I first latched on to Angela Henry with her debut novel, The Company You Keep. I instantly connected to her main character, part-time GED instructor Kendra Clayton. She was a young woman who tried to make ends meet while living in her small town and while patiently (read: not so patiently) waiting for her Mr. Right to arrive on the scene. In the midst of living her relatively quiet life, intrigue and mystery (with a dead person or two) shows up at her door, and when she’s implicated in the goings on, Kendra is forced to roll up her sleeves and investigate. What makes Kendra work for me is that she’s so real. She has her ups and downs, the laugh-out-loud and the cry-out-loud moments, and yet no matter what’s going on in her life, she manages to get herself together enough to investigate the situation. Since Company, Angela has unleashed three other books in the Kendra Clayton mystery series, each as quick-paced and intriguing as Company. Last year, Angela went into the romantic suspense genre with The Paris Secret, but she’s coming back with my girl Kendra sometime this year in Sly, Slick & Wicked, WOO HOO. Learn more about Angela and her novels at her website.

I ran across both of these movie series on Hallmark Channel and instantly fell for them. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen new movies in a few years, but I’ve been able to buy some of the movies from Amazon and other online outlets.

In the Jane Doe movie series, Lea Thompson is Cathy Davis, a soccer mom, who is secretly Jane Doe, an agent for the Central Security Agency. Like my girls Jovan and Cheyenne in the DDIW and ITW, Cathy focuses a lot of her time trying to keep her life separate from the mysteries she works to solve.

The movie above can be bought at Amazon. You’ll have to do a bit more sleuthing yourself to find others.

In the Mystery Woman movie series, Kellie Martin is Samantha Kinsey, owner of a bookstore specializing in mystery books who constantly finds herself involved in solving real-life mysteries.

The above triple feature can be bought at Amazon.com. There are others out there to be purchased, too. Get to sleuthing.

Although I’m more an MW fan than a JD fan (I think it’s the whole being an owner of a mystery bookstore!), I find that both of these series bring forth parts of how I created Jovan and Chey. Like Samantha, Jovan and Chey are not in the law enforcement field. They are mystery writers. Somehow, some way, their meanderings through life and their occupation tend to have them at the wrong place at the wrong time, and they are thrust into a case. And Like Cathy from the Jane Doe series, Jo and Chey are constantly trying to separate the goings on of their lives with the goings on of the cases they find themselves connected with. Just in Into the Web alone, Cheyenne finds her boyfriend, former detective/now PI Ian Davenport mysteriously connected with an influential mother of a missing girl. Chey’s not only drawn to take part in the case to find out what’s going on between Ian and the woman, but also there’s something going with her that endears her to finding the lost girls. Talk about taking your work to bed with you.

[buy your copy today!]

Back in the summer of 2004, I applied to McNeese State University’s MFA program (Lake Charles, LA). It was on a whim, totally out of the blue. I submitted 25 pages of a story I was working on (that, consequently, I never finished!), and a few weeks later, Neil Connelly, the fiction professor at MSU, called me. He and I sat on the phone for a few hours talking about writing and goals. At the end of the conversation, Neil said, “Shon, we want you.” And I tell you, I was so thrumming off the highs of the talk that I blurted, “And I want to be wanted.”

That began my three years at MSU, three vigorous years of training and talks by a soft-spoken, intelligent, creative, hilarious, caring professor with the knack of telling a damn fine story.

[Neil's website]

I was a fan of Neil’s earlier works, St. Michael’s Scales and Buddy Cooper Finds a Way, but his most-recent work, The Miracle Stealer, was a book that really moved me and made me think, I’m glad I fine-tuned my writing under Neil.

[click cover to purchase]

About The Miracle Stealer:

There was a time when Anderson Grant believed. She never doubted the goodness of the people at her church. She trusted both her parents. And she felt unshakeable faith in a kind and all-powerful God.

But then a freak accident nearly killed Daniel, her three-year-old brother. After his rescue, strange rumors about Daniel began spreading around town. The faithful claimed he could intercede with Jesus, cleanse a soul, heal the sick, even raise the dead.

The media trumpeted Daniel as a Miracle Boy, and the number of those believing in him swelled. They descended on Anderson’s small town, along with a horribly scarred preacher and a deranged stalker. Now Anderson is certain of only one thing: she has to stop this.

With the help of her once-and-maybe-future boyfriend Jeff, she dreams up a dangerous scheme that will forever cast doubt on Daniel’s so-called divine gifts. If it works.

But as the plan comes together, the true believers grow more bold, the psycho stalker draws near, and the disfigured preacher challenges

Anderson’s resolve. She finds herself wrestling with her own beliefs in God and her brother, and she’s left wondering if what she really needs to save Daniel might just be a miracle of her own.

One thing that I enjoyed about The Miracle Stealer, and really all of Neil’s work is the quietness of the writing. No matter what befalls characters, the stories do not become full of melodrama and sentimentality. With The Miracle Stealer in particular, there is escalating drama and action that could easily, in a less talented writer’s hands, become just about the drama and action and not about the underlying themes and issues that are at the heart of the story. Another thing that endears me to the novel is its main character, particularly the fact that a man wrote it. Now, yes, I know that there are men who tackle female main characters, so it’s not like the wheel was inventing in this novel, but there is a delicacy, a realness, a truth to who this young female is based on her surroundings and life that draws you in and believe her. When you look back at that cover and see Neil’s name, you might be likely to go, “Wow, a guy wrote this.”

Although this isn’t on my FAVE movies list, I thought in honor of ITW, DDIW, and their inspiration, I would showcase the movie that was birthed from AATT. I’m usually not a fan of movies derived from books–though I have some exceptions. Just like any other reader, I tend to conjure up the look and feel for how the story is in my mind, and most of the time, the movie version does no better than my mind, so I’m left disappointed. But for what these movies are [there are many of MHC's stories made into TV movies], they do their job–entertain. You get the gist of the book from the movie. But even then, if you check out the movie, you still need to READ THE BOOK. There are MHC flavorings in the book that you just won’t get in the movie.

[click cover to be directed to Amazon]

Here’s the story’s synopsis: When Laurie Kenyon, a twenty-one-year-old student, is accused of murdering her English professor, she has no memory of the crime. Her fingerprints, however, are everywhere. When she asks her sister, attorney Sarah, to mount her defense, Sarah in turn brings in psychiatrist Justin Donnelly. Kidnapped at the age of four and victimized for two years, Laurie has developed astounding coping skills. Only when the unbearable memories of those lost years are released can the truth of the crime come out — and only then can the final sadistic plan of her abductor, whose obsession is stronger than ever, be revealed.

]]> http://shonellbacon.com/2012/42612-theatricalthursday/feed/ 0 http://shonellbacon.com/2012/42412-wordlesswednesday/ http://shonellbacon.com/2012/42412-wordlesswednesday/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:00:41 +0000 SBacon http://shonellbacon.com/?p=434

In 2003, Harlequin kicked off its chick lit imprint Red Dress Ink with Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s The Thin Pink Line. A fan of chick lit, I quickly nabbed the book and read it in a few hours. What intrigued me the most about this story was just how much I could not stand the main character! LOL She was so self-absorbed to the point of me wanting to choke her, yet I kept reading.

I figured any writer that could keep me reading about a character I wanted to drop kick was a writer I needed to keep an eye on…

…and I’m glad I did.

This week’s Fan Friday author is Lauren Baratz-Logsted.

What keeps me coming back to LB-L’s works? After The Thin Pink Line [now $2.99 on Kindle], I was hooked on Lauren’s ability to create characters. From Pink Line to Lauren’s literary suspenseful, erotic fare Vertigo [Buy!], and even to her young adult works like Angel’s Choice [now $5.99 on Kindle], I have been a fan of the strong characters Lauren develop, character that, despite their flaws and annoyances, you grow to care about and want to see how this particular part of their life ends. I’m also a fan of dialogue, and Lauren typically does not disappoint with it. Another thing I dig about Lauren’s work is her use of life’s comedic moments. Comedy is hard to write anyway, and capturing life’s comedic moments is even harder because often the situations these moments are found in are actually not very funny and only the people directly involved in the situation can see the humor. Lauren is able to breathe life into those moments on the page, inviting the reader to take part in the humor.

Her latest work, The Bro Magnet, is yet another story that presents the reader with an intriguing character. Unlike the first novel of Lauren’s I read, I actually adore the main character of this one! LOL I gave it a 5-star review. Check out the review below and consider getting a copy today!

In her latest story, The Bro-Magnet, I see all of these things developed–and in a male main character. It’s not often, in fact, I have to say it’s rare indeed, that I get to read a novel by a woman writer that features a male main character. One of the biggest complaints you hear from readers of authors who tend to write in a character that is not a part of them–white authors featuring black main characters, male authors featuring female main characters, etc.–is that the characterization is often stereotypical, flat. What, for me, Baratz-Logsted has added to her long list of tools in her writer’s toolbox is the ability to create a male character that is well-developed, that feels real, that makes you want to smack him and love him all at once. Although plot is important, scene development is important, and I can go on and on here, what draws me to a story first is a real character, and The Bro-Magnet‘s Johnny Smith is that–in spades. Here, you get a smart, funny rom com featuring a complex male character whose thoughts and actions will endear you to him the further you go into the story. To all of you interested in an engaging, funny take on love from an intriguing, complex, quirky man, you definitely need to give The Bro-Magnet a read!

A Nightmare on Elm Street scarred me then, continued to scar me through many of the sequels, until it just got too-too campy, and even today, there is a bit of a what if? in my mind. That’s the cool thing about some of the horror/slasher movies of back in the day: that what if? factor makes you look over your shoulder, makes you slow to turn off the lights at night, makes you double, triple check the locks on the doors and windows.

There is a collection of movies I have that are part of The Faves, movies I can watch pretty much every day and not get tired. It might be characters that nab me. It might be the fantastical atmosphere of the movie. If it’s a musical, it might be the numbers that compel me to watch it. For A Nightmare on Elm Street, it was the concept. Sleep is something we all day. We all need it. When we don’t get it, it messes with our minds and how we perceive things. Just a movie following characters who aren’t allowed to sleep would intrigue me because the things those characters would think and feel and do would be fascinating. Now, add a killer to that need we have for sleep. Make it so that when we try to get what we need, a scarred man is there, in your dreams, ready to kill you for the sins of your parents…or just because you’re asleep and are in his murderous playground. That layer of complexity just heightens the WTF Quotient for me.

It’s amazing that it’s been almost 30 years since this movie dropped. It shows me just how old I am. LOL But it also shows just how good the movie actually is because even though you know everything that is going to happen in the movie, there are still moments that make you go DAMN!