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 URL:
www.graciecmckeever.com
Contact:
gwiz10@optonline.net
Romantic Times
April 2007
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Romantic Times
November 2006
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ABOUT GRACIE
Gracie C. McKeever
is an author from the Bronx and native New Yorker. Aside
from several side trips along the way she’s lived and worked
her entire life in the Big Apple (most of it two train stops
away from the House that Ruth built….Go Yanks!)
Gracie has been writing since the ripe old age of seven
when two younger brothers were among her earliest, captive
audience for various short story readings and performances.
She only started writing with a serious eye towards
publication, however, in 1994 and sold her first mainstream
short story to a genre print magazine out of Colorado.
Since then her short stories, novellas and poetry have
seen exposure in various lit and art magazines and other
venues – online and in print. Of particular note, heard over
the airwaves on KFJC’s morning show, Dancing In The Fast
Lane With Ann Arbor (Unbedtime Stories) out of Los Altos
Hills, CA. Gracie is also proud to be a member of the
"Worlds' Oldest Active Homeless Paper" Street News family
and has seen numerous articles, poems, and novel excerpts
published within its pages as well as having had a poetry
reading on Pseudo On-line Network (Street News Review).
Gracie is an eclectic and avid reader and has had the
great fortune of being able to incorporate two of her
favorite passions and talents, reading and writing, as a
book reviewer for several online e-zines in the past both as
a regular staff member and a freelancer.
In 2001, Gracie caught the erotic romance and erotica
bug when she sank her teeth into her first erotic romance
e-book for a solicited review and hasn’t looked back since.
An instant affinity for the genre was born and spawned
Gracie’s first erotic romance title a few years later. That
title, Beneath The Surface: The Matchmaker 1, was the first
among several other award-winning and top-selling Siren
titles and series.
INTERVIEW
Q: When did you decide to become a writer?
A: I never really made a conscious decision to be a writer. I’ve
just always written and assumed it would always be something I
would do and something that would always be a part of my life. I
decided to write for publication some time in the early 1990’s
when I began submitting my work. I had my first pieces (a short
story and a novel excerpt) accepted in a genre magazine and a
local newspaper, respectively around 1994. Several fiction and
poetry writing contest wins, places and shows followed along
with publication of some poetry and short stories in several
small magazines before I eventually broke into e-publishing with
my first novel, a New Age paranormal urban romance.
Q: Did you choose your genre or did your genre choose you?
A: Actually, it was a little of both. I write romance because
I’ve always enjoyed reading stories with a happily ever after. I
inject paranormal elements because I’ve always enjoyed books and
TV shows with a supernatural twist and/or elements just off the
beaten path. It was a natural progression from reading and
watching these types of stories to wanting to write them.
Q: Tell us about Beneath The Surface.
A: Beneath the Surface is the first book in my The Matchmaker
series and my first book published by Siren Publishing. It is an
erotic romance in the typical boy-meets-girl vein except for the
elevated sensuality level and some paranormal twists and
modern-day, controversial hot-button issues like suicide and
same-sex relationships added for spice and realism. EJ and
Tabitha (the hero and heroine) each come to the story with
emotional baggage, EJ’s being his inherited psychic abilities
and the loss of a past lover by her own hand. Tabitha has a
bipolar, chemically-dependent mother and a father who left her
to the foster system when she was eight, so she’s dealing with
some abandonment issues of her own. Both find something in one
another that the other needs, and coming to terms with their own
internal conflicts and past relationships makes things
difficult. If not for EJ’s persistence and the guiding hand of
his matchmaking, psychic older sister, he and Tabitha would
never work.
Q: Where did you get the idea for In Plain Sight?
A: Several elements were at work that brought the premise for In
Plain Sight to fruition, one of the more important ones being my
interest in the paranormal, specifically as it relates to the
afterlife and the possibility of reincarnation. Reincarnation
presents a perfect opportunity for my characters to complete
business that they were not able to complete during their lives.
Also, I love dealing with family relationships—the dynamics of
siblings, but especially the dynamics between identical twins
has always fascinated me.
Q: Was the story inspired by any real-life experiences and/or
your own personal beliefs?
Q: I've never had any experience with the afterlife or
reincarnation personally, but I'd like to believe that there is
that possibility and that this existence here and now is not all
there is to our lives. Also, my favorite personal themes to
write about are those dealing with healing and redemption—two of
the major themes that run through In Plain Sight.
Q: In Between Darkness and Daylight, are episodes of stalking
and vengeance such as the one Zane experiences common for
individuals in his profession?
A: I don't believe so. For the purposes of telling a dramatic,
larger-than-life story in Between Darkness And Daylight, I took
the every day threat of a threatening phone call and a
dissatisfied customer to the extreme. Zane's experiences were
extreme, but there's no denying what a disgruntled but, more
importantly, obsessed and mentally unstable client or family
member can do if he/she feels they have been slighted and
wronged by "the system."
Q: In Terms of Surrender you deal with the Dominant/submissive
relationship between a White Dominant man and his submissive, an
African American woman. Not many writers seem to want to tackle
this subject. As an African American woman, how did you approach
this controversial pairing and/or did you pull from any personal
experience to portray Nick and Slany’s relationship?
A: First off, I enjoy BDSM-themed romances, both reading them
and writing them. I also enjoy interracial romances. Writing
Terms of Surrender was a challenge but also a natural step in my
writing career, one I enthusiastically took and without
reservation. And no I wasn’t “writing what I know” or pulling
from any personal experience (never been in an interracial
relationship nor a BDSM relationship). As far as the interracial
issue is concerned, I didn’t focus on it as much as I focused on
the individual characters and their personal demons and issues
while they tried to reconcile their feelings for each other and
deal with the D/s dynamic between them, and the much more
pressing and essential issue of them trying to stay alive while
being stalked by a serial killer. Though not a moot point, the
racial issue took a back seat to the demands of the D/s and
suspense conflicts.
Q: As a woman writing m/m romance, how do you get inside two
male characters falling in love and experiencing a sexual
relationship? Do you treat them the same as you would a f/m
relationship? Is there a difference in your mind?
A: I think love is love, no matter how or by whom it is
expressed or experienced. Males and females definitely have
different mindsets and approaches to life and love, but in the
end I think we all want and need the same things out of a
relationship—someone we can trust and who trusts us, someone
with whom we can share our most intimate secretes, hopes,
passions and dreams, someone to make us feel safe and secure,
and someone to hold us and who we can hold.
Q: Do you have any social issues that you feel strongly about
and want to share?
A: I guess I'd have to say that I feel strongly about safe sex
and I'm pro-choice. As an author who writes contemporary erotic
romance, you can imagine these are two issues that come up quite
frequently in my writing. I try not to get on a soapbox, preach
or let my views overshadow the story or characters though. Since
I write m/m romance too, I’m sure you can imagine, I'm also in
favor of same-sex marriage.
Q: Do you find it difficult at times to write love/sex scenes?
A: Over the years, and once I realized it was okay to keep the
bedroom door open and show my characters together, I’ve grown to
love writing love/sex scenes. It does get difficult sometimes
being creative and not repeating the same old synonyms for
putting slot A into slot B, but I enjoy the challenge of trying
to be inventive and keep the sex scenes hot and fresh between my
heroines and heroes, or in the case of my m/m stories my heroes
and heroes.
Q: What does the word romance mean to you?
A: Romance to me means dedication and hard-work. It's not all
roses and romantic dinners and horse-drawn carriage rides. It's
work; wanting to be around for the long haul with the person you
love and care about; willing to sacrifice for that person and
build a life together.
Q: If you could have one hot guy for a day to do your bidding
who would it be and what will he be doing?
A: One of my own heroes/guys or someone else like say…an actor?
Only one? Okay, if it’s one of my heroes, I’d have to go with
E.J. Vega from Beneath the Surface. And as to what I would have
him doing? Hmmm, sexual slave sounds like a nice duty for him.
I’d love to do to him what Tabitha did a couple of times—tie him
up and have my way with him until he begs for mercy. If it’s an
actor, I’d have to go with one of my recent flavors of the
month, Karl Urban for all the same duties as E.J. Mmm-mmm…yummy.
Sexual slave, yep, that’s the ticket.
Q: Who are some of your favorite authors? Do you find it hard to
find time for reading in between writing?
A: I’ll try to narrow this list down so that it’s not going on
for days (no particular order): Octavia E. Butler is my mainstay.
Then there’s Shannon McKenna, Michael Barnette, Lara Santiago,
Morgan Ashbury, Tonya Ramagos, J.R. Ward, Lara Adrian, Nalini
Singh, Sherilynn Kenyon, Tina Wainscott, Karen E.
Quinones-Miller, Khaled Hosseini, Erin McCarthy, Laura Baumbach,
Ally Blue, Joey W. Hill, Lucy Monroe, Jill Shalvis, Joe Haldeman...
As to finding the time to read in between writing, it’s
definitely a balancing act, but I have to feed the muse in order
for her to work for me. I can’t not read. One way or another, I
get it in, if it’s only 20 pages a night on the exercise bike, a
few more while taking a bath, or 20 more on the train/commute to
work—I feed (now I sound like one of my succubus characters,
LOL).
Q: Do you believe the pen is mightier than the sword? Why?
A: Yes, I believe the pen is mightier then the sword because when
all is said and done, after men have died and blood has been
spilled, words live on to incite and inspire future generations
and "fight" another day.
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