{"id":1450,"date":"2017-11-07T09:06:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T14:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2023-01-09T11:30:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T16:30:03","slug":"talking-terry-spear-81m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/talking-terry-spear-81m\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking  with Terry Spear \u201981M"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong class=\"question\">How did you get interested in this genre?<\/strong><br \/>\nI love anything paranormal. When I was 13, my mother took me to see <em>Dracula<\/em> at the local community college. I fell in love with him. He was the underdog, and I thought he deserved to be loved. I started writing vampire stories, but that was becoming popular, so I thought what else could I write? When I created the <em>Heart of the Wolf<\/em> series, I based it on some of the lore of werewolves. I researched wolf behavior and incorporated some of their characteristics into the stories to make the werewolves as realistic as possible. My stories are also very contemporary\u2014the pack travels in SUVs.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header>Spear Snippets<\/header>\n<p>Terry Spear is every bit as fascinating as the characters who inhabit her stories.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Star Student<\/strong>: Spear skipped two years of high school and entered college at age 16.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Big Down Under<\/strong>: She has a huge Australian fan base; it\u2019s her third largest after the U.S. and U.K.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Award Winner<\/strong>: Spear crafts award-winning teddy bears for various charities including Ronald McDonald House.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/aside>\n<p><strong class=\"question\">You were a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves. How does that help you as a writer?<\/strong><br \/>\nI got to fire a tank. I did confidence courses, leadership courses, obstacle courses. It\u2019s experiences like that you can\u2019t get anywhere else. I have written several stories where I\u2019ve used some of the situations I was in.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"question\">What did you like about Monmouth?<\/strong><br \/>\nTo make lieutenant colonel in the military, you have to have a master\u2019s, so I went for my M.B.A. I loved Monmouth. I remember for some of my classes, I was sitting in [Wilson Hall]. I\u2019m trying to concentrate on the lecture, but I\u2019m thinking,<em> this was somebody\u2019s home<\/em>. I was thinking of time travel, and if I went back to the past, I\u2019d be sitting in the middle of somebody\u2019s bed<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"question\">You\u2019ve written more than 50 books. Can you pick a favorite?<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen you\u2019re working on a book, that\u2019s your favorite. Your whole focus has to be on it. You have to love your characters [and] love your story or it really shows. One time, I tried to write a straight young adult novel\u2014not paranormal\u2014and it was an absolute struggle. I finished it, but it was awful and I never shared it with the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"question\">What personal accomplishments are you most proud of?<\/strong><br \/>\nI raised a son and daughter, and I\u2019m proud they have done really well. My son is in the Air Force, and he\u2019s getting his master\u2019s in computer science. My daughter is a dietician for a school system. She just had her first child, and I get to take care of her two days a week. Being a grandparent is fantastic because after the day is through, the baby goes back home with her parents and I get to sleep.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"question\">Your latest novel, <em>Dreaming of a White Wolf Christmas<\/em>, hit bookstores in October. What can you tell us about it<\/strong><br \/>\nReaders had been asking for more of the white wolf pack, a group of private investigators who were turned into wolf shifters in <em>Legend of the White Wolf<\/em>. So, <em>Dreaming of a White Wolf Christmas<\/em> was born. Romance, suspense, and adventure are all part of the wolf shifters\u2019 world\u2014this time at Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sexy werewolves, jaguar shifters, and medieval Highlanders are all in a day\u2019s work for this \u201cUSA Today\u201d best-selling author of paranormal books for teens and adults. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"231\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-231x300.jpg\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-1457 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:50% 50%;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-768x999.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-787x1024.jpg 787w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-2048x2664.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-1536x1998.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-1400x1821.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-1024x1332.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-828x1077.jpg 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-360x468.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2-9x12.jpg 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/terryspear2.jpg 2250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/>","catString":"The Back","issue":"Fall 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11790,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/11790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}