Once upon a time, in a place called San Antonio, a girl was born with sass and far too much imagination. Her name-Moira Keith.
As one of two daughters born into a wonderful military family, Moira spent several years in Panama (as in Panama Canal) when she was a child. At the age of ten, she landed in Las Vegas with her family, where they stayed. Growing up in a place nicknamed Sin City and known for its over twenty-one focused entertainment, left a lot of time for Moira’s imagination to run amuck. It is this city and it’s surrounding areas, both real and imagined, that serve as a backdrop for most of her writing.
Raised in a family with a voracious love of reading, it didn’t take long for her to follow suit. The first romances she truly devoured were from the young adult series Sweet Valley High. In her teens, she watched her first vampire movie…The Lost Boys, and her love of vampires and the paranormal had begun. This particular love affair just added fuel to the fire and soon Moira was sitting behind the keyboard typing away her first stories.
As a writer, she envisions many worlds within the one she currently thrives in. Her pastimes are playing Rockband with her sons, daydreaming and living vicariously through the characters she breathes to life. Indulgences? Why vampires, werewolves and faeries… oh my! Did we mention these guys? Her twin boys provide an inspiration all their own.
A Little Q & A
Which authors have influenced your writing?
There are so many great authors out there. It’s hard to narrow it down. They range from well known, to just starting out and the list is ever changing. A few who are tops on my list right now would be Lori Devoti, Teresa D’Amario, Jeaniene Frost, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Laurell K Hamilton, and Nora Roberts. Though the list hardly scratches the surface, these are some of the first that come to mind.
What else influences your writing?
The Divas… definitely. Oh, and though it may sound a bit cliché’ my other influences come from life, music, art, dreams, friends-everywhere you look there are things that impact our lives, and they mark you. It would be near impossible for those things not to leave a mark on my writing in some way.
What are you working on now?
Depends on the moment. Okay, seriously, I am guilty of having several stories in progress, but at the moment I currently rotate between two paranormal stories. One is a more mainstream paranormal romance and the other is a paranormal young adult.
The mainstream paranormal romance is about a woman who is a half breed. She fully embraces her Fae heritage, but not her wolf. She is marked at birth for repayment of a debt owed by the wolf pack to a trio of war goddesses. Now she must learn to embrace a part of her life she has long ignored, and the fate that awaits her.
The paranormal young adult is about a teenage girl named Faith, who is an anomaly among her kind. She is the first child in history to be born to a vampire. She lost her father before her sixth birthday, and her mother shows little interest in being a mom. At birth, she exhibited no vampire traits, only the human traits of her father, but as she ages, her body seems to take on the vampire traits.
I won’t say more than that since they are works in progress and I don’t want to give too much away, But if you are interested, you can keep track of the progress on my books page.
Do you model your characters on real people or just imagine them?
A little of both. It’s hard not to incorporate traits of people you see or know. I think it helps to make the characters seem more real. But they are not entirely based on real people.
What music do you like/ listen to (if you do) while writing?
This is dictated by the story so it could really be anything from country, to classical, to alternative… anything goes really.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
No, actually I always thought I would be a famous artist or a rock star. I always wrote for fun, but never thought my ideas were interesting enough. It took a long time to come to the decision to work at being a writer.
Do you have a work/writing routine?
Routine? I don’t think I thought of it as one, but yeah I guess I do. Every day I make it a point to sit down and write something or do something that will help enhance my writing. Whether Though I am sure there are authors out there who can whip out books as often as change my hair color, it is not the norm. It is hard work and a process that can ebb and flow depending on many factors. A routine is vital to limiting the ebb, or so I have found in my own writing.
