Q&A with The Minxes of Romance

Join us in welcoming our friends The Minxes of Romance to the Hot Seat! The Minxes have just released their first anthology, BLAZE. I'm chatting with Romy Sommer today, who will be answering questions about what went into this great new release.

 Coombethwaite, the lakeside town where passions run deep, is the setting for the stories in Blaze, the first anthology from The Minxes of Romance.

Romance is in the air for Coombethwaite’s retained firefighters, and none of them will escape its heat unscorched!

Featuring authors Maya Blake, Sally Clements, Catherine Coles, Jodie James, Tara Pammi, Suzanna Ross, Romy Sommer, and Lorraine Wilson. 

Available now on AMAZON

Welcome, Romy, and congratulations to all the Minxes on the release of your first anthology, BLAZE. Can you tell us a bit about the collection of stories?
The anthology consists of eight linked stories set in the fictional village of Coombethwaite, in England’s Lake District. Each story features a different member of the local retained firefighting crew, but the stories all have very different voices, so you can expect a mix of light and flirty, and intense and heated.

Which of the Minxes can readers look forward to seeing in this debut anthology?
8 Minxes have contributed stories to this anthology – including two Harlequin Presents authors, one Harper Collins author, Pocket Novels and short story star Suzanna Ross, and Sally Clements, our very own self publishing guru.

How did the idea for a collection of stories first come about?
To be honest, I can’t remember how this first started! I suspect we were ogling hunky fireman pics when we first got inspired, then during one of our late nights skype chats, fuelled by red wine or lucozade, we got a little silly and thought ‘let’s write a series of stories featuring hunky firemen.’

Did the Minxes decide on a theme for the collection and write stories specifically for the anthology, or did you spot trends in each of your existing works?
All the stories were written specifically for this anthology, and we worked closely together to interlink both characters and setting. Special thanks go to Lorraine Wilson for the Lake District background, and to Sally Clements for keeping the database that helped us keep track of which characters appeared in which stories.

Collaborating as a team on a creative endeavor can sometimes have its challenges. How did the Minxes organize the project?
We work amazingly well together, and a shared sense of humour and supportiveness really helped. Rather than taking ourselves too seriously, we just had fun with putting this anthology together.

This is a self-published work. Can you shed some light on the book design process?
Sally Clements has successfully published several of her books, so she guided us every step of the way and handled the technical stuff. The cover design was done by the talented Heather Howland of Entangled Publishing, when she was still doing freelance commissions. We toyed with hiring a professional outside editor, but since we have some strong editorial talent in our midst, we chose to self-edit, doing three passes on each story by three different sets of eyes.

Is this the first of many releases? Do the Minxes have any other anthologies planned for the future? 

We hope so! We had so much fun putting this collection together, we’d love to do more. So tell us what kind of linked stories you enjoy: athletic heroes, daredevil heroes, stories set in exotic holiday resorts, or stories set in small communities, holiday-themed stories ....?

Thank you so much for joining us, Romy. To learn more about The Minxes of Romance and their debut anthology, BLAZE, visit their blog: www.minxesofromance.blogspot.com.