Today I am speaking with Shiree McCarver.
Hi Shiree! Welcome to Fallen Angel Reviews! It is so good to have you with us today. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. The readers would love to hear something about Shiree McCarver.

Thank you for the invite, I'm delighted to be here with the Fallen Angel team and their many subscribers.

Shiree, you have a great website with many works penned. I also loved the covers to them. Each story sounds terrific, would you like to share where you derived your ideas for these books?

Thank you again, Linda. My ideas come from everywhere. It could be a dream or a day dream while I'm washing dishes or driving down the road. Usually, with a scene, where I find myself the actor (lol). After that the wheels in my head starts turning. The rest comes when I do a loose outline. Most of the action takes place during the actual writing process I'm take pride in the fact that I am an emotional writer. I allow that to come out in my characters. I don't hold back even when it painful for me to write it.

Shiree, why not tell us what a day is like for you?

Actually my day isn't normal for others but it is for me. I had to get my mother to understand this because she was worried that I didn't sleep because I had insomnia on and off for awhile. I realized why.

I am a night creature (lol) once I stop fighting my nature; I sleep without a problem.

My day consist of waking up at 1:00pm, I go straight to the computer check my emails, answer group questions, and check to see if we have any orders for PCB Originals. I shower, dress, eat, try to walk a mile to two miles, then back to the computer.

PCB Originals is a miniature craft business I have with a very understanding friend. In between thoughts, research, or a difficult scene. I break and make a miniature and let my mind think about nothing. Basically from that point I write on and off until 6:00am. I try to go to sleep by 7:00am and up at 1:00 to start it all over again. Writing is like any other job; I actually work longer hours and harder at writing. But the thing about doing what you love, it makes for a short day.

Is anything else in the works now or some more upcoming ones that you would like to share for the future?

For my Satyr shifting readers that enjoyed Selby and Darius, I have a temporary free read up that continues the story with the secondary characters Zaza and Sylus. Some of my books are published after they have been a free read. My readers know it is an unedited version and once they get the published version, by the time it's released it feels like a new read.

I am fortunate to have a very supportive and loyal fan base.

Otherwise, I am working on the second of four to the African Female Assassin Series. The first was The Lord and the Scorpion, the next will be the The Prince and the Panther. I'm really proud of these books because it's historicals but the female is a black woman and the male of other nationalities.

It's nice to have heroic females that look like me; being adored by hero's that look like the men I have always read about over the years. It may not be the popular choice of writing, but it is my choice and I plan to stick with it.

Which do you prefer a strong heroine, or strong hero?

Honestly my females tend to be strong, but not just because she is naturally strong. I like to give her adversity that makes her who she is. My characters tend to bring out the best in each other. I think they compliment each other. One makes up for what the other lacks until it balances, but my men are sensitive, loving, yet they can be alpha when it comes to protecting his heroine, but never towards the heroine, he know it's not necessary. He can get just as much accomplish by making her think more on her on actions and sticking by whatever he believe in that makes him a man.

I think we make the mistake by believing a man has to show strength to be a man. I think it takes a stronger man to extend kindness and respect during the worse of times.

My heroes are men that will speak his mind and admit he is wrong, only when he really knows he's wrong. But when he knows he's right, he stands by it just as stubbornly as any woman. I let my hero be who he is and I don't know what that is until I am writing.

Personally, I think confidence in a man is sexier then dominance. This man has the ability to make a woman beat up on herself for her actions. Women aren't stupid; we know when we do things to get our own way in a relationship.

Instead of getting angry at her for trying to get her way, my heroes' actions let her know they know what she was doing and the only reason she got her way was because he wanted whatever it was just as much.

But honestly characters got so much going on, they don't have time to have those simplistic I am man, you are woman relationship issues. They got issues that one could not accomplish without the other.

Do your characters stay with you long after the book is finished?

Some more then others, mostly the female characters. I think it's because every female I have written has a lot of me and my emotions and reactions in her. So I can never completely just let her go. When a reader laughs or cries while reading a scene, usually I am too while writing it. Like an actor, you pull on personal loss or pain to make the characters emotion real, otherwise, you cheat the character from being all they can be and the readers from the emotional release they are looking for by reading your work in the first place.

Have you always wanted to be an author?

Actually, from age four singing on broom handles microphones, to a make believe sold out audience on my granny's back porch, I wanted to be an entertainer. I am an only child and spent a lot of time alone. When I was thirteen a neighbor of my mother gave me a box of Harlequins and said here, now you something to read when you get bored or lonely. The thing is I was never bored, or lonely. I had too much of an imagination for that. I loved being sent to my room for being bad; usually I got the switch because they knew I loved my bedroom. I still love my bedroom...lol

So I started reading because being a small town Alabama girl, it allowed me to travel. I learned of an entire new world, and it allowed my dream to become grand for sure. I started writing poetry and songs at age eleven. I was seventeen when I realize I wanted to tell stories about women that looked like me in those situations, because I spent years of reading heroines I could not put myself in her shoes and stay there. The minute the author threw in that tiny waist, flowing golden hair, twinkling blue eyes, and skin as pale as a lily. Little ole me became the spectator instead of the actor. Unfortunately, it has taken me 23 years to finally find publishers that will allow me to write these kind of stories for women who look like me. Sad to say, but true.

What is the best advice that anyone ever gave you?

I never got the support that I needed to become what I am today. I was accused of being a dreamer and in a working class family, that was a waste of time. So, I have always been encouraged to get a 9 to 5 job, get insurance. That is considered success in my family. I have always been the weird one, the emotional one, with issues, accused of "feeling sorry for myself". Which was true, because I wasn't happy living what my family considered a workable hope and dream. I think they do that thinking they are keeping you from being disappointed. But they didn't understand that it's the disappointment you have with yourself for not trying that is killing you inside. A slow horrible death.

The best advice I got was while watching Oprah one day and she had Iyanla Vanzant as a guest and I quote: "I must learn to doubt my doubt and to negate my own negativity. I am the only one who can determine how people see me and remember me."

Then I started living that way and standing by who I am and what I want to be. My family accepted, encouraged, and loves me anyway. I was defeating myself and blaming others because it was easier then facing the facts, I was scared to try and fail at the last dream I have.

What are some of your hobbies besides writing?

You can see some of my miniatures here, along with my dear friend Kay who still keeps the child in me alive with this hobby. My oldest dear friend Dorothea is an entertainer in Europe and she still encourages me to continue my hobby of writing songs and facing the audience for a tune of two to keep me from getting vocally rusty.

I also have a good friend, Olga, that helped me during a dark period, if it hadn't been for her, I may not have been here, to be a writer. I think everything I do is a hobby, even writing, because I write as much as I want to, when I want to, what I want to and I love doing it. So I don't have a job any more...my life is one big Hobby after another...lol

Do you have any bad writing habits?

Oh God yes, I wanted to be a star so if it wasn't music related, I wasn't hearing it. Now I'm paying for it, because grammar is an issue for me and I have to try harder then the average person who probably wanted to always be a journalist and was on the yearbook committee and school newspaper. I have to relearn the basics, because of it I don't put out books, as fast I would like to. But in less then a year I have four almost completed. I did warn my readers because I want them to be the best they can be, I may only produce two a year, especially the historicals, which require so much more brainpower. Transporting people to the past with black female characters that weren't mentioned unless it was in slavery complicity in the history books. Takes my all. That is why I am doing so many contemporaries because when I get into the historical. That is all I will be able to do.

What is your favorite genre to read?

This is probably the shortest answer you will get from me today. (LOL) Historicals and Shifters

I have found that some authors listen to music while they write. I noticed on your website that you do listen to Dorothea Lorene. Is she your main choice for listening pleasure when you are composing?

Dot, is my oldest friend. We are talking pigtails. She lives now, in Europe and is a known international entertainer and I am very proud of her. I listen to her for personal inspiration to not give up on the dream. We both had the same dream and we grew up together. I didn't have the stamina for the music business. I don't care much for the networking. So, I followed my second dream, writing romances.

When I'm working on emotional scenes I have a compiled CD of music that moves me. Instrumentals only, haunting sounds, I can't know the song at all or I am distracted because I start singing. Always the entertainer, lol. Each book has a compiled CD of theme songs. When I write my books there are films in my head and what’s a movie without the dramatics of instrumental backgrounds. When I put in that CD, no matter where I am those characters come alive again. I relive their life in my head.

What do you do when you need to relax?

I sing, I always said I wished life were a musical so you can always tell people have you feel. There is always a song for how I'm feeling at any given moment. Yes, I am the nerd that breaks out in song, like a scene from 'FAME' lol. I do my crafts and reading use to relax me, now I find myself breaking down the author’s styles. So being a writer has somewhat ruin that form of relaxation.

Do you have a website other than http://www.shireemccarver.com/default.html that you would like to share with your readers?

I have www.pcboriginals.com for my craft.

I have poems and an awareness site for the sufferers of Hidradenitis. I've suffered from it since I was 17 and spent my graduation summer, in the hospital instead of summer vacation. It's not contagious, they don't know how it happens in some and not others and there is no cure and often it's misdiagnosed. http://www.geocities.com/shreeree/index.html?1024892088980

If you like to hear me sing some songs I co-wrote you can hear them here. http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?songs=252407&T=4800

Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

How can you ask? I think I told you everything but my blood type. I'm known for my blunt honesty so hopefully no one has been offended by anything I say. At age 41, nearly 42 I no longer feel the need to be pretentious about anything just to please others or fit in. I don't say things I don't mean, so I wouldn't take it back anyway. But I don't deliberately say things just to hurt people either.

For Fun: What is your favorite month? Your desired place to travel? And your favorite song?

Favorite month, any month it stays no hotter then seventy-two degrees, my illness makes heat unbearable, especially high humidity days. Another reason I became a night creature.

Desired place to travel, has always been a castle tour throughout Europe and a ride on the Orient Express. I love history, and I have always found other countries history more vibrant then our own.

Favorite song, that I love to sing and I can't find the instrumental for it. "Prisoner" Theme song from "The Eyes of Laura Mars" song by Barbara Streisand. When I sing that song, the words make me feel so in love and so heartbroken, which explains my entire love life in a nutshell...then I cry...sigh and then I feel better...lol

Thank you so much for sharing time with us today, Shiree. Anyone interested in reading more about Shiree and her amazing books, please visit her website to read more about her exciting works. It has been a pleasure Shiree, and I wish you the best with your writing.

Thank you Linda for allowing me to be long winded and toot my own horn without feeling like pompous idiot...lol. It's been fun, like a form of therapy.

Interviewed by: Linda L