On Stage Again

I was seduced Free ARC for 50 Goodreads Thriller Re...

On Stage Again

The feature image shows a crowd in front of a stage with bands of lights shooting upward on the stage where a silhouetted person stands

Yes! I returned to the author stage on Mothers Day. I answered questions from avid readers and offered advice to writers working on their first novel. It was engaging, enthusiastic and… poignant.

I thank hostess Lisa Haselton for inviting me to be interviewed online in her writer’s chat room (www.writerschatroom.com). It’s humbling to be invited as a celebrity onto an interactive site that Writer’s Digest rated as one of the 101 best websites on the Internet for writers.

As an aside, when I decided to write my first thriller I faithfully read Writer’s Digest and applied and extended excellent advice that I found in that magazine. Apparently, some of it worked well. My first thriller won an award for best new fiction.

Back to the Q&A session: it was really fun even though I couldn’t see the attendees like during a bookstore event. I wanted to quickly answer each question from the many online members. That forced me to focus, think, type a short succinct answer, and where possible tie it into an earlier one. Typing fast led to misspellings. I apologized but some may have walked away thinking I am dyslexic or the only reason my stories are entertaining is because I have a really good editor.

However, I did well enough to be invited back by the hostess when my 4th thriller is released in December ( preview it here ). Plus, I made some sales.

Yippee, I can sell books!

So why was it poignant? During the Q&A an attendee shared that she was also a foster child, as I am, as mentioned in my biography. That led to some questions about families and their impact on children and on writers. So I took the opportunity to share the dedication I have in my first thriller, Gold Lust. Here it is:

This book is dedicated to my two mothers.

My birth mother, Elizabeth Delight Mitchell, was mentally ill and institutionalized for most of my childhood. Nevertheless, she proved to be a far better mother than some women who did not suffer the limitations that she fought each day. My mom taught me to read and to love to learn, which gave me the skills to eventually leave poverty behind and become a contributor to society. My foster mother, Hilda E. Hoseney, nurtured me through high school, helping me to heal from a difficult time in my life.

I will never be able to repay these two women for all that they did for me.

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