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Morgen 'with an E' Bailey

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Tag: debut novel

Author Spotlight no.415 – Miriam A Averna

July 9, 2016July 9, 20161 Comment

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and fifteenth, is of Miriam A Averna. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

MimMiriam A. Averna writes horror, dark, mystery, twisted or just plain weird stories. She lives in Milton Keynes with her two cats and partner, but is originally from the South of England and was born in sunny Sicily. She enjoys writing flash fiction, short stories and has just completed her medical mystery novel- No Cure for Fear.

She began writing when she was a kid and is an avid reader of fiction. Her stories have featured in a number of publications.

*

Devolution Z Aug 2015Her horror story Run, Scream, Eat, REPEAT featured in the first ever edition of Canadian magazine Devolution Z in August 2015 http://www.devolutionz.com/previous-issues.html.

Another horror story, End Trails, is available for free download on www.pennyshorts.com. It tells of a girl who is persuaded to run a 5k zombie race by her friend… but is it all it seems? Click here to read that story.

In the Autumn issue of Kishboo e-magazine, she won the runner-up prize for her short quirky story I didn’t like those shoes anyway. Ever wondered how shoes end up on the side of roads? Then read this story to find out!

She is also Assistant Editor for Horror Scribes which publishes flash fiction stories and regularly hosts competitions, their most recent one was based on Dante’s Inferno. https://horrorscribes.wordpress.com/fright-cards

When not writing she is mostly eating, thinking about eating or cataloguing ales and craft beers in her head.

*

And now from the author herself:

Continue reading →

Author Spotlight no.414 – Yani

February 20, 2016February 18, 2016Leave a comment

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and fourteenth, is of Yani. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

a YaniYani is an Amazon Best Selling Author of five 5-star novels hailing from the North Philly and Germantown sections of Philadelphia.

She’s been in the top 20 of African American Fiction-Urban Life for her A Thug’s Redemption series and debuted at number 12 in Romance and Erotica for Obsessive Intimacies.

Yani has a unique way of bringing stories to life, giving her readers the feeling that they are watching a movie with every page that is turned.

Her characters are real, raw and easy to relate to while her story lines are original, and having the ability to evoke emotions in the readers from start to finish.

b Thug's RedemptionShe has been featured in Yo! Raps magazine for ‘A Thug’s Redemption’ and was also a featured author at the 2013 Houston Black Book festival.

Yani first got her start writing for her school paper at University City. Her popular poems granted her an invitation to the Tri-State area’s number 1 Hip-Hop and R&B radio station, where she recited one of her most memorable pieces, “Why Tyrone Can’t Read”.

She then moved on to performing at various open mic nights in Philadelphia before landing a publishing deal with Publish America.

ATRNewWith the desire to self-publish and develop her own production company, Yani bought back the rights to A Thug’s Redemption and re-released it under her own publishing company “Anitbeet Productions”.

She then followed up with two sequels and penned her first erotic novel in 2014.

She is currently in the process of turning A Thug’s Redemption into an independent film and working on her sixth novel which will be released summer of 2016.

To learn more about this remarkable author and her incredible body of work, visit www.theauthoryani.com.

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And now from the author herself:

Continue reading →

Author Spotlight no.413 – cross-genre author Robert Eggleton

September 12, 2015December 20, 20178 Comments

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and thirteenth, is of cross-genre author Robert Eggleton. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Robert EggletonRobert Eggleton was born into an impoverished family in 1951, the oldest of four children. He grew up in low income neighborhoods surrounding Charleston, West Virginian, U.S. His alcoholic and occasionally abusive father suffered from PTSD, called “shell shock” back then – night terrors caused by WWII traumas – and had difficulty holding onto a job. Robert’s mother did the best she could, but Robert had to begin working himself as a child to feed his family. He started paying into America’s Social Security fund at age 12, dreamed of a brighter future, and has worked at various jobs for the next fifty-two years.

In the eighth grade, Robert won the school’s short story contest. The award made his dreams concrete – A Writer. As it often does, life got in the way of his dream. The Vietnam War motivated him to go to college to avoid the draft. As covered by local press, Robert organized antiwar protests while attending college. Except for a poem published in the state’s student anthology and another poem published in a local alternative newspaper, his creative juices were spent writing handouts for antiwar activities and on class assignments. He graduated in 1973 with a degree in social work and with no student loan debt.

Robert worked in the field of adolescent substance abuse treatment as he attended graduate school at West Virginia University. His dream, creative writing, continued to be “on hold.” After earning an MSW in 1977, he focused on children’s advocacy. He helped establish a shelter for runaways, a community-based residential program for high risk youth as an alternative to putting kids in huge institutions, and a state-wide network of family-like emergency children’s shelters. His heartfelt need to write fiction was dissipated somewhat by the publication of nationally distributed social service models, grants, and research on children’s issues.

Robert’s dream of becoming a creative writer continued to take a back seat to nonfiction when he accepted a job as a juvenile investigator for the West Virginia Supreme Court. He worked in this role from 1984 until mid 1997. During this period he was the primary author of dozens or investigative reports on children’s institutions, and statistical reports on child abuse and delinquency published by the Court, and now archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

After running a small nonprofit agency that served people with developmental disabilities, Robert went back home to direct services. He accepted a position as a Therapist in an intensive outpatient children’s mental health program. Most of the kids, like Robert, had been traumatized, some having experienced extreme sexual abuse. One day at work in 2006 it all clicked together and the Lacy Dawn Adventures project was born – an empowered female protagonist beating the evil forces that victimize and exploit others to get anything and everything that they want.

Robert soon found out that it takes much more than good creative writing to become an author. It wasn’t like in the 8th grade when his hand-printed story had won the school’s contest. He was naive about the protocols within the marketplace. Technology was in a period of rapid advancement with publishers presenting a mixture of electronic and traditional submission guidelines and publication formats. Robert was lost. A day after he registered for his first ever science fiction forum experience, he was banned for life due to what the moderator said was self-promotion of his debut novel.

The next day at work, Robert reassessed his life-long dream of becoming a creative writer. During a group therapy session, he looked into the kids’ faces as they disclosed the horrors that they had experienced. It fueled his determination to make his own dream come true and he dedicated half of any author proceeds to a child abuse prevention program.

Subsequently, three short Lacy Dawn Adventures were published in magazines. Robert then found a publisher for his debut novel, Rarity from the Hollow – a traditional, small press located in Leeds. Since the publisher was willing to bear all upfront costs, Robert signed the contract and Rarity from the Hollow was released in 2012 as a paperback and an eBook by Dog Horn Publishing.

Robert then learned that release of his novel was the beginning of a long journey called marketing. His novel has received glowing reviews, most notably by long-time book critic Barry Hunter and by the Missouri Review, award winning authors Darrell Bain, and Piers Anthony, and others, Robert’s writing was compared to that of Vonnegut by the editor of the Electric Review, A Universe on the Edge. A retired editor of Reader’s Digest published that Rarity from the Hollow was the best science fiction that he had read in several years.

Four months ago, Robert retired from this job as a children’s psychotherapist for the local mental health center so that he could concentrate on writing and promoting Rarity from the Hollow. He is holding off on the release of the next Lacy Dawn Adventure, Ivy, until he achieves greater name recognition. Shorter works are pending consideration – two poems and a short story have been submitted to magazines. Another very short story has been entered into a contest. Robert is finally pursuing his life-long dream of becoming a full-time creative writer, but he may need to get at least a part-time job in order to pay his bills in the meantime.

*

And now from the author himself:

Continue reading →

Author Spotlight no.412 – debut novelist David Riese

August 1, 2015July 31, 2015Leave a comment

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and twelfth, is of debut novelist Dave Riese. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Dave Riese - very small 3Born in 1946, Dave Riese grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, graduating from Arlington High School in 1964. He attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, majoring in English literature. During his junior year, he studied English Literature at Oxford University.

After graduating in 1968, David enlisted in the Air Force one step ahead of his draft board’s invitation to join the army. He married Susan, his high school girlfriend, during leave between tech school and his posting to the Philippines at Clark Air Base. During his final two years in the military, he and his wife lived near Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington D.C.

Discharged from the military in 1972, he attended Boston University on the GI Bill for a Master’s degree in Broadcast Journalism. The following summer he was hired by the University of New Hampshire to script and film videotapes about government social programs for the elderly.

His videotape grant ran out in 1976, but luckily at that time, companies were eager to hire people for their IT departments. With no computer experience, David was hired by Liberty Mutual Insurance to attend their three-month training course. He learned later that the major reason he was hired was his writing and communications background. He has often said, “This goes to show you that an English degree is a valuable asset!”

During his 35 years in information technology, the industry evolved from mainframes to personal computers using the internet. He retired from Massachusetts Financial Services in spring of 2012.

He and his wife moved north of Boston in 1974. Their daughter lives in Ireland with her husband. Their son and his wife are both pediatricians working in Rhode Island. They have four grandchildren.

Since retirement, he spends 3 – 4 hours a day, writing (or marketing), usually in a local coffee shop. Echo from Mount Royal is his first novel.

*

And now from the author himself:

Continue reading →

Morgen’s author interview with writer Caroline A Connell

July 19, 2014July 17, 2014Leave a comment

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with thriller, fantasy, children’s author and spotlightee Caroline A Connell. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

We met Caroline back in June and she’s returned today for a chat. But first, here’s a reminder from the biography from her spotlight…

CarolineWriter, blogger, mom, wife and adventurer on life’s creative high seas. Self-confessed book-junkie, literary festival devotee and peruser of indie bookstores. Caroline A Connell is a former finance guru who has escaped death-by-bullet point to live her dream to write novels and publish them.

A lover of the written word, as a child Connell read her way through the local public library. In high school, she would irritate her Eng Lit teacher by reading ahead but still keep tabs on where the teacher was up to. {Does anyone remember those tedious lessons where the teacher just sat at the front and read? For an hour at a time? Talk about killing off a love of literature}.

After college, a life in finance and the law tempered her need to write but it remained an itch that could never be fully scratched. “The Secret Alchemist” is her first published novel and 2014 promises several more.

Connell lives on the gentle, green slopes of the Pennine Hills in the UK with her family and pet dog, and can be discovered at her website and across social media.

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Morgen: Hello Caroline. The gentle, green slopes of the Pennine Hills sounds intriguing, please tell us a little more about where you’re from.

Caroline: I’m from Lancashire County in the UK – it’s a rural farming county, all green fields and rolling hills that run down to the shores of the Irish Sea, but right on the doorstep of the cosmopolitan cities of Manchester and Liverpool. I grew up on the southern shores of Lancaster Bay, with fabulous views to the magnificent Cumbrian Mountains.

Morgen: When and why did you begin writing?

Caroline: I’ve always written. At school I wrote for the school magazine and since then I’ve been thinking up stories and jotting them down as a hobby.

Morgen: Did you always want to be an author?

Caroline: At school it was my day dream, but a school careers counsellor persuaded me to go into the law and that was that for a while. Having said that, it was a wise suggestion on his part – I could subvert my desire to write into drafting legal documentation, which worked, for a while at least. I decided upon it as a career back in April last year. Continue reading →

Author Spotlight no.372 – Caroline A Connell

June 14, 2014June 14, 20142 Comments

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the three hundred and seventy-second, is of debut novelist Caroline A Connell. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Writer, blogger, mom, wife and adventurer on life’s creative high seas. Self-confessed book-junkie, literary festival devotee and peruser of indie bookstores. Caroline A Connell is a former finance guru who has escaped death-by-bullet point to live her dream to write novels and publish them.

A lover of the written word, as a child Connell read her way through the local public library. In high school, she would irritate her Eng Lit teacher by reading ahead but still keep tabs on where the teacher was up to. {Does anyone remember those tedious lessons where the teacher just sat at the front and read? For an hour at a time? Talk about killing off a love of literature}.

Caroline - coverAfter college, a life in finance and the law tempered her need to write but it remained an itch that could never be fully scratched. “The Secret Alchemist” is her first published novel and 2014 promises several more.

Connell lives on the gentle, green slopes of the Pennine Hills in the UK with her family and pet dog, and can be discovered at her website and across social media.

*

And now from the author herself: Continue reading →

Author Spotlight no.337 – Jim Sellers

October 19, 2013October 25, 20137 Comments

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the three hundred and thirty-seventh, is of multi-genre author and interviewee Jim Sellers. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Jim Sellers smile CU cropJim Sellers is the author of the newly released YA book “Jacky the Brave”. Although he had written works in most genres, he was surprised and happy to see his first publishing success was in YA. His writing in that genre is based mostly on events in his own life with some inspiration from friends and other family members. “Jacky the Brave” is just such a collection of his experiences.

Born in Edmonton in north-west Canada, Jim spent a lot of time reading and imagining exciting adventures as a kid. That was the favourite pastime of boys who didn’t play hockey and lived before the age of video games. Like most writers, he has been creating stories since his teen years and found the pen and paper to be a regular companion on long trips and quiet days. He also doubted that any of his work would be published – it seemed unlikely after watching other writers he knew trying so hard. So he set his sights on film and TV. During his 20 years in that business he learned the process of writing screenplays for drama and documentaries as well as advertising and corporate communications before retiring from that industry. For the last 10 years he has been working in communications management for non-profits groups and universities.

Jacky_CoverHe continued to write screenplays as show pilots or spec film scripts, most ending up in the rejection files. It was after he decided to get his Bachelor’s degree (at 50) that he learned to appreciate the sheer joy and freedom of writing fiction. It was this appreciation for fictional writing that caused him to re-evaluate all the abandoned stories he had filed away and all the adventures he had logged in his notes. In 2004, he made a project of writing a series of YA stories based on his previous writing. Each of these stories (4 in all) received different levels of interest from publishers and agents, with results ranging from boilerplate rejections to requests for full manuscripts (followed eventually by rejections). During this time he established a variety of websites about writing, posted his short stories and wrote a serial novel.

After repeated rewrites and editing, his first Young Adult novel was accepted for publication in 2013. He is working on a sequel for the book, a short story collection and a novel.

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And now from the author himself:

Continue reading →

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