Today I have a fun interview with Kate Lutter, author of Wild Point Island.

Charlee: Welcome the Smart Girls blog and thanks for agreeing to be interviewed! Let’s start with your new paranormal romance, Wild Point Island. Readers can find out more and read an excerpt at katelutter.com. If you had to pick five words to describe the book, which five would you choose?

Kate:  Oooh.  That’s tough.  I’ll go with:  Page-turner . . . gothic . . . magical . . . romantic . . . provocative.

Charlee: I know Wild Point Island was, at least in part, inspired by the first season of True Blood. Have you read the books that inspired the TV series? If you have, how do you feel about the differences in the two?

Kate:  I read the first two books only.  And it’s weird because usually I like the books more than the movie or the show or the mini-series.  In the case of True Blood, the series appealed to me more because it was darker than the books.  I also loved the doomed romance between Sookie and Bill and that was what really propelled me to write Wild Point Island—putting two people together who were seemingly destined to be together but then creating other forces to keep them apart.

Charlee: I noticed on your website that you grow herbs in your garden. I’m totally jealous because I had to give up my herb garden years ago. What growing well for you right now? Do you use your herbs for cooking or other things?

Kate:  Charlee, you’re making me reveal all my horrible little secrets.  Up to this year I had this fabulous herb garden—basil, oregano, thyme, sage and catnip (for my cats) as well as lavender-just love the smell and the look of it and spearmint, which is a hog of a spice and completely overtook my garden until I yanked most of it out, but this year was the first year I let my garden grow a bit wild because of the writing.  So I feel incredibly guilty.  I do have some smaller pots on a windowsill with some herbs that I’m growing until I can get my life back in order!

Charlee:  I also saw that you love to travel. Fun! In Wild Point Island, many of your characters have been trapped on an island for hundreds of years.  As a natural wanderer, did you have any trouble relating to your characters circumstance?

Kate:  That’s a great question.  Actually, my own love of travel played a big part in this story.  My hero Simon, who’s been trapped on Wild Point Island for 425 years, can’t accept that the heroine may have to give up her freedom to be with him.  Also, the idea of people or revenants being trapped on an island actually becomes a moral dilemma in the book for my heroine.  Should she use her magic elixir—which she originally intended as a bargaining tool to free her father from prison—to free the revenants from the island even if it means delaying the rescue of her father?

Charlee:  I noticed your Top Ten Romance Reads for Girls on your website. Some great books there! Most of them are what I would call “weepy” books.  Could your book also be described that way? How did those books influence your own writing?

Kate:  I know exactly what you mean, but no, my book is not a “weepy book.”  And I love weepy books.  Wild Point Island, because it’s written from Ella’s point of view and because it’s about a girl returning to her hometown after being gone for 20 years (the island she was banished from), is more of an adventure, mystery kind of plot book.  Ella doesn’t know who to trust as she attempts to rescue her father.  She’s in a dangerous place.   But she’s compelled to go back.  She’s never fit into the human world and all she wants is to put her family back together again.  To answer your other question, the romance books on my website all have heroines who are strong and worthy of love.

Charlee:   Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself or your book?

Kate:  I’m getting the impression from readers that Wild Point Island is a bit different from the run of the mill paranormal romances.  More plot driven.  Several readers have told me that as they were reading, they didn’t know who to trust—they were seeing the world from Ella’s POV, and they couldn’t figure out ahead of time what was going to happen.  I got the impression that they can usually figure things out as they read, but they couldn’t with my story.  I hope that’s a good thing.  And I hope that your readers enjoy the story!  I’m working on the sequel—Ella’s sister Lily thwarted Ella at every turn in Wild Point Island.  I figured she deserved her own story!

But, frankly, Charlee, it’s such a blast to be a writer, and I feel really honored that I can hold my book in my hands or see it on my Kindle!

Thanks for this fun interview!

About Wild Point Island:
Banished from Wild Point Island as a child, Ella Pattenson, a half human-half revenant, has managed to hide her true identity as a descendent of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.  Thought to have perished, the settlers survived but were transformed into revenants–immortal beings who live forever as long as they remain on the island.

Now, Ella must return to the place of her birth to rescue her father from imprisonment and a soon to be unspeakable death.  Her only hope is to trust a seductive revenant who seems to have ties to the corrupt High Council.  Simon Viccars is sexy and like no man she’s ever met. But he’s been trapped on the island for 400 years and is willing to do almost anything for his freedom.

With the forces of the island conspiring against her, Ella must risk her father, her heart, and her life on love.

Get in paperback at Amazon or on Kindle or get it at Barnes and Noble.

About Kate Lutter:
Kate Lutter believes she was born to write. She wrote her first novel when she was in eighth grade, but then almost burned her house down when she tried to incinerate her story in the garbage can because she couldn’t get the plot to turn out right. Now, many years later, she lives in NJ with her husband and five cats (no matches in sight) and spends her days writing contemporary paranormal romances, traveling the world, and hanging out with her four wild sisters. She is happy to report that her debut novel, Wild Point Island, the first in a series, has just been published by Crescent Moon Press. She is busy writing the sequel and her weekly travel blog entitled Hot Blogging with Chuck, which features her very snarky and rascally almost famous cat.

Website: www.katelutter.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/katelutternovelist

Blog: www.katelutter.blogspot.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/katelutter

Email: katelutter.author@gmail.com