Blog Tour

I'm part of a review group on Goodreads and have met some pretty amazing Indie authors there. During the last round I participated in, a fellow writer, Rebecca Hazell, invited me to take part in a blog tour. I would like to introduce her here as my sponsor. 

Rebecca Hazell is an award winning artist, author and educator. She has written, illustrated and published four non-fiction children’s books, created best selling educational filmstrips and educational craft kits for children and even designed award winning needlepoint canvases. I took a look at some of the art she has up on her site and she's a pretty phenomenal painter as well. Visit her here.

I was given four questions to answer, so here we go!

1) What am I working on?

I’ve got several projects going on at once right now. I just published my second novel, Alabama Skye, at the beginning of June. I had no plans to write a sequel until many readers told me they thought there should be more from this cast of characters. Thrilled with this response, I got to work on a story line and and am excited about going back to the fictional seaside town of Kelby, Alabama once again. There has been some buzz on my Facebook page as of late that there should also be a third installment to this series. (I'm so grateful for readers!) We'll see what happens. :) I am also writing a trilogy based on a smart, funny but unlucky in love loan officer who lives in Sparrow, Nebraska and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. This is a more light-hearted story that has allowed me to entertain my life-long fascination with Greek mythology. I hope to have the first book of the series, Dead Beat Dates and Deities, published by the end of this year. Yet another project I have in the works is a mix of both historical fiction and ghost story. I just recently returned to the states after living in Germany for two years. I became quite interested in the emperor Frederick Barbarossa and, with the help of my German landlord, did an extensive amount of research into his life and the lives of his family. That book, titled Red Beard and the Ravens, will hopefully be published sometime in 2015.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

This is a hard question to answer because I think that every author, no matter what genre they write, is different from other authors. Each one of us has our own style; something about the way we write that sets us apart from our fellow writers. I have a tendency not to always stick to the same genre, so I think that makes it harder to make comparisons between my work and someone else’s.

3) Why do I write what I do?

My first novel, The Color of Thunder, was a mixture of historical and literary fiction. I believe Red Beard and the Ravens will most likely fall into the same category. I really love research. I love to dig around in places I’ve never been, time periods I wasn’t alive for and find out what they were like. Alabama Skye turned out to be more in the women’s fiction category. I really enjoyed writing it because it dealt with the relationships between four women in the same family. That was fun because it was close to home without being autobiographical. My Goddess series deals with a topic I’ve long been interested in, and I get to be a bit silly. It’s all a lot of work, but so much fun. I enjoy dabbling in several different kinds of things and it’s interesting to put different voices into the books that I write.

4) How does my writing process work?

Writing process? Well...I'm a full time homeschooling mom of two kids, one in high school and the other in middle school, so I pretty much fit writing in whenever I can! I usually do my best work first thing in the morning. I focus on writing, whether it be actual writing, editing, research or marketing every single day. Some days are definitely more successful when it comes to word count than others, but I do something to further my progress on a daily basis.

Now, I'd like to introduce you to two more authors, both of whom I've read and enjoyed very, very much. 

First up is Alison Ripley Cubitt. Here is her bio and the link to her blog:

I am Alison Ripley Cubitt – author, screenwriter and novelist who co-writes thrillers as Lambert Nagle.  I worked in TV for the BBC and Walt Disney but my passion has always been for writing.  I love to explore the countryside on a horse, a bicycle or on foot. Visit Alison here.

And my friend, G.J. Griffiths:

G J Griffiths is a UK baby-boomer who worked for quite a while in the Photographic industry, and then he became a Science teacher for about twenty years. He likes reading (lots!) walking in the countryside, birdwatching and being a Grandad. Having retired he thought he would try to write a novel, which has since become three novels. Visit G.J. here.

I highly recommend both of these authors. If you have the time, please check them out. They are both definitely worth a read.