•
Do you write under other names?
Yes.
As Claire Delacroix, I have written historical and fantasy romances, as well as a pair of romantic fantasy novellas.
And yes, again!
I also write dragon shape-shifter romances as Deborah Cooke.
•
Could I have read
Double Trouble and/or Third
Time Lucky before?
Yes.
Both books were initially printed in mass market editions and have been
reprinted in trade paperback by Berkley Sensation.
Here are the old covers — maybe they look familiar to you.
These two editions are out of print and the old ISBN#’s are no
longer valid.
•
Do you write anything other than romance?
Well,
everything I write is fiction and most of it has romantic elements.
There is at least one other published author named Claire Cross.
To be sure which are my titles, please check my Backlist.
• How did you end up writing under two different names?
In
the mid-nineties, paranormal and fantasy elements weren’t very
popular in the romance market, so I was asked to leave those elements
out of my historicals. The problem was that I really enjoyed writing
those kinds of stories so I looked for a second publisher.
When I sold several time travels to another publisher, we decided to
make those works distinctive from my “straight” historicals
by my using another name -
to keep things simple, I just anglicized Claire Delacroix. Those books
were published under the name Claire Cross.
Over time, markets change and brands evolve. Currently, my Delacroix
books tend to include more paranormal and fantasy elements, while the
Coxwell series by Claire Cross is contemporary and has no paranormal
or fantasy elements. I also have a new series of dragon shapeshifter
romances, which are contemporary and urban fantasy, and will be published
under the name Deborah
Cooke.
We’ll
see where things end up next!
Books
that include paranormal and fantasy elements:
Claire Cross
• Once Upon A Kiss
(time travel)
• The Last Highlander
(time travel)
• The Moonstone
(time travel)
• Love Potion #9
(magic and tarot cards)
•“A Berry Merry Christmas”
novella in Silent Night
(magic)
Claire
Delacroix
• The
Sorceress
(precognitive dreams)
• A
Magician's Quest
(shapeshifter)
• Enchanted
(shapeshifter)
• The
Warrior
(reincarnation)
• The “Jewels
of Kinfairlie” trilogy (magical elements)
• “An Elegy for Melusine”
novella in To
Weave a Web of Magic
(fantasy with romantic elements)
• “The Kiss of the Snow Queen”- novella
in The
Queen in Winter
(fantasy with romantic elements)
• Are there any characters you’ve left behind whose stories you’d still like to write?
I’d also love to take the story in the novella “An Elegy for Melusine” and write it book-length. There were a lot of additional angles to the story that became apparent as I was writing the novella and it would be fun to have the word count to explore those them.
With my Claire Cross hat on, I still think about the Ariadne’s, the friends of Maralys introduced in Double Trouble. At the time, I’d thought it would be fun to give each of them their own book, especially Antonia. What can I say? I’m a sucker for heroines with attitude and issues!
The only Gothic I’ve ever written was
The Rogue and it was an enormous amount of fun. I’d love to write more Gothics - maybe historical, maybe contemporary - maybe with some paranormal or other weird stuff going on.
Phew! That’s five minutes thinking and fourteen more books to write, besides the ones I've already got on the go. I’d better go take some multivitamins...
•
How can I contact you?
You
can email Chestwick, my trusty custodian, and the email will get to
me.
No hotlink, because that leads to an abundance of spam. Just substitute
the punctuation for the caps in this address:
chestwickATsympaticoDOTca
You can also write to me,
c/o any of my publishers,
but be aware that such mail doesn't always get forwarded quickly to
the author.
Backlist titles are more challenging to find, particularly the first four Claire Cross titles and the Claire Delacroix titles from Harlequin Historicals. Technically, these books are out of print, which means they’re unavailable new. Try used bookstores in your neighborhood, or look online at the used books available on ebay, through other online bookstores or from bricks-and-mortar used book stores like Village Books or All Book Exchange.
