📚 IN DEPTH✏
AUTHOR OF INSPIRATIONAL
ROMANCE & SUSPENSE
💘KATIE METTNER
Will you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I started out life as the middle child and lived with my parents, brother and sister in a little house in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Growing up I loved going to the library with my dad and reading every Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew book I could get my hands on. At 13, I broke my leg skiing and that leg never really recovered from the injury. After many surgeries I was back to working as a baker and cake decorator. Eventually I moved north and worked as a cook until I met my soul mate, Dwayne, on Thanksgiving 1999. In fact, my birthday is June 14 and his is June 15! We were married in April 2000 and we had our first child, Emily, in February 2001. Soon after Edward and Elias followed and suddenly I was a stay at home mom to three kids, while my husband taught fifth grade. Eventually I got my degree in medical transcription and worked as a transcriptionist for a dozen years. While being a stay-at-home mom and a transcriptionist I started writing my first book, Sugar’s Dance.
When and why did you begin writing?
I started writing very early in life and would often write short stories just for the fun of it when I was bored in the summer. I didn’t write as much after graduation as I was busy with work and starting a family. In 2011, I wasn’t able to walk on my leg anymore and the doctors suggested we amputate my left leg below the knee. I agreed and after the surgery, I finally found time to finish the book that had been building in me for years, which was Sugar’s Dance.
What inspired you to write your first book?
When I sat down to write Sugar’s Dance I had toyed with the character, Sugar DuBois, for many years in my mind. I had most of her story already stored in my heart, so writing it down on paper was a way to pass the time after the amputation, and a way to heal from it.
How much of the book is realistic?
In my Sugar Series and Northern Lights Series, everything is 100% realistic as far as the region and the cities they occur in. The medical conditions the characters have are also very realistic and accurate. The Snowberry Series is 100% fictional, as it’s a town I created in Southern Minnesota, but again the medical conditions or events are very real. Magnificent Agony is another fictional town in Wisconsin, but in Calling Kupid you’re in the islands, visiting Honolulu and Maui. I aim to be as accurate as possible in describing the locations; however, the resorts they work in on the islands are fictional.
What books have most influenced your life most?
I love a good mystery, and pretty much read every Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Boxcar Children when I was little. Then I moved on to Mary Higgins Clark, Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich style books. I’m an equal opportunity book reader, but always loved Harlequin Romance Suspense books. They were my guilty pleasure so to say, so I’m sure that is why I like to write romantic suspense now.
What are your current projects?
The second book in the Kupid’s Cove series is in the middle of edits as we speak. It’s titled “Me & Mr. I.T.” Eliana Monroe is the marketing director for Kupid Enterprises, owned by Gideon Armstrong from Calling Kupid. Maltrand Kekoa, or Mr. I.T. as his coworkers call him, is the IT guy for Kupid Enterprises. Ellie crushes on Mr. I.T. so hard, but avoids him at every turn because she’s so technologically challenged she’s embarrassed. When an assignment at work throws them together, Ellie has to face up to her crush, all while trying to solve the mystery of who is stealing from Kupid Enterprises. Me and Mr. I.T. will release August 2, 2016.
I also just released a new book a week ago, White Sheets & Rosy Cheeks. This story is a fun contemporary romance about a ghost who has to engineer a love of a lifetime, from beyond the grave. Upon his death he leaves his house, and everything in it (including him), to his nephew Eli Sheets. Eli and his daughter Molly leave their home in Michigan to make a new life in Bearsfield, Wisconsin. When they meet their neighbor, Diana Forrester, they both fall in love with her. Eli and Diana’s journey to forever is punctuated by a meddling ghost, a tornado, and a little girl named Molly. What they don’t know is that “Ghostie Dan” is the one pulling the strings to bring them together. After all, he can’t leave this earth until he’s made right all the things that went wrong while he was alive.
Tell us a little bit more about Calling Kupid. How did that book come about?
Calling Kupid was actually going to be the 8th book in the Snowberry Series, until I started writing it that is. As the story took off, and drew Gideon and Kate back to Hawaii, I saw an opportunity for a new series, and the Kupid’s Cove series was born. Here is an excerpt from Calling Kupid:
He pulled me into his arms and pointed towards the water. “Have you ever gone swimming in the dark?”
“In Hawaii?”
He winked. “We are in Honolulu.”
“Hmm, then the answer would be no.”
He took the sandals from my hand and tossed them to the sand, then kicked off his boating shoes and stepped out of his pants. I watched in fascination as his long legs slid from the material to reveal Speedos underneath. I tried to avert my eyes, but his package was blatantly obvious in the small garment.
I reached up and unbuttoned his silk shirt, one button at a time, painfully slowly. Not because I was so drunk I couldn’t make the buttons work, but because I was enjoying the sweet torture I could see in his eyes.
When the last button let the material fall open, I smoothed my hands against his muscled chest and pushed the garment down his shoulders. “Mmmm,” I hummed.
He captured my hands against his pecs. “Do you like what you see?”
“I love a man with no chest hair. It’s so….sexy.”
I tried to shake my head and get myself under control, but the alcohol had long since disarmed my common sense.
He brought his hands up into my hair and loosened the bun that held the hazel tresses in place. “And I love a woman with long hair I can tangle my fingers in.”
He did just that, wrapping my hair into his fists and gently tugging me towards him until our mouths were inches apart. He walked backwards into the surf and I had no choice but to follow. In what seemed like the blink of an eye my shorts were covered and the water hovered at the base of my breasts.
“What do you think about night swimming so far?” he asked.
“Oh, shut up and kiss me,” I moaned.
He didn’t hesitate, just crushed his lips to mine with the practiced precision of a modern day gigolo. I brought my hands up to his face and rubbed the laugh lines by his eyes, dripping water onto his glasses. He leaned back without ending the kiss and I had to grab him around the neck to keep from floating away from him. He took full advantage of my lips opening out of surprise and guided his tongue between them. I moaned when he traced the roof of my mouth. It was a long, low, I’m in need, kind of moan and I felt him go hard against my thigh.
The water lapped around us and he pulled back a hairsbreadth to speak. “Have you ever had sex on the beach?”
I shifted on his lap, causing a low groan to come from his lips. “No, the sand gets in places it shouldn’t. Besides, I’ve never actually had sex,” I giggled.
“You’re a virgin?” he ground out, his hand stilling on my thigh.
“Yes, is that bad?” I asked while rubbing his now hard trouser snake.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned softly. “No, you just don’t strike me as a virgin.”
“I might be a virgin, but I’m not innocent.” I slid my hand into his Speedo to prove my point.
“Oh, sweet mother of Mary, no you aren’t.” He was almost holding his breath as he spoke. He lifted one arm from the water to point towards a grass style hut in the distance. It sat regally on tall stilts, daring the ocean to mess with it. There was a long set of glistening wooden stairs that led to the promises hidden beyond. Through the gauzy curtains, I could see a single light shining as it beckoned me toward it.
“I think that still qualifies as sex on the beach,” I breathed out as his head moved down to my chest, so his lips could kiss a pattern towards my hidden promises.
“It’s my private chalet. There’s just enough room for a king-sized bed, a whirlpool tub, and a fantastic view.”
His lips stopped at the V of my cleavage and his tongue slipped down between them making it clear just what the view would be.
How did your interest in writing originate?
That question is simple! For me it was holding a book in my hand in the library and loving how it felt and how the words on the page went together to form a story. How the cover caught your attention and your eyes were glued to the title and author’s name on the front. I remember thinking when I finished the first Boxcar Children book I said, “One day my name is going to be on one of these books.”
Who designs your covers?
I designed the covers for the Sugar Series, the Snowberry Series, and the Kupid’s Cove Series. Carrie Butler of Forward Authority designed the four books in the Northern Lights Series, Magnificent Agony, After Summer Ends, and White Sheets & Rosy Cheeks.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
My advice to new writers is write every day. Even if all you get to write is one paragraph, write one every day. Eventually those paragraphs add up and you have a book. If you don’t find those few minutes a day to write you’ll always ‘do it tomorrow,’ until it’s too late and you no longer have tomorrow.
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ABOUT KATIE:
Katie Mettner writes inspirational romance from a little house in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. She’s the author of the four-part epic family saga – The Sugar Series, The Northern Lights Series and the Snowberry Holiday Series. All three series are set in Minnesota and are a mix of new adult and romantic suspense.
Katie lives with her soul mate, whom she met online at Thanksgiving and married the following April. Together they share their lives with their three children and two leopard geckos. After suffering an especially bad spill on the bunny hill in 1989, Katie became an amputee in 2011. It was while she was recovering that she found time to pen her first novel, Sugar’s Dance. With the release of Sugar’s story, Katie discovered the unfilled need for disabled heroes and heroines. Her stories are about empowering people with special circumstances to find the one person who will love them because of their abilities, not their inabilities.
Katie has a slight addiction to Twitter and blogging, with a lessening aversion to Pinterest now that she quit trying to make the things she pinned.
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WANT TO CONNECT WITH KATIE??
Website & Blog : Katie Mettner Author
Facebook: Katie Mettner Author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatieMettner
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5443295.Katie_Mettner
Pinterest: Sugar’s Ballroom
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The first time I talked to Katie was when we followed each other on twitter. Boy-wasn’t I surprised to discover that the northwoods town in Wisconsin where she lived was the same town our family had vacationed in since the early 1900’s (no this isn’t a mistake- my great-grandparents were the first.) And when Katie wrote a lovely review for my Two Hearts Surrendered, I was even MORE surprised to learn she was an amputee. I applaud her for not letting her disability curb her enthusiasm for living her life!! tf