Meet the Author/Interview With a Character

Thank you all for joining me on this blog hop. I hope you enjoy meeting new authors or getting to know some of your favorites a little better.  

Meet Kasey Dean

This is me, Kasey Dean.  Why you may ask is half my face covered? Well because I, like many other authors use a pen-name, when writing. Kasey just kind of appeared in my head one day and decided she wanted to be heard.  I like to call her my evil twin sometimes but in truth the 'real' me is just a twisted as Kasey is. 

I was born and raised in Northern New York (about 30 minutes from Canada). I have been married for a little over twelve years and have four amazing children (one stepson, two sons, and the baby at seven years old is a girl). I keep telling her she's going to be very well  protected as she grows up. 

I work a very stressful job twelve hours a day. Between work, kids, pets, being and EMT, and recently a Thirty-One consultant, and a million other things I find myself doing there aren't many hours left in the day but I had so many stories in my head that needed to be told I decided to become and author.  It started out just a joke and I never really planned to submit the first book I wrote but the more and more I read and thought about it I thought maybe, just maybe someone would like and want to read my books.  The day I received the acceptance letter from Siren Publishing I cried and couldn't believe they actually liked it and wanted to publish it.  The journey since then has been so rewarding and enlightening.  I have made many new friends that I can "be myself" with. I have even met other authors who's book I have read and were the motivation behind me beginning to write. They have all been welcoming and have become my writing "family". 

Basic favorites about me:

Food - Pizza

Color - Pink (for breast cancer awareness)

Book genre - Romance/Erotica of course

Season - Summer

Movie - Pretty Woman

Actor - Vin Diesel

Actress - Michelle Rodriquez 

Code word - Spaghetti 

(Yes I LOVE Fast and Furious. Whoever decided to put the two of them together in a movie is a genius.)

Interview with Adrian Hektor-Drakon

Or at least my idea of what he looks like. This is actually fitness expert Jessie Pavelka.

No Escape from Destiny (Destinies Book 1)

Me: Easy questions first. 

Favorites: 

Food: Burritos

Color: Black

Season: Winter (So I have a reason to snuggle up with my mates)

Movie: Finding Nemo (Don't judge, just go with it)

Actor: Samuel L Jackson

Actress: Milla Jovovich

Book: Goodnight moon

Me: So Adrian what have you been up to since your book was released? 

Adrian: Basically trying to help Anstice take care of Kassie who's almost nine now and Kairos and Kyrie who just turned two.  I'm not sure how that woman takes care of them all day, every day but I'm glad she does. She's a great mom and I couldn't ask for a better mate. Oh and Nikkos helps sometimes too. 

Me: Speaking of Nikkos, how does it feel after all these years knowing that he had felt the same way about you as you felt about him but was afraid to admit it?

Adrian: I just wish I had known for sure.  There were small things he did in the past that made me think maybe he felt the same for me but I was too afraid of losing him as a friend to push him into anything.  I do have to admit, I'm kinda glad I didn't push. If I had then I'm not sure if we would have found Anstice.  As corny as it sounds, she competes us and I couldn't imagine not having her in our lives.  

Me: What are you plans for the future? 

Adrian: For now we're just living day to day and enjoying life.  We have a few more vacation that we want to go on but with the missing vampire and not knowing who is responsible we can't risk taking the family anywhere right now.  Hopefully we will have answers soon and be able to relax and just enjoy each other again.  

Me: Do you have any advice or words of wisdom for readers?

Adrian: Just live for the day. Live to be happy. Don't try to force anything. Happiness will come to you when it is meant to.  As Anstice's tattoo says τὸ πεπρωμένον φυγεῖν ἀδύνατον. It's impossible to escape from what is destined.  While I believe that every choice you make affects yours or someone else's destiny, it's impossible to escape from the choices you make and the results of those choices.  

Me: Thank you Adrian. 

Adrian: Wait I have a question for you. 

Me: Okay .Shoot.

Adrian: Are you going to write more books in the Destinies Series?

Me: Yes I am. I have started Lucian's story but I have to finish the second book of my Alpha Mates series first.

Adrian: But you started with us. You should get to work on Lucian's story. Oh and you're going to be nice right? Your not going to make him suffer like you did Damian right? 

Me: Because the Skye from the Alpha Mate Series needs his story told too. But don't worry it's almost finished. And you know I can't promise to be nice to Lucian but I can promise he WILL have a HEA by the time I'm done.  I think you will be very surprised at what his story has in story for him and your family.  I can't say anything more but it sure will be interesting. 

Adrian (rolls eyes): Interesting? Great that's what you said about Damian's story.  I better get going and warn the family that you're about to turn our world upside down again. 

Me: I'll try to be a nice as I can, but what fun will live be without a little drama?! (LOL) 

I hope you enjoyed meeting Adrian and myself. He and I would both love to answer any questions you have for us. 

Now to the extra fun part of the hop for you, the reader. 

The GIVEAWAY!!

There will be two giveaways on my site.  

First will be an e-copy of both No Escape from Destiny (Adrian's book)

and Destiny's Journey 

Books one and two of the Destinies Series.  

Leave me or Adrian a question. We'll answer it and you will be entered into the drawing. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Second is the Grand Prize

A $50 Amazon gift card.
Somewhere in everyone blog posts there is a code word.  Visit each blog and find the code word for extra chances at the Grand Prize. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to visit all the authors on the hop. 

Meet the Author/Interview With a Character Blog Hop

Ever wonder what makes your favorite author tick?

Ever wonder where your favorite book characters are now? 

What they've been doing since you read their story.

What their favorite color or food is.

The location of their dream vacation. 

Even the number one item on their bucket list. 

Don't wonder any longer!

Join some really great authors and find out some of these answers and more at the 

Meet the Author/Interview With a Character

Blog Hop

August 26-30, 2013

Add your name and website to the linky list below or contact me kaseydean(at)live(dot)com to become a participant. 

Check back soon for more information. 

Bravery vs. Screaming like a little girl

This is what a mouse may look like to some people. 

But to me it's more like this. 

(Plotting and scheming to take over the world)

Some people say I have an irrational fear of mice.  But it's not irrational at all there is a completely rational reason that I am scared to death of mice. And by scared to death I mean I will jump up on the closest, highest piece of furniture in the room whenever I even THINK I hear one in the house, and staying there for at least an hour or until the cat comes and catches and kills it.

When I was about eleven, where we lived we had a mouse problem. No matter what we did they were always in the house.  Mouse traps, poison, the little sonic thingy, no cats though because my mom said she was allergic to them.  I hated mice, I was always afraid that they would get in my bed while I was sleeping and walk all over me or something.  Now that may have been a little bit of my overactive imagination at work but that's what I thought. 

One night I was woken by the sound of a mousetrap in the kitchen going off.  My first thought...great one less mouse to worry about.  My second...nope not dead (I could hear my dog chasing something around the kitchen and just knew the thing wasn't dead). I listened for a few minutes when all of a sudden something (it had to be a mouse) landed on my bed right next to my pillow.  I jumped up screaming onto the footboard then up onto the post of my four poster bed. Screaming my fool head off, my mother and father both come into the room asking what was wrong.  Told them there was a mouse in my bed.  Father insisted it was just one of my many stuffed animals I had on the bed. Mother said I was probably just dreaming. I told them it wasn't either and that I was wide awake and told them about Cruz (the ugliest dog you will ever meet. Half poodle, half chihuahua. But I loved him) was chasing a mouse around the kitchen.  They went and check and sure enough there was a mouse stuck in a trap but not dead.  My father moved my bed to the middle of the floor in my bedroom and that is where it stayed, so no more mice could fall onto my bed from the open beamed ceiling. 

In the words of Ron White "I told you that story so I could tell you this one."

Sound asleep I hear something making a noise in my closet. My first thought...a mouse and the little rat bastard MUST die.  I will go buy a new trap tomorrow (I just throw them away because I can't touch them to empty them if a mouse is caught in one). The noise go louder...second thought...that's a damned big mouse.

I tap my husband on the shoulder. And by tap I mean he probably has bruised on his should the size of my fingertip and CSI might be able to pull my fingerprints our of the bruises. He wakes up. I inform him that there is a mouse in the closet and he needed to do something about it.  He tells me to go to sleep, leave it alone, and it will go away. 

GO TO SLEEP? IT WILL GO AWAY?? ARE YOU INSANE??

We have been together almost seventeen years and he thinks this is going to work.  This from a man that came home from work one day to find me sitting ON the kitchen table writing on my laptop. When he asked what I was doing I told him there was a mouse and the chairs just weren't high enough to keep it away from me.  When I told him that it has been at least an hour since I last saw or heard from the mouse he laughed and left me sitting there. He didn't go on a mad search for said mouse to kill it. He left. Bad, bad man. 

Knowing I'm not going to sleep I decide to investigate this mouse and try to make him go away (from a distance of kneeling on my bed from across the room). I turn my flashlight app on on my phone and shine it toward the closet. Because this will scare the big bad mouse and make it go away. Oh no, the noise got louder and louder until suddenly I saw something much worse than a mouse. 

What's worse than a mouse you may ask? 

How about a mouse with wings.

Aka....a BAT!!!!

This is not the exact bat obviously because there is no way in hell that I would get close enough to one to take a picture but I'm sure this is what the one in me bedroom last night looked like. Except I'm pretty sure his teeth were bigger.

I scream bloody murder and put the blanket over my head. Rolling myself in the blankets to make sure the is no way that the evil thing can get in.  By this time husband is completely awake telling me "Stay under the covers because you don't want to see what it is."

DUH!! I saw the spawn of Satan when it flew out of the closet. There isn't anything I could confuse it with. 

He finds something (I have no idea what because I'm hiding and screaming for him to just kill it) to swat at it with.  It is obviously flying over the bed because every time he swats at it he over swings and hits the bed.  Of course to me that is really the bat falling on top of me so I scream every time he does it.  

Finally I hear a swat and a ka-thunk as something hits the floor on my side of the bed.  I ask if it's dead. The answer comes in the form of him beating on the floor with whatever weapon he has in his hand.  The he leaves the room. Just freaking left me there under the covers while there may  or may not be a dead bat right next to my bed.  He comes back a few minutes later with something to put it in. 

The bat is now inside an old water pitcher, inside a plastic bag, in the refrigerator in the back of my garage because public health wants to test it for rabies as we were sleeping when I first heard it so there is no way of knowing if it had landed on the bed or anywhere else before I heard it.  

To say the least I have been awake since midnight when this happened and am exhausted.  The only good part was that all my screaming did not wake up my seven year old daughter.  I'm glad of this because you have to be brave for your children and there was no way in hell I could have been brave for anyone last night.  I still haven't told her about the bat and probably won't because she'll never sleep again if she knows there was one in the house.  As it is she has to have her desk pushed up against her closet door every night before she'll go to sleep.  

Moral of the story.  

My fears are not irrational!! If I hadn't had my very real fear of mice I wouldn't have bothered looking to see what it was doing and the bat would have been flying around the room all night without anyone knowing until the blood sucking evil mouse with wings landed on our bed. 

Oh and check your screens to make sure there are no holes in them. 

The Journey is over, Destiny is here.

Finally Destiny's Journey is set to be published.  This was the hardest book so far to write but I can say that I am very happy on how it turned out.  While I'm not supposed to have a favorite character, I can say that Damian has been my favorite since he first popped into my mind. He'll tell you he just walked in and sat in the corner quietly waiting for his chance to be heard but really he ran in waving his arms, screaming, "hey over here.  Write about me. I wanna be in your books."  

He is a sweetheart who's life could have turned out so much differently if fate had been a little kinder to him. For all the pain and suffering he has been through in his short life he has flourished.  Even though he will be in future Destinies book I don't see his story as being over.  I have an idea he may just be a character that deserves a second book all about him and his mates.  Who knows? Anything is possible guess I'll just have to wait and see where the series takes us all.  

With the release of Destiny's Journey I have also been asked to do an interview with manloveauthors.com.  I just completed the interview and submitted it today.  As soon as I know when it will be posted I will be sure to let everyone know.  Until then, if you love men and ManLove be sure to check out the link above for the website. There are lots of interesting interviews and articles there. 

Homophobia

I received my first "in person" dose of intolerance and homophobia today while shopping. I was at a store talking to the employee about something simple when I mentioned my "partner."

Me: "Yeah my partner has...."

Employee: "Oh really?"

Me: "Yeah she said...."

Employee: (Eyes widen then narrow at me) "Your partner is a woman?"

Me: (Confused) "Yes." 

Employee: "I'll gotta go." (She turns and walks away. Walks to another employee and whispers something to her and points at me.)

They share a look the the first employee walks out of sight to gods only knows where. I continued my shopping by myself still confused and not finding everything that I wanted.  Going up the cash register with my purchase the first employee is still no where in sight.  The second one slowly makes her way behind the register. Not saying a word to me she starts ringing up my items.  I'm still confused and irritated by this point.  This is a store that I have been to a few times and they have a point reward system for purchases.  I tell her that I don't have my card with me but that I do have one somewhere and ask if she can look it up. 

She sighs, rolls her eyes at me and says "I guess so."

 I asked "Can you look it up by my phone number?" 

Her reply "Whatever." 

This pisses me off. I have NO idea what the hell I did to make these people act like this toward me.  Anyone that knows me can tell you that I speak my mind no matter the situation so I ask "Is there a problem that I'm not aware of?"

Her response was a grunt. A Grunt. A fraking GRUNT!!

I ask, "Did I do something that I'm not aware of?" (I'm thinking I asked too many questions about what I was looking for or they were just irritated that they showed me several different of the items I was looking for before I found what I wanted.)

She sneered at me "We don't like your kind." 

I stare at her for about thirty seconds trying to figure out what 'my kind' is.  I'm standing at a makeup counter so it can't be that I'm a woman. I'm in a store that I usually see mostly women in. And she IS a women. I have no idea what the hell she is talking about so I ask, "My kind? What kind am I?" 

She glances around the store before whispering, "lesbians." 

NOW my brain to mouth filter (and apparently my volume control) is completely gone. "Lesbians? You don't like lesbians?" 

I now have the attention of anyone within hearing distance. "So your co-worker refused to help me find what I needed and walked away and you are being an ass because you think I'm a lesbian and you 'don't like my kind'?" 

She just glared at me. Not wanting to get arrested I decided it was time I leave before I slap the dumb bitch up side the head and go find her co-worker to do the same.  

I left my entire purchase which added up to be around $50 on the counter and walked away.  As I was leaving the store I noticed six other women put their purchased down in front of her and follow me out.  

One woman caught up to me outside the store and told me she was very sorry that I had to go through that and that I was a very brave person for sticking up for myself. The others passed by and smiled at me. 

I honestly wanted to cry. I know that there are people out there who are intolerant and homophobic but I never thought in a million years I would have to deal with two of them at the same time being that rude to me. 

The reason I thought I would never be on the receiving end of homophobia us because I am NOT a lesbian. I have been married to a man for almost eleven years. The "partner" I was speaking of was my work partner. I DO however completely support equality no matter your sexual orientation.  Love is love no matter who it is you love. I explained to the woman that followed me out that I was not gay and that I was married. She asked why I let the woman at the counter believe I was. I told her that it didn't matter if I denied it or not. If I denied it then I would just be playing into her childish homophobic ways. That she wouldn't care what I said, once she thought it nothing I was going to say was going to change her mind.  She informed me she would never shop at that store again. My goal wasn't to make people not shop there but I thanked her anyway and went on with my shopping.  To say the least I will NEVER set foot in that store again. Unless it's to go speak to the manager about their employees.  Which probably won't make a difference anyway. Actually I'm such a bitch maybe I'll go in there and look around the next time I'm there just to irritate the shit out of the little bitch. Can you get arrested for walking around a store and not buying anything if you mind your own business? 

I still don't understand how people can be and act the way they do. We're all people. We're all human beings. I know that I've lived a somewhat sheltered life growing up and living where I do but this is ridiculous.  I'm not saying any of this to make myself look good because I stood up for something. And I know I'm not the only one that has ever had to deal with people like this. I know many people have had a lot worse experiences than what I did today. I just wanted to say no one should have to be treated this way. If anyone is ever treated this way please know that not everyone thinks the way these two women do. There are a lot of people out there that support you. Stand up for yourself and keep you head held high. 

  

Destiny's Journey (Destinies Book 2) Damian's story

I have finally finished writing Damian's story in my Destinies series.  This book was very hard for me to write because I knew exactly where it was going.  ALL the characters were talking to me and the story was flowing perfectly.  The rate I was writing it should have been finished in about two months but as I was writing I remembered something that was in the submission rules for my publisher.

I went back and checked the rules again and of course what I remembered was the actual rule.  After rereading the rules I had to change almost the whole story.  While my characters did get their HEA it took a long time.  Once they realized I was going to "fuck with their life" they were pissed and refused to speak to me.

No matter how many times I begged and pleaded with them and promised them they would get their HEA they would just have to work for it they would not cooperate.  By not cooperate I mean they wouldn't speak to me when I was trying to write their story but when I would try to work on something else they were in the back of my mind jumping up and down, waving their arms so I couldn't concentrate on anything but them.

Finally after almost a year of trying to tell their story, I have finished and submitted it to Siren.  Now I'm waiting to see if they will accept it.  My hope is that they do and that my fans that enjoyed No Escape From Destiny like Destiny's Journey just as much if not more.  Damian and his mates were my favorite yet to write and as much of a pain in the ass they were I love them dearly and can't wait for their story to be heard.

While I'm sure the men in the above picture are not going to be on the finished cover they are the men I had in mind while I was writing this book.  I will keep everyone updated on Siren's response and when/if it will be published.

To anyone that read No Escape From Destiny and have been waiting for the next book.  Thank you so much for your patience.  I probably could have finished it sooner but neither myself or my characters would have been happy with it if I had to leave out certain elements that needed to be in the story.

I have ideas for at least two more books in the Destinies series and have already started working on book two of the Alpha Mates series along with a BDSM book possibly to be titled Kenzie's Saviors. Now that Destiny's Journey is complete I'm hoping Damian and his mates will be happy and let me write the other characters I have wandering around in my mind waiting for their chance to be heard.

So graceful.

Growing up I took dance lessons for 11 years, won competitions. Gymnastics for 6 years, won meets. Karate for 5 years, won tournaments and got my black belt. Was a cheerleader, won competitions. That being said, I'm a KLUTZ! Apparently my gracefulness only extends to difficult things, not normal everyday tasks.

Yesterday I had my kids throw their dirty clothes down the stairs so I could do laundry. On my way down said stair I tripped on the clothes half way down and fell the rest of the way. All day I was on the couch unable to move and in pain. Today I'm still so sore I had to call in sick. I trip over flat surfaces except when I'm wearing 4 inch heels.

What I can't figure out is how I can go from doing cartwheels on a balance beam and jump spin kicks in karate to tripping over flat surfaces.

Today I'll be laying on the couch again bruised from my ass to my shoulder. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.