Hi Casssandra, Welcome to Café Cala.

It’s great to have you visit Café Cala. I’ve been looking forward to the publication of Grave Robber for Hire – and the rest of the series. I’ve been making some flourless chocolate cake this morning. Would you like tea or coffee with yours?

Ooo yum, chocolate cake and gluten free which means I can eat it – always a win. I’ll have mine with a black coffee please – love that combo, chocolate and coffee, it keeps the heart beating or is that racing?

1 Where did you get the idea for Grave Robber for Hire?

Mmm, it sort of came in three chunks. First when I was half asleep (which is the normal time I get ideas for stories) I saw the heroine Angel with a shovel beside a half dug out grave with a male guardian angel at her side. The second part was I decided a real grave robber wasn’t the nicest person to have as a heroine so made her a psychic who uses her ability to rob graves more in metaphorical sense The third part was making her an animal loving women who has man issues, creating the hero Tyreal, and deciding that some darker scenes would add flavour to the story.
Angel’s quirky side just came to me as I wrote her – she was so fun to write.

2 What have you found most rewarding about your writing?

Putting stories I see in my head on the page, and fleshing them out to be rounder and fuller and far more detailed than any day dream. I love to think that someone will read my work and be entertained and taken into my imaginary world.
Plus, I like being my own boss and the people I’ve met along this journey are so wonderful, I’ve made some great friends.

3 How did you start writing?

I lived in an area I couldn’t find work for in my profession so I renovated two houses and when I’d finished I just had to find something to fill my time. I’d always wanted to give writing a go. So I wrote what would be classified as a new adult urban fantasy and found I loved writing, creating characters, and telling stories, so I took it from there.

4 What would you say has helped you most?

Workshops and courses—dozens of them. And other writers who gave advice and encouraged.

5 What are you working on at the moment?

Two projects—book two in the Grave Robber series, and I’m heavily revising a paranormal romance I’ve called Twin Flames. I wrote it a couple of years ago so it needed a lot of attention so the going is slow.

6 What advice would you offer aspiring writers?

Have more than one story you’d like to tell as your first really isn’t going to be good enough to hit the market, then write a couple more you know isn’t good enough either, but use them to learn the writing craft and find your author voice. Voice is very important.
Join good groups. I’ve been a member of Romance Writers Australia and America and Savvy Authors from the very start.
Take courses and workshops and write to your best ability, seek out critique partners and beta readers who read and write your genre, and listen to what they say.
Take more courses, maybe a few more courses, read lots, and not just in your genre.
Most important is to keep writing. You can’t sell a story you’ve not written.

7 Which authors do you enjoy reading?

Darynda Jones, Karen Marie Moning, J.R.Ward, Nalini Singh, Joan Swan, Anna Campbell, J.D. Robb, Michael Robotham, and many many more.

Available in all Amazon stores. http://tinyurl.com/mqzh87a

Back Book Blurb: Grave Robber for Hire

Reasonable rates
Do family legends hint at long lost treasures? Have handwriting from ancestors I can read to jump-time? Then call, Angel Meyers.

No psychic readings or ghost exorcisms (that’s not my gig).

Angel Meyers loves cheesecake and hot men, possesses I-catch-cute-guys cleavage, and is the only person she knows with her gift. Her talent for touching handwritten documents and connecting with the mind of the writer, dead or alive (usually dead), lets her delve into the past and locate lost family treasure for her clients.

When she’s hired to locate a Rembrandt lost one hundred and fifty years ago, Angel sees a whole bundle of dollar signs. If she finds the painting, her fee would be enough to buy her much dreamed of animal rescue farm.

There’s just one tricky bit, when she touches the writing of Clyde Owen Jones, the last man to know the painting’s whereabouts, Angel feels a malevolence coming off the pages and realizes Clyde was pure evil.

But the evil doesn’t remain with the dead, it’s here now, and it wants the same thing Angel does—the Rembrandt and maybe her soul.

Can Tyreal the Private Investigator Angel found too hot not to hire and Viggo her guardian angel, protect her from herself and Hell’s evil?

Excerpt –about a third into the story:

The skin down my spine vibrated and the hair at the top tingled. I looked around and frowned. A sensation almost identical of being watched feathered my psyche. But this felt more focused and waaaaaay creepier.
“Hayyel,” a voice deep and rich in texture, whispered from beside me.
I spun. Nobody was there. My heart did a little doof-doof-jolt.
“Hayyel, leave.” The voice had breath that tickled my ear.
I lurched forward. The force of the blood created by the hard pounding of my heart made my ears ache.
“Hayyel, run.”
Something shoved me from behind propelling me toward the door. “Eeee.” I yelped and fell knees first, cracking onto the hard wood floor. Shaking like a leaf in an autumn wind, I stood. What a fucking day. What a fucking case. What a fucking family.
The scent of rotting flesh filled the air.
Arms held from my body ready for action or to run like shit, I spun in a full circle and opened my sixth sense to seek what shoved me.
A ghost stood glowering at me. His chest rose and fell as if panicked or after a long run. Each breath emphasized the OMG of his physique. He wore tight tan suede pants, laced at the side-seams and fly, and an open vest. A necklace of large polished Lapis Lazuli circled his thick corded neck. I swallowed. I wasn’t sure if I felt fear, shock, lust, or that favorite of mine, D, all of the above. His coal colored gaze held mine, his hair touched his shoulders in a jet satin curtain. Mother of the gods, he was magnificent.
A Conan the Barbarian version of Tyreal.
Muscles rippled in anticipation of action. His voice, so like Tyreal’s, vibrated the airwaves. “Run, Hayyel. Run.”
I frowned. Run from him? He looked pissed, whatever he was, but not at me.
A whispering babble of high eerie hisses sounded behind me. I turned. Black mist in stubby fingers drifted through the floorboard cracks. The fingers lengthened and stretched into thin wisps, snaking upwards before drifting across the floor in a snake like slither toward me.
Oh, run—run from that.

I’d love to meet you on my facebook or website
Website: www.cassandralshaw.com
Facebook www.facebook.com/cassandralshawauthor

Maggie, thankyou so much for having me today. It’s been fun and the cake was delicious.
Cassandra.