Author Interview and Testimonial with Charlayne Denney

Charlayne Denney is a gifted writer who had an established paranormal romance series, the Fangs & Halos books, long before she came to join us at staff of the Paranormal Romance Guild. Charlayne served quite magically and proficiently in the office of secretary. The PRG is a not-for-profit business entity (don’t let the fairies know we told you that!) and without her secretarial skills, things might have gotten lost in the woods. But she always kept us on track!

Unfortunately, the time has come for us to thank her most gratefully and to bid her a fond farewell because, with great sadness, we must report she is retiring from her PRG secretarial post due to health reasons.

For those of you who haven’t met Charlayne yet, we’d like you to remember her as we first did—an author of paranormal romance. So, pull up a comfy chair, grab your favorite beverage, and let me tell you about Charlayne Denney and her paranormal romance novels.

Charlayne Elizabeth Denney was born in Amarillo, Texas and lived there until 1991. Now a resident of Houston, she has been a waitress, a DJ, a sportswriter, a technical writer, has sold knives, swords, and replica weapons, was part-owner of a comic shop, and is a perennial student.

Charlie, as she’s better known, is a wife, a mom of four, a grandmother of nine, and the pack mom of two Shetland Sheepdogs and a large cat who thinks she’s a Sheltie.

Charlayne started writing in 4th grade. She wrote Mary Sue stories using the Dark Shadows and Star Trek worlds as her universe settings. If you don’t know who the Mary Sue character is, she is the archetypal very young, extremely competent, gorgeous, and well-liked young woman on an adventure. Mary Sue was widely popularized in fan-fictiondom, primarily among teenaged Trekkies with a crush on one of the stars in fictional fandom. These stories were enjoyable ventures into the world of writing—a possible career arc for Charlayne!

But her parents thought writing was not “a proper career.” So, Charlayne stopped writing. However, after a lengthy pause in which she decided writing was a proper career after all, she started writing again.

What should Charlayne write about though? Because she had a peculiar (but entertaining) habit of checking people for fangs and determining whether they lived in the dark, the characters in her own vampire and supernatural imaginings could be exactly who she needed for her renewed writing career. As a result, Lilly, Marcus, and Sullivan were born! The paranormal romance which developed between the characters morphed into the Fangs & Halos Series as each character settled into the urban fantasy storyline–including Baron, the ever-popular vampire cat.

Charlayne’s debut novel, “Lilly’s Angel, The Fangs & Halos Series, Book 1,” was nominated for a Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewer’s Choice Award in its Vampire/Werewolf category.

In addition to writing, Charlayne’s obsessions include the World of Warcraft where she lives as the gnome-mage, Rubyrose, on the Argent Dawn server. Feel free to visit her there or in her Fangs & Halos Series anytime but be sure to bring your gaming dice—or at least a garland of garlic!

You can find Charlayne Denney’s books on Amazon.