Mike Angley

I’m pleased to announce I will be hosting a webinar on careers in the federal law enforcement community on behalf of Henley-Putnam University where I serve as a consultant and faculty member.  The announcement for the webinar was dispatched via press release by the university, and picked up by Defense Procurement News.  The webinar is open to the public, so I encourage everyone to consider attending.  The details can be found here: Webinar Registration Site.

I hope to see you at the event!

My guest today is Margie Church, AKA Churchlady, author of romance/thriller novels with “SASS.”  She tells me that stands for Suspense, Angst, Seductive Sizzle.  Margie is a married mom of two children, and a Minnesota native.  He writing career began early when she published in “McCall’s Magazine” in the sixth grade.   Margie describes her professions as a mother and author whose guilty pleasures are great beer, real vanilla ice cream, and lobster.  I couldn’t agree more with that list!

MA:  Welcome, Margie!  Please tell us a little bit about your background.

MC: I have been published in business to business and consumer magazines for 25 years. I also managed Delivering Performance magazine for 12 years. This beautiful, quarterly magazine was distributed in the U.S. and Canada. I was its lead writer and primary editor.

In addition, I have been a freelance writer for all kinds of construction, orthopaedic, manufacturing, religious, and collector’s magazines for 14 years. I have written about a million ads, brochures, press releases, videos, websites, etc. and I’ve loved it all. I am a passionate writer and enjoy every writing challenge.

I have two romantic thrillers out – Awakening Allaire and Avenging Allaire. Both are published by Class Act Books. I also have a nursery rhyme coming out this spring from Guardian Angels Publishing. My WIP is a paranormal romance between a mysterious vampire and a human.

MA:  I enjoy the paranormal realm, and my current trilogy feature a “light” paranormal element.  What made you decide to get into writing fiction?

MC:  I was laid off from my job and accepted a fan fiction challenge. I took second place in the challenge and at the end of it, I realized I had a really cool story that needed finishing. Awakening Allaire became that story. Until that time, I honestly was scared to death to write a novel. As a magazine writer, I deal with specific word and page count targets. A novel was always daunting – too many words, too complex. Little did I know!

MA:  So are any characters in your Allaire series based upon real people you’ve known?

MC:  I definitely do not pattern my romance novels after real people’s lives. I may take characteristics from them physically or use quirks in their personalities, but these books are utter fiction.

My children’s books are a different matter. They are absolutely written on experiences and emotions I have as a mother.  I don’t relate specifics to protect the children involved but children are funny, amazing, and interesting. Living with children makes for great stories.

MA:  As a dad of three (two teens and one twenty-something now), I can relate to kids and the magic of watching them grow!  Tell us about your stories.

MC:  My debut novel is Awakening Allaire. It is an erotic thriller/suspense, contemporary/suspense and Class Act Books bestseller.  The sequel, Avenging Allaire, was released November 1 by Class Act Books.

Allaire and Devon meet quite accidentally and it doesn’t take much time for the sizzling to start between them. Unfortunately, Allaire is married and her infidelity results in her becoming pregnant with Devon’s children. She tries to pass them off as her husband’s and that of course, ends in disaster. How Devon finds out about her pregnancy and meeting his children is very poignant. Ultimately, Allaire ends up a single parent but agrees to live with Devon to help raise their twins. Allaire seduces Devon during a masquerade party and asks him to marry her. Unfortunately later that evening, Allaire is kidnapped by two drug-crazed ex-cons. She becomes a drug addict and nearly dies in captivity when she’s left for dead. Devon is frantic to find her. The FBI becomes involved as they scour the US looking for Allaire.

MA:  Wow!  That sounds like a rollercoaster ride of a plot!  How did you go about crafting Allaire’s character?

MC:  I had some basic ideas about what kind of woman I wanted Allaire to be. I thought about women I admired and began making a cheat sheet of her traits – physical, emotional, professional. It was important to have to keep her in character as she morphs into this drug addicted captive and to give her proper motivation as a parent.

MA: So what are your Devon’s strengths and weaknesses?

MC:  Devon is an intellectual guy. He’s a lawyer and his life is not black and white. However, he is driven by honesty, despite his father’s influence on his career. He’s heart-stoppingly handsome and a wonderful father. He knows how to make a commitment. He’s funny and snarky. His weakness is Allaire. His heart is a twisting sponge in her hands and she puts him through love’s paces. Sometimes I wanted to see Devon slug one of these goons but he is not physically violent.  Many heroes are physically aggressive. Devon uses his brain.

MA:  I can imagine that with the drug-crazed ex-cons you have a whole stable of bad guys?

MC:  This book and the sequel are filled with bad guys. Nobody is who they say they are. Allaire’s nemesis is their pistol packing nanny, Lucy. She has a license to kill and the hots for Devon. She is a definite problem in both books but even more so in the sequel.

MA:  I don’t like Lucy already!  Are you going to continue to write romance and thrillers?

MC:  I am writing my paranormal and hope to get a contract on it by year-end. I really like smart books. Even though there are lots of erotic vampire novels on the market right now, this one still has an edge-of-your-seat feel to it. The human, Jui Fabrice, has no idea the guy she’s fallen for is a vampire and Wade Kairos wants to keep it that way. There’s a lot of angst and a number of gritty scenes in this book. The romance is definitely hot but there’s much, much more to this story than just sweaty sex. LOL!

MA:  (wipes brow) Well, I think it’s getting warm in here already!  Margie, thanks very much for visiting with us today.  I appreciate learning about Allaire and Devon and your writing projects.  I encourage all my readers to check out Margie’s website and related links to her trailers and publisher:

Margie Church, Romance with SASS: http://site.romancewithsass.com/Home.html

Avenging Allaire’s trailer at Blazing Trailers: http://www.adult.blazingtrailers.com/show.php?title=692

Awakening’s trailer: www.Adult.blazingtrailers.com/show.php?title=507

Class Act Books: www.classactbooks.com

My guest today is author Nancy Lynn Jarvis.  She’s been a Santa Cruz, California Realtor for almost twenty years.  After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, she worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News.  A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager of Shakespeare, Santa Cruz.  Nancy’s work history reflects her philosophy: people should try something radically different every few years. Writing is her newest adventure.

MA:  Well I’m a firm believer (and example) of changing up the routine of life and pursuing new passions, so I can relate to your personal philosophy.  Are you still in the real estate business or have you shifted completely to writing?

NLJ:  I own a real estate company with my husband, although we are referring business out and trying to be retired at this point.

MA:  So what made you decide to write as your new adventure?

NLJ:  I started writing as a game, a puzzle solving exercise as it were, to see if I could do it.  I’ve never had so much fun in my life.  The result was “The Death Contingency” and the formulation for “Backyard Bones” that kept swirling around in my mind as I wrote the first book.

MA:  I agree on the fun part – a lot of work to be sure – but much more fun.  Did you find inspiration for your writing from your Realtor career?

NLJ:  My career was definitively influential in my writing.  Since I never entertained being a writer before I started, I thought I better write about something I knew.  Realtors generally aren’t the most highly thought of people in the room, but judging from the number of people who flock around them with questions at parties, they are some of the more fascinating.  That was another factor in deciding to use real estate in the books.  I thought readers might get a kick out of getting a peek into the business.

MA:  I must admit, that does make for a unique angle.  I can see how your constant interaction with the public can lead to some great, rich experiences for fiction.  Tell me about your latest project – and I’m curious now if you ever actually found some bones in a backyard of one of the homes you sold!

NLJ:  Anyone who has worked as a Realtor will tell you they should write a book.  Did you know being a real estate agent can be dangerous?  Excluding the military, they rank right after police and firefighters for being killed while at work. There’s just so much material to use, it was a matter of deciding which story to tell first.

In “The Death Contingency,” a seller turns up dead and a Realtor Regan has known for years becomes a person of interest in his death.  She’s convinced the authorities focus is all wrong and sets out to prove it.  Then there’s a second death in the neighborhood.  When it’s ruled accidental, Regan is again at odds with the police.  She thinks it’s murder and thinks she knows who the murderer is, but she has to prove a crime has been committed before anyone will take her seriously.  The problem is, she doesn’t want to be right.

“Backyard Bones,” the second book in what I now call the Regan McHenry Mystery Series, is client driven.  It’s not the first time Regan has experienced déjà-vu.  But when the sensation involves finding a second body buried in a client’s backyard where one was found just weeks before, déjà-vu takes on new meaning.  Someone murdered a girl on her seventeenth birthday and, as Regan delves into the motive behind the girl’s murder, she discovers many people are trying to hide secrets about their entanglement with the dead teenager.  Regan must figure out which of them is a murderer, and she has to do it carefully or she’ll become the killer’s next victim.

The characters, a Wiccan family, a politician and his family, a conservative minister, and a college professor are all people I’ve worked with…or at least they started out that way.  Almost all the characters in my books start out as people I know or have worked with, but they do morph into other characters because the real-life people they are based on won’t do what I want them to do unless I rename them and let them have a looser identity.

“Backyard Bones” opens with a body being discovered in the backyard of a newly purchased home.  It winds up being an ancient burial, but another body turns up in the same location a few weeks later and it is definitely recent and murder.  Did I mention I write mysteries?

MA:  <Chuckling> I kind of gathered that!  I definitely love a good mystery.  Tell me about your heroine.

NLJ:  The protagonist started out as me.  I even called her Nancy when I started writing.  It seems I’m a method writer.  I act out scenes and then write them down, so it worked pretty well to start that way, but the first time Nancy had to find a body, I decided that was way too personal and uncomfortable and that she better become someone else that I could watch rather than be.

MA:  So you started out calling her Nancy, but then you changed her name to Regan.  How did you develop her character, especially knowing she was you at the beginning?

NLJ:  Regan is curious; determined and tenacious (which sometimes is a weakness); cares a great deal about her friends and clients; intelligent and observant of things like connections, relationships, details, and body language; and intuitive.  Fortunately she has a very logical husband to run things by who keeps her grounded.  All of those positives, come to think of it, work against her sometimes.

MA:  So, does Regan have to do battle with the same bad guy, or do you change things up?

NLJ:  Regan doesn’t have an ongoing nemesis like a Moriarty, just problems with the murder in each book.

MA:  Okay, so you started out with calling Regan Nancy, who resembled you…how about other characters in your writing.  Are any based upon real people you’ve known?

NLJ:  Just like the characters are based on real people, the background details, color, and most of Regan’s experiences, except for the murder, of course,  are right out of my, “I should write a book,” experiences.

MA:  Cool.  So what’s in your future?  Any additional writing plans?

NLJ:  I’m currently working on the third book, tentatively titled, “Buying Murder” and tossing around an idea for the fourth.  I intend to keep doing this as long as it’s fun.

MA:  Will Regan feature in the third and fourth books?

NLJ:  The protagonist, Regan McHenry, her husband Tom Kiley, and her friend Dave, a semi-retired cop turned ombudsman and police relations person in Santa Cruz, a town with the official motto, “Keep Santa Cruz Weird,” will be in all the books in the series.

MA:  I had the pleasure of traveling through Santa Cruz many, many years back when I was running undercover operations in the Air Force.  I can attest to the motto, but at the same time, the local color of the town is nothing but charming.  Thanks for guesting with me!  I encourage everyone to visit Nancy Lynn Jarvis’ website for more information about her novels: http://www.GoodReadMysteries.com.

I’m currently seeking fellow-writer-guests to blog on my website.  I would like to hear from currently-published authors in the mystery and/or thriller genres.  It’s okay if you write across genres, so long as you primarily write mysteries or thrillers.  For writers of other genres, I will branch out in the future (so there will be opportunities!), but for now I want to concentrate on these two areas to start.

Please query me via email: author@childfinder.us with your title(s) to include ISBN(s), author bio, and a paragraph or two book description.  If you have a unique angle or topic you’d like to pitch, please do so – open to any creative ideas here.

If I select you, I will correspond with some interview questions and ask for more information when the time comes.

By the way, I encourage everyone who visits my website to subscribe to my newsletter and enter my monthly FREE book giveaway.  Contest details appear on the main landing page.

Many thanks!

Mike