My guest today is one of my favourite writers in this multifaceted genre and also, coincidentally, one of my favourite people š
Chris Quinton is here today to tell us about her book Love in Three Moves andĀ to answer some questions about her writing process.
Welcome Chris.
Can you tell me a little about yourself? For instance, do you have to have a day job as well as being a writer?
I don’t have a day job, which should give me plenty of time to write. Of course, it doesn’t work out that way ā I have back problems which mean I can’t sit at a keyboard for long. I’m also a sloooow writer, which doesn’t help.
When you arenāt writing, is there any other creative activity you enjoy? Have you ever written about it?
I like to quilt, and to knit, though the latter is only an ongoing supply of fingerless mitts [totally idiot-proof to make]. Back when I was more mobile, I was a 15th century re-enactor, which I loved. I got to spin, embroider, and dance. I have a few ideas to use a re-enacting scenario, but they are too vague to be even a plot bunny for now.
What are you reading? Can you recommend something that you wished you’d written yourself?
Oh, Gods, the list of wish-I’d-written-it books is far too long! Let’s go with anything by CJ Cherryh for SFR and Fantasy, Lindsey Davis for Historical, Dorothy L Sayers for Mystery. On the reading front, I’m rereading CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series for the umpteenth time. IMO she is right at the top of the list of the best SF writers of all time.
In that crucial inspiration stage of a new story which comes first? Plot, situation or character?
Situation and characters first, then the plot grows organically. But with pruning and training as required. I often have to backtrack and add in elements that occur to me as I’m going along ā the definitive description of a Pantsterā¦
Do your characters arrive fully fledged and ready to fly or do they develop as you work with them? Do you have a crisp mental picture of them or are they more a thought and a feeling than an image?
I usually have a pretty clear image of them and what makes them tick. Odd quirks might appear as the story grows.
What are you working on at the moment? Can you discuss it or do you prefer to keep it a secret until it’s finished.
At the moment I’m working on Interface, an SF story set in a distant part of the galaxy…
Could we please have an excerpt of something?
Here’s a short piece from Love In Three Moves, three short stories charting the ups and downs in a love affairā¦ This is from the first one, It Takes Two:
“It’s me,” David Grainger called as he opened the front door and walked into the large studio apartment. “Are you back? Babs has been nagging me again. Did you get the Stravinsky commis – ?” He stopped in his tracks. Yes, Ben was back from Geneva. The room looked like Selfridges at the end of a sale day. Cushions, bedcovers, pillows and odd items of clothing lay scattered over floor and furniture, and the warm air was heavy with an exotic, expensive perfume. But over all hung the scent of sex.
Who was it this time? David wondered, irritated. Roger, Melanie, or both? Not that he gave a damn who Ben took to his bed. No, he was peeved because he’d heard nothing from the man for several days. Phone calls and texts had all been ignored, and Barbara wasn’t the only one pissed off about it. Important matters hung on the success of Ben’s trip to Switzerland. Sometimes the man was an irresponsible pain in David’s arse.
Fastidious as a cat, he picked his way across the room, nose wrinkling as the assorted aromas assaulted his nostrils, and David thanked whichever gods looked after dissolute idiots that the used condoms had ended up in the waste bin and not on the floor.
Ben, the other half of Grainger & Tremayne Antiques, enjoyed a varied love life. Ten years of friendship, five of which included a highly successful working partnership, meant they’d shared keys long ago and had free range of each other’s homes in the same Canary Wharf up-market apartment block. It wouldn’t be the first time David had strolled in at the wrong moment. He was bisexual himself, but his own exploits in the relationship arena were a lot less adventurous. Or numerous.
“Ben? Are you still alive?”
###
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XTBV4KB
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/713621
Kobo https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/love-in-three-moves
BLURB
Love in Three Moves – Three short stories chart a passionate love affair: yet true love rarely runs smoothly.
It Takes Two
David Grainger and Ben Tremayne are perfect partners in business and friendship ā and finally they give in to the temptation of taking that further. Their passionate love has been brewing for a long time, and everything about their new affair is wonderful – until it isn’t.
Breaking Point
Ben hasnāt seen his ex-lover David, for a year. He lives alone with his remorse for breaking up their affair, overwhelmed by his fear of commitment rather than his love for David. When, out of the blue, David asks him for a favour, Ben grudgingly agrees. The simple errand takes a complicated turn.
Clue Game
Once instrumental in reuniting Ben and David, their friend Barbara Curtis now needs the coupleās help with her own love-life. Despite being in Paris on their pre-honeymoon, Ben and David are caught up in the ensuing puzzle, involving a Paris art gallery, the works of Shakespeare, a devious crossword, a pair of precious earrings ā and satisfaction for Barbaraās heart.
Chris Quinton – a Bio
Chris started creating stories not long after she mastered joined-up writing, somewhat to the bemusement of her parents and her English teachers. But she received plenty of encouragement. Her dad gave her an already old Everest typewriter when she was ten, and it was probably the best gift she’d ever received ā until the inventions of the home-computer and the worldwide web.
Chris’s reading and writing interests range from historical, mystery, and paranormal, to science-fiction and fantasy, writing mostly in the Gay genre. She also writes the occasional mainstream novel in the name of Chris Power. She refuses to be pigeon-holed and intends to uphold the long and honourable tradition of the Eccentric Brit to the best of her ability. In her spare time [hah!] she reads, or listens to audio books while quilting or knitting. Over the years she has been a stable lad [briefly] in a local racing stable and stud, a part-time and unpaid amateur archaeologist, a civilian administrator at her local police station, and a 15th century re-enactor.
She lives in a small and ancient city not far from Stonehenge in the south-west of the United Kingdom, and shares her usually chaotic home with her extended family, three dogs, a Frilled Dragon [lizard], sundry goldfish and tropicals.
Her blog/website is: http://chrisquinton.com
Her Facebook is https://www.facebook.com/chris.quinton.1
My guest today is an author that I first met at this years UK Meet, and I most most intrigued to hear about his first release, The Necessary Deaths, which came out on the first of November and which I, for one, am gagging to read. 
Iām re-reading Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave. Iād read it a few years ago, and when I saw theyād made a film of the book, I worried theyād spoil it. Not at all. If you see the film, or read the book, be ready to weep buckets!
Villains have got to be credible, so they need reasons for being bad. No one is all good, or all bad. 
My guest today goes under the name of Ruff Bear in most places though, as so many of us do, he has another name for those boring administrative things that aren’t nearly as much fun as being a creator of truth and beauty. Sadly Facebook doesn’t have much truck with truth and beauty and insists on the workaday name so I’ve invited Bear to my blog so he can talk about the real him for a while. 
Eventually I am going to get around to erotica in the D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller sense. I canāt see myself writing horror, crime, or anything with a lot of blood and violence. I admire 19th century horror novels like Frankenstein and Dracula, but the horror isnāt the creatures but how people reacted to them.
Put together your ideal team of men/women ā drawing from all and any walks of life, fictional or non-fictional ā who you would want to come to your rescue if menaced by muggers/alligators/fundamentalists?
One day the boyās mother instructed him to make sure he said goodbye to his friends after they were done playing in the fields. Octavian couldnāt explain why he was leaving, only that his mother said they were. It wasnāt too unusual for a family to move from a community since opportunities came and went. Still, so far in their young lives, Octavianās friends had only seen off one other, a girl who left for the interior when her mother was needed at a family cattle ranch when her aunt could no longer manage the place alone. When he said his farewells, the boy with long, bright auburn locks did not know it would be more than two decades before he saw another person less than seventeen years old.
Bear was raised in the Baltimore-Washington area. He has lived in the Albany, NY, area for 20 years. He has been writing since the age of 13 and had his first work, a poem, published at 17. Bear has worked 30 years in higher education as a professor of political science and a student success specialist. He has lived overseas in China, Hong Kong, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
My guest today is a young man, the progress of whose writing career I have been watching with great delight. I have interviewed him before and am very pleased to be given the chance to catch up with him.
The Werecat series: The Rearing, The Glaring, and The Fugitive
My guest today is Liam Livings, writer, baker extraordinaire, and fellow organiser of the annual UK Meet conference for lovers of LGBTTQ fiction, who has just released a touching romance called And Then That Happened with Love Lane Books.
My guest today is D P Denman, self confessed coffee addict and hockey fan who lives in one of the few places in the world greener and damper than Wales. 
The Naked Truth
My guest today is John Goode. Now resident in Texas, he was once in the Navy, but currently spends a lot of his time writing. He has been a professional author for about a year and is best known for his beloved stories about the students and staff of Foster High and his Lords of Arcadia series.
Patrick: Ā Well, it depends. I spent twenty years getting to know Rokey and Flaskamper before I even started to outline the plot of 
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 
Numen’s Trust
Elin Gregory 