Spotlight Author - Bethany Aan

Today I'm honored to introduce you to a dear friend. Bethany and I began chatting on-line almost 20 years ago. I've watched her grow as both a person and an author. Her first release, Hearts of Ishira is the product of that growth. I hope you'll enjoy reading her book as much as I am.


Bethany has been a fan and a writer of romance, science fiction/fantasy, and erotic fiction for more than twenty years and is thrilled that the reading market has finally caught up to her love of all three so that she can share the stories she's always dreamed of writing.

Bethany Aan lives in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina with her husband and their dog, Loki. You can find her author's page on Facebook, follow her blog at http://bethanyaan.blogspot.com, or keep up with everything at once by visiting www.bethanyaan.com.

Q & A for Bethany Aan

1. What is the most difficult for you to write: Characters, conflict, emotions?

Believe it or not, the conflict is the hardest for me to write. My characters tend to tell me about themselves through their thoughts and actions. Emotions kind of come natural to me, for some reason. I’ve always been sensitive to emotions and very self aware of my own, so maybe that’s why. But conflict? I don’t like conflict. And I love my characters, so usually it’s hard for me to figure out who wants to hurt them, and why. I think that’s why my heroes and heroines rarely fight with each other… most of their struggles are internal, but the love is rarely in doubt. I like having them bond together and work towards defeating the big nasty, who or whatever that might be. 

2. If you could time travel would you go forward or backward?

That’s a tough one! I’d much rather be able to do both, to be honest. I’m just as interested in ancient history and the way people lived from day to day, as I am in what’s coming long after I’m ashes. 

3. You’ve been ‘at rest’ for awhile. What prompted you to jump back in with such a vengeance?

This is sort of a spiritual thing. I tried going back to college, and I did okay at first, but then things started happening that showed me that what I thought I wanted to do wasn’t right for me. So I changed majors, from Art Education to Entrepreneurship. I planned on opening my own bakery and cake decorating business, here in the small mountain town my husband and I live in.

The final straw was when both my rampant clinical depression and a severe chronic back pain issue flared at the same time. My depression meds stopped working and so did my back. That showed me that I wasn’t going to be able to do the cake decorating thing, as that’s a lot of hours on your feet and in weird positions. 

So I had a talk with the universe (my personal name for the almighty is Bish… He/She/It/Bob… ), and the universe told me to sit down, quit fighting it, and WRITE. I hadn’t been able to write much of anything in nearly 20 years, but when I finally stopped fighting ‘my destiny’, sat down and started writing… it just flowed out of me. It hasn’t stopped for much of anything, and I have several stories, a few novels, and an entire new world that is involved in an epic space opera. 

4. Tell us about your real life romance.

My real life romance… 

Well, the short version is that I was assistant manager at a bookstore. Sal came in to buy a box of Magic the Gathering booster packs. We started talking, I found out he liked Robert Jordan, and not even an hour before, my boss had told me to go ahead and put a special-ordered Robert Jordan book out. It was autographed, but the customer had never come to pick it up or pay for it.

We like to tell folks that I sold Sal a book he already had and we fell in love, but there’s so much more to it than that… as there is with any great love story. We’ve been together for 16 years this November, married for the past 5, and are more in love now than we were back then, if you can imagine!

 About Hearts of Ishira

When Arianna wakes on a strange planet, she is the only human able to communicate psychically with the big, sexy Thorsani warrior who rides in with his men to rescue the Earth women from their crashed space transport. The Thorsani, humanoid but descended from sentient cats eons ago, are also marooned on this planet they have named 'Ishira'.

Hunter and his brother Jace are Commander and lead physician of Ishira colony. When the captured women tumble into their lives, the small Earthlings turn the men's world upside down. The girls bring drama and heartache, laughter and light...not to mention the first opportunity for sex in more than ten years. And though she's the oldest of her group, Hunter and Jace find themselves drawn to the lovely, curvy Arianna.

For Ri and her ladies, their tumultuous new life takes a very interesting turn when they discover that the Thorsani way is to marry in teams of men...

Excerpt:

“Then why did you cry out?” Jace thundered. “You scared ten lives out of me!”

“I… I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I just didn’t… I wasn’t expecting… “

She threw a helpless look at Hunter, who merely grinned hugely and offered no assistance whatsoever. The beast.

“Did not expect what?” Jace asked angrily, crossing his arms over his muscular chest.

“That,” Arianna pointed, then covered her flaming face with her hands. Hunter nearly doubled over with laughter.

Jace looked down at himself, where she was pointing, and found nothing out of the ordinary. 

“What?” he asked, throwing a bewildered look toward his brother.

“I do not think she has seen men of our… er… endowments before, brother,” Hunter chuckled. “We appear to be more impressive than the men of her world.”

“They’re huge!” Arianna cried, peeking once more before hiding her face again. They continued laughing until she threw a pillow at each one. “Oh, stop it!”

“Your face, little one!” Hunter laughed, leaning back against the wall. “It was as though you have never seen one before.”

5. This is the first book in a series. Can you give us a sneak peek into Book 2? 

It’s hard to pick one that doesn’t reveal too much from book one, but I’ll give it a shot!

Sean?” 

Ri wandered around the large balcony, wondering if he was hiding from her. When she reached the sitting area, she saw that he had slept on the couch out there. Again. The restless energy that had made sleep almost impossible for him still lingered on his pillow. Caressing the spot where his head had left an indentation, Arianna shook her head. She knew that she was the cause of his restlessness, but wasn’t sure what to do about it. Well, that was a lie. She did know. She just didn’t want to admit it, to him or to herself. 

The simplest answer to their issue was the most obvious. She could just take him as her lover, as her third mate. His brothers would welcome him, since the five brothers had been a team long before Arianna had crash landed on Hunter’s world. Ri had touched Sean’s mind far out into space, guiding him home to Ishira, the world where Hunter had built their colony when his people were driven from their home planet. 

I want to thank Bethany for popping in today. 

Happy Reading

Angela