To finish my Into the Web themed week, I’m spotlighting an author I’ve enjoyed for the last six years or so, an author who has mystery on the mind and a chica sleuth who always seems to find herself sucked into … Continue reading
This week’s Teaser Tuesday is a PODCAST. Cleared the cobwebs out the ol’ voice box and recorded myself reading initial pages from Into the Web‘s prologue. Hope you enjoy it! Podcast is just beneath the cover! [buy your copy … Continue reading
I’ve been lucky to meet some great writers in my life. And some of those writers have been instrumental in my development as a writer. One such person has a book that makes my Fan Friday this week.
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.”
Into the Web now has its own trailer! I even managed to marry my first and Second lives for the beginning of it! Check it out, and order your copy now for only $3.99!
I’m an eclectic reader. Monday, I can be reading literary fiction. Tuesday, erotica. Wednesday, mystery. Thursday, fantasy. Friday, chick lit. It typically doesn’t matter the genre; what I care about is a character I want to follow through a book … Continue reading
The Michaels family plays a vital role in my upcoming novel, Into the Web. Leland Michaels is the patriarch of this small family. A mayoral candidate, Leland is charismatic, charming, and usually able to finagle his way out of any … Continue reading
This post originally aired on February 26, 2011, at The Blood-Red Pencil.
What is a “defining moment” book? Well, for me, it is a book that made me think, made me move, made me change something in how I wrote. Most of the stories and books I wrote pre-defining moment book were relationship based, delving on the lives and loves of my characters. If I had to pick a genre, I would say it was women’s fiction with a heavy romantic element.
That changed for me when I read Mary Higgins Clark’s All Around the Town.
I loved it. Still do. Once I year, I still read it.
There were many things I gleaned from the book. I think the thing I liked so much about All Around the Town is that as a reader you had sympathy for the main character and for those characters close to her, but Clark did not write in this syrupy, I’m going to make you feel sympathy by laying the sympathy on thick way. Her writing in that story, at times, is pretty straight forward. I was just rereading it a few weeks ago, and I thought, Man, this could be considered emotionless writing if I didn’t know better, because in that book, it’s not how much sympathy a writer can create in words but how the actions (or inactions) of the character evoke the emotions and the sympathy. And Clark’s also quite good at being pretty concise, getting in where she needs to, and moving out the scene. She doesn’t linger around, adding words for fluff, and she doesn’t add that one more adjective that makes the reader cringe and go, “Yeah, overkill.” She’s also good at layering. The story, in the big sense, is about a young girl who is kidnapped and suffered unimaginable abuse for years and is finally returned one day. We see this girl, older, trying to live as stable of life as she can, despite the fact that the kidnappers still exist, and one of them still loves/wants the girl, and with the girl starting to talk about her past, the kidnappers want her silenced indefinitely. With that storyline, we have many layers, from the girl’s (main character) story to her parents’ story after she’s kidnapped and when she comes home, to her older sister’s story of trying to be protector now that she’s back, to the kidnappers’ stories, to the doctors that try to help/save the girl. And none of it is confusing, and all of it comes together to tell one great story. And as a mystery/suspense novel, that layering is also key in how well Clark embeds intrigants throughout the story that payoff for the reader the more he or she delves into the story. With each page turned, the breath of the reader catches as he/she waits, knowing something is going to happen and being enthralled that Clark is making them hold out—just a little bit longer.
After that novel writing class, I had a renewed love and respect for the mystery/suspense field, and I had the first three chapters of what would end up being—many, many years later—my debut solo novel, Death at the Double Inkwell. And now, two years after that big moment, the second novel in the Double Inkwell series, Into the Web, will drop in a few weeks!
I’ve decided to showcase another excerpt from my upcoming novel, Into the Web. This excerpt is an interesting one because 99.9989% of the excerpt comes from the novel that Jovan and Cheyenne are writing in Into the Web. Sounds like … Continue reading
If I’m going to talk about being a fan of a book or an author, then I have to start with THE book I constantly bring up and THE author I have lovingly stalked over the last, oh, say, 10, 12 years: BERNICE MCFADDEN and her debut novel, Sugar.
I don’t know how I learned about Bernice McFadden’s Sugar, but I do know that in 2000, having read that book, I had found a literary treasure that other works would have to compare to.
click cover to purchase a copy today!
In 2005, when I first interviewed Bernice at my blog ChickLitGurrl: high on LATTES & WRITING, I told her, “Your debut novel, SUGAR, by far, is one of the best books I have ever read. It is delicate and painful and rhythmic and joyous all wrapped into one, tight pleasurable read.” That passion for the novel hasn’t changed.
It actually has grown, especially as Bernice continues to put out such wonderfully moving works.
If you haven’t read Sugar, pick it up. Don’t think it’s outdated; it’s a classic, so it tastes just as sweet and fresh today as the day it dropped.
And while you’re picking up Sugar, also get Bernice’s last two novels: Glorious and Gathering of Waters.
You can click the covers above to head to Amazon and get your copies. Be forewarned, Bernice keeps it vivid, real, and sensory. You’re going to be moved, and you’ll walk away from these novels with more than one thought to keep you company for a while.
For my first Teaser Tuesday, I decided to showcase an excerpt from my upcoming release, Into the Web. Release date is set, April 23, and over the next few weeks, I will be posting a thing or two on the ITW page to get you geared up to make your purchase! To be kept abreast of ITW and other news, at the top right of the site, subscribe to the site via e-mail.
What is ITW about? Read on…
The minute twins and mystery novelists Jovan and Cheyenne Parham find their lives settling into a nice rhythm [get Death at the Double Inkwell to see how it all began], all hell breaks loose – in their personal lives and in the latest crime they find themselves mixed up in. Jo is trying to build a relationship with Mark Brockman, but the deaths of her husband and Mark’s wife, and the sordid nature of their coming together keeps her from jumping into the relationship with both feet. Cheyenne is head over heels in love with former detective-now P.I. Ian Davenport, but unexpected news and Ian’s involvement in a new case causes Chey to second guess the deepness of their love. Trying to figure out their love lives becomes all the more complicated when Jo and Chey are thrust into a series of kidnappings and murders involving young girls who seem to make the wrong friends online. When a mayoral candidate’s daughter is kidnapped, Ian finds himself on the case, much to the chagrin of Chey considering he spends an awful lot of time holding and caring for the candidate’s wife. Bringing the girl home safely and finding the killer pushes the twins to the limits of their personal and professional lives. Going into a web of infidelity, lies, deception, and murder often leaves all involved in disarray. Will Jovan and Cheyenne find themselves, once again, trying to pick up the remaining fragments of their lives once this is all over?
The excerpt below is toward the beginning of the story and kicks us into gear with the individual personal storylines of Jo and Chey and their thrust into an investigation. Enjoy!
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Image wasn’t everything.
To look at Jovan as she walked through Joe’s Gym, one would see a strong, beautiful woman with a strut that said, “I’m on a mission.”
A year ago, while in the beginning of her Picking up the Pieces tour, Jovan stared into a full-length mirror on the back of a hotel bathroom door, and she hated what she saw. She had put on a few pounds since the case was closed on Cordell’s murder. She had stopped taking care of herself—from hair to makeup, from clothing, to going out and moving around. Except for dating Mark, seeing Cheyenne, and touring, Jovan had let her life get away from her. She felt like a hypocrite, talking to women about letting go of their pasts and getting on with their lives when she hadn’t successfully done that.
As she looked in the mirror, she told herself, “Tomorrow, this changes.”