A Lit Interrogation of My Co-Author by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page

      My bad. I forgot to post last month. But I have good news! I've finally gotten around to interviewing my co-author: Tara Woodworth! You know... that *other* name on a few of my book covers? She's real! And after a few libations, what started as an interrogation ended in a character development and shenanigans that somehow mapped out book 3...

Are you curious? Of course you are! So without further ado, here is our interview, which she may or may not remember having... 

 1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer, Tara? (This is a boring arse question, I know, but bear with me, it gets better)!

Tara: When my friend Vanessa sent me a text message saying that we should write a book. 

*interviewers footnote* We used to write together back and forth. Some call it RP. Some of it was crap. The bulk of Shad and Scarlet was pretty good.

2. How long does it take you to write a book?

Tara: *she blinks and tries to ask me the same question. I tell her it is not I who is being interviewed* About a year depending on how often we write, which is about two or three days a week for a few hours per session. Right?

*interviewers footnote* This is correct.

3. What would you say is your interesting writing quirk? 

Tara: Sometimes I lay awake at night thinking about a conversation between characters or how a scene will play out until I fall asleep. 

4. What does your family think of your writing? 

Tara: They think it's great, but they also don't think of me as a real writer because I'm writing fiction/fantasy

*interviewers footnote* Cries** So true...

5. Do you have plans to ever write a book on your own or with another author besides me?

Tara: *She is of course thinking: No way! Vanessa is the best there is! How could I possibly think of writing with anyone other than this amazing genius of fiction and fantasy?* 

What she says: I mi-i-i-ight write a book on my own eventually, but I have no plans to write anything with any other authors. I won't talk about my idea though, or I'll lose my gumption to write on my own, so don't ask about it!

6. Hardest thing about writing with Vanessa C. Hawkins (if any :D) Did I ever frustrate you to no end?

Tara: Vanessa spells pajamas weird and uses weird colloquillisms that I edit out when she isn't looking...

*interviewers footnote* Yeah well, I edit all your adverbs out. Tara is an adverb queen. Also, it's spelled pyjamas. *sticks out tongue*   

7.If you could meet any character in Ballroom Riot which one would it be? 

Tara: Shad. Coz he's a dragon. 

8. Let's talk about Shad. If he could, for whatever reason, only keep one thing from his hoard, what would it be and why? 

Tara: Shad would be so heartbroken that I can't even picture how he would react. He probably has a dragon bug out bag that contains his most precious treasures. So... like, a necklace with the most expensive diamonds, or something with a giant gemstone. Whatever it was with the most monetary value. But if he is thinking of Scarlet as part of his hoard, then he'd take her...

*interviewers footnote* and probably whine about it later...

9. How would Shad break up with someone? 

Tara: He wouldn't. He'd always be the person who was broken up with. Maybe... maybe he would ghost a person... maybe... 

10. Would Shad think fart noises were funny?

Tara: What? Omg. No... if Scarlet tooted he wouldn't say anything, he'd probably just pretend it didn't happen. Scarlet probably would though... she's that kind of woman, and if Shad farted she'd tease him endlessly... if she wasn't blown away by noxious dragon gas.

11.  What would Shad think was the most annoying thing about Scarlet? 

Tara: When Scarlet gets mad at him, she walks too fast on purpose so he has to hobble to keep up. That's annoying... but also, despite being a graceful and loving person, she'll take out something with packaging, open it, use it, and leave the packaging wherever in the hell is convienent for her! She doesn't throw it out! Done using these clothes? Wham! Thrown on the back of the couch! Can't find an ashtray? Cigarette butt in the fruit bowl! 

*interviewers footnote* I think we've hit a nerve here...

Well, Tara, thank you for the interview! Before we end though, is there anything else you'd like to say?

Tara (who may or may not have actually said this): Book three is in the works! Hoping for a release of next year or so, but be sure to keep an eye out on the Books We Love webpage or Vanessa's blog for updates! We promise, it won't take ten years for us to write it... we aren't buttheads like... 

Till next time, folks!
 

Accidental Deaths by J. S. Marlo

  

Wounded Hearts

"Love & Sacrifice #2"

is now available  

click here 

 

 

  

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I write murder/mystery/romance novels. As such, someone will be injured or die by the end of the book, and my perpetrators will go to great length to deflect or cover their crime.

In average, 15,000 people die every year following an accident in Canada. Accidents are the 1st leading cause of death in people under the age of 45, and the 4th overall in all age groups after Cancer, Heart Diseases, and Covid-19. Interestingly, if we separate the statistics by gender, accidents are the 3rd leading cause of death in men but the 5th in women.

Since accidents are relatively common, one way to cover a murder is to make it look like an accident. Here are the six major causes of accidental deaths:

- Motor Vehicle Accidents (1st cause in both men & women): one of my perpetrators tampered with a car...

- Fall (2nd in both men & women): it's fairly easy to push someone down the stairs, but the problem is when the victim survives the fall and can identify the perpetrator...

- Drowning (3rd in men, 6th in women): forcing someone to drown without leaving signs of struggle behind is not as easy as it looks...

- Fire (4th in men, 3rd women): fire tends to destroy everything, except what started the fire...

- Suffocation (5th in men, 4th women): pillows come to mind here...

- Poisoning (6th in men, 5th women): the perpetrators in historical novels could get away with poisoning their victims, but nowadays only a handful of substances will not show up during an autopsy, and these few undetectable substances aren't readily available.

My perpetrators won't stop trying to hide their crimes, but they won't get away with it LOL

Enjoy the small blessings that life brings every day & stay safe!

JS

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

 

Sometimes Inspiration has Fur by Eileen O'Finlan

 

Click here for purchase information

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

I am delighted to announce that my next book, All the Furs and Feathers: Book 1 in the Cat Tales series will be released by BWL Publishing on April 1, 2023. Unlike my first two books, Kelegeen and Erin's Children, All the Furs and Feathers is not historical fiction. Instead it is humorous animal fantasy.

If you wonder what brought on such a deviation from my normal writing fare, it was occasioned by an illness and two cats.

About five years ago as I was recovering from major surgery after a long bout of chronic diverticulitis, I was watching my two cats, Smokey and Autumn Amelia, interact with each other - always an entertaining show. I started wondering what they would be like if they were human. Before long, a story began to form in my mind. As with most stories, I couldn't let it linger there for very long and started writing it. I made Smokey, my sleek Russian Blue, an architect at Fluffington ArCATecture and Autumn Amelia, my food-loving calico Maine Coon, a chef and baker savant.

When Smokey lands the account of her dreams, her boss, Abigail Fluffington, says that if she's successful, she'll become a partner and inherit the business when Abigail retires. This may seem like a dream come true, but there's a problem. The land for the proposed park is adjacent to Rodent Way. Activist Jerome J. Rately quickly organizes R.A.T. (Rodent Action Task Force) and stages a protest.

Meanwhile, quirky, but loveable, Autumn Amelia is busy dishing up meals too delicious for any fur or feather to resist and wandering into the kitchens of local restaurants to improve their recipes.

Together with their furred and feathered friends, Smokey and Autumn Amelia must find a way to make the proposed park a reality if only they can figure out how to abolish the long-standing animosity between felines and rodents.

When I began, I was only writing this story to amuse myself and pass the time while I was stuck at home recuperating. Before long, I had several chapters and it was flowing in a way that nothing I've ever written before or since has ever done. Even after I was fully recovered and back to work, I kept returning to it. By then I was completely hooked. I was working on Erin's Children at the same time so I didn't give it my full attention, but once that manuscript was completed, I returned to it until I could finally write "The End." 

But that's when I realized it wasn't really the end. So many more ideas for the characters filled my head, I knew it would have to be a series.

If you're wondering how I picture the cats, here's my Smokey and Autumn Amelia as they might look in All the Furs and Feathers:

       

              Smokey                                                  Autumn Amelia

How the beauty of my surroundings contrasts with the darkness and evil in my story by Jay Lang

 

The Cove

Jay Lang

Click this link to purchase

http://bookswelove.net/lang-jay/

Chapter One

   My inspiration for writing this chapter was to utilize the beauty of my surroundings, the Pacific Northwest, and then contrast that beauty by writing a scene that has darkness and evil.

 Awoken by scuffling sounds on the path only feet from where I was lying, I watched motionless from the thick brush as the two men walked past. The moonlight illuminated the trail that led to the giant fir. I had seen them up here before, smoking pot and laughing. However, that night, there was a different energy between them. Neither one of them was talking when they stopped at the clearing. When the shorter man of the two leaned against the tree, he disappeared into the shadows. The taller man stood in front of the other, lit a smoke and kicked the dirt with his feet. 

The man in the shadows spoke, “Couldn’t you just talk to me at your place?”

“No, not about this,” answered the taller one.

“Well? Spit it out. I’ve got shit to do.”

The tall man pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and threw it to the ground, crushing it under his foot. I saw him reach under the back of his jacket and pull something out. As soon as his hand passed through the moonlight, I saw the shimmer off the long blade. 

“What the hell is that?” The man sprung from the shadows into the light. His face looked sallow and anxious. 

The taller man flicked his thumb across the blade and said, “You need to make a decision, Tony. Either you tell me where you put the cash, or I gut you like a pig.”

“You can’t be serious,” said the shorter man—Tony. “You’re threatening me after all I’ve done for you?”

“Time is wasting, and my patience is, too. Are you going to tell me or should we get on with this?”

“Ok. Ok. I’ll tell you. The cash is in the black case in my car, under the driver’s seat. I’ll take you to it.”

The tall man nodded slowly and smiled. “Thanks. That makes me very happy. There’s only one more thing I need to deal with first.”

“What’s that?”

The tall man lunged forward and sunk the long blade into Tony’s stomach.

I heard a deep groan as Tony slumped over. I gasped and quickly covered my mouth with my shaking hands. My heart was racing. I wanted to crawl out of my sleeping bag and run but I was too terrified to move.

“Please, you don’t have to do this,” pleaded Tony.

“You’re probably right,” the tall man said. “But to tell you the truth, I’m kind of enjoying it.”

“Listen to me, man. I’ll do whatever you want, ok? If it’s money you want, I know how to get a lot more of it, just let me go.”

The tall man seemed to be listening as he looked down at his victim. The hand that was holding the knife relaxed and fell to his side. After a few moments, he said, “Ok, Tony. You win. Let’s go get the money.” Then he reached out a hand and in the process of helping Tony up, I saw him grip the knife firmly.

In the ending to this chapter, I wanted to show the witness, a homeless man who had nothing, become an important key to the story. He now holds power.

Baroness Orczy by Rosemary Morris

 

To learn more about Rosemary's work please click the cover.

 Baroness Orczy

 

I am a fan of Baroness Orczy, who is remembered for her novels about Sir Percy Blakeney, baronet, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel. Curious about her life and times I wrote this blog, which I hope you will enjoy.

 

     Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September twenty-third, eighteen hundred and sixty-five to Countess Emma Wass and her husband Baron Felix Orczy. Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor, and friend of famous composers, among others, Liszt, and Wagner.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateau. Later she described it as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna. She and her family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style.’  Throughout her life the exuberant parties, the dancing and the haunting gypsy music lived on in her memory.

After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest. Subsequently, afraid of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium.

Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until eighteen hundred and eighty when her the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

 In six months, fifteen-year-old Emmuska learned English for which she won a special prize. Afterward, she attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art. Baron Orczy tried hard to develop his daughter’s musical talent, but Emmuska chose art, and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy. Subsequently, she became an author.

She fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home. When people referred to her as a foreigner, she said there was nothing English about her, and that her love was all English, for she loved the country

In eighteen hundred and ninety-four Emmuska married Montague Barstow, an illustrator, whom she met had net at Heatherby’s. In her own words, their marriage was happy and joyful.

The newlyweds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts, and the theatre.

Emmuska’s bridegroom encouraged her to write. In eighteen hundred and ninety-five her translations of Old Hungarian Fairy Tales: The Enchanted Cat, Fairyland’s Beauty, and Uletka and The White Lizard, edited with Montague’s help, were published.

Inspired by thrillers she watched on stage, Emmuska wrote mystery and detective stories. The first featured The Old Man in the Corner. For the generous payment of sixty pounds the Royal Magazine published it in 1901. Her stories were an instant hit. Yet, although the public could not get enough of them, she remained dissatisfied.

In her autobiography Emmuska wrote, I felt inside my heart a kind of stirring that the writing of sensational stuff for magazines would not and should not, be the end and aim of my ambition. I wanted to do something more than that. Something big.

Montague and Emmuska spent nineteen hundred in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the violence of the French Revolution. Surely, she had found the setting for a magnificent hero to champion the victims of “The Terror.” Unexpectedly, after she and her husband returned to England, while waiting for a train, Emmuska saw her most famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed in exquisite clothes. She noted the monocle held up in his slender hand, heard his lazy drawl, and quaint laugh. Emmuska told her husband about the incident. In five weeks, she wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel. More than a dozen publishers rejected it. They wanted modern, true-life novels. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play. The critics did not care for it when it opened at the New Theatre, London in nineteen hundred and four, but the audiences loved it, and it ran for two thousand performances. The Scarlet Pimpernel was published and became the blockbuster of its era making it possible for Emmuska and Montague to live in an estate in Kent, have a bustling London home and buy a luxurious villa in Monte Carlo.

During the next thirty five years, Emmuska wrote sequels, among which are Lord Tony’s Wife, in nineteen hundred and seventeen, The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel in nineteen hundred and nineteen, and other historical and crime novels. Her loyal fans repaid her by flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero. Released in nineteen hundred and thirty-five, it was produced by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, starred Lesley Howard as Percy, and Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

 Emmuska and Montague moved to Monte Carlo in the late nineteen hundred and tens where they remained during the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Montague died in nineteen hundred and forty-three leaving Emmuska bereft. She lived with her only son and divided her time between London and Monte Carlo. Her last novel Will-O’theWisp and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life were both published in nineteen hundred and forty-seven shortly before her death at the age of eight-two on November the twelfth, in the same year.

A lasting tribute to the baroness is the enduring affection the public still has for her brave, romantic hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, master of disguise.

 The links to online bookstores to buy Rosemary Morris’s   novels are at:

 https://bookswelove.net/morris-rosemary/

 The first three chapters of each novel may be read on my web site.

 www.rosemarymorris.co.uk