Monster Mania - A Guest Post by Russell James

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Russell James. James is the author of 14 nail-biting thrillers and 8 short story collections. His latest release, Curse of the Viper King, is the third in his Grant Coleman series. James was our featured author on August 1, 2017.
 
My latest release is Curse of the Viper King. Set in the Amazon, it follows the adventure of paleontologist Professor Grant Coleman and environmental activist Janaina Silva as they try to find their way home. They discover an isolated logging camp, and the chance to hitch a ride back to civilization.

But the workers uncover a fossil of a giant snake, almost fifteen meters long. Grant is thrilled, but the superstitious workers believe they have let loose a demon.

That night, the world begins to unravel. A mysterious creature attacks the camp, kills several men, and sinks the only boat that can get them home. Soon Grant and the others are in a battle against colossal spiders and a descendant of that great fossilized snake. The key to survival might lie in the lost pyramid of the Aztec Viper King, hidden deep in the rain forest. But they need to get there alive, and one member of the crew has an agenda that doesn’t include Grant and Janaina ever getting home.

This is Grant Coleman’s third adventure, following his encounters with giant scorpions in a cave sealed for ten thousand years in Cavern of the Damned and his exploration of a dinosaur-infested plateau in Monsters in the Clouds. He doesn’t have the best of luck in making travel arrangements. All the stories are self-contained, like Indiana Jones movies, so you can read any of them without reading the others.

I’ve written a lot of horror novels, some pretty graphic. I attend a lot of horror conventions, and frequently have kids ask their parents if they can buy one of my books. I have to wave them off from some of the hard-R rated stuff. But I can direct them to the Grant Coleman series from Severed Press. They are not written on a kid’s level, but they don’t have any language or sex, and the violence is all Jurassic Park monster stuff. Fun for the whole family!

All the Grant Coleman books have some kind of giant monster in them. All are based on real life animal that are much smaller. The Afterword in each book tells you just how close the fictional one comes to the factual. It’s fun to let people in on how strange some real life animals are.

My next release will be The Playing Card Killer from Flame Tree Press in February 2019. This one is a thriller about a serial killer loose in the Tampa Bay area. Floridians might recognize a lot of locations in that one. Stay tuned for a update as that time draws near.

For more information (and some free short stories), visit his website at http://www.russellrjames.com  

Marty Ambrose - Free-Thinking Females

If you enjoy books with strong, independent female protagonists, Marty Ambrose is a writer you won’t want to miss. This Pine Island novelist has penned eight books that feature women who live life on their own terms. “I like writing about women who challenge the status quo,” Ambrose says. “I’ve always been interested in how they do this.” 

A St. Louis native, Ambrose had dreamed of being a writer from her earliest years. “I’ve always had a love of language, and I started writing little stories in elementary school,” she recalls. “Later, I fell in love with the classic writers, especially Edgar Allen Poe. Something about him made me want to write like him. Maybe it’s because we share the same birthday.” After earning her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Missouri, Ambrose traveled to the United Kingdom to pursue graduate studies at the University of York.

It was during her three years abroad that her parents retired to Florida. “I came to visit and loved it,” she says. She inquired about teaching positions at Florida Southwestern State College and was offered a job. This was the beginning of a thirty-year teaching career and established Ambrose as a full-time Floridian. “I love the laid-back lifestyle and being able to enjoy the outdoors year-round,” she says, an enthusiasm she shares with her husband, former news anchor Jim McLaughlin, and Mango, a 90 lb. German Shepherd who happens to have an appetite for Pine Island mangoes.

Ambrose embarked on her writing career fifteen years ago with a romance novel titled Engaging. She followed this with a second romance, Heat Wave, before deciding to change course. “There are two parts of me,” she explains. “There’s the humorous side and there’s the romantic side that’s more intense and emotional.” Ambrose decided to explore her lighter side with Perils in Paradise, a cozy mystery set in Florida that introduced free-spirited Mallie Monroe, a journalist with a penchant for solving murders. Perils in Paradise was the first of five Mango Bay Mysteries: Island Intrigues, Murder in the Mangroves, Killer Kool, and Coastal Corpse. “The Mango Bay Mysteries were fun,” Ambrose says. “I enjoyed writing them.”

Ambrose’s latest novel came as an outgrowth of what she describes as the worst year of her life – a time when she thought she’d never walk again. In 2015, she suffered a serious back injury. A usually active woman with a passion for long-distance biking, Ambrose found herself housebound for three months awaiting surgery. “I realized that when you’re injured, everyone’s life goes on without you,” she says. “So I read. A lot.” One of the books she read was The Young Romantics. In the book, she came across a small excerpt from the journal of Claire Clairmont, the forgotten stepsister of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Intrigued, Ambrose began reading more about her.  “Claire was peripheral,” Ambrose explains. “She was left behind by the people who were most important in her life. It all coalesced for me.” It was then that Ambrose decided to give her a voice.

Claire’s Last Secret, a novel Ambrose describes as historical women’s fiction, takes readers on a fascinating journey through time to the “Haunted Summer” of 1816, a period that produced two seminal horror tales – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyre. During this summer, Claire became pregnant by Lord Byron, the love of her life. The story, told from the perspective of an elderly Claire, shifts from 1873 to 1816 where she relives the events of that momentous summer and uncovers a secret that rocks her to her core. Publishers Weekly praises the book as “…most effective as a study of a young woman who takes a huge risk with her body and soul and spends the rest of her life dealing with the consequences.”

Ambrose’s meticulous research was made possible by a grant from Florida Southwestern State College that enabled her to travel to Geneva and Florence in 2016, which was the 200^th anniversary of The Haunted Summer. While there, she was able to see Bryon’s actual letters and the original manuscript of Frankenstein. “I’ve studied the Romantics most of my life,” she says. “I thought I knew them, but I didn’t really until I made them characters.”

What began as a stand-alone novel has now become the first in a trilogy. “It started as a story, but then it took on new aspects,” Ambrose explains. “It deals with the interconnectedness of life and the way our past dominates how we live in the present.” The next installment, A Shadowed Fate, is half-finished and scheduled for release in 2019. “The Trilogy will take Claire on an odyssey of love and redemption,” Ambrose says. “The second book will tell more about her journey and how she heals from her past.” Ambrose will be spending two weeks in Italy doing research and serving as a panelist in the Women’s Fiction Festival.  

Ambrose hopes readers will enjoy reading about women who live outside the box. “What I enjoy most about writing is creating characters,” she says. “They become so real to me. It’s such a  joy. I love it!”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.martyambrose.com.

Release Day!!

The big day has finally arrived - Release Day for my new novel, One Small Spark! Now available through Amazon in paperback or Kindle.
Here are the links if you want to check it out:

Paperback   https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947327267/

Kindle   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J4T4Z6K/

Inspiration is Everywhere - A Guest Post by Diane Weiner

Note: This was supposed to post on Sept. 15. Due to a technical glitch, it did not publish publicly. I am reposting it today. Apologies to Diane!
   
This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Diane Weiner. Weiner is a former teacher turned mystery writer who is the author of eight Susan Wiles Schoolhouse Mysteries and three Sugarberry Falls Mysteries. Her latest book, Clearing the Course, was released in June. Weiner was our featured author on March 2, 2018.
 
As an author, one question I’m often asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” I have to admit that when I started writing the Susan Wiles Schoolhouse mysteries, I feared the well running dry. Fortunately, twelve books later, the ideas are still flowing.

My first book, Murder is Elementary, started with an image. At the elementary school where I taught, an administrator wanna-be, plied our principal with baked goods (you know the type). He’d often come into her office bearing the likes of Black Forest Cake. What if he tried to poison her and get her out of the picture? Hmmm… a frosted cupcake with fun-fetti sprinkles on the principal’s desk… tooth marks in the frosting…a body collapsed on the floor. What if the newly retired music teacher attended the school’s holiday concert and the principal went AWOL? Knowing as all music teachers do that the show must go on, she hunts for the missing principal, making her way into that office.

Throw into the mix the fact that the principal’s daughter was one of Susan’s favorite students. Add a detective daughter into the mix for conflict, and oh, remember the wanna-be baker? A prime suspect. Now I had the backbone of my story.

Other images became seeds for subsequent books. A dead bookkeeper with papers strewn all over the floor of her office was the start of Murder in the Middle. Being a runner who is often out before the sun comes up, I scare myself. A lot. By the way, this is why I write cozies and not thrillers. Listening to spooky ads for Halloween Horror Nights on my antiquated Sony headphone radio left me imagining stumbling over a dead body (or becoming one), as in A Deadly Course. 

 If I’m stuck for an idea, I look to the news. After all, I do live in Florida! The Stand your Ground law factored into Murder is Private. A story about babies taken from teen mothers and sold on the black market was the impetus for the Georgia Babes storyline in Murder is Legal.

Finally, I believe that places we’ve been and experiences we have are woven into us. I was inspired to write the Sugarbury Falls series because while in high school, my best friend’s grandparents lived in a log cabin in Vermont. Visiting them with her family made a lasting impression. I still visualize the lake and the barn and remember that her grandmother snow- shoed in the winter.

I grew up in Highland, New York, a small town not far from the big city. Westbrook is a resort style version of my hometown with a house that looks like my former home in Tamarac, Florida. Oh, and that town sprouted a Starbucks and a giant Barnes and Noble when I needed them.

Favorite spots are fun to incorporate into writing, even if they become a juxtaposition of several places. When I was younger, I dreamed of opening a school for performing arts. One of my favorite Florida spots is City Place in West Palm Beach. The Dreyfoos School campus is the model I used for the performing arts school in Murder is Private, except in the book it is right on the ocean, with a pier and a light house! It’s fun writing in a world that you love and can keep tweaking until it’s exactly where you want it to be. 

Currently I am writing Murder is Medical, which takes place in St. Louis. My son lives there. When I’m writing about Forest Park, the cat café, or Match Day at Washington University Medical School, it makes me feel closer to him.

Growing up, reading transported me to so many places and experiences. Now, writing does the same. Ideas are all around us, ready to be woven into stories uniquely crafted through our own set of eyes. 

For more information, visit the author's website at www.dianeweinerauthor.com

             

A GREAT Bargain!

FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!
Amazon is offering my novel, Jacqueline, at half-price! This is the perfect back-to-school book for your favorite young reader. Get your copy TODAY!

Amazon.com/Jacqueline/Jackie Minniti

Dana L. Brown - Romance with a Heart

Five years ago, Dana L. Brown had an epiphany. She’d been reading a book and decided she could write one like it. While biking with her husband, a complete story came into her head. It was then that she told her husband she wanted to retire from her 32 years as a regional bank manager and write a novel. Her husband convinced her to wait a year, which she did, and in 2017, Brown joined the ranks of romance writers with her first published book.

While Brown has no formal training as a writer, she's always loved reading and liked to write “for fun” when she was younger. In 2003, she joined a writer’s group hoping to hone her skills. “I loved it,” she says. “They had a writing contest, and I came in second. But I had young kids and was busy with my job, so I set it aside.” As her children grew and she advanced at work, she never lost her desire to write, and in 2016, with a now-empty nest, she left her day job and began working on her debut novel, a contemporary romance titled Lottie Loser.

“I was inspired by Liliana Hart’s books,” Brown says. “I love her characters, and I wanted to write a book like those.” She admits that writing Lottie Loser was easy for her. “The opening scene was just there,” she recalls. “As I’d ride my bike, new scenes would come into my head.”  The main character was inspired by the protagonists in other novels Brown had read. “Lottie’s strong, but also kind and loving,” Brown says. “I love her integrity and the way she cares for her friends.” One trait Brown and her character share is their struggle with weight. “I’ve struggled with food my whole life,” Brown says,  “so I decided that Lottie would have that issue. But her story is not my story. I like to think of her as me with a lot of upgrades.”

Set on Anna Maria Island, Lottie Loser chronicles the life and loves of Charlotte “Lottie” Luce.  Switching between past and present, the story follows Lottie’s development from insecure, overweight teenager to the slim, stylish president of Olde Florida Bank. Her new life is upended by the return of Nick Greyson, the man she has secretly loved since childhood, who comes home to help save his father’s business. The book was named a semi-finalist in the Royal Palms Literary Awards given by the Florida Writers Association.

Encouraged by the response to Lottie Loser, Brown decided to pen a sequel. Call Me Charlotte, published this year, has Charlotte trying to mend her broken relationship with Nick. “I like to stress the empowerment of forgiveness,” Brown says. “Charlotte’s refusal to forgive impacted the next twelve years of her life. When she realizes the power that comes when she forgives, it opens up a whole new world.” Call Me Charlotte received the gold medal for romance from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.

Brown has recently completed The Greysons, the third in what she calls The Anna Maria Island Series. “The characters had so much to say, the first book became a second, then a trilogy, and maybe more.” She is also at work on a stand-alone novel about an older woman bemoaning the loss of her youth. “I love the creativity involved in writing,” Brown says. “It’s such fun to make up characters and give them backstory. I love using my imagination to make up stories, and I love reading them.”

For more information, visit her website at www.danalbrownbooks.com.