Today my guest is award-winning and bestselling author Caridad Piñeiro. Caridad is also an attorney, wife and mother. When not writing, Caridad teaches workshops on various topics related to writing and heads a writing group. She leads a very busy life. Like many writers and authors in today's world, she works full time and does a balancing act between life and writing. How does she do it?I get asked a lot of questions along a similar vein, namely:
1. Do you ever sleep?
2. Are you a vampire?
3. Do you ever take a break?
The answers are:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes
I will say, though, that if I had to categorize whether I was a Type A, B or C, I’d answer, I’m a Type AAA. Fact of the matter is, my grandfather used to say there would be time enough to rest when he was dead and I guess I really took that saying to heart. Which explains my Type AAA personality.
I definitely have a busy life, although I prefer to think of it as a full life. I work in New York City as an attorney, have been happily married for many years, have a great daughter who is also my best friend, enjoy other family and friends and have been blessed to be able to fulfill a lifelong passion – to write.
You are probably wondering how I do all that and still have time to rest. For starters, I get to write on my commute to and from work every day. It’s my “alone” time where I get to escape into the worlds and characters I create with my writing. Sometimes I am so into the story that the train pulls into New York without my realizing it. Luckily I’ve never missed my stop on the way home, although I have had a hurried shut down a number of times.
I also get up early on weekends – at six – and write for a few hours. That gives me the remainder of the day to hang with family, meet up with friends, and get some chores done and rest.
What’s my favorite kind of rest? Sharing time with family. Even if it’s something as simple as having a video fest, just being with family brings me peace. If we’re not just hanging out, we all love to travel and explore new places. I think I inherited that from my grandpa as well. He grew up in a very poor area of Spain and decided when he was a young man that he would seek his future elsewhere. His fortunes took him to Cuba and then to the United States. I was born in Cuba, not that I remember anything about it, but his love for adventure, and my jobs as an attorney and writer, have taken me to over a dozen countries and many more states, often with my family to share the adventures.
What’s my next favorite kind of rest? Hanging with my friends, especially my writing buddies. I love that my writing has brought me together with such a creative and unique group of individuals as well as the many fans who take a moment to chat with me or send me an e-mail.
In fact, my friends and I love spending time together and writing so much that we founded a new writing group recently – the Liberty States Fiction Writers. It’s been an amazing experience to start something from scratch with my friends and very rewarding because we’re busy sharing what we know, learning new things and meeting lots of interesting people who love writing as much as we do!
So now you know about my passions – family, friends, travel and writing. What’s great is that I’ve somehow found a way to meld and balance all of these. Granted it takes a little work and some juggling every now and then – especially when I’ve got a writing deadline – but all in all, I’m not complaining.
You may be wondering what I’m busy with now. Well, I’ve been doing some promotion for my February and March releases, HONOR CALLS and FURY CALLS respectively. They are a Nocturne Bite novella and Nocturne novel that are part of my popular THE CALLING Vampire series. I’m also waiting for the copy edits on my November release, SINS OF THE FLESH. I’m really excited about SINS because it’s my first single title paranormal romantic suspense release from Grand Central Publishing. While I’m waiting, I’m working on the second book in the series, tentatively titled STONE COLD SINS as well as two other books in THE CALLING, which will be out next year.
Which is probably making you ask again, “Don’t you ever rest?”
Of course I do, but who wants to spend too much time resting when you’re having so much fun?
1. Do you ever sleep?
2. Are you a vampire?
3. Do you ever take a break?
The answers are:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes
I will say, though, that if I had to categorize whether I was a Type A, B or C, I’d answer, I’m a Type AAA. Fact of the matter is, my grandfather used to say there would be time enough to rest when he was dead and I guess I really took that saying to heart. Which explains my Type AAA personality.
I definitely have a busy life, although I prefer to think of it as a full life. I work in New York City as an attorney, have been happily married for many years, have a great daughter who is also my best friend, enjoy other family and friends and have been blessed to be able to fulfill a lifelong passion – to write.
You are probably wondering how I do all that and still have time to rest. For starters, I get to write on my commute to and from work every day. It’s my “alone” time where I get to escape into the worlds and characters I create with my writing. Sometimes I am so into the story that the train pulls into New York without my realizing it. Luckily I’ve never missed my stop on the way home, although I have had a hurried shut down a number of times.
I also get up early on weekends – at six – and write for a few hours. That gives me the remainder of the day to hang with family, meet up with friends, and get some chores done and rest.
What’s my favorite kind of rest? Sharing time with family. Even if it’s something as simple as having a video fest, just being with family brings me peace. If we’re not just hanging out, we all love to travel and explore new places. I think I inherited that from my grandpa as well. He grew up in a very poor area of Spain and decided when he was a young man that he would seek his future elsewhere. His fortunes took him to Cuba and then to the United States. I was born in Cuba, not that I remember anything about it, but his love for adventure, and my jobs as an attorney and writer, have taken me to over a dozen countries and many more states, often with my family to share the adventures.
What’s my next favorite kind of rest? Hanging with my friends, especially my writing buddies. I love that my writing has brought me together with such a creative and unique group of individuals as well as the many fans who take a moment to chat with me or send me an e-mail.
In fact, my friends and I love spending time together and writing so much that we founded a new writing group recently – the Liberty States Fiction Writers. It’s been an amazing experience to start something from scratch with my friends and very rewarding because we’re busy sharing what we know, learning new things and meeting lots of interesting people who love writing as much as we do!
So now you know about my passions – family, friends, travel and writing. What’s great is that I’ve somehow found a way to meld and balance all of these. Granted it takes a little work and some juggling every now and then – especially when I’ve got a writing deadline – but all in all, I’m not complaining.
You may be wondering what I’m busy with now. Well, I’ve been doing some promotion for my February and March releases, HONOR CALLS and FURY CALLS respectively. They are a Nocturne Bite novella and Nocturne novel that are part of my popular THE CALLING Vampire series. I’m also waiting for the copy edits on my November release, SINS OF THE FLESH. I’m really excited about SINS because it’s my first single title paranormal romantic suspense release from Grand Central Publishing. While I’m waiting, I’m working on the second book in the series, tentatively titled STONE COLD SINS as well as two other books in THE CALLING, which will be out next year.
Which is probably making you ask again, “Don’t you ever rest?”
Of course I do, but who wants to spend too much time resting when you’re having so much fun?
***
Caridad Piñeiro is a multi-published and award-winning author. From the start, Caridad’s novels have received acclaim and have helped redefine the landscape of modern romance novels. In 1999, Caridad was published by Kensington as part of Encanto, the first line of bilingual Latino romance novels. In 2000, Caridad was one of the first Latino authors featured at the launch of BookExpo America’s Spanish Pavillion. In December 2006, Caridad helped Silhouette launch its successful Nocturne paranormal line with DEATH CALLS, one of the novels in the award-winning THE CALLING Vampire series. DANGER CALLS and DEATH CALLS were selected as the Top Fantasy Books of 2005 and 2006 by CATALINA magazine and Cataromance Reviewers Choice Award for Best Nocturne in 2006. Caridad’s eighteenth novel, MOON FEVER, a paranormal anthology with Maggie Shayne, Susan Sizemore and Lori Handeland, debuted in late September 2007 as #32 on the New York Times Extended Bestseller list.
Caridad’s CHICAS novels, including her seventeenth release, SOUTH BEACH CHICAS CATCH THEIR MAN from Simon & Schuster’s Downtown Press.
Caridad was born in Havana, Cuba, and settled in the New York Metropolitan area. She earned her juris doctor from St. John’s University and became the first female partner of Abelman, Frayne & Schwab, an intellectual property firm in midtown Manhattan.
You can visit with Caridad at her website http://www.caridad.com/ or visit
http://www.thecallingvampirenovels.com/
