Interview with Vi Keeland

An Interview with the magnificent Vi Keeland .

Dear Vi, I am so happy to have you here with us, I am also honored and humbled to have this opportunity to start with.

First, although there are many to know you, but perhaps you can reveal a little about yourself? "The Real Vi Keeland"?

Sure!  These are some things people might not know about me:

A boy with platinum blond hair and light green eyes pushed me off my bicycle when I was eight; I have a small scar on my left knee to prove it. I married him anyway.

I have a horrible fear of ledges—not heights—but standing near the ledge of anything.

I'm short, slightly over five feet tall.

I've had the same best friend for thirty years. She comes over on release day at 11 a.m. and we drink Bloody Marys.

I love to travel. This year I’m visiting Ireland, England, Belgium and Amsterdam.

What lead you to start writing? Did you have that passion at young age? 

If so, did you articulate yourself by novels?

I’ve always been an avid reader and wanted to write my own book.  I’m an attorney by day, so writing is a big part of my life, but it definitely is not the subject matter I truly enjoy writing about. After college, I filled a spiral notebook with my first story, but never completed it.  Then life rolled on—I got married, had three children and fell into a job that I was good at and enjoyed, but wasn’t all that personally fulfilling.

But even after so many years, I was still itching to write that book.  So In 2012, I decided to try to write my first novel again.  I had no idea how self-publishing worked, and truly was just proud of myself for having finished.  At the time, I thought I had just crossed something off my mental bucket list.  Then, a few months after I finished the book, Hurricane Sandy hit.  Four feet of water throughout our house took almost everything we owned.  Even though the rebuilding process was awful, a lot of good actually came out of losing so much.  It made my family realize what was really important. And that, in turn, inspired me to really give writing a shot.  We were still living in a hotel when I started to research self publishing.

Beside writing (and plz do not stop haha) do you do anything else?

I still work full time as an attorney, but I’m working toward changing that in very soon!

If you could be anything - what would you be?

I’d be exactly who I am now—a happily married mom of three that loves writing books.  I’m a very lucky girl!

From where do you get your ideas?

Everywhere!  I find inspiration in very random places—sitting on the beach people watching, reading the newspaper…it can really be anywhere.

I have to ask, are your characters based on real people? Can you find yourself in one or more of them? 

Although all of my characters are fictional and mostly come from my head, I can sometimes find pieces of myself in them—often it’s their fears or silly habits.  And I can always find pieces of my husband in any hero.

Ok this I have to ask that too, do you fall in love with them? (I surely did)

In an odd way, yes!  It’s often hard to move on after becoming so attached to characters.

Penelope Ward and you have written some books together, now how did you celebrate? do you know each other off Facebook before you start writing together?

Plz tell us a little about the whole process?

Penelope and I met when we were part of the same box set promotion.  The set had six authors and we all became friends and started to chat together about the book world.  Eventually, Penelope and I found we had similar taste and started to talk outside of the group and run things by each other—cover photos, blurbs, plots etc.  Over time, we became good friends and now we probably spend more time chatting every day than we do sleeping!

When we co-write, we both write both characters.  We come up with a general plot and a feel for both characters, but we don’t have a formal outline or anything.  We basically pass a word document back and forth every few days.  Sometimes we write two chapters and pass it back at the start of a new chapter, and other times we will leave off in the middle of a chapter.   It’s fun because we never know what direction the other is going to take the story in, and we look forward to reading what each other came up with so much!

Do you have anything else to add for our and yours readers? 

Stop by and visit me!  I have a wonderful group of readers on Facebook that are very welcoming. 

                       https://www.facebook.com/groups/ViKeelandFanGroup/

Wow you have made me laugh, I love that you gave writing a shot as many of our readers do…. So THANK YOU
I want to give a big shout out for Vi..

Thank you so much, Vi for you time participating in this interview, it was amazing so thank you..