The Next Big Thing

Last week, talented author Suzanne Tyrpak (who I will always admire not only for her talent, but because of my jealousy of her friendship with equally talented Blake Crouch) tagged me in her "The Next Best Thing" blog post.  I feel like I've just boarded a train with friends that never stops...so let's see if we can keep it chugging right along, shall we? 

For my part, I will be answering a series of questions and then tagging five other authors to do the same one week from today. 

Here we go...(I keep wanting to say "choo-choo," but that would be entirely childish of me)

1) What is the title of your next book?

I've just released a new book, called Stranger in Town, and I'd rather discuss Stranger over what I am currently working on, since I've got at least three irons in the fire right now.  How's that for rebelliousness? ;)

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

I knew this question would come sooner or later, so why not sooner? 

When I was a girl, about the age of sweet Olivia, the girl in my story, I had a frightening experience that could have ended much worse than it did.  In my story, I took Olivia and put her in the same situation, except I changed the outcome.  I am all about the "what if's" of life, and this seemed like a good opportunity to draw on the fear I still feel when I recall the experience today.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Mystery, suspense, thriller, romantic suspense...shall I go on?

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I am never able to answer this question.  No matter what I say, the actor is never quite right.  Therefore, I cannot answer this.  Sorry!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

One sentence will not suffice.  So here's a few.

Six-year-old Olivia Hathaway tiptoes down the center aisle of Maybelle's Market, stopping once to glance over her shoulder and make sure her mother isn't watching. But Mrs. Hathaway is too preoccupied to notice her daughter has slipped away. Moments later, a frantic Mrs. Hathaway runs up and down the aisles, desperately searching for her missing daughter. But little Olivia is already in the arms of a stranger.

Makes you want to go back and read how I answered question two, doesn't it? 

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I am represented by Pixie Publishing, but I own the rights to my books.   

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Four months from the first line to the publish date.  Dilly-dallying does not exist in this dojo.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Truthfully, I don't know.  I haven't ever read anything that reminds me of my story to any great degree.  Maybe a really, and I mean really, loose version of Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark.  But, I only started that book and never got around to finishing it, so...

As a side note, I love Mary Higgins Clark with a capital L.  I never finished it because life got in the way, and by then, I'd forgotten a lot of what I'd already read and had moved on to about three other novels.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I believe I answered this in #2, but I will add to it.  I wanted to take my main protagonist, private investigtor Sloane Monroe, and throw her into a case that's very different from what she's used to.  I also wanted to get her the hell out of Utah and felt introducing her to the dashing Cade McCoy was an excellent idea, since he will be having his own series ***spoiler alert***.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The ending isn't common.  The reader will NEVER guess until I point them in the right direction when I'm ready.  And readers love that.  I like taking a plausible, realistic situation and then turning the tables.  If I can find a way to spin a story so what the reader thinks is going to happen ends up being completely different than what they've assumed (because readers love to see if they can figure out the ending before it comes), I've done my job. 

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And now to throw five more irons into the fire...sorry gals, but you've been tagged.  What are friends for?  Look for me to link their posts from here next Wednesday...and may none of them be too angry with me over this.  It is, after all, holiday time.

Christine DeMaio-Rice

Julia Crane

JCarson Black

Carol Davis Luce

Elle Chardou

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Indie Chicks Series with my Guest Christine DeMaio-Rice

This week I have the talented Christine DeMaio-Rice on my blog this week. 

She's a fabulously talenter writer who incorporates her fashion industry experience into some of her novels.  And on top of all that, she's a friend.  Here's her story...  

HOW A BIG YELLOW TRUCK CHANGED MY LIFE

(for the better) 

An orange peel grapple is a big machine. Excavator on the bottom. Long arm in the middle. And a metal grapple on the end that looks like a horror movie claw. The base spins. The arm moves up and down. The grapple grabs stuff like SUVs and big piles of metal. 

You may come across one while driving, and if you have a little boy in the car, you may have to pull over to watch the thing move cars into a tractor trailer. Otherwise, nothing about this machine will rock your world. 

But an orange peel grapple changed my life. 

My life was a complete disaster at the time. Though I had a beautiful baby boy and a good husband, I had a job in an industry I swore I would never return to, at a company that wanted nothing more than to suck the blood directly from my heart with a curly straw. This, after I had already sold all the blood in my heart to the film industry, which after a few meetings and screenwriting awards, looked like it might want to take a sip from that straw. 

A sip, because as good as things were looking, I saw a long road in front of me. My work was not “commercial enough,” and my manager had made it clear that years would pass before I would be able to convince anyone that this lack of commerciality was a quality that was, well, commercial. 

But no. My husband lost his job, and I found work in the fashion industry soon after. What I rapidly discovered was that, though out-of-towners could schedule meetings back-to-back all over town, Angelenos were expected to take a meeting at the last minute, or blithely accept a rescheduling. My boss, on the other hand, had no interest in moving around my personal days, and my sick days dwindled in my first three months on the job. It took only a few months for the meetings to dry up and for me to start writing a Santa Claus script out of desperation. 

So, the blood-sucking fashion job with the inflexible hours was right next to a scrap yard, which apparently opened at the crack of dawn because when I got there at seven thirty every morning, the orange peel grapple was already grabbing away. If I had a minute, I watched it go up and down as I clutched my coffee, and I thought, one day I should get a video camera and film this because my son would love it. Really love it. 

My son was about eighteen months old and just learning to talk. I missed him while I was at work, adored him when he was awake and with me, and the rest of the time, I found room to resent him for taking me away from writing. He was then, and has remained, a fireball of energy. His teacher alternated between calling him a Jack Russell terrier and a buzz saw. He is also obsessive. Right now, he has a room full of Legos. Before that, it was Thomas the Tank Engine, and before that, it was trucks. Big yellow trucks. He wouldn’t fall asleep unless he gripped a toy truck in each fist. When he received a Tonka loader for Christmas, it was love at first sight. He called it “lolo.” 

One morning, with the vision of that big ‘lolo’ that I would later know as an orange peel grapple dancing in my head, I dialed a friend’s number. I’d known this man from Brooklyn, and he’d come to Los Angeles a few years earlier to attend the American Film Institute. Most importantly, he had a camera. When I got his answering machine, instead of asking him for the camera, I said something else entirely, something like, “Hey, wanna produce a kid’s video together? Here’s the pitch. Trucks. Okay, bye.” 

That moment may not seem pivotal, but most turning points don’t when they happen. That moment, I took control of my creative life. My friend called me back the minute he got up, and we began the journey toward becoming business owners. We did not pitch the idea around town, and we did not ask permission to bring the work to the public. We put the DVDs on Createspace, and eventually had to hold inventory to meet the demand. 

Lolo Productions and the Totally Trucks series have had ups and downs, but the process taught me two things. One, my concepts need to be simple. If I can’t pitch it in five words, it’s not a concept I should develop. My second lesson is that I can be in control of my product and my creative life. If I think something is worthwhile, I can bring it to my customers. Becoming the producer and publisher of my work means I understand now what agents and studio executives meant when they said “commercial.”

Without my son, I never would have taken the life-sucking job. And without that job, there would have been no orange peel grapple. And without that scrapyard, there would have been no Totally Trucks. No eye for the commercial and no control of self-publishing. Who knows what I would have made without all the things that pissed me off for interrupting my work.

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This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

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For more on her books: click HERE