Please help me welcome author KevaD to Reading with Holly! :)
Holly: Hi, KevaD! Would you tell us a little bit about yourself?
KevaD: No.
Ow!! Jeez. Cool it with the stiletto heels already.
I’m KevaD. David Kentner to the IRS and my wife’s insurance policy she took out on me. I’m a fulltime writer and have the unpaid bills to prove it. In my leisure time I enjoy feeding unicorns, climbing rainbows, collecting wishes, and mending broken dreams. I’ve been known to stand naked by the mailbox and wave at the fire trucks when they go by. Okay. Not really. I wore a mask, and it was a neighbor’s mailbox. I’ll let you decide if that’s a true story or not.
Holly: When did you realize that you would like to write and publish a book?
KevaD: When I was being processed into jail for public nudity and the deputy said this would make a great story.
Holly: Can you tell us a little bit about your book Kantu’s Heart?
KevaD: Of course I can. I wrote it.
Holly: Which came first for you, the characters or the plot?
KevaD: Serious answer: When author Barbara Sheridan first approached me about writing a story for Decadent Publishing’s Western Escape line, the character Kantu immediately stepped up. I envisioned a cave-dwelling warrior and his mate who are murdered in their time by a roving band of cannibals. He awakens in a strange world filled with buildings, machines, and people he can’t understand – people who do not respect the earth and the life that inhabits it. He believes he’s being punished for failing to protect his clan and mate, until he spots his mate, his heart Sanda, in the arms of the man who killed her. Then Kantu embarks on a mission to win back his heart and avenge his people.
Sandra Harn can’t explain her attraction to the ferocious man who leaps into a bullring to protect the animal from young Crow braves slapping its snout in displays of courage for the town’s annual Native American Heritage events. When the exotic warrior turns his unfurled fury on her companion, real estate developer Paul Carson, Sandra’s mind says run, but her body begs surrender.
Holly: You’re out demon hunting (because you’re that kind of awesome) and you come across one about to kill a young couple. He has not seen you yet; what is your first course of action?
KevaD: Set up a live feed to Facebook. This is gonna get good!
Holly: Are you working on anything at the moment?
KevaD: As I said, I write fulltime, so there’s always a current project on the computer. Actually, there are usually three or four vying for my attention.
Author H.C. Brown and I decided to team up for a couple of erotic series. She pens sex and romance as well as anybody in the business. My specialty is characterization and intriguing plots. Our first completed story “Sea Games” is already in the hands of publishers for consideration. Stay tuned.
Holly: How much of you or people you know do you think make it into the characters in your novel(s)?
KevaD: A lot. I’m a people watcher. I absorb the tiny nuances and gestures, the line of a brow, the unbalanced curve of a smile, the graze of a fingertip over a companion’s arm, people’s interaction whether good or bad. The human mind absolutely fascinates me. That’s why most of the stories I write are born from a character and not a plot. I build circumstances around the character for him or her to react in. I know how the story will start and end, but how we get there isn’t set in stone, and I’m usually just as surprised as anybody by the route we travel.
Holly: What is the easiest part of writing in your opinion?
KevaD: Fiction is telling a believable lie. I’m a great liar.
Holly: Do you have anything you would like to say to your readers?
KevaD: Yes.
Back away from the shoe. I know how to use this can of pepper spray.
Holly: What is your favorite part of writing?
KevaD: The journey. When I’m writing, I’m not detached from my work at all. I’m with the characters every step of the way, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. It really isn’t uncommon for my wife to chuckle at me when I’m sitting at my desk blubbering over a scene that just broke my heart.
Random Quickies!
Holly: When do you prefer to read?
KevaD: Whenever my wife wants to have a serious discussion.
Holly: Ebook or hardcover/paperback?
KevaD: I read both, but there’s nothing like the feel and smell of a book in my hands.
Holly: Pepsi or Coke?
KevaD: Pepsi. I also happen to believe you’re never too old to enjoy a shot of Pepsi in a glass of chocolate milk.
Holly: Favorite book?
KevaD: Currently, it’s "Gangsters, Harlots & Thieves: Down and Out at the Hotel Clifton." Theron Moore put together a collection of his father Todd Moore’s poems and essays about growing up in a seedy hotel with his would-be gangster, alcoholic father who did odd jobs for the Capones. The book is a marvelous peek inside back alley life of that era.
Holly: Dark Chocolate or Milk Chocolate?
KevaD: Heretic! Chocolate is a gift of the gods, meant to be revered and worshipped in all its forms.
Title: Kantu's Heart (DP’s “Western Escape” Series)
Author: KevaD
Publisher: Decadent Publishing
Length: 159 pages
Main Sub-Genres: Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense
Sub-Categories: Erotic
Available at:
Blurb:
Before the ice age, warrior Kantu lost his tribe, his mate Sanda, and his life to a vicious band of cannibals led by his most powerful enemy. He awakens in a world beyond his comprehension only to find his mate in the arms of her killer. Misery and strength meld into one goal—to win back his heart and kill his enemy.
With a nudge from her gentle guardian, Sandra Harn travels to Freewill, WY, looking for bargains at the annual rummage sale and, hopefully, answers to her mysterious past. Once there, visions of a time before the town existed make her question her sanity. When an exotic stranger with flowing raven hair and a body she can’t resist tries to kill her companion, logic tells her to run, but her heart and body have other ideas.
A shift in the slight breeze carried a faint hint of animals mixed in a pack. The wrong animals. Tware, sconta, and garrel did not travel together, did not feed or birth their young anywhere close to each other. Kantu jerked his head from side to side and inhaled short bursts of air. The draft rolled and turned as if a child at play in a stream’s mud, and the scent escaped his track. He closed his eyes and slowly faced the four corners of the winds in the hope the beings above and below would give him the wisdom to understand why these plant feeders had gathered without reason. Or had they come together?
At the base of his neck, a ball of heat bore into his body and slithered to his brain where it crumbled and floated through him until lingering once more under the skin on his forehead. With the sensation came the scents. The odd mix of smells dripped like melting icicles into his nose. Kantu quickly layered the traces. Garrel to his left, tware in front, sconta right. A stench remained. Sweat. Man sweat.
Kantu opened his eyes and shifted his gaze to the gray sky rocks where he had left his people…and Sanda...more than a day ago in the caves, in safety while he found a garrel herd’s trail. His tribe weren’t warriors. Man hunters would find the caves and feast on his people, then wear the hides and skins Kantu and his hunters provided the clan. That was the mix of the animals—man hunters clad in their stolen hides and skins. He traced his fingers over the long, bumpy lines from his left shoulder to his right hip. Only he bore the three claw marks of a warrior.
“Sanda!” he screamed to the sky rocks. Kantu gripped his spear sticks and ran.
Video Book Trailer:
KevaD is David "DA" Kentner, prolific author of romance, suspense, horror, fantasy, and winner of American Mensa, Ltd’s Calliope magazine 18th annual fiction competition. His weekly column "The Readers' Writers" in which he interviews famous and soon-to-be-famous authors appears in newspapers across the country.
When not writing, shoveling snow, or mowing their 5 acres outside Freeport, IL, he's trying to explain to his wife the TV has more than SOAP and GAME channels, and pizza really is a necessary and required food group.
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