I liked the book.  I liked the interview. And now, we’ve got 5 minutes of our very own with Robin Oliveira on her debut novel, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.  A rich historical narrative like this can only come from excellent research married to strong talent.  Ms. Oliveira’s got both well in hand and brings us the story of a young woman’s progress over the hurdles of tradition, heartbreak, and the Civil War to achieve her dream of becoming a surgeon.  There’s lots to talk about at the closing of the back cover of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.

We’d like to thank Ms. Oliveira for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Robin: My first credit was an article in the local newspaper on the building of a road behind my home on Cougar Mountain outside of Seattle. The new road spanned a lovely, quiet creek and displaced cougar, bear, deer, and coyote in order to serve the new homes springing up in what had once been dense woods. My home was one of the newly built houses. The story was one of regret about how, in choosing a place of beauty in which to live, I had unwittingly contributed to its destruction.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Robin: MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is a book of historical fiction about a young woman who risks everything to become a surgeon during the Civil War. It’s a family saga, a love story, and an epic about the unpreparedness of both sides of the divided country for the political and medical apocalypse that was to come.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Robin: Several institutions and people contributed to my success. I could not have written this book without the fine education I received in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. An enormous encouragement was winning the James Jones First Novel Fellowship in 2007 for my book when it was still a work-in-progress. And I am deeply grateful to my family, who never questioned the value of what I was attempting to do.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Robin: I write best during the day, usually before two p.m. After that, I find I spin my wheels. However, during the final draft of writing MARY SUTTER, I stayed at my desk from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I had just dropped my son at college, and was determined to write one more draft before Christmas. During that time, I did not see my friends, exercised rarely, and did not answer the telephone. That approach worked and I finished on December 14th. I remember the date because I was so happy to know that I was finally done, until, of course, I learned that “done” was a relative term.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Robin: Believe in the vision for your book even when you don’t yet have the skill to execute it. Persevere in learning the craft of writing and have patience with yourself in the terrible years of apprenticeship. Persist, but persist with purpose, reading literature to learn from the masters, seeking help when necessary, and never ceasing to work for the truest and best incarnation of your story.

***

MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is in bookstores everywhere and also available for eReader instant gratification from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Sony eBookstore. Find more on Robin Oliveira at her website and on her author profile at her agent, Marly Rusoff’s, website.

We’ve already spotted him in last Friday Evening’s Book Reviews for the glowing commentary in the San Fransisco Chronicle, but one quick peek and we find Adam Langer reaping praise for his latest novel, THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, in The LA Times and The Chicago Sun Times - and that’s without even digging around.  There’s much buzz over this satirical skewering of the publishing industry - and the critics love it.  It’s a morality tale that puts a disillusioned writer in cahoots with a disillusioned editor to burn the pretense out of the pockets of the business’ worst offenders.  We’re quite lucky to snatch our 5 minutes.  Mr. Langer’s going to be a very busy guy in the coming months.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Adam: Hmm. I guess that depends on how you define “publication credit. Probably my mom—who has always kept somewhat better tabs on this stuff than I do—would be better qualified to answer. I was thinking that it might have happened in second grade when all students in Mrs Hersh’s class at Boone Elementary had their critiques of the school assembly posted to the bulletin board. But since mine was the only negative critique, Mrs. Hersh chose to leave it off the wall, so I guess that doesn’t count. When I was about ten, I wrote a review of the Mel Brooks movie “High Anxiety” for my grade school paper, which was called “The Demonstrator” and appeared in glorious white and purple fresh off the ditto machine. But if “publication credit” means first byline in a professional publication, that came when I was a sophomore in high school and wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune about book censorship (I was opposed to it).

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Adam: THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN is intended to be a literary thriller, a satire, a love story, a comedy, a quest novel, a wild adventure with gunplay, betrayal, complex villains, con games, and buried treasure. It’s a novel in which just about every detail should be worth paying attention to.  In short, it’s intended to be just about every sort of novel I love told in a fast-paced format that shouldn’t take longer to read than a nonstop flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. Oh, what’s it about? It’s about this thirtysomething, Indiana-born writer who gets involved in a complex con game when he receives a tempting offer to make a bundle by putting his name to a fake memoir. Complications ensue.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Adam: I’m going to leave aside that S word since success is relative and all that. But there are a lot of people who contributed to the publication of “Thieves of Manhattan.” Here’s how it worked. When I was 14, my mom and dad agreed to let me use my sister’s Evanston address so that I could go to high school in Evanston. When I was attending Evanston Township High School, my best friend’s name was Paul Creamer and he and I ate lunch in North cafeteria with a number of other guys, including one named Chip Wadsworth. I didn’t see much of Chip after high school until he hired me to become editor of a Chicago arts and culture magazine called Subnation, and after it folded, Chip helped to introduce me to a guy named Mark Gleason, who was starting a magazine called Book with his college pal Jerome Kramer who hired me as an editor. While working at Book, I met Harold Bloom, whose editor was named Cindy Spiegel (who would later become my editor) and also a friend of Mark’s, whose name was Marly Rusoff (who later became my agent). After I had written and published a number of books, I decided to start work on a screenplay and asked advice from my Hollywood agent Rich Green and from a writer friend of mine named Laura Moser and her friend, an editor named Claudia Herr. I started work on a screenplay that was inspired in part by a Scandinavian film called Reprise (which I saw with a writer friend of mine named Jennifer Gilmore) and Sunset Boulevard (which I saw with Jerome Kramer). I got feedback on the script from an early supporter of mine named Mary Herczog, along with Jennifer and my mom and my brother and my spouse, and also Jerome, who said that I should rewrite it as a book. When I was done doing that, I sent it to my agent Marly, who sent it to my editor Cindy. And those are just a few of the people I have to thank (or blame).

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Adam: Right now. At 10:34 PM when spouse, daughters, and dog are sleeping. Also, between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM, particularly in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts or the Hungarian Pastry Shop and Café in Morningside Heights.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Adam: Oh, gosh, how about these:

1. Read work that inspires you, challenges you, entertains you, angers you.
2. Learn how to shut off your internal critic when you’re writing and how to turn him or her back on when you’re editing.
3. Learn how to become your own best reader.
4. Write the book you want to read, not the book you feel you have to write.
5. Screw writers’ block; just keep going—you can fix it later.

And above all:
6. Never take advice from another writer unless you feel it rings true for you because soon, you’ll be answering this question in a whole different way, though you might well be telling new and unpublished writers to be very wary of advice from other writers.

***

THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, by Adam Langer, is everywhere.  So, better grab a copy to bring you up to speed on what’s making all that happy racket in all corners literary.  It’s also available for Kindle, Nook, and Sony eReaders.

Think women’s fiction and beach read, and if you think hard enough, you’ll conjure something along the lines of Christine Lemmon’s fourth novel, SAND IN MY EYES.  Or you can just read on and let her take you there.  You’d be in good hands.  She’s an expert.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Christine: A poem I wrote in high school was published in the year book.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Christine: SAND IN MY EYES is the story of a woman so overwhelmed by life that hardly is she seeing the beauty around her. It’s as if she is walking around with sand in her eyes until her elderly neighbor brings her flowers, and wisdom related to womanhood.

I let the characters in this story be who they wanted to be and do what they wanted to do without following an outline. It was a bit hard for me to create a woman so overwhelmed and on the brink of misery, especially while in that stage of life when her children are small. I find a tremendous amount of joy being a mother to three young children but also have those hard mommy moments, too. There is a balance in the story between the mother who is spinning around her house like a top, answering the demands of her children while desiring to write a novel, and the wise woman next door who tells her this phase will pass, that she might as well look for the daisies hidden within the weeds.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Christine: If it weren’t for my husband, my manuscripts would be tucked away in a drawer and hidden from the world. When we were dating I would write of him in my diary and then dangle it in front of him, reading only that which I chose to read and substituting ‘blank blank’ for the juicy parts. But I have read every one of my manuscripts to him line by line in a monotone voice, hitting him with a pillow whenever he’d fall asleep. He is honest about my stories, what he likes and doesn’t like but through it all, he is the one who has coached me on tenacity, hard work and pursuing my dreams. When I have felt down with regard to my writing, my husband tells me to get over it and get writing.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Christine: Either early in the morning, right after I wake and pour myself a cup of coffee, or at night from nine until eleven. I write best when I have a daily and consistent uninterrupted chunk of time and when my room does not have sunlight coming through the window. I find it is easier to enter into the story when there is not that bright light coming into the room. If I do try writing when my husband and children are awake, I often turn on classical music to tune out the noise in the house.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Christine: Discover your best time to write and write each and every day regardless of how hectic life becomes. Life only enhances the writing, so write through good times and through bad. Don’t wait for the right time to start writing; just write and enjoy the process. It might takes years to finish your story, or to get published, so make writing your special time and enjoy it. And don’t feel bad about all those stories you wrote that didn’t get published. Writing is like practicing the piano. No one hears all those times a pianist’s fingers hit the keys. They only hear the recital. All those hours you have spent writing in solitude, those pages no one will read, have only gone into making you a better writer.

***

SAND IN MY EYES is summer reading to the letter and is available now.  Ms. Lemmon’s web page has the lowdown on getting a copy into your beach bag.

Holly Christine unveils her latest, TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT, a cautionary tale of self-criticism, ambition, and being careful what you wish for.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Holly: A spritual fable, THE NINE LIVES OF CLEMENZA. The story begins in heaven and follows one soul through its journey of life. It’s a tale of reincarnation, but with a special twist: Clemenza can become anything that she wishes. She begins as air.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Holly: TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is the story of a girl with a past that is less than desirable. During an especially traumatic moment, she decides to ditch her real past and create one that she has always dreamed of. She becomes thin, popular and desired. In doing this, she loses herself. The book unravels through diary entries, third person narratives and the poetry of Emily Dickinson as Tuesday strives to find her true past.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Holly: My family is incredibly supportive. I also have a few college professors that guided me through the editing and publishing process.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Holly: I start very early, especially from a night of tossing and turning with bits of storyline and dialogue, and down a pot of coffee. I let the caffeine do the work and I work until I’m exhausted.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Holly: Never, ever give up on your dream. Everyone says it, but write every day. Start a blog. Share your dream with others. Sometimes sharing makes it all the more real.

***

TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is available now, so check out Holly’s handy link to find the print or e-version that suits you best.

One of my very favorite contemporary writers, Edgar Award winner, Tana French, is gearing up for the much-anticipated release of her third novel, FAITHFUL PLACE.  Just as a character from her debut novel, IN THE WOODS, steered THE LIKENESS (Ms. French’s second book) in FAITHFUL PLACE we’re drawn into an intrigue involving a detective that we’ve already met and found fascinating.  Each novel stands alone, but Tana French’s people, places, and insights will have you craving to connect all the dots.  Clever.  Very.  Honestly, I can’t wait to read it and it doesn’t hurt a bit that Booklist tagged their review of FAITHFUL PLACE with a star and proclaimed it, “Her best book yet.”

We’d like to thank Ms. French for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Tana: IN THE WOODS. I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, along with your standard-issue terrible poetry – I actually submitted one short story to a couple of places and even got a great rejection letter from The New Yorker saying they’d like to see more of my work, but that was as far as I got. When I started drama school, the acting took over and the writing went out the window – till I had the idea for IN THE WOODS, years later.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Tana: It’s called FAITHFUL PLACE, and it’s out this July. This time the narrator is Frank Mackey, who showed up in my second book, THE LIKENESS, as Cassie’s old undercover boss. Back in 1985, Frank was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin’s inner city, living crammed into a tenement flat on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and all their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him – probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone took it for granted she had gone to England on her own and was over there living her shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to know what happened to Rosie Daly – and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done…

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Tana: The obvious, and wonderful, people: I’ve been lucky enough to have an amazing agent and three amazing editors. And my husband is my first reader – he’s got an incredible sense of pace and structure, and somehow he can tell me ‘You know you need to cut that scene and rewrite the whole chapter in a different setting, right?’ without making my head explode.

And drama school. I had a great acting teacher, and I think that, deep down, acting and writing (specially writing in the first person, like I do) are basically the same skill: you’re aiming to create a complex, three-dimensional character, draw your audience into that character’s world and bring them the story through the lens of that character’s needs, fears, biases and preconceptions – you’re aiming to have the audience go away feeling like that character is someone they know deeply and intimately. Plus, in drama school you spend a lot of time observing the nuances of behaviour and relationships, and a lot of time working in minute detail on some of the best plays ever written, which helps to develop your instinct for what works in terms of structure, plot and character. It was great training.

And I never forget to be grateful to pure dumb luck. I believe that talent and/or hard work can get you to the right place to grab hold of luck when it goes past, but then you’re going nowhere until and unless it does.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Tana: Late at night. I’m nocturnal. Which is unfortunate, given that I have a baby so night writing is out. These days I write at whatever time I get the chance, including early mornings. Up until my daughter came along, I thought the only reason for early mornings to exist was when they were actually very, very late nights…

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Tana: You have absolute licence to screw up. For me, this was one of the big revelations while I was writing IN THE WOODS: if you need to rewrite a paragraph fifty times because the first forty-nine versions are so awful they make you cringe, that’s OK. I guess I was conditioned by doing theatre, where the show has to be right every single night, because that audience will never get another chance to see it. It took me a while to figure out that writing doesn’t count as the show until it goes to print; until then, it’s all rehearsal. It’s really easy to get discouraged when something just isn’t working, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never work. You can get it wrong as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

***

FAITHFUL PLACE hits the shelves July 13th and is more than ready for preorder at your favorite online bookseller if you can’t trust yourself to remember to put it on your errand list.  (Yes, that would be me.)  Get it.  Get it soon.  And learn more about Tana French and her work at www.TanaFrench.com.

Bente Gallagher finally gets to roll out her first-written novel, A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS, as her fifth published mystery.  Taking a little from both the write-what-you-know and dream-big axioms, Bente delivers the fun and intrigue between each set of covers.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Bente: There was that article in the LaGuardia Community College newspaper some years ago, about a drama department production of The Wiz… No, I wasn’t a student there, although my husband was. In retrospect, I think the byline may have been his, not mine, although I’m damn sure I was the one who actually wrote the article. Along with quite a few of his assignments and essays, as I recall.

As books go, A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS was the first complete manuscript that I wrote, but it took a while to find a home. While we were waiting for a publisher to fall in love with it, an editor at Berkley Prime Crime approached my agent and asked if I might be interested in generating a series for them about a home renovator. She’d read A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS and decided it didn’t fit their line of cozy crafts- and activity-related mysteries, but she liked me and my writing style, and also thought my background as a realtor and home renovator might be a good fit for them. I was offered a three-book contract to create the Do-It-Yourself home renovation mysteries. The first book, FATAL FIXER-UPPER, was released in November 2008. I guess that’d be my first professional publishing credit.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Bente: A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS was the first book I wrote, four years ago. It’s a rather obvious case of writing what you know. I was a brand new realtor in Nashville, going into empty houses with strangers every day, and I got to thinking about what I might find behind the locked—and sometimes unlocked—doors. Out of that came the story of a struggling realtor and Southern Belle, Savannah Martin, who’s sitting in her office one early Saturday morning hoping that the phone will ring, when the phone rings and the man on the other end tells her that he’s been stood up by Savannah’s colleague and competitor Brenda Puckett.

Savannah, delirious at the thought that Brenda has dropped the ball, rushes to the rescue, only to discover that her caller is none other than Rafael Collier, former black sheep of the little town of Sweetwater, where they both grew up. Oh yeah, and Brenda is dead inside the house, chubby throat cut from ear to ear; that’s why she was unable to show him around. Of course, Savannah has to figure out who killed Brenda, and avoid getting killed—or kissed—by Rafe, all before the money in her savings account runs out and she has to go back to selling make-up at the mall.

It’s a sort of a hybrid of genres: a Southern romantic chick-lit mystery, or maybe a romantic mystery with a Southern chick. Or as it has also been described, “a frothy girl drink of houses, hunks, and whodunit, narrated in a breezy first person voice.” (The Nashville Scene said that, and I love it.)

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Bente: My success? Don’t know that I’ve had a whole lot of that, frankly, but whatever you want to call it, it wouldn’t have happened without a lot of people marketing and promoting and talking about the books. There’s my in-house publicist, employed by the publisher, and my independent publicist, employed—or at least paid—by me, and then there are all the people who’ve read and reviewed all the books on their blogs and in their magazines and newspapers and on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the other websites. None of us would be anywhere without readers, of course, and I’m sure luck has played a part too. And then there’s God…

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Bente: I don’t think my writing changes much with the day or time. I can write any time, just as long as I have the necessary time to get into the zone, if you will. That said, if I wait too long in the morning before getting to work, it becomes easier to get distracted and not get to work at all. I do better, i.e. I’m more disciplined, when I get started right away. The quality of the words I churn out seems to be much the same whether I’m writing at night or in the morning, and whether I write fast or slow, though.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Bente: Read a lot. In any genre, not just the one you think you might want to write in. Sure, you’ll have to be intimately familiar with what sells and what doesn’t, what works and what doesn’t, in your chosen genre, but good writing has a way of sinking in when you’re not paying attention, and you can absorb good writing from any genre or format. So read widely, anything you can your hands on. It’s the best way to learn the craft of writing, and the best way to figure out what you like and don’t like.

Then write a lot. The more you do something, the better you’ll get at it—usually—and writing is no exception. Everything will be easier the more you do it.

And finally, learn as much as you possibly can about the business you want to get into. Because it is a business, and it has its own ins and outs and ways of functioning, and if you don’t understand the inner workings of the publishing industry, you’re gonna find it hard to break in. Case in point: some seven years ago, I thought I wanted to write romance novels. Someone had told me it was ‘easy’ to get published in romance—I’ll take a break for laughter here; no, it isn’t ‘easy’ to get published in any genre—and I thought I’d give it a try. So I wrote a synopsis and shipped it off to the biggest romance publisher in the world, Harlequin. (I should probably mention that at this point I hadn’t actually written a book. I just had an idea for a story, wrote a two page synopsis, put it in an envelope, and hoped for the best.) A couple of weeks later I got a response: a two page rejection letter detailing everything that was wrong with my synopsis and outlining suggestions for what I could do to fix it.

Now I know that this is code for ‘fix this and send it back to me.’ Then, I didn’t know anything except that I’d gotten rejected. So I put the letter in a drawer, never looked at the manuscript again, and basically shot myself in the foot. If I’d known a little more about the industry and how it works, I might have gotten published a whole lot sooner.

Just goes to show.

***

A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS rolls out later this month from PublishingWorks.  You can secure a signed bookplate for your copy by contacting Bente through her website - www.jenniebentley.com.

Allison Winn Scotch has struck NYTimes bestselling gold with TIME OF MY LIFE and THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND.  Now she’s back with a third ringer, THE ONE THAT I WANT.  Summer reading is in full swing and THE ONE THAT I WANT crops up on recommended lists all over the place.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Allison: My first publication credit is kind of nebulous because the first thing I wrote - professionally, aside from my college paper - was ghost-written. I was working in PR, ghostwriting for celebrities, when I was hired to ghostwrite a book for The Knot on wedding flowers. Though my name was supposed to be on the spine (I can’t remember in what capacity, but in some capacity), it wasn’t, and thus…no one really knew that I did it. (Trust me, I won’t go into the details but I was IRATE.) Anyhoo, the upside was that this gig led to my first bylined piece, which was an article for Bride’s, also on wedding flowers. So even though I don’t have a lot of positive memories of that very first experience, I’m grateful for it because it definitely opened a lot of doors.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Allison: I wanted to take the themes I explored in my last book, Time of My Life, and flip everything on its head, while still delving into the concept of how we – and my characters – can create more fulfilling, fleshed-out lives. So for The One That I Want, it was this whole concept of, “What happens when you think you have a perfect life, and it totally gets shattered to pieces?” In this day and age, not an entirely uncommon – unfortunately – scenario. In The One That I Want, Tilly Farmer is thirty-two years old and has the perfect life she always dreamed of: married to her high school sweetheart, working as a school guidance counselor, trying for a baby. One afternoon at the local fair, everything changes. She wanders into a fortune teller’s tent and meets an old childhood friend, who gives her the gift of clarity. Tilly starts seeing things: her alcoholic father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; her husband uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway. And even more disturbing, these visions start coming true. Suddenly Tilly’s perfect life, so meticulously mapped out, seems to be crumbling around her. And as she furiously races to keep up with - and hopefully change - her destiny, she faces the question: Which life does she want? The one she’s carefully nursed for decades, or the one she never considered possible?

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Allison: I think that I’ve surrounded myself with really good, solid, high-quality people. My agent is a dear friend and trustworthy and hard-working and full of kindness and integrity. Too many authors settle for the first agent who offers, which, in my opinion, can be a mistake. Your agent has to be your biggest advocate, and if he or she isn’t, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The same holds true for my editors. I opted to leave my first publishing house because it wasn’t the right fit for me. I ended up taking a lower advance from an editor and imprint who I thought were better long-term career fits, and they were. As an author, you’re pretty solitary in a lot of what you do, but having the right support around you - and for me, that means nice, dedicated, funny, honest, hard-working people - is really important.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Allison: Well, in an ideal world, I’d probably have the luxury of writing at night. I’ve always been a night owl, and tend to get big spurts of energy after 8pm. BUT. I have two young kids, so I DON’T have this luxury! I need to be in bed fairly early if I’m going to have the stamina to get through the day, so to that end, these days, I write in the mornings. I drop my son off at school, then head home to write for a few hours. Trust me, it’s not always easy, but I’ve found that if I don’t get it out of the way before lunch, I’ll procrastinate the whole day through.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Allison: Never assume you are as good as you think you are. What I mean by that is that many new writers - and I CERTAINLY fell  into this category, so I know of what I speak - think their first work (or works) are genius. And the simple truth is that they’re not. That there is SO MUCH to learn about writing fiction that sometimes, those early manuscripts are just there as a learning tool. There’s no shame in that. I have one and a half unpublished manuscripts too, and I still take heavy notes and constructive criticism from my editor and agent. I revel in that. I love that they help me take my work to the next level: that’s what they’re there for. So be  open to constructive criticism and be okay setting aside a manuscript and starting fresh. It’s not a failure, it’s a stepping stone.

***

You can snag Allison Winn Scotch’s, THE ONE THAT I WANT, anywhere you can land a new book - in brick and mortar bookstores or online, with ease, from the handy link at www.allisonwinn.com.

Humor-tinted crime fiction has a new voice, and as Sophie Littlefield is rolling out her sophomore project, A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY, we’re hearing good things about this series.  So, it could behoove you to save a slot on your Summer reading list for the antics of tough-talking, middle-aged vigilante, Stella Hardesty.  And when you pick up the book, tell them AuthorScoop sent you.

We’d like to thank Ms. Hardesty for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Sophie: Oh, I am so delighted you asked! My story “I Slept With My Husband’s Best Friend To Save My Marriage” appeared in True Story magazine back in 1996. It was one of two dozen confession stories I sold over a period of several years.  And let me tell you, it doesn’t matter if someday I receive a Pulitzer and a Nobel on the very same day, nothing will compare to the thrill of finding that magazine in my local Target…with MY WORDS inside. I didn’t even have a byline (the confession magazines’ stories are, urrrmmm, anonymous) but when I saw those words that I had written in actual print, I cried with joy. And I bought all the copies they had, which must have confused the clerk mightily.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Sophie: A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY, the second in the Stella Hardesty mystery series, was released on June 8th. Stella’s efforts to get in the sheriff’s pants are flummoxed by the arrival of his not-quite-ex wife, and she has to clear an old friend’s name when he’s accused of murder. Um, I’m not great at summarizing my own books – my agent tells me I’m the second-worst pitch person she’s ever met. (The worst being the fantastically talented and fall-over-in-a-swoon handsome Graham Brown.)

OK… SOPHIE’S PUBLICIST UNCEREMONIOUSLY BUTTING IN HERE… (because I agree with the agent about Sophie’s pitching skills, and I love Sophie… hence my two cents)  A Bad Day for Pretty is a crime / mystery novel where the heroine is a tough-as-nails, middle-aged, Midwestern woman–not your usual mystery heroine–who’d gotten herself out of a violently abusive marriage (the hard way), and who now works out her demons by dishing out justice for other women who are being victimized by abusive partners.  Makes for a very unique page-turner!

Pretty follows Sophie’s first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, which won the RT Book Award for Best First Mystery, and was an Edgar Award Finalist for Best First Novel.  I only mention that so you all will know Sophie’s writing is high quality… but what I (and many people) love about Sophie’s books is that yes, the writing is great, but it’s down-to-earth, blunt and even funny–like a real midwesterner should be–even when the subject matter is serious.  This makes for a really fast read.  (OK.. TONY, THE MEDDLING-YET-WELL-MEANING PUBLICIST, SIGNING OFF HERE…)

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Sophie: My husband’s support has been unflagging, ever since we met twenty-four years ago and I told him I was going to be a writer “someday.” He never stopped believing I could do it, even when I did. And my brother, the writer Mike Wiecek, has been there for me since the beginning. Shh, don’t tell, but all the smart parts of my books? – those are the ones Mike fixed. Also, I’ve got the best writing friends a person could hope for. I almost don’t want to share their names because I’m afraid you’ll want to steal them, and I could not do what I do without having them there to celebrate the good times and pick me up on the bad days.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Sophie: I write at all times of day: when I get up in the morning, after the kids go to school, and late at night when it’s just me and my night-owl son keeping each other company. I really probably shouldn’t admit this, but my favorite passages I recently wrote came about in an unorthodox way: I have trouble sleeping occasionally, and I had taken a sleep aid when I realized I had forgotten to write two short scenes that were due before the next morning. I cranked them out in under an hour and then my face hit the desk when I passed out. To my great astonishment, they were pitch-perfect.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Sophie: I think the smartest thing I have said in the last year came about when I was addressing young writers. It was “don’t pay attention to anyone’s opinion about what you write” and I was careful to specify that included parents and teachers.

Many well-meaning folks will tell a writer what he or she ought to write. They’ve got their reasons, occasionally they have their assessments of trends or industry statistics, but what they don’t have is a view into the writer’s head and heart. Only the writer knows what issues stir and inspire her, what characters lurk in the shadows of her imagination, what journeys she needs to take them on.

For most of us, we need to be very, very cautious about protecting our voice. Looking back on my many years of writing, I can see that I allowed others’ opinions to push and pull and propel me in all kinds of directions before I got old and stubborn enough to hunker down and stick to what I know and what I love.

A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY is available in bookstores everywhere and of course for delivery from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, as well as for their eReaders.

Jessica Brody first visited with us in February of 2009 when her fiction debut, THE FIDELITY FILES, had cracked its release date and taken off at a run.  It proved to be just the thing to rouse the admiration of her publishers, reviewers, and readers.  It also drew the curiosity of the industry over the possibilities for how Jessica’s ideas and talent might be applied to sequels, media adaptations, and the Young Adult market.

We’d like to welcome her again and thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: THE FIDELITY FILES seems to have been wearing some grippy cleats.  Tell us about what’s happened to your career since that book went over so well and how it’s led to your latest release, THE KARMA CLUB.

Jessica: LOL! Love the cleats metaphor. Yep, I’m holding on for dear life! And that’s quite appropriate given the fact that my career as an author often feels likes a roller coaster ride!

Well, after I wrote The Fidelity Files and its sequel, Love Under Cover, I decided to try my hand at young adult. But not really on purpose. It was more of an accident…a very fortunate one.

I came up with the concept for The Karma Club as an adult novel (because that’s all I really knew)—about three women who decide to take Karma into their own hands and get revenge on the men who have wronged them. But something wasn’t sitting right for me. I kept thinking, “Shouldn’t these women know better than to go around plotting revenge?” Well, we would hope so (although it’s not always the case, right?)

Anyway, it seemed to me that this book could have a much deeper message hidden within it, about the universe and its mysterious ways in which it works, and I quickly realized that it would make such a better story as a book for teens. A sort of coming of age—or coming of wisdom story. So I wrote 50 pages of it, sent it to my agent to get her thoughts and she said, “You have a very natural voice for young adult!” And I thought, maybe that’s because I never really grew up! I still think of myself as an awkward fifteen year old! Haha. But seriously, I loved writing The Karma Club so much—the teen voice feels so organic to me—that shortly after I sold it, I went on to sell two more YA novels to the same publisher. They’ll be coming out in the next two years. I can’t wait!

AuthorScoop: You’ve gone from debut novelist to busy, busy and much sought after.  Has the ride, so far, been what you’d dreamed it would be?

Jessica: Well, to be honest, not exactly. And that’s probably because my dreams of being a full-time writer never actually included any real writing. LOL! They were all just fantasies of glamorous parties and book signings and big fat checks. But it turns out, if you want to be a full time writer, you have to…well, write! And I do. All the time! Every day. As soon as I finish one book, I start the next. Idleness is my worst enemy! I guess I would say it’s just more work than I expected. But since I love what I do so much…it rarely feels like work…except maybe during those really hard parts in the middle of the story when you question your sanity and your decision to become a writer over something much simpler, like say, a candlestick maker.

AuthorScoop: With all of your book tour travels and general hubbub, it’s probably safe to guess that this past two years has been unlike any other.  But what’s been the same for you?

Jessica: I think it’s important to keep some things constant in your life. I know it’s huge for me. Otherwise, I’d feel like I had nothing to “go home to.” And even though I love traveling, I also really love coming home. To familiar things that rarely change. I’m still with the same wonderful, supporting man. I still watch the same television shows (unless they were unjustly canceled—yes I’m looking at you, NBC. Bring back Journeyman!). And I still live in the same apartment…which I adore. Although we’ll probably be moving soon, so that one’s a wash!

AuthorScoop: And with the accomplishment of these successes secured, what new advice would you offer to aspiring novelists?

Jessica: Try to write every day. Even if the stuff that’s coming out reads like a third grade book report. Sometimes you have to get the crap out in order to get to the good stuff. And sometimes, writing just to write is the only way to get a book done. Even if it means having to go back later and delete it all!

AuthorScoop: What’s next for Jessica Brody?

Jessica: Ahh! So many cool things! As mentioned earlier, I have two more young adult books coming out in the next two years. My Life Undecided—about a girl who enlists the blog reading population to help make decisions in her life—is coming out in Spring 2011 and 52 Reasons to Hate My Father—about a spoiled teen heiress who’s forced to take on a different low-wage job every week for a year if she wants any hope of receiving her trust fund—will be out the following year. I’m so excited about both! And right now, I’m working on a new sci-fi-ish series for teens that I hope to sell soon! Lots of good stuff in the works! I hope you’ll stay tuned!

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Find out what Jessica Brody is up to online at her website and here’s an incentive to head on over and bookmark the page: the very clever trailer for her latest release, THE KARMA CLUB.

Internationally bestselling author, Barry Eisler, is gearing up for his latest release, INSIDE OUT, in just a few days.  As he likes to do (and as his fans like for him to) he draws on alarming current headlines and his own CIA covert operations expertise to bring relevance to his top-notch thrillers

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Barry: That would be Rain Fall, published by Putnam in 2002, the first in what became a series about half-Japanese, half-American assassin John Rain, whose specialty is making it look like natural causes.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Barry: Well, I can’t do much better than the jacket copy:

Torture.

Ghost Detainees.

And a massive cover-up that continues even today.

This is the propulsive thriller that reveals the disturbing truths hidden behind the headlines.  A thriller only former CIA operative turned bestselling novelist Barry Eisler could have written, and a story that urgently needs to be understood.

Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton, who explains the price of Ben’s release:  find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator from Ben’s unit who has stolen ninety-two torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the US government.  But other players are after the tapes, too, and to find Larison, Ben will have to survive CIA hit teams, Blackwater mercenaries, and the long reach of the White House.  He’ll also have to find a way to handle Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent who has her own reasons for wanting the tapes and is determined to get them before Ben does.  With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle—everyone but Ben, who will have to find the right alliance if he wants to stay alive.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Barry: I’ve certainly had plenty of luck along the way.  On the other hand, I’m a big believer in the adage, the harder I work, the luckier I get.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Barry: It varies so much it’s hard to say.  In a perfect world, though, I like to get up around five, get out of the house, and get down to it just as it’s getting light outside.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Barry:

1.  Don’t watch television.
2.  Read like a writer.
3.  Read the advice on my website, For Writers.  I wish I’d known what’s written there when I was starting out.

INSIDE OUT hits bookstores at the end of this month.  Keep updated with his events and releases via www.BarryEisler.com, FaceBook, and Twitter.

The newest mystery from Delacorte Press, THE WHOLE WORLD, is also author, Emily Winslow’s, fiction debut.  Her life’s experience on both sides of the Atlantic Pond bring a ring of firsthand knowledge to the characters and the university life at Cambridge.  Busy bogging, signing, and gearing up for the US release rush, we’re lucky to have snagged our 5 minutes in all the hubbub.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Emily: A logic puzzle for Games magazine. I’d grown up reading the magazine, and ended up writing for them after college. The editor gave me a lot of freedom to experiment, which was wonderful.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Emily: THE WHOLE WORLD is set in Cambridge, England, narrated by five characters affected by the disappearance of a popular graduate student. It’s a mystery, and it’s an exploration of how expectations and assumptions limit what each characters is able to perceive and understand about the circumstances they share.

I loved writing it, and researching it. We had just moved to Cambridge from the States, and there was so much I wanted to tell everyone back home about this strange place. And so much I needed to figure out to be able to navigate life here! It’s British, but more specifically it’s “Cambridge”: academic, international, and with a population in annual flux, as students arrive and graduate and fellowships begin and end.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Emily: My husband. We homeschool our kids, and he teaches/plays with them until noon most days, which is when I write. Then he goes to work, as CTO of a technical company, and I take over with the boys. We meet up in the evening, on the couch, after the kids are in bed. Skyping the California office for him; TV for me; and footrubs! I love the footrubs.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Emily: I used to do my best writing at night, after ideas percolated all day during my dayjob. I guess the energy I used at work and the energy I needed to write with were different. Now that my dayjob is my kids, I find my creative energy is all used up after a day with them. My nights are no good any more. So, morning it is.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Emily: Join the AbsoluteWrite Forums.  Get educated about the business of writing, so it doesn’t take you by surprise when you’re ready to leap into the professional fray.

THE WHOLE WORLD hits bookstores in the US this week.  Find it here, there, and everywhere with this handy link.  And keep up with Emily with the latest updates on her website and blog.

Roger Morris first visited with us in January of 2009 when the success of his first two Porfiry Petrovich crime novels was building up a head of steam.  Accolades have kept his typing fingers flying and opera (yes, opera!) have kept him busy on the side.  All of this has left AuthorScoop intrigued over his comings and goings.  So I asked if he’d come back and update us on a life in the year of a successful novelist. He said yes.

We’d like to welcome him again and thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: Your first Porfiry Petrovich novel, THE GENTLE AXE, seems to have been wearing some grippy cleats.  Its traction led to a sequel, A VENGEFUL LONGING. Tell us about what’s happened to your career since those books went over so well and how they’ve led to your latest release, A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK.

Roger: I love your terms! Grippy cleats and traction - makes it sound very dynamic and even dangerous. Sometimes I do have the feeling that I’m hanging on by my fingernails, to be honest. There are no certainties, I’m discovering. After A VENGEFUL LONGING, I was commissioned by Faber and Faber to write A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK, the third book in my series of Russian set historical mysteries featuring Porfiry Petrovich (the detective from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment). That’s what kept me busy for most of 2008 and a bit of 2009. When I finished A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK, I went back to Faber to see if they wanted me to write the next book. I had always planned it as a series of four. That was last year, a difficult time for a lot of publishers because of the worldwide economic crisis, so it was by no means certain. In the event, they kept me waiting for six months, but did eventually renew, and so I wrote THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN. That’s now been delivered. The good news is my editor likes it, but I’ve yet to meet up with him to go through his edits. I’m sure there will be some - there always are. Somewhere along the way I managed to write the libretto to an opera called COCTEAU IN THE UNDERWORLD, for the composer Ed Hughes. It was nice to work in a collaborative way for a change. We’ve seen a few workshop performances staged, which has been very exciting, and there are plans for a production later this year.

AuthorScoop: Has the ride of a career novelist, so far, been what you’d dreamed it would be?

Roger: I’m not sure I can claim to be a career novelist! I’ve managed to take a couple of years or so out of the rat race to write a couple of books. I think I need to show a longer track record before I can claim career novelist status. The dream, such as it is, could end any moment. That insecurity is always with me. At the same time, though, I do consider myself to be extremely lucky. I know what it feels like when you’re writing and trying to hold down a day job at the same time. All you ever want is more time to spend on your writing. So the greatest pleasure, and luxury, over these last couple of years, is simply to have the time to write. The reality of that is unglamorous and uneventful, not really a ride at all. More a question of sitting at a desk and working. But having the freedom to work on something you want to work on is wonderful, and exciting in its own way, though it’s very far from being a rock’n'roll lifestyle!

AuthorScoop: Momentum being what it is, it feels safe to guess that these past two years have been unlike any other.  But what’s been the same for you?

Roger: Interesting question. My home life. I get a great deal of stability from that. My kids keep me very rooted. And yet, they’re growing up. So they are constantly changing in many ways. In terms of the writing, one thing that doesn’t go away is the doubt, the sense that what you’re working on is no good and never will be any good, that you’re wasting your time. The usual nonsense. That never really goes away.

AuthorScoop: And with the accomplishment of these successes secured, what new advice would you offer to aspiring novelists?

Roger: I wouldn’t like to presume to offer other people advice. But if you’re going to press me, I’d say don’t give up. I think I’ve got where I am - wherever that is - simply because I persevered. I didn’t give up, when perhaps other more sensible people might have. My first novel, TAKING COMFORT, was published in 2006, when I was 46. Before that I’d clocked up at least 20 years of rejection. I’ve lost count of my unpublished novels. If there were awards for perseverance, then I think I might be in the running. I’ve been lucky too. But you can’t very well advise people to be lucky!

AuthorScoop: What’s next for Roger Morris?

Roger: I’m planning a new crime series, set in the present day, in England. It will be very different to my Porfiry books. It’s early days. I don’t really want to say too much about it. But I am quite excited by the prospect of working on something new.

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Find out what Roger Morris is up to online at his website and treat yourself to an immersive historical mystery in any (and all) of his Porfiry Petrovich novels available in bookstores or for mail delivery and Kindle download at the click of a few buttons from Amazon.com.

WATERMARK, the debut novel from Vanitha Sankaran, enters the ranks of popular historical fiction on a wave of enthusiastic reviews.  Vivid details of medieval France and the art and science of papermaking bring scholarly enrichment to a story of the pull of love and enlightenment against a tide of myth and irrational suspicion.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Vanitha: Wow, that takes me back.  My very first credit was for an essay I wrote in my college Lit class on Othello. The essay was chosen to be in the University of Arizona’s Freshman Composition guide and when it came out in print, I can’t tell you how excited I was.  Little did I know it would be another ten+ years before I had my next credit, this time for a flash fiction piece that made it into an online journal called The Independent Mind.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Vanitha: There’s so much to say, I don’t know where to begin!  Growing up, I was never a very good student in history.  The way it was taught seemed so dry and lifeless.  So imagine my surprise when as an adult, I picked up a historical fiction novel (one by Sharon Kay Penman) and I was enthralled.  I knew then exactly what genre of book I wanted to write.  Watermark, for me, is a convergence of different interests–the history of papermaking and its part in the transition from oral to written storytelling, the south of France with its delicious mixture of heresy and new ideas, and troubadour poetry, where heady ideas about what true love was all about were talked about through tales of debauchery, betrayal, and the darkest of lusts.  My protagonist is a girl who has no voice outside of her writing, which gave me the perfect opportunity to explore all sorts of ideas as she found her place in an often cruel world.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Vanitha: My family, especially my sister for reading some pretty awful first drafts, and my husband for his never-ending patience that I could achieve my dream.  I’ve had a lot of help from my classmates and teachers at Antioch University, various beta readers, and in particular, a group of highly dedicated and sharp novelists called NovelPro.  I do have to give a special shoutout to my agent, Marly Rusoff, who believed in the book even when I was no longer sure of it, and Lucia Macro and her team at Avon A, for their tireless efforts to get the book so beautifully made and to get the word out!

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Vanitha: Morning through mid-afternoon is my best writing time.  After that, my hounds are clamoring for my time, and the day just disappears!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Vanitha: Keep working at your craft.  Don’t be afraid to scrap something and try a new approach.  Every word you write, even if it doesn’t make the final cut, gets you closer to your goal.  You just have to keep writing.

WATERMARK: A NOVEL OF THE MIDDLE AGES, is available in bookstores everywhere and also for order for delivery by mail or eBook download, from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

You can also find Vanitha on FaceBook and Twitter, so don’t miss her.

Author and child-advocate, Kay Bratt, debuts the moving memoir of her four-year, life-changing turn as a volunteer aide in a Chinese orphanage.  Her humanitarian work earned her China’s ‘Pride of the City’ award in 2006 and through this book, SILENT TEARS: A JOURNEY OF HOPE INSIDE A CHINESE ORPHANAGE, she looks to reach deeper and wider with the stories of these forgotten children.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Kay: My first publishing credit was a piece in the On the Spot expatriate magazine. It was an article written to inform the international expatriate community about the charity work being done on behalf of orphans in the community they were living in—and offered tips for them to get involved.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Kay: SILENT TEARS; A JOURNEY OF HOPE IN A CHINESE ORPHANAGE, is a memoir of my time living in China and working with their forgotten orphans. It is a story of overcoming obstacles while witnessing tragedies but most importantly shows the strength of the human spirit in action when fighting for something they believe in. In my story, readers become emotionally involved in each child I write about and I frequently receive emails asking for updates on specific children who captivated their hearts.  The book also includes interspersed anecdotes of my attempts to acclimate to the interesting but often confusing Chinese culture and the perplexing situations I occasionally found myself in.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Kay: The success of my endeavors in China can be directly attributed to the many supporters who assisted me in working directly with the children or contributing to the Happy Fund to sponsor life-saving operations and purchase items that improved the living conditions of those in the orphanage. The success of the book can be a direct result of a story that needed to be told and an amazing publishing team at AmazonEncore who believed in it enough to get it into as many hands as possible.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Kay: I do my best writing early in the morning when I feel refreshed and ready to tackle another day. I can write at night but usually there is too much noise and interference going on around me. I am easily distracted so solitude is my best muse.  In addition to having the atmosphere around me peaceful, I have a special ‘writing sweater’ that I wore while writing Silent Tears. Our house in China tended to be freezing in the winter because of the concrete walls and inadequate heating sources—and in the summers we kept the indoor temperature frigid to fight against the hordes of mosquitoes. (A battle I frequently lost as they constantly swarmed around my ankles at my own desk and kept me awake at night buzzing in my ears) With these conditions I was continually cold while writing and needed the warmth of a sweater. I latched on to a grey, somewhat ragged bundle of threads that I believe brought me good luck. I still put it on from time to time when putting together special pieces that require inspiration. I’m wearing it now, just for your audience!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Kay: When I decided I was going to be the voice of the children who could not speak for themselves, and publish Silent Tears, many people told me it would not sell or be appreciated. Despite the negative feedback, I trudged along because I believed I had an important story to tell. When I finally proved that I had a possible success in my hands, I was able to secure a well known literary agent. Unfortunately, after many months of unseen progress it was evident that she did not believe in my story enough to aggressively market it to publishers. I took it upon myself to sever that relationship and went after a new agent that I felt was right for me. I emailed her and told her I already had a reputable agent but I wanted her instead. It was the right decision for me but the moral of the story here is don’t sit back and let someone else take control of your dream.  If you believe in your story, do not let anyone deter you from being published. Remember to build your platform by frequently updating your website (mine is www.kaybratt.com), blog, Facebook and work hard to become a known contributor to as many online opportunities as you can find. Most importantly, believe in yourself and others will too!

SILENT TEARS: A JOURNEY OF HOPE IN A CHINESE ORPHANAGE, from AmazonEncore, is available now for order and Kindle download.

In the mystery tradition of Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie, Simon Tolkien sets a nearly impossible task for his detective - to prove the handily solved crime didn’t go down the way all signs indicate that it did.  Tolkien’s latest, THE INHERITANCE, is hitting the lists and review circuits just in time for summer reading.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Simon: FINAL WITNESS published by Random House in 2002.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Simon: Minotaur Books have just published my book, THE INHERITANCE. It’s a locked room mystery set in England in 1959. A young man, Stephen Cade, is caught apparently red-handed at the scene of his father’s murder in a manor house near Oxford. However, the detective in charge of the case, Inspector Trave, is unconvinced of Stephen’s guilt. As Stephen’s trial proceeds at the Old Bailey, Trave continues to investigate the other people who were present in the house at the time of the murder. Once it’s revealed that Stephen’s father committed murders in France in 1944 in order to obtain a priceless ancient relic,Trave has to race against time to solve the crime and save Stephen from the gallows.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Simon: My wife, Tracy, encouraged me through good times and bad; my agent, Marly Rusoff, believed in the book and found it a good home; my editor, Peter Wolverton, made insightful suggestions for the book’s improvement; and my publicist, Kathleen Carter, has worked tirelessly to bring the book to a wider audience.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Simon: I get up early in the morning and start work when the sky is full of stars, and when I finish writing for the day at about twelve thirty the sun is high over the Pacific. I love writing in Southern California!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Simon: I think perseverance is vital as it’s extraordinarily difficult to get published these days. With fiction having a hook like a particular historical setting can also make a book more attractive to a publisher. The right agent also makes a big difference - some act like glorified postboxes while others really care, putting a lot of work into a book before they make submissions to publishers. Of course the problem is that you only tend to find out if your agent’s any good after you’ve signed on the dotted line.

THE INHERITANCE, from Minotaur Books, is available in bookstores and at online retailers now, and is ready for download to your Kindle, Nook, or Sony Reader even sooner than the regular brand of ‘now’.  And visit Simon Tolkien’s FaceBook Fan Page once you’ve discovered your next great read.

Author Andrew Grant is back with his second David Trevellyan thriller, DIE TWICE.  His plots and his audience span the Atlantic from the U.S. to his native England, and Grant’s background hints at a catalog of experience and intrigue to draw upon.  Not a bad well to draw from for inspiration when you write page-turners, it seems.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Andrew: EVEN, my first novel, was also my first publication credit.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Andrew: My latest release - DIE TWICE - will be launched on May 11th.  Obliged to leave New York City in the aftermath of his previous mission, David Trevellyan is summoned to the British Consulate in Chicago.  To the same office where just a week before his new handler was attacked and shot by a Royal Navy Intelligence operative gone bad.  Assigned the job of finding the rogue agent and putting an end to his treacherous scheme, Trevellyan soon finds that once again, his only hopes of saving countless innocent lives lie not within the system, but in his instinctive belief – you’re bound to do what’s right, whatever the personal cost may be.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Andrew: Writing is often thought of as a solitary profession, but the truth is that to be successful, a large team of people is always involved.  For me, that would include my agent, Janet Reid.  My editors - Pete Wolverton in New York and Trisha Jackson in London.  Everyone at St Martin’s Press and Macmillan who worked on the artwork, production, marketing and promotion of my books.  The booksellers, who put them in the hands of readers.  And in the case of DIE TWICE, my mother-in-law, Anastasia Friel Gutting.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Andrew: I’m a night person, so I work best between 11.00pm and 3.00am.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Andrew: My only advice would be - take no advice.  Writing is an individual process and you just have to figure out what works for you.  There are no right or wrong answers, and the only thing that matters is turning in the best manuscript you can possibly produce.

DIE TWICE, from Minotaur Books and St.Martin’s Press, is due in bookstores next month and available at online retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com for  pre-order right now.  Get yours!

Some people do it all.  Scholar, soldier, a man handed his MBA from the European School of Economics by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, PhD, international marketing consultant, etcetera, etcetra, etcetera (yes, he’s actually earned all three etceteras - just see for yourself) Matthew Christian Davis, has turned author and put his elaborately impressive resume behind  BEST OF DC: DEFINING CHANGE IN AMERICAN LEADERSHIP (BEST OF DC, VOLUME 1, INAUGURAL EDITION).  This latest volume in the ‘Best Of’ series, presented by Global Village Consulting, offers an inside look at the actual cogs - the businesses, services, and people - that make a city, country, or region move.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Matthew: BEST OF DUBAI, 2005 - showcasing sustainability and economic development in the United Arab Emirates.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release..

Matthew: BEST OF DC - ‘Defining Change’ in a new era of American Leadership, is a hardcover 6-pound 365-page yearbook with 27 chapters that focus on each economic sector of industry and culture in the United States… each chapter has a Leader Preface, followed by five illustrated case studies of organizations and individuals who are making positive contributions to society with major community impact.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Matthew: The human capital and sweat equity that made this project a success, are the men and women who live passionately by doing what they love - and love what they do for work, by working to make positive change in America.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about the legwork involved in researching a project like this?

Matthew: Worked 90+ hours/week over the course of two years to ‘weed-out-worst’ by researching, writing, designing, and editing draft material for BEST OF DC… ‘weeding-out-the-worst’ in order to discover what ‘brings-out-the-best-in-us’ as a community. Analysis included research from history/mission/vision of officials from major government, military, contractors, and businesses; including federal agency directors, governor’s offices, universities, bar associations, regional planning organizations, charities, foundations, embassies, and international trade and commerce organizations.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what’s next?

Matthew: Continue the momentum, but build a team of qualified professionals who can collectively work together to build on what I created - as online eBooks, as webisodes on interactive awareness server on GVPedia.com, and pilot an investigative journalism TV series with compelling episodes on a major television network.

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BEST OF DC is available for online preview, and in hardcopy through Global Village Partnerships, and on Amazon.com.

Author, Melanie Benjamin, hits the scene with her historical novel and debut, ALICE I HAVE BEEN, to much buzz.  The story is an inspired what-if speculation on the life of Alice Liddell, muse to Lewis Carroll and template for one of the most recognizable characters in all of literature - the very Alice who tumbles down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.  The book is climbing lists and gathering speed, so it’s quite nice to catch Ms. Benjamin before she’s too busy for us.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Melanie: Many years ago, I had an idea for a parenting essay; I tossed it off, sent it to a local parenting publication, and was offered my own column.  I thought publishing was so simple - little did I know how hard it would be in the ensuing years!  The ease of that first publication credit did not prepare me for the inevitable rejection that’s part of every author’s life.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Melanie: ALICE I HAVE BEEN is a book of historical fiction, about the life of Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll’s ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND.  It’s also about their friendship; how it gave the world Wonderland, but also changed their lives forever in ways that were both beautiful and tragic.  It haunted Alice through her long, eventful life - which included a rumored romance with a prince of England, and sending all three of her sons off to fight in World War I - until, near the age of 80, she finally seemed able to embrace her literary legacy.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Melanie: Two things - reading is the primary one.  I really do believe the best education a writer can get is a lifelong love of reading, particularly in the genre they wish to write.  Second is my ability to look forward, not back; I don’t get too attached to my words and if something doesn’t work out, I toss it - even whole manuscripts! - if I think it’s not working out.  Then I begin something new.  This ability has really saved my career.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Melanie: Afternoon and after dinner.  I’m not a morning person!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Melanie: Read, read, read!  Read everything you can, read what’s being published today.  And also - respect.  Work hard at the craft of writing, give it years of study and practice as you would any other artform.  The Internet has made it all too easy to think we’re all writers; the ease of seeing your words instantly on a screen or a blog can lull a person into thinking she doesn’t have to work that hard.  We all do.

ALICE I HAVE BEEN is in bookstores now and available at online retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com for both delivery and Kindle or Nook download.

Jamie Ford first visited with us at the release of his debut novel, HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, when the steam was just clearing the stack.  That was nearly a year ago and, boy, what a year.  Bestseller lists, book tours, a paperback release, and film-adaptation rumors, and the train just keeps on rolling.

So I asked if he’d come back and update us on a life in the year of a really successful debut novelist. He said yes.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: So, it’s been quite a year for you.  Of course this process began well more that a year ago, though.  What’s the timeline of HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, from its inception to AuthorScoop hitting you up with this questionaire?

Jamie: Well, after I sold my soul to the Devil in the spring of 2006, it’s been a blur, lots of book touring, editing, fire and brimstone, etc.

AuthorScoop: For a debut novel to have made this big of a splash, you’d have to get a unique take on your freshman year in the publishing trenches.  How’s the water in the deep end?

Jamie: I’m still holding my breath. The book has this life of its own now. Whatever the book does is great, but I’m still just this obscure creative person doing my thing, and I’m fine with that. When HOTEL hit certain bestseller lists, it was exciting and all, and obviously my editor and agent are thrilled, but the sun doesn’t shine brighter, birds don’t chirp any sweeter, and food doesn’t taste any better. Life just keeps going. Business as usual. Though I still get calls from friends and relatives asking, “Hey, did you know your book is at Target?”

AuthorScoop: With all of your book tour travels and general hubbub, it’s probably safe to guess that this last year has been unlike any other.  But what’s been the same for you?

Jamie: I never dreamed I’d spend so much time on the road. In 2009 I must have spent 100+ nights in hotels. Nice hotels with room service, but still, that’s a lot of time away from home, away from my family, away from my writing desk.

The things that haven’t changed have been my home life. I didn’t go out and buy a Porsche or anything. After I got my first royalty check, I think I went out and bought the first season of Mad Men, and then a week later the second season, that’s about it. I love the process of writing, the research, the time spent in Storyland. I’d write even if no one read my books, it’s just an enjoyable creative pastime. I still read pages at a local open mic night. Plus, I really live off the grid. It’s so nice to fight my way through LA traffic and come home to Montana. I’ll be in my backyard mowing the lawn and my neighbor still asks, “Hey, are you ever gonna finish that novel thing you were working on.”

AuthorScoop: And with the accomplishment of this past year secured, what new advice would you offer to aspiring novelists?

Jamie: Don’t sign the contract in blood. If only I’d known…

AuthorScoop: What’s next for Jamie Ford?

Jamie:Just handed in a new book, Whispers of a Thunder God, to my editor at Ballantine. I wrote it off and on, between my travels, during my travels, so there’s more rewriting involved this time. Sort of like putting on your dress and then deciding to iron it, there’s some pain involved.

I’m also researching a YA project and still kicking around a short fiction collection. And there’s talk of a stage production of HOTEL, but like the film thing, it’s a longshot.

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CJ Lyons‘ work has been inspired (and made to ring true) by her career as a pediatric ER doctor, and her public speaking benefits from a bit of both of her vocations.  With three well-received medical suspense novels on the shelves, she’s a busy lady.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

CJ: I’ve been writing pretty much all my life (telling tales even longer, lol!)  My first attempt at publication (ie. Allowing “grown ups” to read my writing) came in third grade when I was the writer, director, producer and one of the voice talents for a weekly radio broadcast over the school PA system.

My first actual writing credit was a few years later when the school paper serialized my story about a blind Civil War orphan and her horse as they traveled the countryside helping people caught in the chaos of the war. All my stories back then had horses in them, even one I won my very first writing award for: The Red-headed Rebel, about a girl and a real-life distant relative of mine during the Revolutionary War, and yes, her horse….

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

CJ: URGENT CARE is Book #3 in my Angels of Mercy series.  This series is a cross-genre blend of medical suspense with thriller pacing, romantic elements and is told from the point of view of the women of Pittsburgh’s Angels of Mercy’s ER.  In URGENT CARE, ER charge nurse Nora Halloran must face her greatest fear: the man who attacked and left her for dead two years ago.  Now he’s back and killing his victims, with Nora and the man she loves his next targets.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who else do you feel has contributed to your success?

CJ: Too many people to count!  Reader friends who give me honest feedback, writer friends who give me encouragement and the occasional kick in the butt, even bestsellers who have lent their support and mentorship.  Not to mention my medical colleagues and patients who taught me the true meaning of courage.  In fact, URGENT CARE is dedicated to all the nurses who worked with me during my 17 years of practicing pediatrics.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

CJ: There’s no one “prime” time for me—I’m a terribly unregimented writer, I’m afraid.  Rebellion against all those years of my medical practice requiring me to be extremely regimented.  Now I write what I want, when I want, and it’s all fun!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

CJ: The best advice I have is exactly what I use as my own credo and teach my writing students: No Rules, Just Write!

If you have the vision, passion, and commitment to make your dreams come true (and believe me, it takes all three!) then you don’t need any rules.  Stop looking for the “right” way and put your butt in the chair and get to work.  No Rules, Just Write!

URGENT CARE is available in bookstores now, and through Amazon.com for delivery and Kindle download.