Tag: best selling author

Interview with successful self-published Author, Mike Wells

Mike. HeadshotAn Interview with Mike Wells *** ‘Unputdownable Thrillers’

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I like to write outside if the weather is warm enough, which is one reason I live most of the year in Cyprus. I usually write on our veranda, or at an outdoor cafe by the beach. I like to move around to different places, keeps things stirred up.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

A. No. Those kinds of things (IMO) can turn into excuses not to write, I broke myself of anything like that a long time ago. I’m generally a very flexible and adaptable person, don’t get dependent much on physical elements like that.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

A. I can’t throw up. Continue reading “Interview with successful self-published Author, Mike Wells”

It Shouldn’t Work….A Review “Suspicion at Seven”

reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing Rating: 5 out of 5 quills     “Suspicion at Seven” by Ann Purser

 

These plots shouldn’t work……but they do in the most charming and understated way.    The owner of New Brooms, Lois Meade is an amateur sleuth and has a team of ‘cleaners’ (merry maids) that keep their ears to the ground when foul play occurs.  Cunningly simple and a delight for readers.

The setting is a small village in rural England where Lois has lived most of her life.  She has raised threeSusp.7.Purser.Scan children and now lives with her husband, Derek, and her mother, Gran, who rules the house with an ungloved hand. (no velvet gloves here!)

Village life and all the characters that make up a community are artfully woven into each mystery. Continue reading “It Shouldn’t Work….A Review “Suspicion at Seven””

Interview with International author, Peter May (part I)

Peter May, best selling international author, granted me an interview.  I was very excited as his newest in The Lewis Triology was released September 1st.  Through this process his wife, Janet, and I have become new friends.  Starting this month they will be on a book tour in the US…..more about that later.  Read my review of The Lewis Man.

Q. Peter, where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I live in France and spend my winters in Spain. In France I live in a two hundred year old, stone-built farmhouse. It’s a 14619739192_1d38f13ba2_opretty rambling place on three levels. It’s in the middle of France and very far from the sea. In Spain I live in a much more modern apartment with sea views. And in both places I have a study. As you’ll see from the pictures, the set up is pretty much the same in each place. I travel with my laptop between the two locations and link it to two extra computer screens. I like to have as much screen space as possible, that way I can have the file I’m writing in open, together with all my research files, and any research video that I’ve taken.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.) Continue reading “Interview with International author, Peter May (part I)”

Winners Announced in the FREE book Give-away!

Cover.Susan.new.book4-7We are so pleased to announce the winners of a signed, copy of Susan Elia Macneal’s new book, ‘The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent’.

CONGRATULATIONS!!   The winners are:  Sara Hyman and Micheal Nelson

Fans of Susan’s should check out my interview with her done last year.  This author brings back the WWII experience and Winston Churchill’s glory days  so vividly that readers will feel that they are there during the London Blitz, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the hot political climate of the day.

Susan.MacN

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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!

In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create!  

To receive my posts sign up for my blog, blogs, blogger, writer, author, playwright, books, plays,fiction  On the home page, enter your email address.  Thanks!

Review~~’The City’ by Dean Koontz

reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing reviews, authors, writing reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing REVIEW ~~ ‘The City’ by Dean Koontz  (5 out of 5 quills)

True to Dean Koontz’s style he starts the reader off with a great tale of a musical family….Grandfather is a ‘piano man’ , mother is a jazz singer and eight year old Jonah is a wanna be piano man without a piano.  You see, Mom is a single parent, married to an absent, then back again, no good, shiftless man.  Theirs is a tight-knit lower middle class family squeaking by.The.City.Koontzindex

Then on about page 100, the weird stuff starts to happen and you know you are back in another of Koontz’s scary plots.  ‘The City’ does not disappoint;  you’ll love the characters in the story, good and bad.  The story is written in first person from Jonah’s point of view and it certainly took me back to being just a kid with very real monsters under the bed and in the bedroom closet.  And Jonah Kirk is a great kid; not too good, he’s still a kid and isn’t above lying to get out of potential trouble. He has a mentor who becomes an unlikely but loveable friend when he needs a friend the most.
As always, it’s a chilling, terrifying tale where you hope that good triumphs over evil but, not until the last few pages, will you know if Koontz sees it your way.

 

Continue reading “Review~~’The City’ by Dean Koontz”

Author’s Roaring Twenties Featured on UK Blog

Tara.Ford.photoAuthor, Blogger Tara Ford seems to love my writing….so much that she is featuring my books on her web site at Fiction Five Fridays.
Tara is a successful author out of the UK. To help support her fellow-authors, she has developed this clever Friday Special.  Visit her web site and wander around. You won’t be disappointed!   http://taraford.weebly.com/fiction-five-friday

The rules are simple – 5 sentences from a page with the digit 5 in the number. Short and sweet and readers get a little taste of what their favorite (or new) author is writing.

TODAY!  I have been chosen by Tara with my 5,5,5 contribution  (fifth day of the week, a five in the page no. and a five sentence excerpt) from a roaring twenties, hot jazz and cold gin, wild novel that I wrote about San Francisco:  “Wild Violets”.  WHAT FUN!!

Continue reading “Author’s Roaring Twenties Featured on UK Blog”

Win a Free book! Macneal’s The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent

Susan.MacNeal.(c)_Andrea_VaszkoTo promote not only Susan Elia Macneal’s new book but also my Blog, the folks at Random House have invited me to do a BOOK GIVE-AWAY!   Easy to enter but remember it is for a signed, paperback of ‘The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent’ only and you must have a US mailing address.

Like my page (writeratplay) on Facebook, like Susan’s page  https://www.facebook.com/susaneliamacneal?fref=ts, and follow us on Twitter.  Return to the post  and comment on my page, ‘Book Give-away – Done’.    WINNERS will be announced later this week!  Hurry to enter!!!
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!

In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create!    Dean Koontz dean2photo_9was interviewed by me June 28th and July 1 in a two part sensational visit with this suspense-thriller mega-star.

To receive my posts sign up for my blog, blogs, blogger, writer, author, playwright, books, plays,fiction  On the home page, enter your email address.  Thanks!

My Interview with Dean Koontz! (part 2)

dean2photo_9Q: When did you begin to write seriously?

A: While I was in college. I sold my first short story when I was a senior, and the same piece won a prize in the college-writing contest Atlantic Monthly conducted at that time. I wasn’t very good for a number of years, but I kept selling. Later, I recovered the rights to all that early stuff and deep-sixed it, mostly science fiction and Gothic novels.

Q: What makes a writer great?

A: Writing truth, I think. By which I don’t necessarily mean entirely realistic settings and story lines. Any genre allows for the writing of truth. To do it means to write stories that are more than plot, to write characters that feel like real people, and to avoid writing ideologically. These days, a great deal of fiction is ideological, and that approach virtually ensures a limited lifespan for the work. Resist the temptation to be swept away by current
“issues” in your work and write instead about timeless human values and hopes. Ideologies sooner or later collapse due to the tendency of ideologues to ignore all manner of realities in the fashioning of their ideologies.

Q: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book,” look like? Continue reading “My Interview with Dean Koontz! (part 2)”

MacNeal’s release of new book Sparks Give-away!

Never one to break with tradition…..there’s a side story with regard to my enthusiasm for Susan Macneal’s writing. 

The first of the Maggie Hope spy mysteries, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, (which I highly recommend) is fiction but based in fact.  The author was fortunate enough to have had several interviews with Churchill’s private secretary before her death.  The book is about a ‘typist’ who was relegated to a menial job because of her gender.  She was actually educated in mathematics and cryptology and could easily have fitted in with MI-Five (British CIA) but for her being a woman.

I was so taken by Winston Churchill’s pets having the run of the war offices….and how Susan wove this little fact (with many others) into her story so deftly.  At the time I was looking for lighter material to round out my collectionchurchill.CATBookCover.do of short plays for the classroom.  An idea came to me  of Mr. Churchill noodling away in front of his easel and Nelson, his cat talking to the audience; telling them something about the times that they lived in, an anecdote or two about the Prime Minister and of course, listening patiently to Mr. Churchill’s comments about the world at large.

July 1st,  the fourth and newest book in the Maggie Hope series will go on sale.
Continue reading “MacNeal’s release of new book Sparks Give-away!”

Interview with Mega-star Author, Dean Koontz

After interviewing best-selling authors now for two years, I have the great privilege of sharing with you, an interview with Dean Koontz  beginning June 28th.

Dean and Trixie, circa 2000
Dean and Trixie, circa 2000

I first met Dean in the pages of ‘Watchers’ starring (in my opinion) the brainy and magnificent Golden Retriever, Einstein.  From that day forward I lived for the day that I would have my first ‘golden’.  My interview begins with the story of my Sadie and Dean’s Trixie (a retired golden retriever service dog) and the letter.  It’s just too rich  not to share.

Since Trixie, Dean has always had a golden retriever in his family as have I.

Hope you will stop back by on June 28th and July 1st  for this fascinating and in depth visit (2 parts)  with this mega-star author, Dean Koontz!

Sadie, 2012
Sadie, 2012