Shh! Authors at Work

Wondering what's ahead from the Classic and Cozy Authors? Wonder no longer. Here are some of the projects we're working on.

SANDY CODY
Title: All That I Am
Main Characters: Peace Morrow, Flannery Donohue and Rachel Woodard
Genre & Publisher: Mystery/Crime, probably indie-published
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
Rachel almost stopped breathing when she read Amanda’s message: U missed it. We made the news. Check UTube. She clicked on the link that followed, then watched, fascinated and repelled. Not only did the clip show Amanda and the picketers, it included footage of the accused girl, Flannery, standing next to her grandfather, looking and sounding guilty as sin. Who said pictures don’t lie? Not true. She turned off the phone and stared into space. She turned it back on, watched the video again, this time more carefully, especially Flannery.
Publication Date: None yet
Did you know (something I learned for this story): I learned about the process of forensic hypnosis to help witnesses recall forgotten details

JEAN C. GORDON
Title: Reclaiming His Family (working)
Main Characters: Renee Delacroix and Rhys Maddox
Genre & Publisher: Inspirational Romance for Harlequin Love Inspired
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
Rhys ran his hand through his heat-dampened hair. This feeling that he was walking a tightrope without a net was why he stuck to his own business and didn’t socialize. The sooner he had Owen and Dylan and could concentrate on the three of them as a family, the better.
Due Date: July 25, 2016
Publication Date: None yet
Did You Know: The Welsh last name Maddox has numerous spellings, Maddox, Mattox, Madoc, Madog

KAREN MCCULLOUGH
Title: Market Center Mysteries: Wired for Murder
Main Characters: Heather McNeill and Scott Brandon
Genre & Publisher: Mystery with Romantic Elements; The book was accepted at Five Star/Cengage but released when they folded it, so I'm self-publishing it.
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
Dieter Gebhardt was pushing my buttons and he knew it. “I do not understand vy you say ve cannot do this.” A hint of smirk leaked onto his face. The tiny curl of his lip belied his pretended ignorance of my meaning, much less the authority behind the words. The sales representative for Schwartz-Mann GmbH was playing me, and I couldn’t tell if he really thought he could get his way by feigning stupidity or if he was just trying to score some machismo points. I didn’t care about the points, but he damned well wasn’t going to win the argument
Publication Date: July 1, 2016
Did You Know: You don't need a wireless service plan to make phone calls with a smart phone as long as you have access to a WiFi hotspot.

DEBORAH NOLAN
Title: Colleen's Story
Main Characters: Colleen Frescato, her sons, Michael, Patrick and Anthony, their fiancée and girlfriends, Lily Hanson, Juanita and Sana, and Colleen’s new love interest, Nick Rampallo
Genre & Publisher: Sweet Romance
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
Colleen stared at him and remembered him from forty years before. They’d been in grammar school together and had even kind of dated, if what 8th graders at St. Francis School did back then qualified as “dating.” After graduation, they’d gone their separate ways. Colleen had gone to Mount St. Dominic’s, and if she remembered correctly, Nick to the nearby public school. In any case they’d lost touch. But she hadn’t forgotten him. That would be impossible.
Due Date: I plan to finish in time to pitch at the RWA conference in July.
Publication Date: None yet
Did You Know: That Kearny, a blue collar town in Essex County, New Jersey once populated by Irish and Scottish immigrants, is now the first stopping point for Ukrainian and Polish immigrants.

Shh! Authors at Work

Wondering what's ahead from the Classic and Cozy Authors? Wonder no longer. Here are some of the projects we're working on.
 
SOFIE COUCH
Title: Jail Bird
Main Characters: Roxanne and Cyran (an homage to Cyrano de Bergerac) and parallel mini-romance featuring Claire Voyant, (yes, I DID go there), and Sam
Genre: Romantic Comedy
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
A silent alarm. A cracked safe. A missing manuscript. And now, a car chase. Well, it wasn’t so much a “chase” as a two block crawl with a dramatic musical backdrop courtesy of the local country radio station.
Publication Date: April 30th! (I’ve gotta get crankin’.)
Did you know: Did you know that in Cyrano De Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, 1897, Cyrano and Roxanne were cousins? Ewww.

JEAN C. GORDON
Title: The Matchmakers: A Match Made in Williamstown
Main Characters: Libby Schuyler and Jack Parker
Genre & Publisher: Inspirational Romance Novella proposed to Serenade Books
One Paragraph from the Page I'm On:
Jack unfolded his fists he hadn’t realized he clenched and looked over Libby’s head at her grandmother. He pasted a smile on his face. “I’m ready. I haven’t had a good home cooked meal in months, since the last time I visit my parents.”
Due Date: June 20
Publication Date: None yet
Did You Know (something I learned for this story): The University of Philadelphia has a Department of Religious Studies

Getting To Know Us -- Jean C. Gordon

 

Yes, we all have bios on this website, but there is so much MORE to know about our Classic and Cozy bloggers.  So the 2nd Friday of each month is dedicated to getting to know us better. This month I'd like to introduce you to me, Jean C. Gordon. I’m interviewing myself.

Okay, inquiring minds want to know…why a writer? Certainly not for the fame and fortune…or maybe it is?
I think my writing is a natural extension of my love of reading. All though school, I loved writing, even though my best subjects were math and science. I went on to study journalism in college and later combined my math skills with my writing to become a financial writer.

When did you first put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to create your classic and cozy characters?
I started seriously pursuing fiction writing — romance novels — in 1995, after writing romance reviews for the now long-defunct Paperback Trader. I sold my first romance novel, Bachelor Father, to Avalon Books in 1999. Four more followed before Avalon Books was sold to Amazon Montlake. Since 2010, I’ve written for Harlequin Love Inspired. 

Do you have a set writing schedule?
Last month, after working for many years as a financial writer and Editorial Manager for a financial publisher in Albany, NY, I became a full-time author and freelance financial writer. I’ve been trying to maintain an at-home work schedule similar to my old day-job schedule, starting about an hour later than I used to and stopping about an hour earlier, for roughly a seven-hour day. But I’ve taken advantage of the flexibility to make exceptions for some volunteer work on Tuesday morning and mid-day walks with our lab-mix Xena. And no more writing evenings or weekends.

Is there a certain routine, food/drink, or location that summons forth the muses for you?
No, I guess my muse is every present. Or maybe that’s never present, so it doesn’t matter where I am.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
As I said above, I love to read. I like taking walks with Xena and my husband and enjoy our grandchildren who live with us. We share a 175-year old farmhouse on 12 acres with my daughter and son-in-law. I have a small flock of chickens and volunteer one morning and one evening at my church’s Book Nook, a used book fellowship mission. My husband and I like to travel the U.S., and I have a collection of shot glasses from every state we’ve visited. Once I meet my current looming deadlines, my son-in-law and I are going to tackle some home repairs and renovations.

I imagine you’ve been reading all of your life (all great writers have.)  What was your favorite book as a child?
The one that sticks out most is The Secret Garden.

Do you re-read books?  If so, which one have you re-read the most?
I don’t re-read books. I have a few on my keeper shelf in the living room, but haven’t re-read them.

But there’s more to life than reading, writing (and arithmetic)…what is your most memorable adventure in your life?
The cross-country, from Western New York to Los Angeles, CA, that my husband and I took as 19- and 20-year-old newlyweds to finish college in Los Angeles. We drove an old F-100 Ford van with my piano and his motorcycle and all our other worldly belongings. Along the way, we camped without a tent, only our double sleeping bag, in Ohio, stopped in Iowa to see my husband’s cousin who couldn’t make our wedding. She was going to college at Iowa. My husband had the distinction (at that time) of being the only man to stay overnight at her sorority house. We go to stay in the rec room. Then, it was on to my aunt and uncle’s in Manhattan, KS. A perfectionist professor at Kansas State, he “helped” my husband repack the van for optimal weight distribution. We crossed the Texas panhandle at night. It was so flat and desolate, it was spooky. We’d seen the headlights of a car driving toward us, but the car wouldn’t reach us for ten minutes. We also went through the Mohave Desert at night to avoid the heat (no AC in our van). It was still 110 in Needles when we left. And, then we came back two year later in a Ford Courier pickup, but that’s another adventure.

If you were on American Idol, what song would you sing to WOW! the judges? 

Nothing I sang would wow the judges.

What are you currently working on? What can we readers look forward to seeing from you?
I’m working on copy edits for the second book, Holiday Homecoming, and writing the third book in my new series for Love Inspired, The Donnelly Brothers — Hometown boys make good . . . and find love. The first book of the series, Winning the Teacher’s Heart is in stores now

Celebrated motocross champion Jared Donnelly returns to his hometown Paradox Lake to rebuild his family’s tarnished reputation, a move that nearly tears high school teacher Becca Norton’s family apart.

Last question…movie rights…who’ll play your current main characters when Hollywood comes knocking on your door? 
Holiday Homecoming:  Chris Helmsworth as Connor Donnelly and Natalie Wood as Natalie Delacroix
Josh’s book: Bradley Cooper as Josh Donnelly and Troian Bellisario as Tessa Hamilton.
For a complete list of my books click on over to my Website, JeanCGordon.com, and while you’re there, sign up for my author newsletter. You can also keep in touch with me on my Facebook page.

It's Fall!

by Jean C. Gordon

Do you what September is? September is National Chicken Month. Thank you Little Gray, Yellow, Brown, and Yellow Spot for posing.

It's also the beginning of Fall, my favorite season. My birthday is in September. Our wedding anniversary is in September. It’s still warm in the Northeast, but not sweltering hot as August often is. We have the beautiful fall foliage. And school starts. I was enough of a geek that I always looked forward to going back to school.

Which brings me to a question: Does the season a book is set in influence your book choices? Aside from holiday-month books — I love holiday books — I never gave much thought to the season in which a book was set, either in my reading or my writing, until ninth book, Small-Town Mom. And the season only came to my attention when we were at the cover stage. The story takes place in the dead of a frigid Adirondack Mountains winter. But the book came out in June, and initially, the cover had no snow and looked like spring, not winter. The dusting of snow was added to bring it into season.

With the books I've written since then, I've thought about when it will be published and tried to mesh the story's season with the publication season (or close). And, just for fun, I checked the seasons my books are set in. Four are set in the fall, one in the winter, and the rest in the summer.

Stories, stories everywhere

by Jean C. Gordon

Readers often ask, "Where do you get your story ideas? "My short answer is "Life." Maybe I should refine that to "Ordinary Life."

For instance the idea for my first published book, a sweet romance from Avalon Books, came from the experience of another family that was adopting a Korean baby from the same agency we used to adopt our son. The Korean agency had a strict rule of allowing only married couples to adopt its children. Sadly, after a child was placed with a local family, the mother died before the adoption was finalized. Initially, the agency wanted to take the child back. I don't know what actually happened, but the resolution in my story is a happy one--naturally.

An article I read at work in The Wall Street Journal  planted the seed of my second Avalon book. It was about a financial planner who scammed older people. In my book, the hero's grandmother was scammed. My heroine works for the practice that scammed her. Of course, she knows nothing about it. But the hero doesn't know that.

Small-Town Sweethearts, my first Love Inspired Romance grew from a comment a family member made about how she liked their new church because it was more formal, and she could worship privately there. In contrast, I really like our church because of the fellowship the congregation shares. I started thinking about the value of Christian fellowship and how different people perceive it, and the story unfolded.

An incident my daughter experienced as a midwife inspired my latest Love Inspired, Small-Town Midwife. I thought, what if Autumn, my midwife heroine, no longer has the confidence to catch babies. Then, I brought in Dr. Jon Hanlon who exudes nothing but confidence in his technical app roach to delivering babies. How could a romance not develop?

Think about your life. How many story ideas do you see?