New Interview with Author Shirley Martin

We welcome Shirley Martin to the BWL blog this week. Today we feature a new interview with her, and for the next several days you can catch some excerpts of her BWL work. Enjoy!

Born near Pittsburgh, Shirley Martin attended the University of Pittsburgh. After graduating from "Pitt", she taught school for one year, then obtained a position as a flight attendant with Eastern Airlines. Based in Miami, she met her future husband there. After raising three sons, she devoted her time to writing, something she had always wanted to do.

With a vivid imagination and a love of storytelling, Shirley has always enjoyed writing. Her first published novel, "Destined to Love" reflects her familiarity with western Pennsylvania, where she hails from, and her love of romance writing. From this historical romance, she blossomed out to other romance genres. "One More Tomorrow" is a vampire romance, one her publisher dubbed "a sizzling seller". With several fantasy novels and novellas, her writing should appeal to just about every reader of romance. Her books have been sold at Amazon and most major book stores and have garnered great reviews.

A widow, Shirley lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her two cats.

Visit her website: http://shirleymartinauthor.com/

BWL:  Why did you choose the genre you write in? Is it your favorite to read, or another reason? 

SM:  I love to write and read fantasy.  In writing, you can let your imagine run wild. There are so many possibilities. 

BWL:  Describe yourself using 5 words. 

SM:  Old but young at heart.

BWL:  What might readers be surprised to learn about you? 

SM:  I was once engaged to a man from Beirut, Lebanon.  Almost married him but then met the man I later married. 

BWL:  What was your favorite book as a child or young adult?  

SM:  As a young adult, I read many historical novels. (they weren't romances then, just historicals.)  "Captain from Castille" was my favorite, later made into a movie. 

BWL:  What super power would you like to have and how would you use it? 

SM:  If I could wave a magic wand to create peace in the world, that would make me happy.

BWL:  If you could fix one problem in the world what would it be? 

SM:  Stop war.

BWL:  If you could go back in time for one day, which time period would you like to visit?  

SM:  Either the colonial period in Pennsylvania or ancient Rome. Hard to choose which.

BWL:  Choose one person, living or dead, you'd like to share a meal with. 

SM:  Jesus

BWL:  Name one thing you'd change about yourself if you could. 

SM:  I'd like to be more assertive. 

BWL:  What's one genre that interests you but you've never tried to write? 

SM:  Sci-fi might be interesting, but I've already spread myself enough with historical, paranormal, and fantasy.

BWL:  Thanks Shirley! 

~ Find Shirley's BWL titles here: http://bookswelove.net/martin.php

New Interview with Author Margaret Tanner

We welcome Margaret Tanner to the BWL blog this week. Today we feature a new interview with her, and for the next several days you can catch some excerpts of her BWL work. Enjoy!

~~~

Margaret Tanner is a multi-published Australian author. She loves delving into the pages of history as she carries out research for her historical romance novels, and prides herself on being historically accurate. No book is too old or tattered for her to trawl through, no museum too dusty, or cemetery too overgrown. 

 

As part of her research she has visited the World War 1 battlefields in France and Belgium, a truly poignant experience.  

 

Margaret is a member of the Romance Writers of Australia, the Melbourne Romance Writers Group (MRWG) and EPIC.  She won the 2007 and 2009 Author of the Year at AussieAuthors.com. Her novel Frontier Wife won the Best Historical Romance Novel at the 2010 Readers Favorite Award, and another novel, Wild Oats was a 2011 Finalist in the EPIC awards.

   

Margaret is married with three grown up sons, and a gorgeous little granddaughter.

Outside of her family and friends, writing is her passion.

Website: http://www.margarettanner.com/
Blog:   http://wattleglen-margarettannersblog.blogspot.com/

 ~~~

BWL:  Why did you choose the genre you write in? Is it your favorite to read, or another reason?

MT:  I have always been interested in Australian history. I like to read it and also write it. I love doing the historical research for my books nearly as much as I enjoy writing the story. I pride myself on being historically accurate. There is nothing worse than reading a book with historical inaccuracies in it.

BWL:  Describe yourself using 5 words.

MT:  Tenacious, focused, temperamental, resourceful, excitable.

BWL:  What might readers be surprised to learn about you?

MT:  That I am a chocoholic.

BWL:  What was your favorite book as a child or young adult?

MT:  Seven Little Australians, which was set during the 1890’s, and written by Ethel Turner.

BWL:  What super power would you like to have and how would you use it?

 

MT:  I would like to be able to travel back in time, and I would use it to research my books.

BWL:  If you could fix one problem in the world what would it be?

MT:  Poverty.

BWL:  If you could go back in time for one day, which time period would you like to visit?

MT:  I would like to travel back to the period of the 1^stWorld War. (1914 – 1918)

BWL:  Choose one person, living or dead, you'd like to share a meal with.

MT:  Florence Nightingale.

BWL:  Name one thing you'd change about yourself if you could.

MT:  I would like to be taller.

BWL:  What's one genre that interests you but you've never tried to write?

MT: Time Travel really interests me.

BWL:  Thanks Margaret! 

Find her BWL books here:  http://bookswelove.net/tanner.php

New Interview with Author Gail Roughton

We welcome Gail Roughton to the BWL blog this week. Today we feature a new interview with her, and for the next several days you can catch some fun excerpts of her BWL work. Enjoy! 

Gail Roughton has spent over thirty years in a law office as a legal secretary/paralegal. During those thirty plus years, she raised three children and quite a few attorneys. She kept herself sane by writing books, tossing each completed novel in her closet. The children are grown and she decided it was time to clean out the closet. Now multi-published, her credits include the paranormal romantic suspense series, War-N-Wit, Inc. and a dark romance/horror series, appropriately titled Dark. She still maintains she couldn’t have this much fun for free doing anything else. 

Places to find Gail:

Blog:  http://gailroughton.blogspot.com               
Twitter: @GailRoughton
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gailroughton

BWL:  Why did you choose the genre you write in? Is it your favorite to read, or another reason?

GR: I didn’t actually choose the genre I write in.  It chose me.  I start out with only one goal.  I just want to tell a story.  Not just any story.  A goodstory.  A great story would be even better.  A story about characters who live, breathe, hate, love, lose and win.  Who come to life as the reader turns the pages.  It took about eight books for me to realize – all my stories have some element or other of the paranormal, whether I think I’m writing romance or suspense or fantasy or even horror.  So while I never guarantee I’m writing in one specific genre or the other (even in the same book), I pretty much can guarantee that there’ll be elements of the paranormal in it.

BWL:  What was your favorite book as a child or young adult?

GR:  Gone With the Wind.  I kid you not.  My sister took me to see the movie when I was 6, back in the days when it was re-released every seven years in the movie theaters.  I read the book the summer between the second and third grades, and it wasn’t until I was eleven or twelve that another book had as much impact on me.  And that book was To Kill a Mockingbird.

BWL:  If you could go back in time for one day, which time period would you like to visit?

GR:  Honestly?  I wouldn’t.  Go back to any time period for even one day.  I started thinking about it and then had visions of all the stuff that could happen during that one day.  I mean, Rome?  They’d probably throw me to the lions in the Coliesum.  Medieval England?  I’d get covered with fleas.  Or catch the Bubonic Plague.  The American West?  Sure as shootin’, the wagon train I was on would be attacked and I’d catch an arrow or get taken as a hostage. So thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll stay here.

BWL:  Choose one person, living or dead, you'd like to share a meal with.

GR:  I lost my big sister about fifteen years ago.  I’d love the chance to tell her all about her niece and nephews, her great-nephew and her almost here great-niece.  And to show her my book covers.  She actually read a few of my books before she died, several of which are still in my closet and might or might not ever get re-written now that I know at least a little more about how to write a book. She did read the first draft of the Dark Series, twenty years before it ever pubbed, and I’ve always been so grateful for that.  But I’d love for her to see my parade of covers.

BWL:  Name one thing you'd change about yourself if you could.

GR:  To be better.  A better person, a better mother, a better friend, a better writer. Okay, that encompasses a lot of facets of my personality, but it’s really still just one thing.  To be better. 

BWL:  Thanks Gail! 

Find Gail's complete collection of Books We Love titles here:

http://bookswelove.net/roughton.php

and come back tomorrow to catch the first of her excerpts! 

4 Stars for The Fisherman's Daughter by Sydell Voeller

"The Fisherman’s Daughter is a well written romance with an intriguing mystery, a pretty fast pace and its vibrantly descriptive. This is a shorter novel with lots going on. I totally didn’t expect the conclusion and normally I’m pretty good at figuring it out. 4 Stars." ~ Tome Tender Book Reviews

Read the whole review and an interview with the author Sydell Voeller here

New Interview with author Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey likes to travel and has written seven travel books, the research for which took her throughout Alberta, B.C., the Yukon, and Alaska. She has now switched to fiction writing and Whistler's Murder is the third novel in her travelling detective series. She lives on a small acreage in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. Follow her blog here:
 http://thetravellingdetectiveseries.blogspot.com/

 BWL: How long have you been writing and in what genres?

JDY: My first article was published in 1987 in Western People a magazine that came out in The Western Producer, a prairie farmer's newspaper. Since then I have had articles published in Motorhome, Up Here, Life In Canada's North, seven travel books, one poem, one short story, and three mystery novels published.

BWL: Where you do get your inspiration?

JDY: I do a lot of people watching, save articles about people and events, listen to news and sometimes just have an idea pop into my head. My first and third novels ideas were from news items I had heard about; my short story and my third mystery were my own ideas.

BWL: Tell us about your book(s).

JDY: Whistler's Murder is the third novel in what I call my Travelling Detective Series. Illegally Dead and The Only Shadow In The House were the first two. The main character is Elizabeth Oliver, a residential care aide, who spends her holidays researching places for articles for travel magazines. For some reason she gets drawn into a mystery each time. While she is solving the mystery she is also working on her article so the reader gets a glimpse of the places she is visiting. Illegally Dead is a combination of the two genres, mystery and travel. In The Only Shadow In The House I also added poetry to the mix with some of the clues being told through the poems of one of the characters. In Whistler's Mystery, Elizabeth's best friend, Sally Matthews, is also in Whistler attending a Science Fiction/ Fantasy Retreat so Science Fiction is the third genre for that novel.

BWL: What about your next book?  Will it be part of a series or a stand alone?  Can you give us a taste to whet our appetites?

JDY: My next novel in my Travelling Detective Series takes place in Disneyland. So far in the first three novels I have mentioned a bit about Elizabeth's family. Her father, Phil, is retired. Her mother died of breast cancer. She has fraternal twin younger siblings, Terry and Sherry. Sherry is a breast cancer survivor. In this third novel, they are all attending a family reunion with other relatives in Disneyland. Elizabeth also has identical female twin cousins, one of whom is autistic. When the non-autistic twin is murdered a lot of skeletons sneak out of the closet and a lot of dirty laundry is revealed about each and every one of her family, including her grandmother who is financing the trip.

BWL: Why did you choose to publish electronically?

JDY: I try to keep with changes in life. My grandchildren's generation is growing up in the electronic age and that is their life. Electronic books will eventually replace the paperback just like the vehicle replaced the horse and buggy. I was at Word On The Street in Vancouver last September as part of Crime Writer's Of Canada and many people came to our booth wanting to know which of our books were e-books.  By downloading their books they can take twenty or fifty novels on their holiday in their device instead of twenty or fifty paperbacks that take up a lot of room. Right now 1 in 5 people are reading electronic books and that is only going to increase.

BWL: What are your hobbies and interests?

JDY: Definitely reading but I also love to paint, sew, hike, walk, travel, prospect for gold and generally have fun.

BWL: What does the future hold for you?

JDY: I am retiring soon and I have so many book ideas that hopefully I will be writing for the next twenty-thirty years, just like P.D. James.

BWL: Where can readers find you?

JDY: I have a blog at http://thetravellingdetectiveseries.blogspot.com/

BWL: Thanks Joan!