken from a dream.

What do you think makes a good story?

I think a good story is felt by both the author and the reader. They might feel it on different wavelengths, and they might relate it to different experiences, but a good story will touch them both.

What inspired you to write paranormal romances instead of another genre?

I like to think of paranormal romances as "supernaturally-charged love stories". They blend the uncertainty of a budding relationship with the notion of things beyond our explanation. There's just something about them...

I think that's why I struggle so much when I try to write contemporary. I always end up giving someone superpowers!

Did you have any goals for Strength when you wrote it — to get published, or just to finish, etc?

My main goal for Strength was definitely publication. I had already written a few "shelved" stories by then, so I knew I could finish it. The thing was, with this manuscript, I took the time to really learn the craft and the industry. That made all the difference in the world.

What inspired to you write the Mark of Nexus Series?

(This is kind of my boilerplate answer for this question, but it's the best way to describe it.)

Strength—and ultimately, the whole Mark of Nexus series—started as a "what if" scenario. What if a unique, supernatural race lived among us? What if there was more than one? How would the world stay in balance?

I listened to music while I plotted out a few points, and the 2005 Five for Five cover of "All I Know" came on. Oh my goodness. The lyrics—the first few lines about bruising each other—really struck me. 

As I considered them, the figurative meaning morphed into a more literal scenario. How tortured a man with uncontrollable strength must be... falling in love for the first time... unable to touch the woman he loves without hurting her...

That's how the romance element fell into place. ;)

Did you originally plan to have the series Mark of Nexus or did the idea of a series occur after you started writing strength? 

The plot always felt a bit too complex for one book, but I didn't get a clear number until I sat down to write a loose outline.

Do you have a specific number of books in mind for Mark of Nexus or are you planning to write until your _______________? 

I think three should do it, but I'm not absolutely certain. I'd love to do a few novellas that focus on secondary characters, like Cole's story.

If you could tell your fans anything, what would it be?

That I love them. Seriously. They're allowing me to live my dream, and for that, I'll be forever grateful. <3

Strength Tour Giveaway

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Interview with Author Sarah-Ann Smith

Please Welcome

Sarah-Ann Smith, Author of Trang Sen

Your career has been on a high professional level in diplomacy. What led you to decide to write a novel, and particularly a novel about wartime Vietnam?

My Foreign Service assignment during the last two years of the war was in the Indochina section of the State Department. In that position I was deeply aware of the way the war, and its ending, tore apart people’s lives, both American and Vietnamese. And there were many refugees, or émigrés really, in and around Washington, and I got intrigued by what their lives must be like here, after starting over. I started thinking, they would make an interesting story.

Had you been to Vietnam when you started the book?

No, but as soon as travel bans imposed by our government were lifted, around 1988, about thirteen years after the war ended, I did go to Ho Chi Minh city and environs, wandering the streets, keeping a journal and describing places that I thought would be where scenes in the novel might have taken place.

How did you manage to connect places in wartime Saigon with what was there a decade and more later?

Actually, it wasn’t as hard as one might think. Vietnam at that time had not begun to develop economically, so there hadn’t been much physical change, modernizing and so forth. Saigon was like a ghost city full of people, the remnants of American service stations with the American signs, rusted but still hanging; American-style signal lights at the intersections, most of which were no longer working. The highest buildings on the skyline were American-built, so that the place looked much like a mid-1960s Midwestern city, with the older French buildings and small Asian storefronts mixed in.

How long did it take you to write the novel?

I wrote it in fits and starts, beginning back in the mid-1980s. Other things, such as family illness, kept getting in the way. When I finally did have something I thought was worth sending to agents, the response was very discouraging, and I would periodically get stymied. But gradually it took shape, and the final version – before the copy-editing and publishing process took place – was done about four years ago.

Do you speak Vietnamese?

No. I did try to learn such things as names people give their children, forms of address – Miss, Mr., etc. And I do speak Chinese, so Asian-language tonalities and speech patterns weren’t completely unfamiliar to me.

How did you go about writing the novel? Did you do a great deal of research?

I had some background to start with, from my academic studies, which focused on East and Southeast Asia, and from my Foreign Service experience, though I never actually served in Vietnam. When I began working on the book, I started with the story, then tried to be sure it was as historically and culturally accurate as I could make it. That isn’t the way all authors work, it’s just my way. Some writers do it the other way around, doing lots of research, then writing the book.

Did you particularly identify with one or more of the characters, Trang Sen, for instance? Are there others that you dislike?

To a certain extent, particularly as the characters were being developed, I identified with each of them. I don’t think I could create a character that I disliked from the word go. Once the book was in editing stage, I liked some better than others – I’m not going to say which ones.

How would you describe the focus of the book?

I originally intended it as a coming-of-age story about a young woman with conflicting desires and ambitions. And it is a coming-of-age novel, but I’ve been surprised that readers see it as a way of understanding certain things about the Vietnam war that they never understood before. So I’ve come to see that it really is both, and perhaps other things as well.

How accurate is your description of the issues faced by Vietnamese immigrants when they arrived in the U.S.?

In my own personal experience, which is reflected in more objective studies, it was terribly difficult for many of them. Refugees who were highly trained professionals found themselves in menial jobs as the only way to make a living – that’s very humiliating for an educated person. Some committed suicide. Teen-agers were also adrift, and some went terribly astray.

Did you know any couples like the one you describe?

Working in the State Department – and because of the personal stories that went around at the end of the war – I was aware that there were many relationships, and many kinds of relationships, between American men and Vietnamese women. Some of them were quite good and ended in marriage, but many were little better than the kind of liaison between a G.I. and what I refer to in the book as Tea Girls.

Will there be a sequel?

A lot of people have asked me that. I think everyone who reads the book ends up wondering what will happen to Trang Sen in her new life. But given that this book took so long to write, I don’t know that I’d want to undertake that commitment right now.

About Trang Sen

  Set in the Vietnam War era, Sarah Ann Smith's novel "Trang Sen" touches numerous genres—historical novel, coming of age, love story, political analysis—but at heart it is simply a riveting story of fascinating people caught up in the turmoil of their time and place, and told in the spare style of a true master of the language. Trang Sen is "White Lotus," a young Vietnamese girl caught up in the chaos and heartbreak of civil war, international conflict, and the disintegration of her family. At last, in a new life far from her homeland, she finds deep within herself the brave woman she has always longed to be. 

{Blurb from Trang Sen at Amazon.com }

BUY Trang Sen

Trang Sen is Available at

Amazon and Barnes & Noble