Aloha to Sarah Grimm and AFTER MIDNIGHT

I wonder if Sarah Grimm's newest hero, the front man from Black Phoenix, sang a cover of Eric Clapton's AFTER MIDNIGHT:

After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down.
After midnight, we're gonna chug-a-lug and shout.
We're gonna stimulate some action;
We're gonna get some satisfaction.
We're gonna find out what it is all about.
After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down.


Sarah is an award winning author of romantic suspense.  From her bio,

Sarah spent years scribbling in notebooks, filling the pages with partial chapters and the margins with titles and story ideas. She told friends that the characters spoke to her, and that she was compelled to get their stories on paper. Eventually, she sat down at a computer and wrote her first tale of dangerously sexy suspense. That book, Not Without Risk, is a 2011 Readers Favorite Award Winner.

Sarah lives in West Michigan with her husband, two sons and three miniature schnauzers. Between mom's taxi service, parts runs, and answering the phone for the family marine repair business, Sarah can be found curled in her favorite chair, crafting her next novel. 

Kim:  Tell us about West Michigan - your favorite sight, sound, and smell. 

Sarah:  Did you know that Michigan is the home of the longest freshwater shoreline in the world? It’s true, and I’m lucky enough to live along that shoreline. My hometown is a small city that sits right on Lake Michigan. It’s a beautiful area surrounded by rivers and lakes. An area full of trees, greenery, and white sandy beaches.

My favorite site is probably our pier. Beautiful isn’t it? 

Photo from Sarah

Although, at least three months out of the year it looks more like this: 

Photo from Sarah

My favorite sound is…hmmm, I’m not sure if my favorite sound is the birds singing in the early morning or the sound of my husband’s drag truck racing down the track. Favorite smell is easier – the smell of burning rubber at the track. Yes, I’m a speed junkie. 


Kim:  I am curious about your path to publishing - who and/or what helped you find it?

Sarah:  I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until my youngest son was born and the struggle to keep him alive began, that I wrote more than a few chapters of a project. During the first year of my son’s life he was in and out of the hospital at least a dozen times and had endured more surgeries than I care to remember. The highlights were stomach surgery, throat surgery, and a tracheotomy with all the special care that entails. As you can imagine, all the hospital time left me desperate for a distraction, so I took pen to paper, yup, longhand, and wrote my first romance. Not just bits and pieces of a book, but the entire hero and heroine’s journey from ‘Chapter One’ to ‘The End’. 

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Once the book was finished, I joined Romance Writer’s of America nationally as well as my local chapter. I went to conferences and learned about the craft of writing. I wrote and re-wrote that book, about four times actually, until I felt it was good enough to submit. I submitted to a small publishing house just after they received RWA recognition, and they accepted it. I wasn’t with a big NY publisher, but I didn’t care. I was going to be published. 

Then my publisher began having problems. There were some of us who could see it coming, but like a train wreck, there wasn’t anything we could do. By this time, my first book had debuted to rave reviews and brisk sales, and they’d accepted my second book proposal. When they went bankrupt, I stopped writing. I felt betrayed and discouraged. In retrospect I should have kept plugging along, doing what I loved most, but I guess we don’t always do what’s best for us. 

In 2008 I decided enough was enough and jumped back into the publishing world with both feet. I submitted to The Wild Rose Press. I was thrilled when they accepted my romantic suspense, NOT WITHOUT RISK. Even more so when it was released in January 2010 to reviews calling it “…fast paced, nail biting, page turning, edge of your seat suspense…” and "...a romantic, adventurous, thrilling read."

I’m happily writing again, I just released my second book with The Wild Rose Press, a hot contemporary titled After Midnight, which was just featured as one of Book Lovers Inc.’s favorite reads of 2011.

Kim:  What was your friends' responses when you told them that characters spoke to you?

Sarah:  ROFL. Great question! Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don’t have a truly great answer. I’ve never been snubbed or threatened to be committed when people learned I hear voices. Honestly, I don’t recall anyone being surprised by the news. You see, I’ve always been a bit of an odd duck—quirky & loud, a daydreamer who is a bit too impulsive. I was the child you would find talking to an empty room. The one who carried a notebook everywhere she went and would drift away from conversation and write. Because of this, my friends have always been a bit ‘quirky’ as well.

Now that I’m an adult, any new friends I make are typically other writers, so they are one hundred percent accepting of the fact that characters talk to me. They have to be, for they suffer from the same affliction. 

Kim:  What inspires your "dangerously sexy suspense"?

Sarah:  I get my inspiration from everything around me: Magazine articles, news clips, or bits of conversation overheard at the local coffee shop. However probably the biggest source of inspiration for me is music—specifically phrases or snippets of lyrics that on a particular day, for no particular reason, set off a series of questions or the spark of an idea. An idea that is usually completely unrelated to the original theme or idea behind the song lyric.

I’m a die hard romantic, but another genre that I can’t read enough of is suspense. Everything I write has an element of suspense to it, whether it’s what reviewers call ‘page turning, edge of your seat suspense’, or contemporary romance with just a touch of suspense.

My newest release, After Midnight, combines music and romance with just a dash of suspense—my three favorite things. It’s a tortured heroine story, the tale of piano phenom turned bar owner Isabeau Montgomery, and how one night, after midnight, her entire world changed.

Here’s the official blurb:

Thirteen years—that's how long Isabeau Montgomery has been living a lie. After an automobile accident took her mother's life, Izzy hid herself away, surviving the only way she knew how. Now she is happy in her carefully reconstructed life. That is until he walks through the door of her bar...

Black Phoenix singer/front man Noah Clark came to Long Island City with a goal--one that doesn't include an instant, electric attraction to the dark-haired beauty behind the bar. Coaxing her into his bed won't be easy, but he can't get her pale, haunted eyes nor her skill on the piano out of his head.

Can Noah help Isabeau overcome the past? Or will her need to protect her secret force her back into hiding and destroy their chance at happiness? 

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Kim:   What's next for Sarah Grimm?

Sarah:  Although I never planned for it to be while writing After Midnight, the book has turned into a series of books. When one of the secondary characters began insisting he get his own happily-ever- after, my one book became two. Then upon After Midnight’s release, I’ve been getting such positive feedback on another of the book’s characters that the series has expanded to four books. So right now I’m doing something I never do and lightly plotting out the next three books—making certain that specific key elements of the characters, and their stories, carry through from one book to the other.

Mahalo, Sarah, for joining us at SOS Aloha.  I am giving away a copy of AFTER MIDNIGHT to one randomly selected commenter.  To enter the giveaway,

1.  Leave a comment - anything goes!

2.  This giveaway is open to all readers.

3.  Comments are open through Saturday, December 17, 10 pm in Hawaii.  I'll post the winner on Sunday, December 18.

Mahalo,

Kim in Hawaii


To learn more about Sarah and her books, check out her website at www.sarahgrimm.com.