Echo Falls – author interview – Jaime McDougall

About Echo Falls

Running from a nightmare stalking her every move, Phoebe Martin arrives in Echo Falls hoping she has finally found a safe place to stop. But trouble has a way of catching up and soon the signs are there.

After a vicious attack in an alley, policeman Aidan O’Bryan is left with Phoebe as his only path to understanding why the Echo Falls werewolf pack – his pack – is being attacked. When another pack member is killed, Phoebe is forced to confront her past before she loses Aidan and everything she has come to love.

Love and duty become one as Aidan strives to prevent Phoebe from becoming the next victim. But with Phoebe just as determined to protect Aidan and her new home, secrets from her past threaten to tear them apart.

Will love give Phoebe the strength to trust Aidan and face her fears, or will her past destroy her future.

About Jaime McDougall

Jaime McDougall is a citizen of the world, currently loving life in beautiful country Victoria in Australia. She loves eating sushi, kidnapping her husband and naming her pets in honour of science fiction authors.

She has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: High School: The Real Deal and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Campus Chronicles. So You Want to Write a Guest Post: An Author’s Guide to Promoting with Guest Blogging is her most recent non-fiction ebook. She has also enjoyed writing a column called ‘The New Australian’ in local newspapers as well as various articles online.

Echo Falls is her first paranormal romance novel. You can buy it now at:

Amazon ( Kindle ) | Barnes and Noble ( Nook ) | Smashwords ( Multiformat )
Amazon ( Print ) | Barnes and Noble ( Print )

You can visit her website at InkyBlots.com

Interview

Q:  Biggest Pet Peeve about the writing life.

Right now, my biggest pet peeve is finding time to write. It's the busy season, so when I'm not doing work, I'm doing holiday related things. When I'm not doing those, I'm trying to sort through a load of paperwork that has popped up. Sometimes it seems never-ending...

Q:  Biggest Career Surprise

That people enjoyed my book! Haha. I think there is almost always the doubt when you put your work out there that anyone will read it. Then, when people read it, whether people will like it.

I actually haven't been surprised that people enjoyed it (I have faith in my work) so much as being surprised at the enthusiasm people have for Echo Falls. Between good reviews and numerous requests for a sequel, I am so pleasantly surprised with people's enthusiasm.

Q:  Worst rejection you’ve ever received?

This is going to sound strange, but the worst rejection has to be no rejection at all. At least with a rejection, you have an answer. The not knowing annoys me to no end and leaves me in this strange state of limbo...

Q:  What’s next for you?

The sequel to Echo Falls. After you get asked enough times when/if there will be a sequel, you tend to accept that you need to write a sequel. Haha.

Fading Echoes takes place about seventeen years after Echo Falls. The story focuses on Charlotte who, because she is the child of two 'natural born' werewolves, has some abilities that go above and beyond the normal werewolf heritage...

Q:  What are a few of your favorite genres and why?

I like pretty much anything paranormal. Paranormal romance, urban fantasy, etc. I look at the world and think that there is more than what our five senses are telling us. These genres explore that thought.

Q:  Do you have a writer’s studio? Describe it for us and what is the view you see from the window?

I wish I did. I was walking in town a week or so back and saw a fully furnished apartment for rent. If I could, I'd love to rent that. It's above ground level, is right by the post office and grocery store, has a balcony where you can look at the city centre, has one minute walking access to many cafes... I'll have to dream a bit longer, though.

Winds of Change - author interview Carole Eglash Kosoff

Winds of Change Book Tour

Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.   She graduated from UCLA and spent her career in business, teaching, and traveling.  She has visited more than seventy countries.   An avid student of history, she researched the decades preceding and following the Civil War for nearly three years, including time in Louisiana, the setting for Winds of Change and her earlier novel, When Stars Align.  It is a story of bi-racial love.  It is a story of war, reconstruction, and racism, but primarily, it is a story of hope.

This is her third book.  In 2006, following the death of her husband, she volunteered to teach in South Africa.  Her first book, The Human Spirit – Apartheid’s Unheralded Heroes, tells the true life stories of an amazing array of men and women who have devoted their lives during the worst years of apartheid to help the children, the elderly, and the disabled of the townships.  These people cared when no one else did and their efforts continue to this day.

Her second book, When Stars Align, chronicles the Civil War and Reconstruction through the love affair of Amy, a white girl, and Thaddeus, a colored man born of the rape of an eleven year old slave girl and the teen heir to Moss Grove.
You can visit her website at www.windsofchange-thebook.com or connect with her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.

About Winds of Change

The racially charged love and conflict of the critically acclaimed When Stars Align become more entrenched after the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Amy had taken her daughter, nephew, and a son she’d had never been able to acknowledge, born from her love with Thaddeus, her colored lover, to San Francisco, as a refuge from the intense racial scrutiny of the South.
They are forced to return to their old home, Moss Grove, a successful Mississippi River cotton plantation, as young adults.  They discover facts about themselves that refute everything they believed regarding both their parents and their racial background.  It changes the lives of each of them.  Bess and Stephen’s love is thwarted.  Josiah struggles with echoes of his past.
It is a tumultuous time in American history that includes the inventions of airplanes, automobiles, telephones and movies midst decades of lynchings and economic turmoil.  It is the Spanish-American War and World War I.  Racial biases complicate lives and relationships as newly arrived immigrants vie with white and Negro workers all trying to gain a piece of the American dream.  Winds of Change is a soaring historic fiction novel that stands alone but follows the next generation from those we came to know in When Stars Align into the 20^th century. It is a socially relevant, historically accurate, saga of decades often overlooked in American

history.

Interview 

Q:  Give us an example of a typical writing day.

I don’t write everyday but I try to write at least 4-5 times a week.  I write until I hit a ‘glitch’.  Rather than force it, I stop and let my mind wander to other things.  Usually the answer hits me about 4 in the morning.

Q:  Do you write on a computer or with pen/pencil and paper?

 

I use a computer that allows me flexibility in editing.  I can also send it to friends who critique both the plot and the grammar.

Q:  Do you work from an outline?

I do on the non-fiction I write but not on the historic novels.  My novels, however, span decades, and I need to know where the story is heading. 

Q:  Biggest Pet Peeve about the writing life.

Having to do so much marketing by myself.  I love the writing and I have even come to be tolerant of the publishing process but the new paradigm of books and ebooks makes marketing my responsibility.

Q:  Biggest Career Surprise

That at this point in my life I’d be working on writing my 4^th book.

Q:  Worst rejection you’ve ever received?

It didn’t have to do with my writing but with a life event and it wasn’t easy to deal with and move forward.

Q:  Nicest rejection you’ve ever received?

  

I’d love to represent your book but I can’t find a publisher.

Q:  Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 

Hopefully alive and still traveling and playing tennis and writing.

Q:  What’s next for you?

 

Finishing my current book and beginning on the next.

Q:  Who is your favorite author, and why?

Two…Gore Vidal and William Manchester…they bring history alive.

Q:  What are a few of your favorite genres and why?

Historic fiction, historic non-fiction and social science fiction.

Q: In writing your book/novel if you could do it again what would you do differently?

My current novel, Winds of Change, contains a great deal of history.  I had hoped to have more plot and less history but the events were so compelling I wasn’t able to accomplish it…I would try again.

Q:  Where do you write from? (location and description)

I have a pleasant well lit office, music in the background, and dogs lounging nearby.

Q:  Do you have a writer’s studio? Describe it for us and what is the view you see from the window?

Lawn and trees

Q:  Writer’s Block – If you have ever experienced it – how did you resolve it?

By walking away from the computer until my mind unravels the problems.

Q:  Have you ever abandoned any books/novels in progress?

Not recently but I have in prior years

Q:  Advice for the audience, first time authors, those choosing the writing life.

Keep reading and writing.

Q:  Who or what was your greatest influence that made you want to be a writer/author?

My love of telling a story.

Q:  How did you feel holding your book in your hands for the first time?

It was magic and I could feel my entire body tremor.

Lagan Love - author interview - Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy was born in Killarney where he spent his first three years before his family was deported to Dublin, the Strumpet City. Growing up in the verdant braes of Templeogue, Peter was schooled by the De La Salle brothers in Churchtown where he played rugby for ‘The Wine and Gold’. He also played football (soccer) in secret!

After that, he graduated and studied the Humanities in Grogan’s under the guidance of Scot’s corner and the bar staff; Paddy, Tommy and Sean.  Murphy financed his education by working summers on the buildings sites of London in such places as Cricklewood, Camden Town and Kilburn.  Murphy also tramped the roads of Europe playing music and living without a care in the world. But his move to Canada changed all of that. He only came over for awhile – thirty years ago.  He took a day job and played music in the bars at night until the demands of family life intervened.  Having raised his children and packed them off to University, Murphy answered the long ignored internal voice and began to write.  He has no plans to make plans for the future and is happy to let things unfold as they do anyway.  LAGAN LOVE is his first novel.

You can visit his website at www.peterdamienmurphy.com or his blog at www.peterdamienmurphy.blogspot.com.  Connect with him at Twitter at www.twitter.com/PeeloMurphy and Facebook at www.facebook.com/LaganLove.

Visit his tour page at Pump Up Your Book


About Lagan Love
If you know something about passion, and desire, and giving everything to live your dreams then leave your world behind for a while. Come with Janice to Dublin, in the mid nineteen-eighties when a better future beckoned and the past was restless, whispering in the shadows for the Old Ways. Janice has grown tired of her sheltered existence in Toronto and when Aidan leads her through the veils of the Celtic Twilight, she doesn’t hesitate. In their love, Aidan, Dublin’s rising poet, sees a chance for redemption and Janice sees a chance for recognition. Sinead tells her that it is all nonsense as she keeps her head down and her eyes fixed on her own prize – a place in Ireland’s prospering future. She used to go out with Aidan, before he met Janice, so there is little she can say. And besides, she has enough to do as her parents are torn apart by the rumours of church scandals. But after a few nights in Grogan’s, where Dublin’s bohemians gather, or a day in Clonmacnoise among the ruins of Celtic Crosses, it won’t matter as the ghosts of Aidan’s mythologies take form and prey on the friends until everything is at risk. Lagan Love is a sensuous story of Love, Lust and Loss that will bring into question the cost we pay for our dreams.

Q:  Give us an example of a typical writing day.

On a good day I start early (5 or 6 AM) and write new copy until midday. I break for lunch, a quick check on emails, etc. and then take a nap. I spend the later part of the afternoon catching up on what is going on in the wider world, watching European football games and interacting with real people – like my family. By 7 PM I get back to work and edit what I wrote earlier until night.

On a bad day I start early; shuffle punctuation until noon, get distracted by the internet, smoke too much and, when frustration gets the better of me, wander the neighbourhood until it is too late to worry about all that might have been achieved!

Q:  Do you write on a computer or with pen/pencil and paper?

I worked as a computer programmer for years so working on the computer is natural for me. I like that I can write, edit and delete, add notes, cut and paste, and review without wasting paper. That said; proofing on screen is very difficult. Also, I spend a lot of time arguing with my word processor about syntax and spelling. I have tried pen and paper but my handwriting has deteriorated to the point that even I can hardly read it.

Q:  Do you work from an outline?

Yes, but my outline for Lagan Love was completely hijacked by my unruly characters and they were right – they made it a better story. But I learn as I go and the outline for my next work is more flexible, focusing more on the story arc and leaving room for my characters to grow and go as they must. Without an outline a story could be a great adventure from which the writer might never return – and that might be the best way for a writer to ride off into the sunset!

Q:  What’s next for you?

I have my next two books outlined and one drafted. I hope to go back and explore all that lies in interpersonal relationships and the relationships between people and their history and mythology. We are, whether we admit it or not, greatly influenced by all that has gone before. This is as true for the radical as the conservative. I want my stories to be readable and enjoyable on the surface but also riddled with rabbit holes down which the more Alice-like among us can wander.

Q:  Writer’s Block – If you have ever experienced it – how did you resolve it?

I do not believe in writer’s block but I do accept the existence of procrastination and inertia. There are times when the creative process is beyond me but I find that these can be the best times to edit and review. By doing these things I can coax my creative self back into the mood. I suppose it is the same in every area of life. How many of us have been at work and wished we were somewhere else? What can you do but roll up your sleeves and get busy doing things until you get something done? That was the most valuable lesson I learned from my years in my day-jobs.

Q:  How did you feel holding your book in your hands for the first time?

It was incredible. I felt validated and relieved – and to be totally honest – a little impressed with myself. I immediately sat down and reread it, making mental notes as to what was good and what could have been better. However the bigger thrill came when I sat and watched by son devour it from cover to cover – pausing only to pass comments that were not unkind!