Interview with author Michael Sprankle

Author Michael Sprankle is here today and we’re chatting about The Ghost of Tom Mix.

Bio:

Michael Sprankle is an American author of journalistic style fiction. 

His writing style combines the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that impact society to at least some degree. He is a graduate of Penn State University with a BA in film. His books feature the recurring themes of drug abuse, comedy, everyday life, art, crime and conspiracy theories. He has worked as a bit-writer for major motion pictures and television shows, and has worked for some of the largest studios in Hollywood. Literary influences who have inspired his writing are recognizable in his novels and include Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, and Dan Brown.

Novels include:
Once Upon a Time in New York, How I Painted My Masterpiece
Love & Theft (in the 2016 Pulitzer competition)
The Killing Spring
I Want to Believe

The Ghost of Tom Mix (with Rick Cherry)

Current Project:
The Apocalypse Within
The Killing Spring Movie (in development 12/19)

TV Shows:
Alcatraz
Under The Dome

He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona

Welcome, Michael. Please tell us about your current release.

In The Ghost of Tom Mix, the reader

What inspired you to write this book?

My inspiration for this book came from my love of old Hollywood.

Excerpt from The Ghost of Tom Mix:

The streetlights began turning off one by one as we drove underneath them, leaving a darkened freeway behind us. When we got to Tom Mix Wash, the thermometer on the dash stopped functioning, our cell phones lost service, and the dash lights flickered and died, including the light that lit up the clock on the dash. I continued to drive, but we were both totally freaked out. The inside of the car got very cold…

What exciting story are you working on next?

My next project is The Apocalypse Within with co-writer Rick Cherry. It is an absorbing story of the end of civilization relayed through a handful of tortured characters. It will be coming out in early 2018.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

From early on, I kept a journal of everything interesting in my life. Like most of us writers, writing is an outlet. It is a way to block out all the noise and distraction in life…the craziness, and just think, focus, and release whatever thoughts have been weighing heavy on our hearts and minds. Along with the little “stargate” that writing provides for me, it has also taught me many things. I have noticed that I write in more than one way. Sometimes, I write for others. I write what I think people would like to read, or what they can relate to. The schizophrenic me writes for myself. I write about certain things based entirely on how I feel or even how I feel about certain things. And sometimes, I am at a total loss as to what to write about which forces me to become very creative; so, I pull some dusty file out of the back of my mind. Writing has shown me a few things. Writing has shown me that it's okay to write about whatever it is I want to write about, that this is my creation to write and my story to tell; there is no right or wrong way, and that is a nice feeling to have. In this sense I create a monster, and bring that monster to life. I also have never been much of a social butterfly and I am somewhat closed when it comes to feelings or personal matters. It is through my writing that I can express these things in a more comfortable manner than I feel I would otherwise.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I don’t write full time, but if you are serious about writing, you must write every day. One of my quirks or habits, is that even when I can’t physically be writing, I am constantly writing in my head. I write when I’m driving…sometimes even when I’m watching TV. I maintain a daily routine of writing as religiously as the most driven marathon runner. I can’t afford to wait for a lightning bolt of inspiration to strike before sitting down and staring at a blank page.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

My most interesting quirk bar far is the way I twist things around in my stories. The best plot twist is an unexpected one. This means something happens that the reader could in no way infer was going to happen, or perhaps a change in the story that might not have been completely unexpected, but occurred at a completely unexpected time in the story. Try giving your story an open ending, try something unexpected, and be sure at least one of your characters is shifty.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Laugh if you will, but I wanted to be a movie star. I actually almost was. To find out how, you would have to read my novel Love & Theft.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Nope. Time to write.

Links:

Barnes and Noble | Goodreads | Facebook | Amazon | LinkedIn

Thanks for stopping by today!

Interview with novelist Gerri LeClerc

Novelist Gerri LeClerc joins me today to talk about her new women’s fiction, Silent Grace.

Bio:

Pennsylvania native Gerri LeClerc lives on Cape Cod with her husband Ron. The medical background Gerri gained as a Registered Nurse is reflected in her stories, which explore the complex ways in which children’s health challenges affect the lives of the adults around them. A passionate reader with a lifelong love of classic romantic suspense and contemporary women’s fiction, Gerri is the author of Missing Emily, the first book in the Knoll Cottage trilogy, which appeared in early 2016.

Welcome, Gerri. Please tell us about your current release.

Sisters Beth and Patrice Hensen have taken very different paths in life. When Patrice’s drug addiction interferes with her ability to raise her 8-year-old daughter Grace, the always-responsible Beth assumes temporary custody. Settling into Knoll Cottage, the small home on Cape Cod Beth has recently purchased, Beth and Grace struggle to adjust. Just as their lives stabilize and their bond solidifies, fate steps in with surprises that test their hearts, souls and strength yet again.

What inspired you to write this book?

The nurse in me! Deafness and the conflict in the deaf community over to treat or not, has always intrigued me. I thought about how lonely a child with hearing loss must be, how she might misconstrue communication from others. How hard it must be for Grace to build trust in people.

How a handsome doctor and a loving aunt might help her hear again. (Must have romance in my story, too.) The second issue in the book is addiction to prescription drugs, which is so prevalent today. How easy it is to relieve Patrice’s pain in her difficult life with easily obtained drugs. And the toll addiction takes on those who love her.

Excerpt from Silent Grace:

With sleet tapping at the window of her New Bedford, Massachusetts apartment, Beth Henson sat on the floor, packing a box of books. The phone rang with her sister’s unique ringtone and interrupted her off-key singing. Beth hesitated, pressing tape over the flaps of the box, and considered letting the call roll to voicemail. Instead, she wove her way through a maze of packed boxes, retrieved her phone and answered.

            It was a video call from Grace.

            “Mommy won’t wake up,” her niece said in her fragile voice, while she also signed at a frantic pace. “Scared.”

            “Is she breathing? Turn the phone so I can see Mommy,” Beth said, signing the main words. Grace understood and switched the phone’s camera to Patrice on the couch. Beth saw that she was breathing deeply.

            “I’m coming now, sweetie. Stay on the phone with me.” But the call ended. Beth must have signed wrong. She didn’t take time to call back. She grabbed her purse from the table by the front door. “Keys. Keys,” she said, dumping the contents on the floor. She scooped up the keys and left everything except her wallet where it landed. Grace had to be alarmed to use her voice. Beth was afraid she knew what it was; had seen it before.

What exciting story are you working on next?

While I work on book three in the Knoll Cottage trilogy, I’ve been busy revising another novel I wrote, A Marriage to Die For. It’s A suspense story about how an abused wife escapes her DEA Agent husband who promised to kill her if she leaves him. And how a raccoon that gets into your basement can lead to romance when the sheriff comes.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I think when my friends began to read my first manuscript for me. I had such wonderful feedback and support. They saw me as a writer—and I began to believe it, too.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

My husband and I are best buds. We love to do things together—after many years of marriage! When I started writing, I became immersed in a surprisingly time-consuming effort. It’s not just writing, it’s a learning curve, it’s networking, it’s marketing. Everything takes time. So, I began to get up at 6 a.m. and work until 11 a.m. I’d sneak back to the computer if he was otherwise occupied later in the day. My husband’s on board now, and he’s learned to cook dinner—he likes to eat!

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

St. Frances Cabrini. She’s my patron—it’s a long story. Her statue sits on my desk. And then Livia, my cat. She thinks she’s my muse. I think she is, too.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wore my mother’s nurse’s uniform for four consecutive years on Halloween.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Thanks for being part of Lisa’s blog on my novel, Silent Grace. I hope you read it, and I hope you love it!

Links:

Website | Amazon | Facebook | Twitter

Thanks for being here today!

Interview with contemporary women’s fiction author Katie O’Rourke

Author Katie O’Rourke joins me today to have a conversation about her contemporary women’s fiction novel, A Long Thaw.

Bio:

Katie O'Rourke was born and raised in New England, growing up along the seacoast of New Hampshire. She went to college in Massachusetts and graduated with a degree in gender and sexuality. She lives in Tucson, Arizona where she writes, loves and is happy. 

Monsoon Season, her debut novel, was a bestselling e-book. A Long Thaw was released in 2014, followed up by Still Life, a collection of short stories. Her most recent novel, Finding Charlie, was selected for publication by KindleScout.

Please tell us about your novel.
A Long Thaw is about two female cousins who were close as children and reconnect as adults. Abby and Juliet were born into one big, close, Catholic family. But the divorce of Juliet’s parents fragments this family and sends the girls in very different directions. 

Juliet grows up too quickly, on the west coast, forced to be responsible for her younger sisters as well as an alcoholic, single mother. On the east coast, Abby grows up a pampered, sheltered only child. As women, they try to mend the rift and come to terms with the way their shared history connects them in spite of the years apart.

What inspired you to write this book?

I've always imagined A Long Thaw as a modern interpretation of the old prince and the pauper story. Abby and Juliet are cousins who, until the age of ten, live the same privileged, sheltered lives in a big Irish Catholic family. When Juliet's parents divorce, her mother moves across the country so that she no longer has that safety net. The cousins reconnect in their twenties and the book deals with the ways we are changed by our experiences as well as the ways we are unchangeable.

Excerpt from A Long Thaw:

Abby

            In September, Ryan comes home from work and tosses the lease on the kitchen table. “It’s that time again,” he says as he removes his tie, hanging it over the back of a chair.
            Abby stands at the stove, pushing the chicken stir-fry with a spatula.
            After graduation, they both took jobs in Boston and neither could afford to live in the city without a roommate. Living together just made sense; it was about practicality. Love was incidental.

            Ryan kisses her on the cheek and gets a pen out of the drawer beside her. He signs his name and holds the pen out towards her.
            They have shared the apartment for a year. They do their own dishes, take turns making dinner, split all the bills, fifty/fifty. They never argue with raised voices. They renewed in March without much discussion. Their signatures side by side on a legally binding document caught Abby’s attention, distracting her from the landlord’s monologue on snow plows. She handed the papers to him with a reluctance she hadn’t quite understood.
            Abby sets the spatula on the counter and reaches out her hand. Then, she hesitates, drops her hand back to her side. They look at each other.
            “What?” Ryan says. His sandy hair curls at the edge of his ears, overdue for a haircut.
            “I’m not sure about this.” Abby's as surprised as he is to hear herself say this.
            “What do you mean?”
            The stir-fry is starting to smoke. Abby turns off the burner. Ryan waits, still holding out the pen.
            “What are we doing?” Abby asks.
            Ryan expresses his confusion with a shrug.
            “How many times do we renew this lease? Is this it? Is this all you want?”
            Ryan turns his back and places the pen on the table. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
            Abby crosses her arms. “I don’t want you to say anything.” Especially not that, she thinks. As if she could tell him how to act and that would fix everything; the fact that it didn’t naturally occur to him was just irrelevant. “I’m not asking for anything. I never ask you for anything.”
            Ryan turns around. “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

            They look at each other without talking, locked in a silent battle of wills. Ryan blinks first. “Abby, we’re young,” he says, as if this has meaning.
            “I know we’re young. I just need to know if you want this to work.”

            He sighs then, a deep sigh that signals annoyance or defeat or exhaustion. Abby isn’t sure which. “Are we in this together?” Abby asks. “Are you in this?”
            “I love you.” Ryan steps closer, but Abby backs away.
            “Yeah, but what does that mean? You love me in this exact moment and possibly for the next six months?” Abby gestures to the paper on the table.
            “I can’t see into the future.”
            “You don’t have to. You just have to want it.” Abby studies Ryan’s face. “I just need to know it’s a possibility, that you see us as a possibility.”
            Ryan sighs again. Defeat, this time. “I don’t know what I see.”
            Abby leaves him standing in the kitchen. She isn’t hungry.

What exciting story are you working on next?

Blood & Water is about family, in its various manifestations: the one you're born into, the one you choose and the one you create. The novel follows five characters: a young mother named Ally, the deliberately childless Tim and Sara, single dad David with a college-bound daughter and David's little sister, Delilah, who shows up on his doorstep with a secret.

On the surface, these friends are on very different paths in their lives with seemingly little in common, but they connect in meaningful and sometimes unexpected ways. Their experiences overlap in a way that reminds us what it is to be human.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I started calling myself a writer in college, but it took me awhile before I felt comfortable enough to claim it when answering the question at parties: “So, what do you do?” I think it took the publication of my first book.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I have never been a writer who forces a daily output. Some days the inspiration hits and some days it doesn’t. There’s definitely value to carving out regular writing time and making it a priority. I try to participate in NaNoWriMo every year to help me remember that.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

One of my favorite things to do in my work is have characters who pop up in subsequent books, even though I don’t write sequels. The imaginary world that I constructed for my first novel, Monsoon Season, is the same world that exists in A Long Thaw and Finding Charlie. Characters overlap because they're inhabiting the same space. A main character in A Long Thaw is a peripheral character in the book I’m writing now.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

As a young child, I thought I’d be a teacher. I think a lot of kids imagine that because it’s one of the only professions we see up close. By high school, I was thinking about being a psychologist because I’m endlessly fascinated by issues of identity and family dynamics, by the nature vs. nurture debate. These are things that inevitably find their way into my fiction.

Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon

Thanks for being here today, Katie!

Interview with writer / debut novelist David Trock

Writer and debut novelist David H. Trock is here today and we’re chatting about this newest crime fiction (a murder mystery), A Religion Called Love.

Bio:

David Trock has been published in several genres including crime fiction and medical non-fiction. As a novelist, his foray into murder mystery was launched in 2016 with the psychological thriller, A Religion Called Love. In 2007, his first book titled, Healing Fibromyalgia, was published by Wiley & Sons. He's written book chapters and journal articles primarily in the field of rheumatology. He is an attending physician at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut and a clinician on faculty at Yale University School of Medicine

Welcome, David. Please tell us about your current release.

A Religion Called Love is an unconventional murder mystery that draws attention to controversial themes, such as the meaning of faith, the debate over stem cells & tissue cloning (known as somatic cell nuclear transfer), and the pain of unrequited love.

When a young kindergarten teacher confesses the truth about her unorthodox religious beliefs, a throng of angry parents confronts her. The next day, she is found dead, and an investigation led by Detective Robin Noel (a friend of the deceased) exposes the lurid secrets inside a small town.

What inspired you to write this book?

At first, the story was inspired by the yearnings of three different men for the central character (Kathryn), then I folded in the dynamic of a woman (Detective Robin Noel) who also secretly pined for her, then I focused on the intertwining of their lives after Kathryn's death. The subplots pertaining to religious faith and humanism came later and fit perfectly into the narrative. 

Excerpt from A Religion Called Love:

(from the end of chapter 1)

When word of Kathryn's attitude spread, she was snubbed in the teacher’s lounge, anonymously harassed online and marginalized by a small but formidable core. At dismissal one Friday afternoon, she found herself surrounded outside the door of her own classroom by a throng of angry parents. Confronted by pointed fingers and accusations, she was forced to field questions from all directions. What kind of teacher are you? What kind of values are you teaching our children? You’re a disgrace to the school!

 Kathryn flinched, thinking an object had been hurled in her direction. The brief misperception tugged at her playful sense of humor—she had nearly smiled but thought better of it. By chance, a security guard was making his rounds and diffused the situation by his mere presence. He strolled past the adults, who nodded politely in unison, and when he was out of sight once more, their angry pitch returned. Don’t put confusing thoughts in their minds! You don’t have children of your own, stay away from ours!

 Kathryn tried to assure everyone that her personal beliefs were no threat whatsoever to their children. She insisted that only kindness and fairness and the Golden Rule were emphasized in class—but their anger only escalated. Finally, she said, “I’m going home now.” She squeezed through the fray and turned to say one more thing: “By the way, if you’re certain that having a religion is required to be a good teacher, then my religion is love—love for one another—love and respect for all living things. That is my religion.”

 Kathryn walked away from the spectacle that Friday afternoon and made little of it. She ended her week in the usual way, on the top step of her cement porch with a cup of green mint chocolate chip ice cream. A roach clip sat in the porcelain ashtray beside her. “Sugar Magnolia” echoed in her thoughts. A crescent moon lit a corner of the sky that evening and she slept well. 

 The following day, Kathryn’s body was discovered at home with no sign of forced entry—no evidence of rape or robbery. She was only twenty eight when it happened, a crime that roused the neighborhood from its provincial slumber. Neighbors whispered from behind the yellow police tape that she should have been more careful. A patrol car idled silently at the curb with lights running. Curious onlookers gathered to see what was going on, speculating among themselves about the pretty kindergarten teacher inside. Detectives arrived in short order to ask them what they had seen or heard, and their responses were predictably useless. No less than a dozen different stories belied the fact that nobody knew exactly why Kathryn James was dead or who was responsible. 

A five-block area was scoured for evidence. Detectives went door to door looking for clues. One reclusive neighbor protested for being questioned more than once, but Detective Robin Noel didn't care; she was accustomed to that kind of response.  

What exciting story are you working on next?

I'm working on several projects, both fiction (the first living heart donor), and non-fiction (about treating chronic pain).

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I still think of myself as a doctor, teacher, husband, father, and somewhere in there I get my share of writing done.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I love to write, so I find time to do it whenever I can.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I usually write freehand, then I edit at least once before transferring to my laptop.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I love animals, so I wanted to become a veterinarian.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I've attended several book groups that have focused their debate on the religious themes of A Religion Called Love, and I think that's okay - but don't forget the love part!! 

Thanks for being here today, David!

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