Q+A with Isabel Cooper (Night of the Highland Dragon)

Please welcome today's guest author, Isabel Cooper!  Isabel is the author of the Highland Dragons paranormal romance series, including her new release NIGHT OF THE HIGHLAND DRAGON.

Q+A with Isabel Cooper

EJ:  When did you begin writing?

Isabel:  Oh, writing in general I started in something like third grade: very painstakingly crayon-illustrated adventures of puppies, I believe. And maybe princesses. By middle school, I'd discovered fantasy and spent math class writing a five-color-pen (the turquoise and pink version, of course) story where a girl suspiciously like me but prettier turned out to be a mystical heroine. I didn't get published until college, when a magazine bought one of my short stories, and I got my first novel published around 2010. With any luck, my writing's improved in the process.

EJ:  What brought you to the paranormal genre?

Isabel:  Probably early exposure to Lord of the Rings--although, even before that, I was very much inclined toward the weird magic elements of cartoons. (Rainbow Brite, dude. I would completely watch a grown-up version of that.) I can't remember a time when I didn't like fantasy: finding D&D and similar when I was an early teenager only exacerbated that. I started reading romance novels a little later, around eight or so, and at some point the combination just seemed like a good idea, or at least the sort of thing I'd try on a dare. Which I did. And then it got published.

I feel like the moral of my life is "do things that friends suggest when you're all drunk." This is one of the reasons my life will never make a good Afterschool Special.

EJ:  If you could be any paranormal or have any one supernatural talent, what would it be? Why?

Isabel:  I'm torn. On the one hand, I'd like to be a medium or another kind of communing-with-the-dead person, because I'd really like confirmation that there's an afterlife. On the other hand, I'm a child of the eighties, and I really want the kind of magical power that involves sparkly multicolored light and roses manifesting out of nowhere. (There's this thing in nineties-ish fantasy lit wherein oh, you don't need fancy robes and wands and stuff to do magic, it's all about nature and your own spirit, and I say bah to that: why even bother getting transcendent universal power if you can't dress up? Freaking hippies, man.) So...maybe anime-style transformation sequence?

EJ:  Tell us why readers will enjoy your new release.

Isabel:  Okay, so first of all, it's yet another book in my unofficial Excuses to put Badass Women in Victorian Clothing subgenre. (I love Buffy and Xena; I also love big hats and plush skirts. And I didn't get into this to avoid self-indugence.) This time, the badass in question is actually a dragon, and more than a century old, and she's impressing the hell out of an English spy, who is himself pretty damn awesome and also messes around with coded letters and weird magic devices, so that's a lot of fun. There are demons. There are excessively creepy imperialistic cults lurking around the edges, and everyone suspects everyone else for a while: in particular, my hero and heroine suspect each other for a long time, except they don't suspect each other of remotely the right things. I fool around a whole lot with mythology and folktales. It's a great time.

And also, have you seen the earrings in my cover art? Damn. Go art department.

EJ:  If your book(s) were being made into a movie, who would you cast for the leading roles? Why?

Isabel:  Ooh. Well, for this one, Judith would probably have a Lucy-Lawless-as-Xena thing going on, albeit in considerably fancier dress: tall, dark, physically imposing, and hot. William I see as Anthony Stewart Head, with slightly redder hair, around S1 of Buffy: more civilized and intellectual, a little apparently older, but still no wimp and still quite attractive.  (Yes, most of my pop-cultural images were formed in the mid-nineties. Such is my way.)

Thank you Isabel for joining us here today at From the Shadows!

Night of the Highland Dragon (Highland Dragons #3) by Isabel Cooper

Acclaimed author Isabel Cooper’s thrilling paranormal romance series continues with a sexy Highland dragon shapeshifter and an inquisitive hero…

William Arundell is a detective working for a secret branch of the English government. When a young man is found dead, William’s investigation leads him to a remote Highland village and the intoxicatingly beautiful lady who rules MacAlasdair Castle.

The charismatic Judith MacAlasdair is not what William expected. The only daughter in a long line of shape-changing dragons, Judith is wary of William and his unrelenting questions. However, when William’s investigation takes an interesting turn, they must put aside years of bad blood and a mutual distrust of outsiders to band together to save the British Islands from its deadliest foe…

Release Date: June 2, 2015
Genre: Paranormal Romance
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To learn more about Isabel Cooper and her books, please visit her website.  Have a question for Isabel?  Ask in the comment section below.  We love comments!