Mary Wagner's Open Salon Blog

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:12:40 -0500

I first heard about “The Next Big Thing Blog Hop” on a Facebook post from the Florida Writers Association page, when a young writer I’d recently met, Bitten Twice, asked if anyone was interested in participating. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it sounded like fun! Basically, it amounts to an Independent Authors game of tag, where authors who have recently published books or have “works in progress” answer questions about their projects and then link back to other authors who are talking about THEIR latest projects.

One author posts a blog, linking back to the writer who first extended the invitation, and then asks five other authors to participate, who each then link their blog posts to the person who invited THEM to play. It reminds me a bit of the “chain letters” we used to get as kids. Back when mail actually came in envelopes and was written on paper…

At any rate, I’d like to thank fellow author Bitten Twice for “tagging” me to participate and have this much fun.You can click on these links to find Bitten Twice’s blog, website, and books.

In this particular “hop” my fellow authors and I, each in our respective blogs, have answered 10 questions where you get to learn about our current “works in progress.”We hope you’ll enjoy the romp! Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS

1: What is the working title of your book?

The working title in my head is “Quantum of Evidence.”I think of it as that tipping point, that “eureka moment,” when the jumble of jumble of information that seems disconnected and random finally sparks and flares into that moment of truth that you can't deny. Although I’m entirely open to suggestions at this point.

2.Where did the idea come from for the book?

It first started bobbing to the surface when I went to a writers’ retreat held at The Clearing on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin’s Door County.I took a few steps out of my usual routine as a prosecutor and a mother to be surrounded by nature’s splendor and fresh air and sunshine for an entire week. And then I realized I had some dynamite elements for a suspense novel involving a prosecutor and mother who didn’t know that her stepson would have a dangerous link to a murder.

3.What genre does your book fall under?

This would definitely come under the heading of “suspense fiction.”

4.Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, for this particular book I’d pick the actress Stana Katic from the TV series Castle for the lead character, and Josh Lucas as her detective/love interest.Stana brings a brilliant competency to her detective role in the TV series, as well as an emotional distance that sometimes breaks, and that’s the complexity that I’m looking for here.

BUT speaking of movies…every once in a while I send out a wish list to the Fates, and hope that someone will pick up my first non-fiction book, Running with Stilettos, fictionalize it and turn it into a movie.I would just love to see Patricia Arquette play a younger, better looking version of me.And for the even younger boyfriend with the Harley and the black leather pants? Well, either Hugh Jackman or Aaron Eckhart would be perfect!Aaron did an absolutely splendid job as the pony-tailed biker/friend in the movie Erin Brockovich.

5.What is the one-sentence synopsis for your book?

After a runaway teenager is found buried in a shallow grave, prosecutor, single mom and former juvenile delinquent Maggie Delahunt discovers a link to her troubled stepson and the dangerous lengths that reinvention will take us.

6.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m pretty sure I’m going to self-publish this one too. I have no patience for the length of time it takes for words to make it into print through traditional publishing channels. Had I waited for a traditional publisher to agree to pick up my first three books, Running with Stilettos, Heck on Heels, or Fabulous in Flats, I’d be short more than a dozen writing awards and an incredible amount of fun by now!

7.How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m embarrassed to admit that I started this book about six years ago…and then wrote the other three books instead. When asked why, I usually just explain that “life got in the way.” A lot of things were going on in my life for a few years that interfered with keeping a complicated train of thought going. So I’ve got my shoulder to the wheel again, and hope to have this book finished by the end of April, 2013.

8.What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I’m going to be so bold as to draw a tiny comparison to author William Kent Krueger’s first Cork O’Connor book, Iron Lake. Not because I plan to have my characters running around in the north woods and Indian reservations of Minnesota, but because his main character is so layered, and flawed, and still good to the core despite massive past mistakes.

9.Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, I love suspense fiction. A story has to have a puzzle to solve, and a villain to discover, in order to keep my interest to the final page. So it was a foregone conclusion that I would want to write a book like that. Further, though, I wanted to create a character with the complexities and nuance and contradictions that define us in real life.

10.What else about your book might pique your readers’ interest?

It was Leo Tolstoy who wrote that “happy families are all alike,” and everybody knows that unhappy families can be mined for an endless supply of screwed-up character development. Maggie, on the other hand, had that “happy family” thing going for her until her parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was thirteen.I wanted to explore how somebody who got thrown off the rails like that with no warning would deal with it and reinvent herself, and how it would affect her choices and relationships.As an adult, she’s obviously got a few parts missing on the “human connection” scale. On the other hand, she’s got a steel-trap mind, and a simmering impatience for incompetence and unfinished business.

www.runningwithstilettos.com

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:12:21 -0500

At any rate, I’d like to thank fellow author Bitten Twice for “tagging” me to participate and have this much fun.You can click on these links to find Bitten Twice’s blog, website, and books.

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS

1: What is the working title of your book?

2.Where did the idea come from for the book?

3.What genre does your book fall under?

This would definitely come under the heading of “suspense fiction.”

4.Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

5.What is the one-sentence synopsis for your book?

6.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

7.How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

8.What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

9.Who or what inspired you to write this book?

10.What else about your book might pique your readers’ interest?

www.runningwithstilettos.com

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:12:58 -0500

At any rate, I’d like to thank fellow author Bitten Twice for “tagging” me to participate and have this much fun.You can click on these links to find Bitten Twice’s blog, website, and books.

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS

1: What is the working title of your book?

2.Where did the idea come from for the book?

3.What genre does your book fall under?

This would definitely come under the heading of “suspense fiction.”

4.Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

5.What is the one-sentence synopsis for your book?

6.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

7.How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

8.What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

9.Who or what inspired you to write this book?

10.What else about your book might pique your readers’ interest?

www.runningwithstilettos.com

FREE award-winning book on KINDLE!!

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:11:34 -0500

Just in time for the holidays, I’m offering a FREE promotion for the Kindle version of my award-winning book, "FABULOUS IN FLATS" . This was the collection of essays that was named “Published Book of the Year” by the Florida Writers Association in 2011. It was also a finalist in the Indie Excellence Awards, and ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards.

You can check the book out right now on its Amazon Kindle page (and I freely admit that the cover art is still a work-in-progress), but you can DOWNLOAD IT FREE NEXT SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, ON DECEMBER 1 AND 2, 2012. If you don’t own a Kindle, Amazon offers a multitude of free “apps” for reading Kindle things on other devices, such as iPads, iPhones and iPods, and personal computers. And of course, if you’re an “Amazon Prime” member, you can borrow my Kindle books at any time.

The essays in Fabulous in Flats run the gamut, from my learning how to operate a chop saw off the back of a pickup truck, to surviving an auto accident in a blizzard, to stepping out in rhinestones and a “recycled” mink at a Viennese ball, and all points in between. As always, just as in my earlier two books, "RUNNING WITH STILETTOS" and "HECK ON HEELS," there is gratitude, and hope, and reflections on parenthood and life and love, and all those twists and turns that we never see coming…but learn to navigate anyway.

So download the book, spread the word about this offer to your friends and family and writing groups, and if it turns out that you like it, it would be great if you could leave a short review on Amazon!! And remember, Kindle books make great and EASY gifts for the readers in your life.

www.runningwithstilettos.com

From truckstop to supreme court

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:10:01 -0400

Reflections on the importance of government student loan programs.

When I graduated from high school at seventeen, I was living on a farm with no indoor bathroom in the middle of nowhere. My family didn't have an extra dime. When I worked, first as a truckstop waitress and then, after winter passed, for a local finance company in a "no skills" job, it was to support the family. I literally did not have $25 to my name for a college application fee.

Two years passed, during which I moved in with my grandparents in Chicago, worked more low-paying jobs requiring no more than the ability to spell and work a calculator, and I finally got into Marquette University, funded at first entirely (tuition, books, food, dorm room) by student loans and grants. Family support? None. There was none to be had from my own parents.

Without federal help, there would be no journalism degree, no newspaper bylines, no writing career. Then, when I went BACK to school years later as a soccer mom with four kids at home, again, student loans covered the entire cost of my law school tuition as I commuted as a part-time student, still doing the "full time mom" thing and showing up regularly for field trips and school volunteer days.

You can imagine how much "spare" money there was to finance my quest to become a lawyer. Without those loans, there would be no law degree, no job for the past twelve years as a prosecutor, no arguing and winning cases before the state supreme court defining public policy and law in the areas of drunk driving and children's protection. The effect of that "government assistance" was lifelong and still ongoing, and clearly has had a ripple effect.

When I hear the suggestion that those going to college should "borrow money from your parents," I wonder...in whose world? Not mine.