Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Story Behind How The Deer Moon Hungers by Susan Wingate


My husband, Bob and I took an evening walk. It was thirty-four days before my Mom died. She was terribly sick by then. We don’t typically walk in the evenings but for some reason―probably, just to get out of the house, leaving Mom with a caregiver―we decided to just take off on a stroll westward
from our home on a road that wraps around a slice of water in North Puget Sound called the Olympic Straits. Walks down that particular stretch of road elicit tons of fodder for my stories. It was along that same road when The Deer Effect idea came into being.

Anyway, we were heading back home after being out for a half-hour, walking east on that same road when the moon decided to make an appearance. It was as full and yellow as I’ve ever seen. It looked like a huge beach ball made of cheese. And in a breath, MacKenzie Fraser zipped by me on her bike―figuratively, that is. In my mind, she and her sister seven-year-old sister, Tessa were racing down the hill on that same road in the direction of the moon when Tessa skidded to a stop nearly making Mac run over her. The discourse between them took on an excited and intimate tone. And there I am with Bob and we’re walking closer and closer to them. I mean, I was listening in, eavesdropping on what they were saying. It was all kid issues…

“You nearly made me run into you, brat!” From Mac.
Nothing from Tessa. Tessa was staring up at the moon. Gaping, really.
Finally, after a barrage of insults from Mac, Tessa says, “See the deer in the moon, Mac?”
Mac answers, “There’s no deer, dork. There’s a man but no deer.”
Tessa now, “Wonder if the deer’s hungry?”

After that scene played out for me, I knew I had to write their novel. That scene occurs in Chapter One of HOW THE DEER MOON HUNGERS. And the title went through several revisions with working titles: The Secret of Deer Moon (not bad), What the Deer Moon Hungers For (I hated the dangling participle and it’s quite a mouthful), Why the Deer Moon Hungers (okay, getting closer), then it takes a hard left to Moon Spyer (what the?), and finally the published title of How the Deer Moon Hungers, which seems to sum up everything I was trying to accomplish with the other title variants. It got a contract as Moon Spyer and we talked about changing the title after the ink was dry both ways. But I knew Moon Spyer wouldn’t be the final title. I mean, just say it a couple times. It’s awkward and the word “spyer” isn’t a real word. I had to force it into my dictionary. And believe me, it wasn’t going easily.

I guess what I want you to know most about this story is that at its core DEER MOON is about two sisters―one who lives and one who doesn’t.

Thank you for allowing me the platform to talk about my latest novel. I hope you love Mac and Tessa as much as I do. Sincerely, Susan Wingate.


About the Book

For those who enjoy reading books like Where the Crawdads Sing and My Sister’s Keeper
MACKENZIE FRASER witnesses a drunk driver mow down her seven-year-old sister and her mother blames her. Then she ends up in juvie on a trumped-up drug charge. Now she’s in the fight of her life…on the inside! And she’s losing.
HOW THE DEER MOON HUNGERS is a coming of age story about loss, grief, and the power of love.

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08676VMT3


About the Author 

Susan Wingate is a #1 Amazon bestselling award-winning author of over fifteen novels. Susan writes across fiction and nonfiction genres and often sets her stories in the Pacific Northwest where she is the president of a local authors association. She writes full-time and lives in Washington State with her husband, Bob.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: www.susanwingate.com
Blog:    www.susanwingate.com/blog
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanwingate
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorsusanwingate

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

The Story Behind Anna Incognito by Laura Preble


I’ve lived with several varieties of mental illnesses through my life, and although I often find them difficult to live with, I don’t know that I’d give them up. I think they contribute to making me a writer. And as a reader, I’ve rarely seen authors accurately portray mental illness in a way that is
accessible and accurate, so I wanted to do that, to give people a look from inside the fishbowl. (Because, honestly, sometimes I do feel like a goldfish staring out at the world from my little bubble!)

Anna Incognito tells the story of Anna Colin Beck, a woman with severe OCD and significant trauma. When she is invited to her therapist’s wedding several states away, she decides to take a road trip to stop the wedding, since she is sure that she and the doctor belong together. A friend of mine actually inspired me to write it…she deals with trichotillomania and dermatillomania (hair and skin picking), but she is so much more than her conditions. She is highly intelligent, funny, and has a skewed look on life that I really love. The story isn’t at all about her, but I based the character on her.  I had her read the book to be sure I got everything right. I wanted to portray a character who dealt with a mental illness, but who was not defined by the illness.

I also wanted to give readers a view of mental illness from the inside, and to show how funny life can be when you  have a mental illness. I don’t mean to imply that mental illness is funny, because it’s not. I have a couple of the conditions Anna has in the book, and I understand how serious it is. Still, it does color your reactions to things, and honestly, most of my favorite people have some kind of mental illness, and they’re really hilarious people. I also think it’s really important to portray people with mental illness in fiction. It’s been stigmatized a lot in American culture especially. I think if more people saw mental illness from the inside out, they’d understand more why there is a great need for more treatment options, for more sensitive law enforcement, and for greater resources in schools.

I try not to be heavy-handed with messages, because no one likes being preached to. I guess if I were to pick a message, it would be that people can be resilient and heal no matter what circumstance. This may not be true for everyone, but I know it is true for me, and for many people I love. Also, that family is not necessarily those with whom you share blood—your family can be the people you choose to be in your life.
  
I do have to brag a little – I just received a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and that felt really good. It’s a big chunky silver medal too.

About the Book

Lots of narrative pull…wonderfully complicated. – Jincy Willett, author of The Writing Class, and anthologized by David Sedaris in Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules.

Anna Colin Beck knows all too well what can happen when things go wrong really wrong. So, she’s spent the last several years living an extremely regimented life at home, doing everything she can to avoid subjecting herself to the torments of a germ-infested world. Everything must be just so, and when things don’t go to plan, she punishes her own body…and that still hasn’t helped alleviate her pain.

After a chance meeting in a laundromat, she finds herself completely infatuated with another person, something that hasn’t happened to her in a long time. Dr. Edward Denture is seemingly brilliant and magnetic…and in the blink of an eye, she’s attending intense somatic therapy sessions as his newest client. The more he draws from her, the further their relationship grows, until it’s crossed countless lines and consumed Anna with a fierce toxicity. And before she knows it, she finds herself buckled into the driver’s seat of a powder-blue El Dorado for a solo cross-country road trip, determined to stop his wedding. It’s a trip that will test every limitation she’s ever set for herself, and though she’s planned extensively for all contingencies, there are some twists and turns you just can’t prepare for.
With wry observations on the intersection of luck, fate, and life, Anna Incognito is a searing, darkly witty exploration of what it means to be alive.

PRAISE FOR ANNA INCOGNITO

IndieReader.com: 5/5 “Rich with witticism in the face of painful realities and evoking lyrical truisms throughout, from of a rating scale of 1 – 5 this novel is so off-the-charts good, it deserves a 10.” LINK HERE

OnlineBookClub.com: 4/4 “The writing was captivating…This book would be great for readers who are struggling with mental health or for those trying to understand it better. Are you ready to go for a drive with Anna?. Buckle up, because you are in for the ride of your life!” LINK HERE

Kirkus Reviews:  “The protagonist’s acerbic wit and mordant tone work well in the difficult material in Preble’s unconventional road novel. A razor-sharp, oddly fun  romp through the American West.” LINK HERE

ORDER YOUR COPY

 

Mascot Books → https://mascotbooks.com/mascot-marketplace/buy-books/fiction/romance/anna-incognito/

Amazon → https://amzn.to/3gWo7wf

 Barnes & Noble → https://bit.ly/2MtLLSV


About the Author

Laura Preble is the award-winning author of the young adult series, Queen Geek Social Club (Penguin/Berkley Jam), which includes the novels Queen Geeks in Love and Prom Queen Geeks. Her novel, Out, dealt with the concept of LGBTQ rights within a young adult dystopia; Alex Sanchez, author of Rainbow Boys, says “Out explores an intriguing, mind-bending, and challenging portrait of an upside-down world that turns the tables on homophobia, acceptance, and love.” She has won a Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize, and has been published in North American Review, Writer’s Digest, Hysteria, and NEA Today.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website:  www.preblebooks.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/LauraPreble
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/laura.preble1  

Monday, July 6, 2020

The Story Behind Slow Down by Lee Matthew Goldberg


Slow Down is being reissued with a new publisher so it was written a long time ago. I’d been fired from my first job after college at a production company that was quite abusive, and I put that into the
start of the novel. I heard the song “Yellow” by Coldplay and imagined if many people had the same tattoo of a yellow circle. Without a job, I would write every day in the park, and it made me realize that writing was what I wanted to do full-time.

After finishing, I sent the book out to agents but it really wasn’t ready. So I stuck it in a draw and wrote a different book that landed my agent. We tried sending Slow Down out, but editors found the main character too “mean and unsympathetic”. It wasn’t until we found an indie publisher that liked the book for that very reason. It was exciting to have Slow Down be my debut and now three novels later, it’s even more exciting for it to be re-released and find a whole new audience. 

The theme of the novel is that the characters are moving at too fast a pace and will have to slow down to save their lives. They exist in a wealthy, Hollywood bubble that rewards them for their bad behavior. But the novel is a love story too between the two main characters, Noah and Nevie. To be together they must give up all the glitz and fame and escape to a place where they can just live simply. The question is, Do they make it out alive?

About the Book

How far would you go to make your dreams come true? For budding writer and filmmaker Noah Spaeth, being a Production Assistant in director Dominick’s Bambach’s new avant-garde film isn’t enough. Neither is watching Dominick have an affair with the lead actress, the gorgeous but troubled Nevie Wyeth. For Noah’s dream is to get both the film and Nevie in the end, whatever the cost. And this obsession may soon become a reality once Dominick’s spurned wife Isadora reveals her femme fatale nature with a seductive plot to get rid of her husband for good.

Slow Down, a cross between the noir styling of James M. Cain and the dark satire of Bret Easton Ellis, is a thrilling page-turner that holds a mirror up to a media-saturated society that is constantly searching for the fastest way to get ahead, regardless of consequences.

Here’s what readers are saying about Slow Down!

“Slow Down is a frenetic first novel…full of unedifying characters scrambling for the elusive, perhaps imaginary, brass ring.”
Publishers Weekly
“Lee Matthew Goldberg writes like a young Bret Easton Ellis doing a line of uncut Denis Johnson off the back of a public urinal. Memorable in the best possible way, also mostly illegal, Goldberg’s Slow Down is a mad man’s tour of Manhattan’s vices, follies, and ultimate betrayals.”
–Urban Waite, author of The Terror of Living and Sometimes the Wolf
What would happen if one of Raymond Chandler’s 1940’s femme fatales were to join forces with one of Jay McInerney’s enfant terribles? Lee Matthew Goldberg wrings every delectable trope imaginable out of this mashup while still managing a fresh spin. A writer to watch out for.”
–David Kukoff, author of Children of the Canyon
“Slow Down starts fast and gets faster quick, gunning through yellow streetlights on its way to a full collision with your shattered soul. Lee Matthew Goldberg takes on the American Zeitgeist in this stunning debut.”
–Stephen Jay Schwartz, LA Times bestselling author of Boulevard and Beat
Slow Down is a brilliant rush of a work charting the rise and fall of Noah and other pretentious losers. Savor this book.”
Foreword Reviews
“Dark and hard-boiled writing that grabs you by the throat. Slow Down is one of those rare novels that’s so good you want it to go on forever!”
–Nick Pengelley, author of Ryder: An Ayesha Ryder Novel
“The plot takes off…there’s no denying it’s fun to watch rich snots destroy themselves.”
Booklist
“Goldberg’s portrayal of the New York demimonde is one of the book’s strengths and brings to mind Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero. He also succeeds in marshalling a complicated plot.”
CrimeFictionLover.com

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://amzn.to/3dmv8UU



About the Author 

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE DESIRE CARD, THE MENTOR, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The second book in the Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming, along with his Alaskan Gold Rush novel THE ANCESTOR. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press, Monologging and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leemgol
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/leematthewgoldberg