Today is your LAST day to enter my STOLEN HEAT Release Contest! I’ll be taking entries up through 11:59 PST tonight! Don’t miss out!

Oh, and I have good tidings of romantic joy! I have a holiday anthology coming out September 29th this year. USA Today Bestseller Jennifer Ashley, Alissa Johnson and I have teamed up to bring readers A CHRISTMAS BALL. The characters in all our stories will be attending the same grand event (even though a few of mine do not have invitations!). But YOU are definitely on the guest list. Please visit www.emilybryan.com to try an excerpt.

3) What’s the best compliment you ever got on your writing or book(s)?
“You kept me up all night.” is hand’s down the nicest thing a reader has ever told me. The best thing I’ve ever heard from another writer was, “You make me forget I’m a writer, too.”

4) What’s your writing schedule like?
I’m blessed to be able to write full-time now. I fiddle with my blog and emails till about 9 AM, then I turn on my writing music and get to work. I like to pick an instrumental movie soundtrack to write my stories to because there are no lyrics to distract me and a soundtrack covers a wide range of emotions. Plus when revisions come back, the music will put me right back into the world of my story. It’s like an autonomic response.

I break at noon for lunch and watch something on HG TV (I’m fascinated by people doing clever things with their interior design, but am quite satisfied with my white walls, thank you.) Then I head back to the world of my story. I aim for 10 pages a day. When I hit a wall, I spend 30 minutes on the treadmill, walk the dogs, or (as a last resort) do housework till the scene becomes clear in my mind. When my DH comes home from work, I’m home from work, too.

When I first started writing, I had a 40 hour a week day job as a banker. My DH says I enslaved people to debt by day and lust by night! Back then my page goal was 2 a day during the week. I’d jot down a couple paragraphs while I waited for my teammate to open the bank with me in the morning. I’d think about the scene I was working on if I got a minute during the day and after supper, I’d park myself in front of the computer and I couldn’t get up until I finished the 2 pages. On Saturday, my DH would clean and do laundry so I could write 10 pages, and on Sunday, I did 5. In this manner, I finished a 400 page manuscript every 4 months. It’s grueling, but totally doable.

5) If you could be one character from any book you’re read or written who would it be and why?
My goodness, I can’t limit it to just one. I’m like Ben Affleck in Shakespeare in Love when he bursts back into the theatre with a flourish of his cape. “Silence, you dog!” he says. “I am Hieronimo. I am Tamburlaine. I am Faustus. I am Barabbas, the Jew of Malta. Oh, yes Master Will, I am Henry the Sixth. What is the play and what is my part?”

I am every character I’ve ever written or read. We read to try on other people’s lives, to experience their triumphs and failures. Sorry, Elisabeth. I could never pick just one.

Thanks so much for having me here today. I’d like to offer a copy of VEXING THE VISCOUNT to someone who leaves a comment or question for me. Let me kick off the discussion by asking your readers a question.

Do you prefer alpha heroes or beta heroes?