Interview with Author Tanya Hanson

Today I have an interview with Tanya Hanson, who is a fellow author with me at The Wild Rose Press.  And we were together at the publisher's retreat a couple of years ago at the Silver Spur dude ranch in Texas.

Tanya, tell us a littl about yourself.

I’m a California beach girl happily married to my personal hero (firefighter and cancer survivor). We’ve got two grown kids, who are the best thing I’ve ever done, and two little grandsons who totally obsess us. I love travel, country music, Hallmark movies, and McDonald’s iced coffee. I don’t like to cook, am terrified of down escalators, am a proud Defender of Wildlife, and I volunteer at our local horse rescue. Spending the Fourth of July keeping Amigo calm during the fireworks was the best way to spend Independence Day!


Sounds like a busy life. And as a grandmother myself, I understand the obsession! When you decide to become a writer?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since the first time I read LITTLE WOMEN when I was eight years old.

I love LITTLE WOMEN.  It was one of the first books I bought with my very own money. I remember going to the bookstore and drooling over it for months before finally purchasing it.  Can you tell us about your road to publishing?
I procrastinated for far too long. Finally with the kids off to college, my hubby said, you better start finding out how to get published. Amazingly, one of my teaching colleagues was a pubbed romance author who directed me to Romance Writers of America and our local chapter. At the first meeting, I met best-selling author Charlene Sands, now one of my best friends and greatest inspirations. She really helped me get my start with critique and tons of handholding. And still does!

Tells us a little about your current book. What inspired you to write it?
SOUL FOOD is the fifth in eight contracted novellas in the inspirational Hearts Crossing Ranch series at Pelican Book Group. All are set on a ranch in modern-day Colorado. The heroine, Kelley Martin, is based a little on my niece Kelley...they are both vegetarians. Yet neither Kelley is “judgmental against carnivores”, as book-Kelley always says. The setting, a city slicker wagon train, is based on a real-life wagon train trip I took with my hubby recently around the Tetons. It is still almost surreal, looking back.

Buy SOUL FOOD here.

It’s amazing how real-life helps form most of my fiction. Of course the wagon-train setting is real, and my trip not long ago to The Wild Rose Press’s retreat on a ranch in Bandera Texas helped me with so many ranch details. Even small things in the book, like blood donating--I’m a regular having donated 57 pints, turn up in my stories. And hero Jason’s simple little “butterfly kiss” came from a children’s talk during a church service.

Before we go, what project do you have coming up that you'd like to tell us about?
Book Six, ANGEL CHILD, will be out in late 2012. It features a single mom falling in love with one of the sons of Hearts Crossing Ranch but scared to reveal her disabled child. Then I’m returning to sensual historical romance for the holidays with The Wild Rose Press’s CHRISTMAS FOR RANSOM, releasing November 28, features a good-hearted, good-looking outlaw who, unbeknownst, falls for a woman whose horses he just stole. She’s the schoolmarm he’s hired to teach him to read.

And I traded in the Stetson for a prayer cap. Pelican Book Group has acquired my young adult novel. “THE CIRCLE GIRLS: ONCE UPON A WITCH” will release under my new pen name, Anya Novikov. It’s spooky and time-travel-y and has a great message that finger pointing and casting blame without personal responsibility didn’t just happen in 1692. It’s all around us.

Thanks so much for being my guest today. I always enjoy learning about how other writers take the path to being published.

Learn more about Tanya here:

http://www.tanyahanson.com/
http://www.petticoatsandpistols.com/
http://www.goodchristiancowgirl.com/ (the wordpress blog is still being born)