Author Interview: Zee Monodee and her upcoming release, Calling Home

Today I have the honor of interviewing a fabulous author and one of my awesome critique partners, Zee Monodee. Welcome, Zee!

ZM: Hi Jessica, hello everyone! It's a total pleasure to be here – thanks for having me, and for your lovely intro words.

Can you tell us about your upcoming release, Calling Home?

ZM: Sure! Calling Home is part of a themed series I've just started, titled "Destiny's Child." In each book, a child (or more children) will bring an unlikely couple together. These two people usually have little/no biological tie with the child, but Fate throws them all together and it's up to them to create a family unit and find love in the process. These stories are old-fashioned, tender & sweet romances. I'd totally see myself handing this to my thirteen-year-old nice to read.

On to Calling Home specifically. It's the story of a cold and clinical forensic pathologist – the heroine, Margo Nolan. Proof and concrete evidence drive everything in her job and her life; there's no place for emotion and feelings. Or is there…? Because suddenly, Margo finds herself the guardian of eleven-year-old Emma, the daughter of her late best friend. When Emma was born, Margo became like a second mum to the girl, until she and her best friend fell out and they severed contact between them.

But Margo doesn't do relationships – the closest interaction she gets daily is with dead bodies during autopsies in her morgue. How on earth does she then cope with a growing tween who's obsessed in half and half measures with football (soccer. The book's set in England ) and boys?

Help happens in the form of the local village doctor, the handsome and sexy Jamie Gillespie. Margo finds herself having the hots for him, so at odds with her usual personality, and *gasp* he is younger than she is. How does she handle Emma in her bumbling, inept attempts at being a mother, and get a grip over her treacherous feminine self around the hunky Jamie?

I look forward to getting my hands on this book. What inspired you to write this story?

[image error]ZM: Well, like Margo, I'm a big fan of the BBC show "Silent Witness". It's a sort of CSI-type drama that focuses more on the lives of three London-based forensic pathologists as they solve their cases. I also love all three versions of CSI. What intrigued me is the fact that these forensic pathologists and crime scene officers cannot let emotion drive them – they have to go by proof, and proof alone.

But then, if evidence guides everything in your life, what exactly does that entail? And if you're a woman too, attempting to break the glass ceiling in a man's world? What happens when you get the one thing your heart has desired in the past – your child?

These were the starting points that brought the character of Margo to my mind. I wanted to explore what a forensic pathologist's life would be like, but outside the lab. Does she have relationships? Is she socially inept?

Which led to Margo needing help, and *wicked grin* another wrench thrown into her life – what if the woman in her was awakened? That's how Jamie came into being. I don't think of these two as 'meeting their match'. They don't exactly butt heads; they could be the other's fulfillment… Jamie's a calm, sweet, patient man, but how far will his patience with the reserved Margo stretch?

And then there's Emma, the tween. I have tween boys, and I wondered what it would be like to have a daughter.

I've read some of your other stories and they all seem to have very independent women whose walls are broken down by the right man. What about this type of character appeals to you?

[image error]ZM: Lol – whenever I try to set out to write a different kind of heroine, she always morphs into this kind of character. There's a certain layer of darkness too that pervades my 'people'.

I guess it's about a woman's fulfillment. I grew up in an Indian-origin culture, where the greatest value is placed on a woman becoming a wife and then asap, a mother. But I also grew up in a time when girls are encouraged to become more than just wives and mothers – there's a balance to find between these two extremes in the society I grew in. For instance, my mother's dream was that I make a 'good' marriage; my dad's dream was to see me having a fulfilling career. I had to juggle between these two extremes to find my place.

And I suppose all women today face this kind of struggle too. Can women have it all – love, career, kids, self-actualisation? Or do they have to choose – some or the other, but not all of them? I'm also a hopeless romantic – to me, there's nothing quite like finding that 'right' person to be your other half. When you don't have him, you might not miss him; you don't need him to be fulfilled. But if you do find him, he makes a huge difference in your world. The right man helps a woman reach her full, true potential – with him by her side, she can strive to have it all, and get it all too. I'm for women, but not a hard-core feminist. The right man does make a difference, though a woman can make it to the top on her own. Love, romance, finding "the one" – that's a fantasy we cling to, and something that can happen in reality too.

Being mothers, we both know how kids can change our lives instantly. Can you give us a hint as to what Margo Nolan goes through when Emma becomes a permanent part of her life?

[image error]ZM: Lol. Well, for starters, she's not used to tantrums and mood swings around her. Margo's world is rational, clinical, and runs like clockwork. Suddenly she has to juggle a moody tween, impose discipline, figure out what's going on behind her back when she finds Emma texting boys on her cell phone – who knew being a mother meant all that? To Margo, parenting means PTA meetings and other such staid considerations; putting food on the table – and can a growing tween subsist on frozen food, Margo's usual fare? And suddenly too, her time is no longer her own. Her schedule will have to revolve around Emma, and how on earth will she reconcile that to the fact that as a forensic pathologist, she'll get called to crime scenes at any hour of day and night, without prior notice?

Margo's world gets thrown upside down and back around again, and the biggest question remains in her mind – will I be a good mother? Do I even know how to do that? These are questions all mothers ask themselves, but for someone who needs proof to guide every decision, what proof does she have that she's doing a good job with the girl? How can she trust her gut and instinct, when emotion is something that does not constitute tangible proof?

Are there any movie/television stars who influenced the characters in Calling Home?

ZM: Definitely! I always work with an 'image/physical template' in my mind – helps me to keep my descriptions constant and picture the people in my mind when I'm writing.

[image error]For Jamie, I saw him as actor Jared Padalecki, from Supernatural. I'm a huge Supernatural fan, and I admit it, on Team Sam all the way. I just knew the cute Jared would be cast into a hero of mine someday, and when I imagined the character of Jamie, I immediately saw him. Like Jared/Sam, Jamie is twenty-nine, and very tall and big, plus he's also a casual clothes type of bloke. He's got that silent presence that I needed Jamie to project, that subtle strength that comes from patience and maturity beyond his actual years. And yes, he's hunky too.

[image error]Margo I saw as actress Francie Swift. At first glance, she seems cold, aloof, a blonde beauty but totally uptight. But look closer and you see delicate vulnerability in her features, in the guarded look. She embodied how I saw Margo completely – mature but not 'old', definitely not a simpering miss, professional and distant, but with a beating heart underneath if only someone would look closer.

Emma was actress Conchita Campbell, and Robbie Barnes (won't spoil the surprise as to who he is *grin*) I saw as actor Rob Estes.

How did you get started in your writing career?

ZM: I've always loved to tell stories – I remember creating elaborate scenarios for Barbie and Ken when I was eight. Then when I watched Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Eastenders with my mum, then later on soaps like The Bold & The Beautiful and The Young & The Restless, I would always imagine alternative story twists and endings. In school, I favored story-writing essays in my language classes. But I thought my career would be in corporate. After high school, I got a job with a big company and also started my degree.

Then it took a minor car accident when one of the vertebras in my spine got crushed, and I had to have physical therapy for months, combined with a totally fetid atmosphere of back-stabbing and one-upmanship at work – I quit my job, because the face I saw of corporate, I didn't like at all. At around the same time, I got married and soon after, my son was born. Didn't have time to settle before breast cancer came knocking on my door – and that's when I decided that the dream of 'one day I'll be a writer' starts now, that one day happens when we want it to happen.

I put fingers to keyboard during those long, insomnia and stress/worry-filled nights of chemotherapy treatments and radiation therapy moments to good use and wrote my first story. That was six and a half years ago, and I haven't looked back. Writing is what I always wanted to do and I had found my calling. There's always a silver lining to every cloud, and for me, cancer showed me I could write and get my work published.

Incidentally, the cancer came back, last year in fact, around this very date. Another hoop of treatments again – and I had my qwerty phone with me every day at the hospital. Two-thirds of Calling Home was written in the waiting room of the hospital here, while I waited for my turn for radiation therapy during five consecutive weeks.

I wish your start had happened some other way, but I'm glad you are writing such fabulous stories. What other titles do you have published?

ZM: I used to write under two other pen names in the past; had three novels published as such. I've now recovered the rights to these books and they're no longer in circulation.

As Zee Monodee, I have the first in a three-book romantic suspense/espionage series out. The book is titled Walking The Edge (Corpus Brides: Book One). It's out with Noble Romance Publishing, who is also the one bringing Calling Home out.

What are you working on now?

ZM: I just completed the draft of Book 2 in the Corpus Brides series, titled Before The Morning.  I've started Book 2 of the Destiny's Child series, and will be going back to it next month, or as soon as I polish Before The Morning and send it off to my editor.

That second Destiny's Child story is titled Glory Days, and finds a couple reuniting nineteen years after they were teenage lovers. The hero doesn't know the heroine had a child and gave her up for adoption. Today, their daughter has died… and left a premature baby behind. It's up to them to care for this child, but can they when the past and the loss of their own daughter hangs so much between them?

Oh, I can't wait! What author(s) have influenced your writing style?

ZM: I'd have to say British author Jill Mansell. She's one of my favourite authors, and her books are always filled with twists and turns that you totally don't see coming. You start with a premise and a set of characters; when you reach the end, you can bet everything is completely different for everyone, and the journey was a rollercoaster romp.

I like to have that kind of ups and downs in my stories, take unexpected turns in the road and surprise the reader. Well, I hope my readers will be surprised. I read a lot of British authors, and characterization is more prominent than plot in their writings. I follow that path too.

The strong heroines – I'm inspired by authors like Megan Hart and Victoria Dahl (both of whose work I also love). Megan Hart has immense depth layered into her characterization and plots, and Victoria Dahl always delivers a good time in her writing.

Quickies

Favorite romance book/series: The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

Favorite song: Someone Like You by Adele

Favorite movie: Love Actually

Favorite drink: Ice-cold Mountain Dew

Favorite time of day: Night time, when everyone's asleep and it's totally quiet

Favorite way to relax: Sing along to Abba tunes

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

ZM: That I hope the people reading this will take a chance on me and my books? Seriously, I'd tell people to go for their dreams. As long as no one's gonna get hurt, what are you waiting for? Someday/One day is right now – live your life to the fullest and make the most of it. Have no regrets.

I couldn't agree more. Where can my readers find you?

ZM: At my blog http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com

I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, & Goodreads as Zee Monodee.

They can also drop me an email anytime at zeemonodee@hotmail.com

I love making friends and meeting new people, so I hope they won't be shy or hesitate to get in touch.

Where can my readers find your books?

At the Noble Romance Publishing website/store, and on Amazon and B&N.

Thank you so much, Zee, for joining us today! I wish you all the best with this release and the many others that I look forward to reading.

ZM: Thanks again for having me over, Jessica. You've been a total darling, and I loved your questions, had a blast. *hugs*