As part of Aussie Author Month, we’re running a series of Q&A-type posts featuring authors who write romance fiction or fiction with romantic elements. Each post will feature the same set of questions or prompts. We tried to make them fun and easy for the authors—and we hope you enjoy them, too!

Photo: Book Thingo via Flickr

Our first quickie is with urban fantasy author Tracey O’Hara. Her first book, Night’s Cold Kiss, won the 2010 R*BY Award in the Romantic Elements category. It was also nominated for the Aurealis Award in 2009.

Tracey’s next book, Death’s Sweet Embrace, is the second book in the Dark Brethren series and has just been released in Australia.

Website: traceyohara.com
Social networks: Facebook | Twitter
Genre: Dark urban fantasy
New release: Death’s Sweet Embrace

Where you do your best writing

It depends on my mood. One day I can do my best work parked in front of the television and working on my laptop, and other days I can’t write a word that way. Because I have just moved—I am still working out where my best work is going to happen—I am setting up a new office space.

Favourite thing in your writing space

My computer. Without it I couldn’t write. But if you are talking no essentials it would have to be my R*BY award (sorry if that sounds a bit pretentious, but it looks so pretty).  The next would be my dragons. Though not sure I will be able to have all of that with my new writing space.

Best food and/or beverage to accompany a good read

Ohh—hot chocolate with marshmallows on a wintery read and a glass of Brown Brothers Moscato on a hot day. Yum yum.

One thing you would never do in the name of research

Kill someone. A given really, but since I do a lot of that in my books—I am not about to go out and try it for real. Ohhhh, that has given me a very interesting idea for a book. Drinking blood would have to be right up there, too.

How friends and family would describe you two days before a deadline

A mad screeching harridan who is likely to burst into tears at any given moment with the least provocation. Actually sounds like me most of the time.

One book you’d save in an emergency and three words to describe it

It would have to be my signed copy of the Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Complex, fantastic and o-m-g-I-cannot-believe-he-signed-my-book. (Yes, I know that is cheating.)

Your life in a book—what would the title be? In which genre or category would it be shelved?

The Life and Times of the Fabulous Ms. O and it would be shelved in You-have-to-be-kidding Fantasy.

One book you loved as a child

The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

Describe yourself as the heroine of a romance novel

You are kidding, right? I have never thought of myself in the least way as how I would be as a romance heroine. How about:

Tracey’s myopic eyes squinted towards the setting sun. Soon it would be time. Time for her to park her ample frame in front of the computer screen and hope the magic words would flow well this night. Some may call her tenacious, but she knew it was just sheer stubbornness.

Best advice for surviving the zombie apocalypse

RUN!

Favourite method of procrastination

The internet, including Twitter and Facebook. Hours go by if I am not careful. I have been rationing myself now for about 6 months.

Do you kill fairies?

Hell no. What would be the point of reading the book if I read the back first? I am a computer analyst programmer and therefore a logical thinker. It also makes me very much linear in my thinking—I must start at the beginning and sequentially read till the end. I can never jump ahead. I also write the same way.

DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE (Dark Brethren, Book 2)

HarperVoyager | 9780061783142 (P) | 9780062041654 (E) | Excerpt

After centuries of secret conflict, humans and parahumans have reached an uneasy truce. But unspeakable evil now threatens the tenuous peace.

Teenaged shapeshifters are being slaughtered by a sadistic serial killer who rips their still-beating hearts from their paralyzed bodies. A task force forms to halt the madness, including the vampiric Aeternus Antoinette Petrescu, as well as Kitt Jordan and Raven Matokwe, members of enemy Animalian tribes … and forbidden lovers.

A centuries-old blood feud has divided their shapeshifting peoples, and if their passion is discovered it will doom them both. But past hostilities must be put aside, for the killer they seek is but the first sign of the all-consuming nightmare of The Dark Brethren.

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