NM
: Tell us about your latest title, Sin's Iniquity.SH : Sin's Iniquity is about Sinclaire who (of course) falls in love with Christopher, against her mother's wishes and her own better judgment. Albeit Sin's a grown woman, she yearns to have her ungrateful evil mother respect her as a daughter, which has never happened in her entire life. On top of that, Sin's trying hard to fight the freak in her, and being with the gorgeous Christopher is not helping. Eventually their past comes into play and if they don't stop seeing each other one of them will end up dead.
NM : What is a live story, and how does this concept help put you in direct contact with your readers?
SH : A live story is a blog that the author (me) post a chapter on every day! The story will actually come straight from my head to the paper at least an hour or two before the post. I don't work on the story before hand except in my head where I flesh out the characters, scenes and dialogue (I talk to myself a lot). I (the writer) knows what's happening about the same time time (or only a couple of hours earlier) than the reader. It's especially difficult to do with romance suspense (which I am) because I must drop the red herrings early and I can't go back and redo scenes or change things around on the reader or add new story lines. (A couple of times I did change up on sub-characters names, but the readers jumped on that real fast). What I put on paper the first time is what the reader will know the entire story. How do I do this off the top of my head? I'm still trying to figure that weirdness out about me, but obviously I'm doing something right since I get about 500 to 1500 hits on a daily basis when I post. (Love Scenes usually get double that amount because I get revisits.) As a writer, I get a high from hearing directly from my readers as I post the story. (And they are very honest about my writing). Plus, this is a forced way for me to keep the story good.
NM : How long have you been writing? What are the stumbling blocks on your path?
SH : I've been writing since I decided to become a novelist at twelve. My brother use to charge people to come sit on my porch and I'd tell a story with a cliffhanger at the end to get them to come the next day. The real stumbling block I've had was life. A lot of partying in my college years, a lot of relationships I didn't need to involve myself in and a lot of trouble I should have kept my legs closed on, LOL.
NM : How would you define the pinnacle of your literary career, and do you feel you've achieved it yet?
SH : The pinnacle will always be something bigger than where I am. When I can stand in front of the Academy Awards and tell millions of people that I'm glad my mother knew I was a writer even before I did would be the best! But I know immediately after walking off stage, I will then go for a Nobel Prize. A goal I know that would be closer to reaching is to have a bestseller in a year or two.
NM : You are a member of several online writing groups. Are they helpful when you are working on a story?
SH : Quite helpful because they are often posting articles about writing and some have come joined me on the blog when I'm writing. They'll give me tips offline and let me know if they enjoyed themselves. I value other writers' opinions of my literary work very much and I enjoy criticism.
NM : Before you put out a book do you have a "critique" team that will give you honest feedback on the story?
SH : That's where my live blog comes into play. The readers that join from the beginning to end give me great honest feedback and then I have five offline readers that get the complete book and give me the highs and lows of the book and where I need to improve before publishing it to paperback. Once I had a scene where the characters spoke in Spanish and I just put it in English. A reader came back and translated the entire scene's dialogue in Spanish just out the kindness of her heart for me. I was so grateful for her help.
NM
: What authors really inspire you?SH : When there's a lull in my creativity, I honestly pick up who I think is the queen of Romance novels Jane Austen. I know that sounds strange coming from an African-American writer, but I was raised by the classics and before I even read Richard Wright, my mother made us read Shakespeare and Tolkein. I'm inspired by everything though.
NM : If you could give a word of advice to anyone considering becoming a writer, what would you say?
SH : Read about your craft, read everything you can get your hands on, read, read read! As writers we forget that it is so important to do this in order to fuel our own creativity.
NM : How can our readers find out more about you and your amazing work?
SH : By going to my website at http://sylviahubbard.com and they can go to my story blog at http://sylviahubbard.blogspot.com and subscribing to receive updates even to their phone!