Hi everyone I know that I have been absent lately. Please forgive life has a way of biting you in the butt when you least expect it. But for my return to the wonderful booking and cooking world the fantastic Kiss Me in Paris blog stop.
Authors: Kimberly Kinrade & Dmytry Karpov
Series: Deveuax #1 (standalone)
Publication: June 25, 2013 by Daring Books
Category: New Adult (NA)
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Synopsis:
When the city of love brings two lost souls together, only their darkest secrets can tear them apart.
Winter Deveaux tried love once. It didn't end well. Unable to open herself up to another heartbreak, she hides in her romance novels as she struggles to break out as a real author. She thinks Paris holds the answer to a new start, but when her nightmare follows her across the world, she's forced to face the darkness living like cancer inside her soul. If she doesn't, she might miss her chance to become the kind of writer she's always wanted to be. But more than that, she'll miss out on the greatest love she's ever known.
Cade Savage is heir to the largest ranching family in Texas. Part cowboy, part architect, Cade has his feet forever in two worlds. When he receives an acceptance letter from the school of his dreams, he must decide between family and destiny. But ghosts from his past still haunt him, and circumstances beyond his control may decide his fate.
When Winter and Cade meet, everything they believe about life, love and what it means to be happy is put to the test.
Will the magic of Paris pull these two lost souls together? Or will their darkest secrets tear them apart?
Kiss Me in Paris is a standalone novel in the Kiss Me series. Travel the world with the Deveaux sisters as they find love, and trouble, in all the right places.
Review:
Who hasn't dreamed of that one true love? Add in the back round of Paris and what could go wrong? Cade and Winter learn that when true love turns life on its head the best thing to do is follow the road together.
When I had initially signed up for this book tour I was a little leary I have seen duet authors go both ways and was interested to see how a husband and wife handle it. they did a superb job using parts of their own fantastic love story, and both with a creative passion for writing, they wove a great story together that grabs you by page five and has Paris appearing in your dreams.
This beautiful story garners a 5 star rating from me and b9th authors have my unwavering attention in waiting for further publication.
Author Review:
I had the amazing honor of getting a few questions answered. Take a look they are amazing. :-)
What has inspired your writing?
KK: A lot has inspired my writing, but this book had its own inspiration. The initial inspiration for Kiss Me in Paris came from an illustration of the Eiffel Tower with a couple in silhouettes kissing in front. I came up with the title, Kiss Me in Paris, and the idea nagged at me. I thought it would be fun to have a series, a Kiss Me series, that takes the readers on a tour of the world's most romantic cities. That's when I conceived of the Deveaux sisters—world traveling sisters who find love, and trouble, in all the right places.
I'd been wanting to explore contemporary romance after writing two urban fantasy/paranormal series (The Forbidden Trilogy and the Seduced Saga), and this seemed the perfect place to start. I'd spent a summer studying at the Sorbonne (much like Winter and Cade do—in fact their dorm experiences were loosely based on mine), and I thought it would be fun to go back to Paris for this first book.
When I told my husband, Dmytry Karpov, about the idea, he and I started brainstorming characters, story lines and plots and we wound up writing the book together, which was the most exciting part of this experience. I loved writing a romance with my own Sexy Russian Prince.
DK: I've always been interested in writing a contemporary novel in order to explore themes that most people can relate to, like following your dreams, going against your families wishes and more. When Kimberly told me about her ideas for Kiss Me in Paris, it was the perfect novel for me to explore those themes in.
How do you juggle writing and the outside world (lol) ?
Being married to your co-author has its perks, and its drawbacks. Neither of us like to stop working to do stuff like making meals for us and our children or cleaning the house, but it's necessary. We divide the 'chores' of cleaning, cooking etc between the two of us equally, and we have times set to do certain things. Like before bed, we clean the kitchen and straighten up the house, and on Friday we do a more thorough cleaning of the house. We spent so many years working other jobs (like marketing for other authors) while writing, that we got used to working 24/7, but now that we are full time authors we've set limits on our work schedule. We work while the kids are at school, Monday through Friday, and on weekends and evenings it's family and personal time. It's hard when our muse is so demanding, but it's been wonderful to just enjoy that time with our little girls and each other. It definitely helps us balance everything. And the kids grow up so fast, that we don’t to miss any of it.
Do you ever write a whole story just to scrap it and start again?
KK: Yes. One. My first book, Death by Destiny, is not fit for public consumption. We'll still write it someday, but the entirety of what I've written has been scrapped to rewrite it from the beginning. It was basically my practice book. I spent years and years writing and rewriting and scrapping and rewriting. I learned a lot and grew a lot, but when I read it now, I cringe at spots. Since then, I've learned enough to know if a book or story is right before I start it. No more scrapping
DK: I wrote a book in high school, The Exiled God, that was an epic fantasy. I had over 80k words written, and it grew so complex that I wrote myself into a corner. This was before I learned to outline. I hope we can eventually write some version of my original idea, but the project has been scrapped and would likely have to be rewritten entirely before it's published.
Do you have any real life times that come into play in Kiss Me In Paris?
KK: I used some of my own experiences in Paris to paint a more vivid picture for Cade and Winter, but their stories are their own. However, their lessons are universal, the journey of going after what you want in life, of falling in love, of having to choose between what you want and what others want for you… that's something we can all relate to. Also, the dorm rooms (including having to bring your own toilet paper to the bathrooms) and the party where she has to pee in a hole standing up, those were based on my experiences in Paris! And the French professor was named after my professor, who died of lung cancer many years ago.
DK: Being a writer, I was able to pull a little from my life to develop Winter's character. However, I had to come up with pretty much everything else.
For Kiss Me in Paris you collaborated with your husband and did this project together how did that go?
The journey was an intense one. It was the first contemporary romance either of us had written (since both of us come from fantasy/paranormal writing), and we wanted it to be more than just a love story. We wanted Kiss Me in Paris to be a novel that would evoke deep and varied emotion from its readers, that would make you laugh and cry and fall in love, all the while living vicariously through Cade and Winter as they learn to follow their dreams, heal from the past and open up to each other and to life.
First, we were on the same page when it came to what we wanted from this book. We rarely disagreed about the novels content. When we did, we asked for outside opinion (usually from our editor, Tracy Riva, or our awesome beta readers) and discussed the pros and cons of our different approaches. The approach with the most pros always won out, but we often found creative ways of fulfilling the intent of the other person, even if not in the exact way they'd wanted.
We also learned to comprise. Kimberly really pushed to get the novel finished, while Dmytry really pushed to keep editing. We balanced each other out, and finished a high quality product. It's never good to launch before the book is polished, but also, you have to know when to let it go and move on, otherwise you'll spend your whole life on one book. Together, we created a book that we can both be proud of, even if we did have to delay the launch a few times.
During this, we both acknowledged what the other person brought to the table, and how together we were doing something we couldn't have done on our own, at least not in the same way.
Every writer will have their own strengths, and in a co-writing situation, you need to play to those. In our case, Dmytry is the faster outliner and Kimberly is faster at prose. We also each enjoy those parts of writing more, so that's how we divided our tasks. We'd talk through the book, the characters and the story and make sure we both contributed to the big picture of what happened, then Dmytry would write detailed outlines for each chapter.
He also added a lot of dialogue, as he is very good at writing dialogue.
Kimberly would then flesh out the chapters, add prose, add more dialogue and even scenes and tweak as necessary.
We would then re-read the chapter together, changing and editing and adding and deleting, until we were both satisfied that the chapter was a 10. Once we'd done that level of editing on it, we sent it to the first round of editing, then beta readers, then editing some more. At the last, when we knew the content was exactly what we wanted, we sat together for two days straight and read through every single word of the book OUT LOUD. We then polished and perfected the prose, and sent it once again to our two editors for a final review.
It was an intense process, and there were nights we lost our patience, but it was worth it in the end. By playing to our strengths and using our team well, we created a book we're very proud of.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
KK: That first inspiration when I sit down and begin writing. It's like falling in love for the first time. But also, I love the feeling of writing the last word, though bittersweet. Knowing that I've penned the novel that my soul was meant to write. It's a giddy feeling.
DK: I love outlining and writing the dialogue. Working out the character arcs and plot twists. It's part of the reason I'm exploring screenplay writing, as well.
Who if any are some authors that inspire you?
KK: I have a lot of inspirations, but given the hoopla going on recently about J.K. Rowling writing under a pen name, I'm going to say her. I admire the fact that after her huge success with Harry Potter, she kept writing and trying different genres and styles, even willing to start over with modest sales and a new name to build a new brand. Also, she is philanthropic and so giving of her time and money. Her books are amazing and if I could sit down with any author today for tea, it would be her and/or Neil Gaiman. I clearly have a thing for Brits.
DK: Right now, it would be Mark Lawrence. His dark fantasy, Prince of Thorns, pushed so many boundaries, and I loved it. As a writer, I like to feel free to write whatever I want. Not all critics agree with pushing boundaries, and sometimes I allow that to dull my creativity. I hate that. It's important to write what you love and take risks. Of course, I take in to consideration what my readers enjoy, but for the most part my motto is: if I love it, so will someone else.
LINKS
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18158314-kiss-me-in-paris
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Me-Paris-Series-Volume/dp/193955912X/
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kiss-me-in-paris-kimberly-kinrade/1115863421
Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/Books/kiss-me-in-paris
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/328002
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id667505178
