Lisa Cach 2002 Interview

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"New Worlds Are Our Oyster."

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by Barbara Sheridan
Leslie Tramposch: Managing Editor - Sara Reyes: Marketing and Publicity

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December 2002
A Romance for all TIMEs!

Update: Lisa Cach

Lisa Cach lives in the Pacific Northwest on the same small farm where she grew up. She has worked at a zoo, a bookstore, and a restaurant, washed dishes, tutored logic, sailed the Caribbean studying eels and pumping bilge water, and spent a year in Japan teaching English. She has degrees in English and psychology, and spent three years working the graveyard shift at a crisis hotline.

Ms. Cach has loved romance novels ever since a friend in junior high snuck one into their comparative cultures class. She read it avidly, certain all the while she would be caught and punished for having such explicit material on campus.

An Interview with Lisa Cach

PNR: You've been really busy since THE CHANGELING BRIDE debutedin October of 1999. You've written seven single title novels, and contributed to four romance anthologies.While many paranormal authors have opted to write series, you have opted for variety. You've written both historical and contemporary, straight, and paranormal romances, time travel, witches, ghosts. Is
this a personal preference? Do you feel variety is important to a successful writing career?

Lisa C.: My eclectic choice of writing topics is personal preference, yes, but I don't think it's been good for my career. I think people like knowing what they're going to get when they pick up a book by a certain author. I've heard a few people say they buy by an author's writing style, rather than her usual subject matter, but Ithink those people are in the minority.

All this jumping around between subgenres has given me a chance, though,
to see where my strengths lie and where I am happiest. I think I'm going to end up writing in two veins, for two publishers: contemporary comedy for Pocket, and historical paranormal for Dorchester (Love Spell).

PNR: You've returned to time travel with your latest release, GEORGE AND THE VIRGIN. However there the similarities end. George is an unusual hero. Tell us
about his occupation and what made you choose it.

Lisa C.: George is a professional wrestler, known in the ring as "The Saint." I decided to make a wrestler a romance novel hero after reading Mick Foley's autobiography, "Have a Nice Day," and seeing a few interviews with wrestlers on TV. They seemed to be such nice guys, so different from how they appear in the ring.

From there, it was a matter of imagining a good-hearted, enthusiastic wrestler put into a situation that had the potential to be the ultimate SmackDown! I loved the idea of pitting such a creampuff against not only a real dragon, but a woman who has let her heart turn to stone.

PNR: LOL, I have to admit, I have a real crush on "The Rock", so I found this very cool <g> . George has been feeling melancholy of late. He's just coming off an injury, however something deeper is troubling him?

Lisa C.: Poor George. He's worried that he might be corrupting America's youth by promoting violence on television. He has let the judgement of others affect his view of himself, and is having an identity crisis. Is he a good guy, or a bad guy?

PNR: George is a good guy in his personal life, a man who cares about family. He looks after his single parent sister and her daughter Gabby. How does Athena return the favor?

Lisa C.: Athena uses aroma- and hypnotherapy to lead George into a creative
visualization where he can symbolically work out his issues.

PNR: Athena's hypnotic trance sends George to a place and time far more real than a dream state should be. In medieval Markesew another woman is casting a spell using the exact same stone. Why?

Lisa C.: In medieval Markesew, a woman is casting a spell to call forth a dragonslayer. Markesew is besieged by a dragon, to whom a virgin is given in yearly tribute. The spell-caster is worried that her daughter may be next on the dragon's dinner plate.

PNR: George sees the symbolism of the quest set before him and sallies forth to slay the dragon and rescue the virgins. However first he has to get past his most
formidable foe, the crone who receives the young women in tribute and leads them to their death with the dragon. She is not what she seems. Tell us about Alizon.

Lisa C.: Alizon escaped the jaws of the dragon when she herself was sacrificed, a
dozen years past. She took over the role of the crone, and has been rescuing the yearly virgin tribute ever since. She hates the villagers of Markesew, who so casually throw away the lives of young women. The necessities of survival have burnt away the softness of her heart. She is less than thrilled when George appears, seeing him as a threat to the secret life she has built for herself and the virgins.

PNR: There is so much humor in this tale. Do you feel humor is an important element in a romance?

Lisa C.: I think a little comic relief is necessary in almost any story, just as it's necessary in life. How much comedy you put in is a different issue, subject to different tastes and styles. I think it can work against a romance, if the hero is too much of a clown. He's got to keep a manly, competent edge, if he's going to be sexy.

PNR: We"ll leave the readers to ponder George's fate. You've taken yet another turn in you romance writing career. DR. YES will be the second title in
Dorchester's new B.L.I.S.S. series. The title of course is a play on a James Bond movie title, rather fitting. Tell us about this new series and of course your contribution.

Lisa C.: The books are comedic spy romances, with the heroines newly recruited into active service for a secret organization called B.L.I.S.S. The heroine of DR. YES is an adventure tour guide in Nepal, hired to stop the nefarious Dr. Archer from discovering the Himalayan source of a legendary female aphrodisiac. If the drugwere replicated and released on the world market, it would turn every woman into a sex slave. Harrison Wiles, a B.L.I.S.S. agent, comes along to help her, but the friction between them lights fires that neither can control.

PNR: Sounds like fun! What's next for Lisa Cach?

Lisa C.: I'm working now on a book for Pocket, tentatively titled BLAME IT ON OPRAH. It's a contemporary comedy about a geeky American girl who goes to London in hopes of finding and marrying a peer. She's been watching a lot of Oprah on TV, and has taken a little too seriously the idea of following her dream. Embarrassment and adventures follow. <g>

COMING IN FEB. 2003!

Order it now!

Love Spell
February 2003
384 pages
ISBN: 0505525186

Featured in this Issue:

Interviews with:

Lisa Cach,
Dee Davis
Samantha Gail
Melanie Jackson
Judi McCoy

Lisa Cach

Website

Books

Previous interview

Nominated for:
PEARL AWARD 2002
GEORGE AND THE VIRGIN
Finalist:
Best Time Travel

Buy it now!

Love Spell
June 2002
384 pages
ISBN: 0505524899

Sometimes, slaying the dragon
is the easy part...

A medieval village is besieged, its virgins demanded in tribute, so when St. George the Dragonslayer arrives from modern times, his quest is clear. Being a professional wrestler doesn't qualify him for the task, but a sword and imagination are all he needs...or so he thinks, until he comes up against the mysterious mistress of Devil's Mount.

Twelve years ago Alizon was sent to die in the jaws of the serpent. Too tough for dragon teeth then, she'll never surrender to some foreigner in shiny hose now. She fears first for the secret world she's built atop her mountain...but as the hero approaches, Alizon realizes it is not the dragon's armor he's come to pierce, but the scales around her own ferocious heart.

Other Paranormal
Romance Titles

Buy it now!