A Character Interview from Black Cats and Ballet Slippers

Black Cats and Ballet Slippers, a Fun Middle Grade Supernatural Mystery!

Today we have Gemma Mayfield here from Black Cats and Ballet Slippers. Great to have you here, Gemma! Can you please tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

Gemma: Hi guys! Thanks for having me! Well, to start off with, I go to Middleton Middle School. My best friend Izzie and I do A LOT of dance. I love ballet! I wish I could dance everywhere I go. Now that I think about it, sometimes I do! Anyways, one thing that really stands out about me is that I’m SUPER tall. I’m taller than Trevor Davis, who I have a huge crush on. I also keep having bad hair days, which doesn’t help the situation. It’s hard to explain these things to my parents or my little sister. Only my cat, Mungo, seems to understand me. Or maybe he just doesn’t say stuff because he can’t talk.

What type of conflict are you up against in Black Cats and Ballet Slippers?

Gemma: Everyone who’s been to middle school knows that it’s pretty weird. I mean, boys are from Mars! They are so strange. But I think something REALLY weird is going on at Middleton. I think that my teacher, Ms. Pruett, is a witch! She’s been casting spells on people, including Trevor! I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt, and I think it’s up to me to figure out how to save our school.

Wow, that seems super scary! You do a really great job writing down all of your adventures in your diary. When did you get your first diary?

I just LOVE my diary! I used to think that diaries were for silly people. Izzie gave me my first diary for my birthday. Now I write in it all the time. If you don’t have a diary, you gotta get one! Just make sure that no one steals it from you when you’re in math class. If some of the stuff I wrote about got out… sheesh! Especially the stuff about Ms. Pruett and her witchy shenanigans. And then, of course, the List of Cutest Boys is in there, too. Now THAT would be embarrassing to pass around!

Do you have a goal that you have recently set for yourself?

Well, I’d really like to get along better with Demonica… er, Monica. She’s this girl at my school. She is pure EVIL, but I’m wondering if maybe I’m just not giving her a chance. Maybe she’s a nice person underneath it all! I think there’s truly a possibility for goodness in all of us. Argh. Who am I kidding? She really is a demon in disguise!

Okay, so here’s a fun question to wrap things up: Name five things right now that are in your backpack.

Yay! This is sort of a fun question. Let me take a quick look…

1.     A hair scrunchie. This is an absolute necessity! You never know when you are going to have a bad hair day and your hair looks like a broom. It’s best to just put it back in a ponytail.

2.     My math homework. I actually finished this in class yesterday. Math… so easy! But I don’t really like saying that out loud—it’s not good for the popularity status. Which I need to work on, by the way.

3.     An extra pair of ballet slippers. These could come in handy at any time.

4.     My Bubblegum Bliss lip gloss. It’s supposed to make your lips look more pouty. Unfortunately, Trevor never seems to notice.

5.     Aha! Mungo’s cat collar! Now how did THAT get in here? Weird.

Thanks again, Gemma, for visiting today. Hopefully Mungo will be happy to get his cat collar back. It’s been great getting to know a bit more about you!

Iva Valentino lives in Arizona with her husband and their dog, Lupo. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Education. She loves living year-round in the warm desert.

Iva spent many years as a middle school teacher, where she enjoyed teaching her students all about science. She currently works as a science editor at an educational publishing company. She loves travel, yoga, and photography. There is nothing that brings her more happiness than a good dance class!

You can visit Iva at the following sites:

Website: www.ivavalentino.com

Blog: www.ivavalentino.com/blog

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ivaavalentino

Purchasing links for Black Cats and Ballet Slippers:

MuseItUp Publishing: https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/now-available-in-ebook/black-cats-and-ballet-slippers-detail

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Cats-Ballet-Slippers-Valentino-ebook/dp/B00ISW6BAA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1410125518&sr=1-1&keywords=Black+Cats+and+Ballet+Slippers

Conda here. Thanks for being on my blog, Iva (and Gemma too). It was a delight to find out more about a character in Black Cats and Ballet Slippers. Readers, questions for Iva or Gemma?

  

 

Sara Jayne Townsend Mystery Author Guest Blogs!

Dead Cool, the second in the Shara Summers Mystery series.

It's my pleasure to have mystery author Sara Jayne Townsend on my blog today. Thank you for visiting, Sara! Without further ado...

The Complicated Love Life of Shara Summers

By Sara Townsend

                                   

I always said I don’t write romance novels.  I don’t like reading romance novels – I have always held this view that too much romance detracts from the action.  But lots of people like love stories, and even I will agree that sometimes a love interest can add a bit of spice to a sub-plot.

When I created my amateur sleuth Shara Summers, I made her a 30-year-old straight single actress with a fairly relaxed attitude to casual sex.  It was logical to assume there would be men in her life.  I also decided that a slightly chaotic love life would make for a more interesting character than someone in a happy and stable relationship, especially since this was a character I wanted to take through a series.

So I had already decided that Shara would have relationship problems.  However, I did not anticipate when I set out to write DEAD COOL, the second book in the series, just how chaotic Shara’s love life was going to be.  The book begins with the re-introduction into her life of her Canadian ex-boyfriend, David.  Shara is now settled back in England and thinks David is behind her and far away, in Toronto.  But then he turns up on her doorstep – literally – begging her to audition for the sudden and unexpected vacancy of backing singer in his new band, which is about to embark on a European tour.

It soon becomes clear to Shara that David isn’t quite as over their relationship as she is.  But she’s more interested in the band’s guitarist, Jake.  And then when the band’s front man is killed, the handsome detective constable investigating the case seems far more interested in Shara than perhaps he should be.  And what of Richard, the actor that Shara was seeing at the end of DEATH SCENE?  She’s ignoring his calls – but why?

This isn’t a love triangle I’ve put my poor character into.  It’s more a rectangle.  It seems the path of true love is not destined to run smoothly for my amateur sleuth.  But from a reader’s perspective, I think it’s far more interesting when it doesn’t.

Sara-Jayne Townsend is a UK-based writer of crime and horror.  She was born in Cheshire in 1969, but spent most of the 1980s living in Canada after her family emigrated there.  She now lives in Surrey with two cats and her guitarist husband Chris.  She co-founded the T Party Writers’ Group in 1994, and remains Chair Person.

The first two books in her amateur sleuth series about Canadian actress Shara Summers, DEATH SCENE and DEAD COOL, are available as e-books from the MuseitUp book store: http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/our-authors/70-our-authors/authors-t/420-sara-jayne-townsend

You can learn more about Sara and her writing at her website at http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com or her blog at http://sayssara.wordpress.com.

 

NEWBIES WRITERS' GUIDE TO THE WRITING BIZ

I often get asked one of the Sisters In Crime bloghop questions, "If you were to mentor a new writer, what would you tell her about the writing business?"

There is one important concept that seems simple but is difficult to understand and accept: If you are serious about being an author, then writing is a business. This is separate from the creative work of writing. They are two very different things. The more a writer is able to keep the two distinct, the more successful she'll be in both.

Whether you are a well-established name or pre-published, you are having a writing career. The business aspects of the career are your job in which you are the boss, CEO, CFO, and employee. What does that mean, really? It means that you must work to be your best advocate in your business decisions. It means that you must work to keep yourself apprised of this new publishing world. It means that you must work to promote yourself as best as you can. What it mostly means is the writing comes first and foremost always. In business terms, you can't sell what you don't have. You need product. (With rejections, it's helpful to think of your finished manuscript in terms of being product. After all, no one sells all their product all the time.)

The writing business can be frustrating, annoying and even heart-rending. Remembering that the writing biz isn't writing often helps reduce the pain. And the rewards far outweigh the struggle. May all you new authors succeed!

This blog post was inspired and created for the Sisters In Crime bloghop. You can find out more here, www.sistersincrime.org/bloghop.

Last, but perhaps most important: my great friend and great author, Kathy McIntosh, is also participating in this bloghop. She's the author of the comic crime novel in which there is “plenty of laughs in this page turner and plenty of insights that keep the story fresh and memorable.” So hop on over to her post about what she says to someone who says "Nothing against women writers, but all of my favorite crime fiction authors happen to be men," on her website here.

And dear readers, what do you think? Are you successful in separating the two aspects of being a successful author? Any tips on how to do so?