Five Things You Didn’t Know About F.M. Meredith a.k.a. Marilyn Meredith

What an intriguing idea! Thanks for asking; let’s see what I can come up with.

1. When I first began writing my Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, the main character was a man and I thought that to get more male readers it would be smart to just use my initials. However, the publisher of the book put my photograph on the back cover which let anyone who looked at the book know that F.M. Meredith is a woman. Oh, well. Since I also write another series under my more common name, I just continued on with F.M. Meredith.

2. My interest in law enforcement began way back when I was a child. My uncle was a L.A.P.D. motorcycle cop and he told many interesting stories about all the important people he’d escorted and protected, including a couple of U.S. Presidents. I also babysat for a policeman’s family when I was twelve and thirteen. He always left his loaded gun in a drawer with instructions that I was to use it if anyone tried to break in. Can you imagine?

3. My husband was a Seabee and the first home we were able to buy was in Oxnard near the Port Hueneme Seabee base. We only had to pay $100 down. All of our neighbors were others with low paying jobs like firemen and police officers. We hung out with a lot of the police families as well as the other Navy families. One time we were all at a poker party at one of the police officer’s homes. While we were there, a wife of one of the men who came was murdered in their home. Of course he was the primary suspect and all of us were questioned. He wasn’t guilty, by the way, it was a random act of murder by a mentally ill person. I used that tragic incident in one of my early Rocky Bluff books.

4. My daughter married a young man who became a police officer. He was a great guy, good husband and father to their three kids. My daughter didn’t like to hear his stories, but I did. Every morning when he got off the graveyard shift he’d come to our house and have coffee and tell me his stories. He once took me on a ride-along, making me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone he was a police officer. Sadly, after 15 years on the job, he lost his life in the line of duty. The three boys have all grown into fine young men and one is now a police officer.

5. I’m a member of the board of the Public Safety Writers Association, http://www,publicsafetywriter.com which has many police officers as members (and others like me who write mysteries) so I still hear many stories. My job on the board is planning their annual conference. In this capacity I’ve met the most interesting people—top mystery authors, FBI men, reformed gangsters, members of the border patrol, training officers, cops from all over the country including police chiefs, and forensic experts. And yes, I’m loving it.

I decided to stick with one theme for my five things most people don’t know about me and since the book I’m promoting is about a police department, I thought I’d give your readers some idea why a great-grandmother writes about a fictional police department and the officers and their families. I could have revealed the time I went to a nudist colony, but I’ll save that for another time.

My latest book is An Axe to Grind which begins with the discovery of a headless corpse. It’s the story of a stalker, his victim and the victim’s family as well as the two detectives working on the case. The ongoing romance of one of the detectives with a female officer is put on hold—but when the detective gets in trouble, his fiancée comes to the rescue.

An Axe to Grind is available in all the usual places. For an autographed copy, order from my website.

As F.M. Meredith and Marilyn Meredith, I’ve written nearly thirty books, mostly mysteries. My website is http://fictionforyou.com and my blog http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Cilla McCain

*I’m one of those weird people who prefers to do my dishes by hand. That’s because I get my best ideas while cleaning house.

*I often think out loud and pace back and forth when I’m pulling a scene or paragraph together for the final time. If someone were to secretly videotape me I would probably look completely crazy!

*I learned last summer that I actually like to go fishing. I finally get what people see in it! It can be very soothing. But I doubt that I will ever have the nerve to bait my own hook. ICK!  I also love classic car shows and can spend hours watching the Barrett-Jackson auctions.

*People who meet me don’t realize how truly shy I am. When I was very young, it was almost painful for me to interact with new people. As I’ve gotten older I’ve developed a method for dealing with it and can almost appear to be outgoing. It helped me a lot during the research for Murder In Baker Company because I had to deal one on one with the toughest soldiers you can imagine!

*When I get mad, I curse like a drunken sailor who had to spend his leave in jail. I don’t know where it comes from! I was raised to be the stereotypical southern lady and most of the time that description fits. But when I get ticked off it is a whole other deal. I write better at those times too, so maybe it’s a good thing.

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Cilla McCain comes from a large army family and grew up on various army bases until her family settled outside Fort Benning, Georgia. She lives in the Georgia mountains and writes fulltime, focusing on issues dealing with social justice

1.  I never took a writing course in college.  In fact, I never saw myself as a “real” writer although I was drawn to it from an early age – about 7, as I recall, when I wrote my first story.  Excited, proud and curiously let-down – the story didn’t live up to my expectations  – I was hooked on writing from then on.  I was too young to understand how hard creating anything reasonably good is, but I knew I had to keep trying. 

And like most writers, I drank in my craft through reading.  I was in awe of the authors I encountered as I grew up and could not imagine myself in such august company.  In college, I avoided English Lit, majoring in Latin American Studies (another passion) and listening to jazz until the wee hours (a third passion).  Eventually, in my twenties, I began writing for real – first, freelance travel articles while I lived and worked in Ecuador, Mexico and Brazil, Later, I ran marathons:  books.

2.  My new novel, Gringa in a Strange Land, is the fifth book I’ve had published,  It had a very long gestation period – over 30 years!  I wrote the first draft in the mid-70’s after I moved to New York City from the Yucatan in Mexico.  I had a cheap little apartment – and no furniture.  One day, while walking in Central Park, I struck up a conversation with a man and his son who told me they were moving away and had furniture to dispose of.  They ended up giving me a desk, lamps, couch and chair. They even delivered it to my address – all for free! (There are angels at work in this world.) 

Now I had  a beautiful  mahogany “piano” desk on which set up my good old Olivetti typewriter.  And that’s where I began what would become Gringa about a young woman living in Mexico, her adventures and mis-adventures, the characters she met, the places she grew to love.  Above all, her own journey from darkness toward the light.

3.   My close friends know the story of how Gringa in a Strange Land was resurrected and now I’ll tell you.  Gringa brought me many wonderful things in the late 70’s, after Ithe wrenching process of letting it go – that is, trying to find an agent and then a publisher.  Other writers read the manuscript and were enthusiastic.  But I had to learn the painful process every writer goes through – rejection.  I was young, insecure and didn’t know how to separate myself from my work – in other words, to become a professional. 

After several turn-downs, I was ready to shelve the manuscript – typescript then!  Then I was introduced to a wonderful, smart woman who became my agent.  She couldn’t place  Gringa.  Life went on, I wrote other books, articles, and essays.  Gringa sat quietly in a drawer with other wallflowers and would probably still be there except – something happened.  I had become busy with a new husband and then a family and the years flowed by.  Now this is the part that is hard to tell: a few years ago, my husband became crippled with pain.

The doctors couldn’t figure it out until  finally at yet another specialist’s office, I was taken aside and told the truth.  It was terminal cancer.  My husband had months to live.  And during the year that followed,  I learned to do things I’d never thought I could face.  I had little time or energy for myself, but in a moment of grace, as he was sleeping one day, I began rummaging around in my files for something to write about.  You see, I was now long habituated to the writer’s life, it was what I needed to do.   I came upon a box  with the now- yellowed typescript of my first novel,  I started reading it.  And I saw the bones of a book.  I could do better, dig deeper, write more clearly.

Draft after draft emerged, slow but steady during this private journey, this refuge, this hard work that existed apart from the anguish and the crises, the trips to the hospital in the middle of the night, and at last, the grief, the long glass-shattering pain of loss.  I sometimes think,  I wrote Gringa to reassure myself that I still existed.

4.  Everyone who knows me more than superficially knows that I am “in the program,” shorthand for being a recovered alcoholic.  And in my case, also a drug user.  My journey through the l2 Steps and the fantastic fellowship of A.A. began about a year after I had finished writing Gringa in a Strange Land, in l977. So I am what they call an old-timer but I prefer long-timer! 

The perspective of many years of sobriety is built into Gringa. The best way to explain this, I think, is to emphasize the hope and gratitude for life that the possibility of sobriety brings to the person suffering from substance-abuse.  The novel is fiction, but of course it comes out of my experience. Full of fear but fighting to find a voice and a purpose even as I was unable to see the limits and bad choices that active addiction imposes on good people.

5.  On a lighter note!  Among many interests I have is a passion for plants and animals.  Especially animals.  Right now I have three; the fourth, a darling little pet rat I called Daisy who my teenager “gave” me when she left for college, turned up dead in her cage recently for no apparent reason.  The two Siamese cats liked to stand outside her cage trying to freak her out.  I became a huge “meezer” fan after someone gave me his Siamese when he developed a strong allergy to cats.  I acquired  a beautiful apartment cat boy who sat on top of my desk while I typed away on the first version of Gringa, after which he would demand his reward – which consisted of his running furiously back and forth in the little  rooms while I chased him.  He was very jealous of my husband.  

When we got married, the cat took his revenge by spitting up fur balls in both of his slippers!  Currently there are two Siamese, a tiny white spitfire and a chocolate rescue boy who was half-dead when I got him, but is now sleek and happy. I mustn’t forget the hulking cream-colored Lab either. Paco tends to be very enthusiastic about all other dogs which, combined with Muhammid-Ali-like strength, caused me recently to fly through the air as he lunged towards another potential best friend.  I sailed through the air and landed on my nose. Fortunately, the nose has healed fine and I have almost forgiven Paco.

Linda Dahl has written extensively about Latin America, women in jazz, New Orleans and other topics that interest her over a thirty-year career as a published author.  She has lived in Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil and New York and currently lives in an old farmhouse with lots of flowers and pets.  A widow, she has a daughter and a stepson.  Her website is www.lindadahl.com and a blog about her new book at http://gringainastrangeland.blogspot.com

I write my novels in my head first.  When working on a novel, I will go to bed an hour or so earlier than usual, and begin the novel in my mind as a mini-movie.  I play the movie over again until I’m ready to put it on paper.

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I push my children to read and write.  I place the utmost value and importance on the written and spoken word.  I demand at least two classics per year out of my children, so they can see the amazing array of literature available to us all.  I then ask for a story from the same genre and a verbal synopsis of the novel.

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I love to bake bread.  For me, especially now that fall is upon us, and winter is at our backdoor, I find kneading dough to be downright meditative.  And, once, the smell of home baked goods fills the house, the weather outside no longer matters, because a smile automatically comes to one’s face.

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I can be a klutz.  Last year, while cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I wasn’t paying attention and dropped the pan of turkey.  The cooking bird flew across my kitchen floor and landed near my stairwell.  My boys and I just stood there with our mouths open until the family cat came charging up the stairs to attack the invader.  We never laughed so hard.  Possibly, I will be serving ham this year.

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I’m still afraid of the dark.  While many outgrow their childhood fears, I must admit, this is one fear I have never been able to shake.  One never knows what lurks in a darkened corner.

Maryann Paige was born in Brooklyn, New York, lived in Nevada and Texas and landed back in her home state.   She resides in the beautiful Hudson Valley and uses the area as the setting for her novels and stories. She attributes the idea for Hidden Shadows to her younger son, who claims to have met the shadow people on a nightly basis.  After researching and learning of them, she decided to write a novel loosely based on her son’s experiences. Please visit Maryann at www.maryannpaige.com to find out about her latest novel, Cemetery Gates.

1. I firmly believe that what we dream about and pray for comes to pass. Sometimes it happens or arrives in different packages than we intended but it will always appear for our highest and best. For six years I managed my own commercial business followed by another twelve years of wearing business suits, hose and heels.

I’m a Gemini, we love order but hate being disciplined. The daily routine of getting up and out is the reason I won’t go to the gym. There were many mornings that I remember throwing a pray over my shoulder on the way out the door; ”Oh, God, let me be able to work in my pajamas.” Later I added a second prayer “… let them send money and leave me alone.” Writing answers both prayers. I have a wardrobe of ‘house jammies’ and love working from home. It’s a dream come true.

2. Writing was the first thing I never intended to do. My mother was a schoolteacher. She loved grammar, she was a word- meister, she had beautiful handwriting and saw letter writing as a creative art. I on the other hand was my father’s daughter; let me tear something apart and I can put it together.

My mother always despaired that I, the only girl out of a litter of six, was not developing the grace and poise that she would want others to see in me. In that effort, most of my conversations with her were grammatically corrected. With correcting my spoken word, anything she found that I had written including thank you notes and other compulsory script was reviewed, red marked and returned for correction before being posted. This might explain why I never kept a diary…(that and the above mentioned ‘Gemini’ item). I found writing and composition B-O-R-E-ING and tedious. However it was also my mother’s love of books that ignited a passion for reading in me. Literature was the influence that saved me from my rebellious self.

Before my mother died I was able to give her a copy of my first printed writing. It was a booklet I had prepared for a workshop on Synchronicity and Healing that I held in Crystal River, Florida. After she died, I was the one that sorted through her effects and decided their direction. In the bottom drawer of her dresser I found several old spiral notebooks. I opened them and found page after page of her beautiful handwriting recording stories of her childhood, her children and life with my father. These I kept for me. They are part of the wonderful gifts and lessons from my parents.

3. I’ve wanted to be a storyteller. It’s an ancient skill and highly regarded in many cultures. My first introduction was with the hill-folks of the Ozark Mountains. A good narrator can control the breathing of a group of listeners. I challenge myself to do the same with my writing; using words to transfer emotions and create pictures in readers’ minds. I’ve considered taking a journalism course through independent study but decided ‘why ruin what’s working.’ Maybe I will just continue to study the work of my peers.

4. I was born to be a healer. While on my first pilgrimage into sacred places of the Maya in Guatemala, I was given an oracle reading by one of the Elders. The reading was based around the date of my birth on the Mayan calendar. Through a translator, the Elder told me that the day of my birth fell on the day of healers. It was a nice confirmation to the decision I had made just ten years before. I had chosen to study natural medicine.

There is a little known law in the U.S. that states it is illegal to state that you heal someone. At first it seems like one more limitation in the alternative healing field, however, when approaching the word from a holistic viewpoint it makes sense. ‘All healing comes from within.’ Those in the healing arts are simply guides, and a guides can only take you were they have been.

5. I’ve created an independent study program. When new clients come to me it’s generally because they’ve been everywhere and tried everything else. You can imagine I get a very interesting assortment of problems to work through. In the end they always say the same thing; ‘you should teach others how to do what you do.’

Other than offering workshops and classes I’ve never clearly seen in my mind how to share the years of study, mingled with lessons from experience and the tutelage of my Elders; all of this filtered through the spiritual guidance I receive. I had recently prayed for guidance in my next step. The answer can as e-mails from Hawaii and New York asking for help for ill family members; help medical doctors and specialist had not been able to give. While sharing these cases with one of my students on a visit to Florida, she asked why I can’t teach this if I can do the work over the inter-net. It was the same question my husband had been asking me for years; now I was ready to hear the answer.

About the Author

Malana Ashlie is the author of Gringos in Paradise: Our Honduras Odyssey. She holds degrees in naturopathy, herbal sciences, subtle energy as well as a PhD in Metaphysics. She has been privileged to study with traditional Elders of Mayan and Hawaiian cultures. Dr. Malana has been widely published on the subjects of holistic health and spiritual growth and now offers this in her independent study program: Dynamics of Healing and Happiness. She currently lives along the sunny coast of Honduras but travels teaching workshops that incorporate ancient wisdom into modern life.

Visit Malana at:
www.gringos-in-paradise.com
www.wisdompathway.com

Everyone has heard of evolution, whether in school, from magazines, or on television. But have you ever wondered what you’re not being told? In my book The Evolution Conspiracy I expose the naked truth about evolution—and just for you, dear readers, I’ve compiled this list of the top five things most people don’t know about evolution:

1. Charles Darwin was not a biologist. He earned a degree in theology and, while he learned a great deal from his scientist friends, he never formally studied science. Today evolutionists insist only people with degrees in biology should be allowed to discuss evolution. By this standard Darwin had no right to pen his seminal book The Origin of Species.

2. Darwin rarely defended his own theory. When it came to defending the theory of natural selection Darwin left the debating to others, like Thomas Huxley (aka “Darwin’s bulldog”). Today evolutionists refuse to defend evolution or debate anyone who questions evolution but demand dissenters submit to endless interrogation, usually through websites.

3. Fossils pose more questions than they answer. Most fossils are incomplete and/or are found shattered in thousands of pieces. Scientists estimate fossils represent no more than 10% and perhaps less than 1% of all species that ever lived on earth. Hence new fossils often create a mystery rather than solving one: For instance, pterosaur fossils recently found in China have primitive bodies but heads and necks identical to much later pterosaurs, leading to wild speculation about how evolution could suddenly produce a mishmash of traits.

4. The beginnings are unknown. From the very first life-form to the origins of flowering plants, the task of pinpointing and understanding the beginnings of anything in evolution bedevils scientists. Where did DNA come from? What was the very first living thing, and how did it come to be? How did multicellular organisms originate? What is unknown about life on Earth dwarfs what is known like Godzilla looking down on an ant.

5. Evolution is a puny force. Biologists define evolution as descent with modification, an ornate term for the everyday phenomenon of inheriting genetic changes (aka mutations) from our ancestors. Since mutations have never been shown to generate vastly different forms of life, scientists lack evidence that evolution has the power to create the diversity of life that exists today or that existed in the distant past.

Want to learn what else you don’t know about evolution? Grab a copy of The Evolution Conspiracy to get all the information you need to make up your own mind.

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Lisa A. Shiel researches and writes about everything strange, from Bigfoot and UFOs to alternative history. She has been interviewed for big-city newspapers, national magazines, drive-time talk radio shows, and TV news. She has a master’s degree in library science. As a fiction writer, Lisa developed the Human Origins Series—which includes the novels The Hunt for Bigfoot and Lord of the Dead. Lisa’s other nonfiction books are Backyard Bigfoot: The True Story of Stick Signs, UFOs & the Sasquatch (a finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s 2006 Book of the Year Awards) and Strange Michigan. Her latest book, The Evolution Conspiracy, Vol. 1, marks the initial release in a planned three-book series. Find her online at EvolutionConspiracy.com, Twitter.com/LAShiel, or on Facebook.

Caridad used to play the bassoon as a kid and loves music.

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Caridad loves to travel to the locales in her books because she thinks it helps spice up the locations for her readers.

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Caridad is most creative in the morning and writes on the train to and from work every day.

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Caridad’s favorite author is J.D. Robb.

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If Caridad wasn’t a writer and attorney, she would love to be a chef.

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Caridad Pineiro is the NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of over 20 novels and novellas.  Her latest release, SINS OF TH FLESH, is the first book in an exciting new paranormal romantic suspense series from Grand Central Publishing.  Caridad is also the author of the popular THE CALLING Vampire novels from Silhouette Nocturne.  For more information on Caridad, please visit www.caridad.com or www.thecallingvampirenovels.com.

1. When she was in 6th grade she hatched a goose from an egg, in an incubator that she made from a large soap detergent box, with a light bulb. That goose was a wonderful part of her family for 8 years!

2. In high school, she was a member of one of the very first coed Explorer Posts (sort of an extension of Scouts) with whom she did white-water rafting, rock climbing, rappelling, backpacking, hiking, and camping.

3. During an Explorer Post “Olympics” Day, she won 2 second place, and 2 third place ribbons in the riflery target shooting event. She was the only girl competing against more than 100 boys.

4. In 1974 she drove 10 hours with Explorer Post friends to see the King Tut exhibit in New Orleans, and vowed that she’d see it again in Cairo someday; which she did 19 years later.

5. In 1999, in Colorado, she saw a rattle snake make its way up inside her car, into the wheel-well. She enlisted the help of a sheriff’s deputy, who was no help and all, and organized by herself the best way to get the snake out of her car.

Gina C. Browning is a creative, independent thinking, married mother of 2 adopted children and has been living her dreams for as long as she can remember. She is from Texas, but due to her husband’s job, moved to Australia with her husband and 17 month old son, Ryan, in 1989. Since then, they have moved internationally (because of her husband’s work) 4 more times, with a few domestic moves thrown in for good measure. In 1997 she and her husband adopted their daughter, Raechel, from China.

Having graduated from North Texas State University in 1979, with a BFA in “Metal craft and Jewellery, Gina has been a professional jewellery designer/maker for the better part of 30+ years, and has written poetry, on the side, since she was a child. She is currently living in Australia (for the 3rd time), with her husband and daughter, where her dreams continue to inspire creativity. Her son, now 21 years old, no longer lives at home.

http://www.eloquentbooks.com/MoonbeamDreams.html

Five Things You Didn’t Know About J. M. Hochstetler

1. I talk to myself when I’m alone. Um . . . well, sometimes I also talk to myself when I forget I’m not alone!

2. I may seem calm on the surface, but inside I’m a screaming maniac.

3. I actually love to research arcane facts. I can spend hours digging out one piece of information that never makes it into my story. I guess it’s the thrill of the hunt.

4. My internal editor never shuts up. Sigh.

5. Although I was born in Indiana, my first language was German. Actually, that might explain a lot . . .

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J. M. Hochstetler was born in central Indiana, the daughter of Mennonite farmers, and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Germanic languages. She is the author of Daughter of Liberty, Native Son, and Wind of the Spirit, the first three books of the American Patriot Series about the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a modern-day retelling of the nativity story, is the 2009 Christian Small Publishers Fiction Book of the Year and a finalist for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year. You can learn more about Joan and her books at www.jmhochstetler.com, http://americanpatriotseries.blogspot.com/, and http://oneholynight.blogspot.com/.

I have 7 brothers and 1 sister, yep, Irish Catholic and darn proud of it.

I didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer until I was 36 years old and didn’t write Colonel Trash Truck until I was 43. I always had stories in my head and had been complimented on my writing throughout my life but thought “doesn’t everyone write like this”? Someone told me that I was missing my calling and asked me to write a spec script for a TV sitcom. I thought they were crazy. But, I gave it a try and started to write and didn’t move from where I was for over eight hours. I finally knew what people meant when they said things like “we all have a calling” or “do what you love and it won’t be work”. Nothing in my life has given me more fulfillment or made me feel more alive than writing, especially Colonel Trash Truck.

I have two Basenjis puppies named Frodo and Strider after one of my favorite fantasy books (yes, I am a Lord of the Rings geek.)

I was switched at birth but my mom felt something wasn’t right. She felt bad to feel that way but decided to ask the nurse. Sure enough, I was in the arms of a woman named Gertrude. When she got me back, with my bald head and bruises, she knew I was hers.

I believe my best work has been when I pray, meditate and connect with God before I begin. I am often shocked at what I write and think “did I write that? Not bad.” When I wrote Colonel Trash Truck, I woke up one morning and saw the Colonel in my imagination, rolled over and wrote the book in less than an hour…it felt like dictation.

Kathleen Crawley has been an advertising executive for over fifteen years. She resides with her husband Ronald Thomson in Redondo Beach, California. She is a native Californian having graduated from UCLA with a B.A in sociology. Colonel Trash Truck is her first book. About writing for children, Kathy says, “I have a number of books I want to write for kids because I think children are fascinating. They are open, creative, and interested in everything; they bring out the kid in me.”

You can visit Kathleen online at www.coloneltrashtruck.com