Trish McCallan has been writing for as long as she can remember. In grade school she wrote children’s stories, illustrated them with crayons and bound the sheets together with pencil-punched holes threaded with red yarn. She used to sell these masterpieces at her lemonade stand for a nickel a book. As she got older her interest changed to boys and horses. The focus of her literary masterpieces followed this shift. Her first full length novel was written in seventh grade and featured a girl, a horse and a boy. At the end of the book the teenage heroine rode off into the sunset . . . with the horse. These days Trish sticks to romantic suspense with hot alpha heroes and rollercoaster plots. You can find her at www.trishmccallan.com

Q: It’s rare today to find an author who does nothing but write for a living. Do you have a day job other than writing, and if so, what is it? What are some other jobs you’ve had in your life? Have they influenced/inspired your writing?

A: Up until Dec 15th of 2011, I worked full time and wrote early in the mornings and on weekends. But Forged in Fire’s sales have been so great, I was able to quit the day job in order to write full time. I used to be a bookkeeper, which is coming in handy now since I’ve basically went into business for myself. I am familiar with QuickBooks, recordkeeping and taxes, so I’ve been able to apply many of the things I learned in my previous jobs, to my own fledgling business.

Q: Tell us briefly about your book.

A: Forged in Fire is a high octane romantic thriller, the blurb follows.

Beth Brown doesn’t believe in premonitions until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a commercial airliner. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the man she’d watched die the night before.

Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities. When Zane and two of his platoon buddies arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his teammates’ corpses. Then she arrives—a leggy blonde who sets off a different kind of alarm.

As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth will need to open herself to a psychic connection with the sexy SEAL who claims to be her soul mate.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I am currently working on the second book in the Forged series. This book is another high octane romantic thriller, with a working title of Forged in Ice. This book begins where Forged in Fire left off and continues the rollercoaster ride started in Forged in Fire. The hero in the second book is Lieutenant Marcus Simcosky, one of the secondary heroes in Forged in Fire.

Q: Do you have a favourite character? Why is s/he your favourite?

A: My Favorite character in the book is Commander Jace (Mac) Mackenzie. But I’m not sure why. The guy is a serious ass. He’s a misogynist, with a huge chip on his shoulder and nasty temper, but he intrigues me. He’s intensely loyal to the people he cares about and would do anything for them. He’s highly intelligent, bluntly honest, and politically incorrect. All of which makes him an interesting character. He is in a position of authority, one that requires a certain amount of kiss-assery—which he refuses to do—which puts him in constant conflict with someone.

Q: What type of music, if any, do you listen to while you write? Do you need the noise or the silence?

A: I need complete and utter silence to write. If I listen to music I get caught up in the lyrics and start day dreaming about other ideas or plots. My dogs aren’t even allowed in my office during my writing, because they’re just too much of a distraction.

Q: How do you balance out the writer’s life and the rest of life? Do you get up early? Stay up late? Ignore friends and family for certain periods of time?

A: Now that I am able to write full time, I try to treat the writing like a job. I write daily from 9:00 am until 6:00 pm. I’m unmarried, so I don’t have kids or a husband I need to make time for, however, I do have a grandmother in her nineties and an aging father. I lost my mother to cancer three years ago. My only regret so far in my life is how many family occasions I passed on because my writing time was so limited. When I think back on all those memories I missed out on with my mom . . . . I’ll never make that mistake again. So my grandmother, my father and my brothers and sister are my number one priority. I’ll drop everything to spend the time with them.

Q: The main characters of your stories – do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them or do you create them to be completely different from you?

A: I put a bit of myself, a bit of my family, a bit of my favorite characters from television, a bit of the stranger at the bus stop or the airport and I mix all the characteristics together and come up with someone new, someone who doesn’t really resemble anyone.

Q: Is there any particular book that, when you read it, you thought, “I wish I had written that!”?

A: I absolutely love Guy Gavriel Kay, and wish I had written every book he has published, as well as anything he hasn’t published yet.

Q: In my experience, some things come quite easily (like creating the setting) and other things aren’t so easy (like deciding on a title). What comes easily to you and what do you find more difficult?

A: The characters come very easily to me, so does the action and keeping up the tension. The most difficult element is pace. It is such a fine line between enough detail to develop character, and create a visual setting, yet still maintain the fast pace. I tend to do a lot of cutting after every scene, then again during every revision.

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You can find Trish McCallan at www.trishmccallan.com