Day: June 29, 2016

How to Keep Your Characters from Getting Bored

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July is National Anti-Boredom month. I recently asked author Carole Ann Moleti what her characters do to fight boredom.

Liz and Mike Keeny are far from bored during the summer months. The Historic Barrett Inn is full of guests. Liz and her beloved housekeeper Mae are busy attending to them-as well as to little Eddie. Mike is fisherman, so he takes full advantage of the warmer days to nab some striped bass and flounder for the local restaurants.

On top of that, the ghosts haunting the Inn are always more riled up in the summer months and the painful anniversaries of their traumatic last years have the specters buzzing and their hosts struggling to contain them. And this year, they have Category 5 Hurricane Edward on the way. Is it just coincidence he’s named after sea captain Edward Barrett? Mike and Liz don’t think so. When the evacuation order comes, do they stay or do they go?

Breakwater Beach: Book One in the Unfinished Business Series

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Available in e-book, print coming Fall 2016  http://amzn.to/1VfwnZR

Blurb:

Liz Levine is convinced her recently deceased husband is engineering the sequence of events that propels her into a new life. But it’s sea captain Edward Barrett, the husband that died over a century ago, who has returned to complete their unfinished business. Edward’s lingering presence complicates all her plans and jeopardizes a new relationship that reawakens her passion for life and love. What are Captain Barrett’s plans for his wife, and for the man who is the new object of her affections?

Excerpt:

Mike tipped his hand in salute and went out to his truck. “Morning,” he said to Mae who was getting out of her van.

“Good morning’ to ya, too,” she replied, looking at him askance. “Come along, lassies, still plenty to do.”

Mae looked at Liz standing in the doorway wearing Mike’s sweatshirt. Her eyes traveled from Liz’s hair, still damp and caked with mud and sand, all the way down to her bare feet.

“Ehh . . . a change in plans, girls. We’ll start downstairs today. First, polish the woodwork and then clean all the fixtures. Then upstairs, after the missus has time to get dressed.”

Mae herded them out of the foyer then followed Liz upstairs, smiling like she was about to solve the crime of the century. “From the looks of ya, that was one wild night on the beach. Now ya best be hoppin’ into the tub after passin’ me the nightie. I’ll soak it and get that mud out before it’s ruined. I’ll freshen the big guy’s sweatshirt, too.”

“It was nothing like that, Mae.” Liz couldn’t bear the thought of having to explain this to another person she knew from another life.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not passin’ any judgment. To be honest, I’m relieved. Ya took my advice. There’s nothin’ wrong with livin’, Liz.”

Also available in ebook and print: http://amzn.to/1RNz7ce

The Widow’s Walk: Book Two in the Unfinished Business Series

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Mike and Liz Keeny are newlyweds, new parents, and the proprietors of the Barrett Inn, an 1875 Victorian on Cape Cod, which just happens to be haunted. By their own ghosts. The Inn had become an annex of Purgatory, putting Mike, Liz, and their infant son in danger. Selling the historic seaside bed and breakfast was the only answer, one that Liz and her own tortured specter refused to consider. Were they doomed to follow the same path that led to disaster in their previous lives? Was getting out, getting away, enough?

Coming in 2017: Storm Watch 

Read more at  http://bit.ly/1Pr1y1x

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Blurb:

Mike and Liz thought they’d gotten control of the specters haunting the Barrett Inn. But things get very complicated when they’re the ghosts from your past life. The Category Five Hurricane bearing down on Cape Cod appears to be headed directly for them–or has it been spawned from inside them?

Excerpt:

Either it was age or too much on his mind, but forgetting your morning routine was like getting lost in your own back yard. Mike was in the parking lot before he realized he’d forgotten to stop for tea. There was some water and soda aboard the Whaler-warm of course-some stale snacks too. The sun peeked through a bank of puffy white clouds, giving the hint of a beautiful day to come. But to the west, a dark expanse rolled over itself like a giant octopus, its tentacles undulating, slapping the shit out of the cottony sky. “Damn ghosts.”

 Bio

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Carole Ann Moleti lives and works as a nurse-midwife in New York City, thus explaining her fascination with all things paranormal, urban fantasy, and space opera. Her nonfiction focuses on health care, politics, and women’s issues. But her first love is writing science fiction and fantasy because walking through walls is less painful than running into them.

Books One and Two in the Unfinished Business series, Carole’s Cape Cod paranormal romance novels, Breakwater Beach and The Widow’s Walk, were published by Soulmate. Book Three, Storm Watch, is expected in 2017.

Urban fantasies set in the world of Carole’s novels have been featured in Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Seers: Ten Tales of Clairvoyance, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, and Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires. Her award winning non-fiction, which ranges from the sweet and sentimental to edgy and irreverent has been published in a variety of literary venues.

Links

Subscribe to Carole’s Newsletter and get a free ebook:  http://eepurl.com/bfNver

Amazon author Page: http://amazon.com/author/carolemoleti

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/Cmoleti

Website: http://caroleannmoleti.com

Facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/CaroleAnnMoletiAuthor/

Google Plus: plus.google.com/103609323247390103301

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomCmoleti

Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/caroleannmoleti/

 

 

Snarky Sunday: I Get No Respect

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The other day, I overheard someone say, “You get up at 4am every morning to go to the gym? I’m impressed.”

Seriously? Lots of people get up that early to go to the gym. I mean, gyms are open at that hour. Right? People must go or else the places wouldn’t be open. What’s so flippin’ impressive about that?

Image credit: andrejad / 123RF Stock Photo

Frequently, I am up at 4am . . . to write. Books. And to conduct the business related to those books. But that’s not impressive.

Someone who writes a non-fiction lifestyle essay that gets included in an anthology and goes on Good Morning, America impresses people. Creating whole universes from the landscape of the mind makes me weird.

A contributor to Business Insider tried an experiment a few years ago. He got up at 4:30am for 21 weekdays. Hey! You want a medal or a chest to pin it on? You’re a single guy. No obligations. You probably never worked a Day Job in your life. Not everyone has those luxuries. Nor do we get to decide to go to bed an hour or so earlier just because we’re up earlier.

I may get no respect, but you know what? I create magic. Try that at the gym.

 

 

 

Vegetables

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I’m not quite sure what people in the US have against vegetables, but there is definitely a conspiracy. We seem determined to cancel out any health benefits from eating veggies by adding things to them. I don’t mean seasonings or even a dab of butter, but other stuff. Unhealthy stuff.

As a child, I wasn’t fond of vegetables. I ate canned green beans, canned yellow beans, canned corn, and canned peas. Which probably explains why I didn’t like vegetables. As a teenager, I added iceberg lettuce to my repertoire. I didn’t really begin to appreciate veggies until I was older. Unadulterated vegetables. Asparagus. Broccoli. Cauliflower. Red, yellow, and orange bell peppers. (No, I still don’t like green peppers.) Kale–and most other greens. Beets. Sweet potatoes. Carrots. Winter squashes. I’m still not fond of summer squashes, but I’ll eat them.

I first realized this propensity a couple of years ago. I used to make a butternut squash/red onion/baby spinach/craisin dish for our family’s Thanksgiving celebration. A co-worker made her butternut squash with cheese and cream. Now, I have nothing against cheese. At all. But isn’t gooping up a vegetable with unhealthy stuff contrary to the point of eating vegetables?

For the past several years, my Thanksgiving contribution has been sweet potatoes. I think sweet potatoes are sweet enough without any help. So I invented my own recipe. A savory sweet potato dish. It’s now my annual contribution to all autumn, winter, and early spring family gatherings as it is gluten free, dairy free, oxalate free, and vegan. And it’s edible. This year, I wanted to try something simpler. Maybe something in the slow cooker. I asked friends for recipes that didn’t involve additional sweetening. No luck. I received many links and ideas, but every one of them called for one of the following: sugar; brown sugar; molasses; honey; maple syrup.  So I ended up making my usual sweet potato faux gallette. And it was fabulous.

Next up, I want to try roasted brussel sprouts. Anybody have a good recipe?

Office Reclamation

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It was nearly a year ago when I started my office reclamation project. And while it has been on hiatus for a while, at least I’ve managed to keep the clutter at bay.

While going through some papers earlier this spring, I came across print-outs of my novels. Now I’m wondering why I need to keep them? All of my books are stored on the cloud. Several are published. I also e-mail the final manuscripts to a special e-mail account I have just for that purpose.

I think that before the county has its next Shred-a-thon/Shred-O-Rama, I’m going to revisit those files and purge them.

Unless you can think of a reason I should keep them.

 

 

Writing in Two Genres

On Saturday, May 2, one of my dearest friends and critique partners (Gayle Callen/Emma Cane/Julia Latham) is going to be talking to my local RWA chapter about writing in two genres. She’s published in historical romance (Gayle), medieval romance (Julia), and small town romance (Emma) by Avon Harper Collins.

All of my critique partners write in two genres. Kris Fletcher writes Women’s Fiction and for Harlequin Super Romance, and Christine Wenger writes romance for Harlequin Special Edition and cozy mysteries for Obsidian (Penguin).

I felt like such a slacker. Then I realized that on Tuesday, May 5–less than one week from now–I, too will be published in two genres: paranormal werewolves with Soul Mate Publishing and contemporary baseball romance with Loose Id.

And what do my two genres have in common? The heroes are men in organized groups (packs & teams). They’re the guys who break away from the stereotypes to find a life beyond the safety of male bonding. This was not conscious on my part, but it’s certainly been a lot of fun.

What’s next? Maybe a baseball playing werewolf!