2. Brent Nichols
3. S. Arthur Martin
4. Carolyn J. Rose
5. Anne Holly
6. David M. Brown
Tomorrow, the Top Six from the Same Six Awards continue, so stop on by!
Showing posts with label Carolyn J. Rose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carolyn J. Rose. Show all posts
Friday, December 23, 2011
Top Six of the Same Six - 2011 - Most Popular
Top 10 lists are overrated! To celebrate the end of a great year, I'll be featuring some quick posts over the next couple of days to recount some of the "Best of" my interview series The Same Six Questions. Today's Top Six from the Same Six includes the "winners" of the popularity contest. The following six interviews received the most attention (hits/pageviews) this year. Winners are listed in no particular order. Be sure to give these interviews a look and see what all the fuss was about:
1. Ty Johnston
2. Brent Nichols
3. S. Arthur Martin
4. Carolyn J. Rose
5. Anne Holly
6. David M. Brown
Tomorrow, the Top Six from the Same Six Awards continue, so stop on by!
2. Brent Nichols
3. S. Arthur Martin
4. Carolyn J. Rose
5. Anne Holly
6. David M. Brown
Tomorrow, the Top Six from the Same Six Awards continue, so stop on by!
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Same Six Questions - Mike Nettleton
Welcome back to The Same Six Questions! Not to be outdone by his better half, author Mike Nettleton (husband of and co-conspirator with Carolyn J. Rose) has joined us today to give us his version of the answers. Do you think they fight over serial commas? Anyway, welcome Mike!
Thanks, Andy! I grew up in a then-tiny coastal town Bandon, Oregon and moved to Grants Pass my sophomore year. I attended Southern Oregon College in Ashland for five years and accumulated enough credits to graduate. Unfortunately, I'd taken to playing course catalogue roulette and didn't secure a degree before discovering people would pay me to talk on the radio. In 43 years, I appeared on more than twenty stations in Oregon, Northern California and New Mexico. The final sixteen years were spent at 1190 KEX and its sister stations in the Clear Channel Portland cluster. I also ran an audio production studio/creative house in Albuquerque for five years. Rob, my forty-year-old son from my first marriage works for Intel and makes far more money than I ever did. Which is a good thing. I have way too many hobbies, including, golf, tournament poker, pocket billiards, backgammon, travel and reading. Since retiring in January of 2011, I've begun acting again, appearing as Gonzalo in the Shakespeare in the Park production of The Tempest at Lovejoy Fountain Park. As soon as my hambone hormone kicks in again, I'll probably audition for another play.
The Same Six Questions
1. Have you published a book yet?
My wife Carolyn J. Rose and I have co-authored five books including The Hard Karma Shuffle and The Crushed Velvet Miasma mysteries featuring the tie-died one name detective Paladin behind the backdrop of Portland's counter-culture and The Big Grabowski and Sometimes A Great Commotion featuring investigative reporter Molly Donovan and a cast of quirky, funny and sometimes downright bizarre local characters in the fictional Oregon coastal village, Devil's Harbor. The young adult fantasy The Hermit of Humbug Mountain involves brother-sister runaways who are drawn into the ultimate battle of good versus evil deep in the heart of an Oregon Coastal mountain. My solo hard-boiled detective novel Shotgun Start has been released by Krill Press. Neal Egan, a cop who loses his badge after blind rage leads him to beat down his wife's lover has turned to the only talent he possesses to keep money coming in--that of a golf hustler who fleeces wealthy country club types with delusions of golf adequacy. When his ex-wife Desiree Diaz becomes the prime suspect in the shotgun slaying of her washed-up movie star lover, Neal is recruited by her wealthy father to help clear her and is drawn into a web of the methamphetamine trade, internet pornography, brutal bikers and New Mexico's version of organized crime. All of the books are available as Kindles and Nooks or as paperbacks.
2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
It was never a conscious decision (I want to be a writer and that's that!). Instead, there was an evolution. My parents gave me a portable manual Smith Corona typewriter for a high school graduation present. Since my handwriting was (and is) totally illegible this was a very practical gift. Initially, I wrote poetry (OMG is it mawkish and ugly) and then started noodling short stories for a college class. My involvement in radio saw me writing commercials, public service announcements, promos and longer form scripts. I wrote radio plays, short stories and even a screenplay. After meeting my wife and fellow writer Carolyn Rose in the debris of my first marriage exploding, I found a kindred spirit and we got involved in writer's groups in Eugene, Oregon. After winning the Pacific Northwest Writer's award blue ribbon for my short stories in the mid-nineties, Carolyn and I finally goaded each other into finishing our first joint novel, The Hard Karma Shuffle. Although we both had to continue our day jobs, we both decided writing fiction would be a part of our lives from then on.
3. What was your first lengthy piece of fiction (say, >1000 words)? What wasit about? When did you write it? Do you still have it?
In 1989 or so, I wrote a longish short story called The Oldest Living Flower Child or something like that. It was about anancient guy who'd been kept alive for research purposes for several hundred years through miraculous advances in medical technology including the replacement of nearly every organ in his body except his brain. He's only semi-lucid and flashes back to the sixties a lot including fragments of performances by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin he may or may not have seen. The climax of the story has him guided to the roof of the hospital by a conspiratorial nurse and tractor-beamed into the belly of an enormous UFO. This story was written on the first computer Carolyn and I owned, an Apple 3C, which had no hard drive and stored data on 5-inch floppies. I believe I still have acopy on a roll of computer paper with perforations on both sides from the old-style printers. Some day, when I'm in serious writer avoidance mode, I should go back and look at it. But I'd have to fight the instinct most writers have to rewrite everything they've ever written.
4. When was your first indication, "I can do this (write)"?
In Eugene, I was in a high-quality writer's group, led by the editor and book doctor Elizabeth Lyon. Although supportive, they pulled no punches in telling you why something you wrote wasn't working for them. I'd cranked out a short story called Take It Like A Man, the night before one of our sessions. It was told from the point of view of a kid waiting to receive a vaccination--or at least that's what you think is happening. As it turns out, something entirely different is going on. As was my custom, I'd spewed the story onto the page and time being short had very little chance to proofread or edit it. To my amazement, after I read the story for group, it was met with almost total silence. I couldn't tell if they were stunned, amazed, offended or nauseated by it. Finally, Elizabethjust said, wow! That's really powerful. Other than some minor structural suggestions, there was no criticism of it. Later, I entered it in the Northwest Writer's Conference Short Story competition. I had no expectations, because I always viewed the story as the strange mutant child of my imagination. It won first place. I felt honored, validated and totally mystified by where the story had come from. The year after, my story SuckerPunch which I'd worked much harder on and rewritten numerous time, won again.
5. If you could meet oneof your characters in real life, which would it be?
I'd love to attend a potluck supper with the residents of Devil's Harbor, Oregon, where The Big Grabowski and Sometimes A Great Commotion are set. I'm sure I'd laugh a lot, and who knows, if I had enough to drink, I might even take off my shirt and get into a belly-bucking competition with the Mango Marauder. But, if I had to boil it down the one character, I'd have to say it would be Rory Monroe. Rory is the best friend, roommate and then romantic interest of Neal Egan, the ex-cop golf hustler who provides the point-of-view for Shotgun Start. She'sattractive, smart, funny and a talented artist. Although warm-hearted and generous, she has a very low threshold for pretensions, self delusion and disloyalty. The one serious relationship she had broke up just prior to marriage when "he decided I was prone to say f*** way too much." In many ways, she reminds me of my wife, Carolyn. In fact, most of my characters are amalgamations of people I've known. I borrow a speech pattern from one person, a cleft of the chin and barrel chest from another and cheap cigarillo smoking from a third and voila, whole new character emerges.
6. It's a dark and stormy night...you're alone in the house...there's a knockat the door...you open it, look out, and proceed to scream like a little girl.What's on the doorstep?
My doppelganger. Except it would be me as I look when I first peer into the mirror in the morning before I've had a chance to splash water on my face and suck up some coffee. What could be scarier, after all, than coming face with yourself? My ex-wife could probably cause the same reaction.
_____________________________
Hmmm...your answer to #6 sounds like a really good book I know of. ;) thanks for sharing, Mike! Find out more about Mike and his books and read a sample chapter at deadlyduomysteries.com or their blog. You can also find the deadly duo on Facebook.
Come back this holiday weekend when my guest will be Toni Dwiggins!
Thanks, Andy! I grew up in a then-tiny coastal town Bandon, Oregon and moved to Grants Pass my sophomore year. I attended Southern Oregon College in Ashland for five years and accumulated enough credits to graduate. Unfortunately, I'd taken to playing course catalogue roulette and didn't secure a degree before discovering people would pay me to talk on the radio. In 43 years, I appeared on more than twenty stations in Oregon, Northern California and New Mexico. The final sixteen years were spent at 1190 KEX and its sister stations in the Clear Channel Portland cluster. I also ran an audio production studio/creative house in Albuquerque for five years. Rob, my forty-year-old son from my first marriage works for Intel and makes far more money than I ever did. Which is a good thing. I have way too many hobbies, including, golf, tournament poker, pocket billiards, backgammon, travel and reading. Since retiring in January of 2011, I've begun acting again, appearing as Gonzalo in the Shakespeare in the Park production of The Tempest at Lovejoy Fountain Park. As soon as my hambone hormone kicks in again, I'll probably audition for another play.
The Same Six Questions
1. Have you published a book yet?
2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
It was never a conscious decision (I want to be a writer and that's that!). Instead, there was an evolution. My parents gave me a portable manual Smith Corona typewriter for a high school graduation present. Since my handwriting was (and is) totally illegible this was a very practical gift. Initially, I wrote poetry (OMG is it mawkish and ugly) and then started noodling short stories for a college class. My involvement in radio saw me writing commercials, public service announcements, promos and longer form scripts. I wrote radio plays, short stories and even a screenplay. After meeting my wife and fellow writer Carolyn Rose in the debris of my first marriage exploding, I found a kindred spirit and we got involved in writer's groups in Eugene, Oregon. After winning the Pacific Northwest Writer's award blue ribbon for my short stories in the mid-nineties, Carolyn and I finally goaded each other into finishing our first joint novel, The Hard Karma Shuffle. Although we both had to continue our day jobs, we both decided writing fiction would be a part of our lives from then on.
3. What was your first lengthy piece of fiction (say, >1000 words)? What wasit about? When did you write it? Do you still have it?
In 1989 or so, I wrote a longish short story called The Oldest Living Flower Child or something like that. It was about anancient guy who'd been kept alive for research purposes for several hundred years through miraculous advances in medical technology including the replacement of nearly every organ in his body except his brain. He's only semi-lucid and flashes back to the sixties a lot including fragments of performances by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin he may or may not have seen. The climax of the story has him guided to the roof of the hospital by a conspiratorial nurse and tractor-beamed into the belly of an enormous UFO. This story was written on the first computer Carolyn and I owned, an Apple 3C, which had no hard drive and stored data on 5-inch floppies. I believe I still have acopy on a roll of computer paper with perforations on both sides from the old-style printers. Some day, when I'm in serious writer avoidance mode, I should go back and look at it. But I'd have to fight the instinct most writers have to rewrite everything they've ever written.
4. When was your first indication, "I can do this (write)"?
In Eugene, I was in a high-quality writer's group, led by the editor and book doctor Elizabeth Lyon. Although supportive, they pulled no punches in telling you why something you wrote wasn't working for them. I'd cranked out a short story called Take It Like A Man, the night before one of our sessions. It was told from the point of view of a kid waiting to receive a vaccination--or at least that's what you think is happening. As it turns out, something entirely different is going on. As was my custom, I'd spewed the story onto the page and time being short had very little chance to proofread or edit it. To my amazement, after I read the story for group, it was met with almost total silence. I couldn't tell if they were stunned, amazed, offended or nauseated by it. Finally, Elizabethjust said, wow! That's really powerful. Other than some minor structural suggestions, there was no criticism of it. Later, I entered it in the Northwest Writer's Conference Short Story competition. I had no expectations, because I always viewed the story as the strange mutant child of my imagination. It won first place. I felt honored, validated and totally mystified by where the story had come from. The year after, my story SuckerPunch which I'd worked much harder on and rewritten numerous time, won again.
5. If you could meet oneof your characters in real life, which would it be?
I'd love to attend a potluck supper with the residents of Devil's Harbor, Oregon, where The Big Grabowski and Sometimes A Great Commotion are set. I'm sure I'd laugh a lot, and who knows, if I had enough to drink, I might even take off my shirt and get into a belly-bucking competition with the Mango Marauder. But, if I had to boil it down the one character, I'd have to say it would be Rory Monroe. Rory is the best friend, roommate and then romantic interest of Neal Egan, the ex-cop golf hustler who provides the point-of-view for Shotgun Start. She'sattractive, smart, funny and a talented artist. Although warm-hearted and generous, she has a very low threshold for pretensions, self delusion and disloyalty. The one serious relationship she had broke up just prior to marriage when "he decided I was prone to say f*** way too much." In many ways, she reminds me of my wife, Carolyn. In fact, most of my characters are amalgamations of people I've known. I borrow a speech pattern from one person, a cleft of the chin and barrel chest from another and cheap cigarillo smoking from a third and voila, whole new character emerges.
6. It's a dark and stormy night...you're alone in the house...there's a knockat the door...you open it, look out, and proceed to scream like a little girl.What's on the doorstep?
My doppelganger. Except it would be me as I look when I first peer into the mirror in the morning before I've had a chance to splash water on my face and suck up some coffee. What could be scarier, after all, than coming face with yourself? My ex-wife could probably cause the same reaction.
_____________________________
Hmmm...your answer to #6 sounds like a really good book I know of. ;) thanks for sharing, Mike! Find out more about Mike and his books and read a sample chapter at deadlyduomysteries.com or their blog. You can also find the deadly duo on Facebook.
Come back this holiday weekend when my guest will be Toni Dwiggins!
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Same Six Questions - Carolyn J. Rose
Well, after a brief layoff, The Same Six Questions are back and ready and raring to go. Please give a warm Welcome to author Carolyn J. Rose!
I’ve lived in 6 states and 9 towns or cities, moving steadily west from upstate New York to my present home in Vancouver, Washington. When I’m not writing, I work part-time as a substitute teacher, a job one notch less hazardous than that of crash-test dummy. I’m married to Mike Nettleton, who has also co-authored a number of my books and we live with two small dogs, Bubba and Max, who strive every day to bend us to their will. My hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking.
The Same Six Questions
1. Have you published a book yet?
I recently published my 11th book and second indie, skipping outside the mystery-suspense genre of Hemlock Lake and An Uncertain Refuge to write a “love letter” to my youth and the mountains where I lived. A Place of Forgetting, set in 1966, begins in the Catskill Mountains and concludes in the hills of Arkansas.
The story revolves around 19-year-old Liz Roark whose dreams turn to dust when a girl known only as April arrives carrying a duffel bag of bright clothing and an engagement ring from Liz’s childhood sweetheart Ben Hoyt, a Marine missing in action in Vietnam.
Grieving for Ben and for her loss, Liz flees small-town sympathy and humiliation, heading for Chicago to study journalism. But April hijacks the journey, steering them to a remote Arkansas farm and a psychic she hopes will validate her yearning for fame and fortune.
Ripped off and stranded on the psychic’s mountaintop with only a few dollars and a copy of Walden, Liz learns powerful lessons about trust, betrayal, deception, determination, love, and whether the psychic’s vision of tragedy must come to pass.
A Place of Forgetting is available in Kindle and print formats through Amazon, and also from Barnes & Noble.
2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
As a kid, I made up stories for my younger cousins. They were a terrific audience, probably because there were no cell phones, video games, or computers back then. We got only two TV channels and the colors on the screen were black, white, gray, and snow. I, however, was live and in living color. As an added bonus, no one had to climb up on the roof and adjust my antenna.
At the age of 16, I sold a poem to Seventeen. My career was launched! Unfortunately, due to the need to make a living, that career didn’t leave the vicinity of the dock for many years.
Yes, I wrote, but it was for television newscasts and promotional spots—pieces that had to be written well, written fast, and matched with video. I learned to scoff at deadlines, stress, and coffee that wasn’t cold in my cup. Eventually, all of that paid off.
3. What was your first lengthy piece of fiction (say, >1000 words)? What was it about? When did you write it? Do you still have it?
In the 1990s, I wrote several short stories for Murderous Intent, a magazine now defunct. The first was about a malicious landlady who snooped and meddled and made her tenants so miserable they joined together to kill her. I still have copies of all the stories I published, but my first novel has long since been tossed.
It was dreadful in many ways—the characters spent way too much time thinking and then talking about their thoughts or dreams, the description was mundane and filled with minutiae, and if there was a fresh simile or metaphor in those 300 pages, it would have been lonely. Eventually I recycled the paper and later I recycled facets of the plot. The ideas were good, but the execution, well, did I mention that mundane description?
4. When was your first indication, "I can do this (write)"?
I guess I always thought I could write, but when Consulted to Death was published by Deadly Alibi Press and I held it in my hands and ran my fingers over the slick cover, I knew that I would write. Each book is another brick in the foundation for the ones to come, and each book is like a plant that grows and seeds more.
I still love and am inspired by the feel of a new cover and the riffle of pages. But now I love my Kindle, too. Seeing where readers have highlighted phrases and sentences makes me want to get back to the computer and create phrases more that they can connect with.
5. If you could meet one of your characters in real life, which would it be?
I would love to have a beer (or several) with Jefferson Longyear from Hemlock Lake and the sequel, Through a Yellow Wood, which I’ll release next year.
Jefferson spent 25 years in the land of the lost, wandering the country, trying to remember who he was. He’s a man burdened both by what he remembers and what he doesn’t. He has a strong sense of honor and justice and he does what needs to be done without spending a lot of time agonizing over the decision or the outcome.
I guess you could say I’m attracted to men of action with a code of honor—guys like Jack Reacher and Bob Lee Swagger and Virgil Flowers.
6. It's a dark and stormy night...you're alone in the house...there's a knock at the door...you open it, look out, and proceed to scream like a little girl. What's on the doorstep?
It’s that very short string of numbers on the balance line of my checkbook.
____________________________
Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Carolyn! To find out more about Carolyn and her writing, be sure to check out her Amazon Author Page, Web site, blog. I hope you'll stop back on Monday, when my guest will be Mike Nettleton. See you then!
I’ve lived in 6 states and 9 towns or cities, moving steadily west from upstate New York to my present home in Vancouver, Washington. When I’m not writing, I work part-time as a substitute teacher, a job one notch less hazardous than that of crash-test dummy. I’m married to Mike Nettleton, who has also co-authored a number of my books and we live with two small dogs, Bubba and Max, who strive every day to bend us to their will. My hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking.
The Same Six Questions
1. Have you published a book yet?
The story revolves around 19-year-old Liz Roark whose dreams turn to dust when a girl known only as April arrives carrying a duffel bag of bright clothing and an engagement ring from Liz’s childhood sweetheart Ben Hoyt, a Marine missing in action in Vietnam.
Grieving for Ben and for her loss, Liz flees small-town sympathy and humiliation, heading for Chicago to study journalism. But April hijacks the journey, steering them to a remote Arkansas farm and a psychic she hopes will validate her yearning for fame and fortune.
Ripped off and stranded on the psychic’s mountaintop with only a few dollars and a copy of Walden, Liz learns powerful lessons about trust, betrayal, deception, determination, love, and whether the psychic’s vision of tragedy must come to pass.
A Place of Forgetting is available in Kindle and print formats through Amazon, and also from Barnes & Noble.
2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
As a kid, I made up stories for my younger cousins. They were a terrific audience, probably because there were no cell phones, video games, or computers back then. We got only two TV channels and the colors on the screen were black, white, gray, and snow. I, however, was live and in living color. As an added bonus, no one had to climb up on the roof and adjust my antenna.
At the age of 16, I sold a poem to Seventeen. My career was launched! Unfortunately, due to the need to make a living, that career didn’t leave the vicinity of the dock for many years.
Yes, I wrote, but it was for television newscasts and promotional spots—pieces that had to be written well, written fast, and matched with video. I learned to scoff at deadlines, stress, and coffee that wasn’t cold in my cup. Eventually, all of that paid off.
3. What was your first lengthy piece of fiction (say, >1000 words)? What was it about? When did you write it? Do you still have it?
In the 1990s, I wrote several short stories for Murderous Intent, a magazine now defunct. The first was about a malicious landlady who snooped and meddled and made her tenants so miserable they joined together to kill her. I still have copies of all the stories I published, but my first novel has long since been tossed.
It was dreadful in many ways—the characters spent way too much time thinking and then talking about their thoughts or dreams, the description was mundane and filled with minutiae, and if there was a fresh simile or metaphor in those 300 pages, it would have been lonely. Eventually I recycled the paper and later I recycled facets of the plot. The ideas were good, but the execution, well, did I mention that mundane description?
4. When was your first indication, "I can do this (write)"?
I guess I always thought I could write, but when Consulted to Death was published by Deadly Alibi Press and I held it in my hands and ran my fingers over the slick cover, I knew that I would write. Each book is another brick in the foundation for the ones to come, and each book is like a plant that grows and seeds more.
I still love and am inspired by the feel of a new cover and the riffle of pages. But now I love my Kindle, too. Seeing where readers have highlighted phrases and sentences makes me want to get back to the computer and create phrases more that they can connect with.
5. If you could meet one of your characters in real life, which would it be?
I would love to have a beer (or several) with Jefferson Longyear from Hemlock Lake and the sequel, Through a Yellow Wood, which I’ll release next year.
Jefferson spent 25 years in the land of the lost, wandering the country, trying to remember who he was. He’s a man burdened both by what he remembers and what he doesn’t. He has a strong sense of honor and justice and he does what needs to be done without spending a lot of time agonizing over the decision or the outcome.
I guess you could say I’m attracted to men of action with a code of honor—guys like Jack Reacher and Bob Lee Swagger and Virgil Flowers.
6. It's a dark and stormy night...you're alone in the house...there's a knock at the door...you open it, look out, and proceed to scream like a little girl. What's on the doorstep?
It’s that very short string of numbers on the balance line of my checkbook.
____________________________
Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Carolyn! To find out more about Carolyn and her writing, be sure to check out her Amazon Author Page, Web site, blog. I hope you'll stop back on Monday, when my guest will be Mike Nettleton. See you then!
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