Getting to Know you Thursdays with Sandra Peut with a giveaway.

Please help me welcome Aussie author Sandra Peut to my blog this week.

1.    Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a wife and mum of 4 kids, a trained dietitian, and have an overactive imagination (which certainly helps with storylines!).

2. When you were a child did you have a favourite book or books?

I always had my head in a book while I was growing up. Some favourites were the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, Trixie Belden series, and anything by Janette Oke (historical prairie romance).

3. Do you have a favourite Genre to both read and right write?

I’m a sucker for a good romance, but I also like there to be either dramatic/mystery/thriller elements as well. And it’s got to be fast-paced.

4. Did you have favourite authors growing up who have influenced you?

As mentioned above, the Nancy Drew series helped foster my love for a good mystery. I later discovered that the author, Carolyn Keene, was actually a whole group of authors under the one pen name!

5. When did you know you wanted to be an author?

When I started writing novels for my school friends to read. I would have been about 12.

6. How did you go about becoming an author?

I wrote! Lots of reading too, to help develop my style. My big break came when I placed third in the first Rose & Crown/Sunpenny (UK publisher) new novels competition in 2009, and was subsequently offered a book contract.

7. If you were not a writer what would you like to be?

Perhaps working in journalism, marketing, or advertising. Who doesn’t love a catchy ad-campaign? J

8. Outside reading and writing what do you like to do?

Watch movies and go out on coffee dates with my husband, catch up with my girlfriends, go for family walks on the beach.

9. Do you have a place you love to visit or would love to visit?

I’d love to go back to Europe (went there for a whirlwind tour before having kids), and the US. Anywhere overseas would be great – as long as two nannies came along to help look after our tribe, lol!

10. If you could have a meal with 3 living people who would you choose and why?

A good literary agent from the US (any would do), Paulo Coelho (author of The Alchemist, sold 65 million copies worldwide), and my husband, Craig.

Finally can you tell us about your current books and/or any that will
be coming out soon. Also where we can find you on the web.

Here’s a ‘blurb’ about my romantic suspense novel, Blue Freedom (published by Rose & Crown Books in 2010:

Bella Whitman is a freelance health and fitness writer with a tragic history. When she is offered a dream opportunity to undertake a writing assignment which will take her on a journey across the South Pacific islands, she grabs it, despite her misgivings about the arrogant but handsome editor in charge of the magazine, Ethan Gray - and Jay Hinkley, the contract photographer Ethan has hired to travel with her. Despite a rocky start, Bella finds herself being drawn to Jay as they work and travel through the islands. But can this relationship develop into more than a friendship, when he already has a woman in his life? And with a dangerous hit-man trailing their every move, can Bella and Jay finish their assignment - despite the shadowy motives of their employer Ethan - and survive a deadly rendezvous with a Thai drug consortium in a nail-biting climax?
Through this fast-paced adventure, Bella is able to find healing from past pain and discover emotional and spiritual freedom.

My next manuscript is a Young Adult supernatural romance involving guardian angels. I’m just working on the rewrite now, and hope to get it to an agent in the next month or so.

For more info (plus my blog posts), check out www.sandrapeut.com. 

GIVEAWAY

Sandra is offering one reader a copy of her book Blue Freedom. Please leave a way to be contacted if I dont already know and a comment relating to the interview or with a question for Sandra. you have til 6pm Aussie time Thursday 28th to enter.