Mom got TAGGED...

Last year I had the privilege of listening to Bob Mayer speak about e-publishing and self-publishing. One of the things he mentioned was that most writers are INFJ - which is the Myers-Briggs personality type that includes people whose primary mode of living is focused internally, an introvert, or, as I like to label it - a hermit. So... I thought it was interesting that some enterprising author created this tag game - to help us pull ourselves out of our writing caves and wave "hello" to the rest of the world. 


I was honored and delighted to have been tagged by the very creative Kat Daughtry - you can check out her blog and her Amazon page.

Now... on to the questions:

Terri, what are you working on right now? I'm in the middle of Book 13 in the Mary O'Reilly series. This time her sleuthing takes her to Galena, Illinois (which is where we met her in Book 1.) I'm having a great time doing research on this book - a couple trips to Galena to check out their history and their beautiful town. I'm also nearly done with a romance. I put it aside to get book 13 started - but I'll be back to it as soon as Mary's book is done. I'm also working on Sean's story - and I REALLY LIKE IT. It's very different than Mary's stories, but I hope you fall in love with the new characters you're going to meet. I have some new ideas for other stories - but they are going to have to wait for now. 


How do your stories differ from others in it's genre? My Mary O'Reilly stories are about a woman (Former Chicago Cop) who can see and communicate with ghosts. I think that's a little different than most of the popular paranormal genre because there is a lot out there about vampires, werewolves and zombies - but not too much about ghosts. My books are character driven - they are staged in small town America and my secondary character are just as important as my protagonist. My stories have been written to be inter-generational; you can read them and lend them to your mother and your teen-aged daughter. The romance is sweet, the humor is clean and the language is PG. 

How does the writing process work? My writing is really organic. I come up with some basic "events" that I know must happen in the book and then I start writing. Occasionally, I'll stop and do a rough outline - one or two sentences for each chapter - but I don't outline more than that because I know it will be a waste of time, because I won't follow it. (Really, it;s not my fault- my characters don't let me follow it!) I write in the morning, in the afternoon and in the middle of the night - whenever the muse hits me. I'm easily distracted - which is REALLY bad - so I need to shut myself away from the world and give myself a deadline in order to finish my books.

                                     Now, the fun part. TAG!
Here are three authors I think you MUST know and I want to know the behind the scenes of their books. Click, like, follow, and buy books from these authors and soon, I hope to see a similar blog post from each of them.  

Ophelia Julian - I met Ophelia through a mutual friend when Ophelia was researching e-books. Ophelia was already a traditionally-published author, but she was interested in the advantage of self-publishing and e-books. We met over a lunch of fried chicken and diet sodas and talked for several hours about e-books. Now, Ophelia's series - Bridgeton Park Cemetery - are on of my favorite spooky stories. You can learn more about Ophelia here at here Amazon Page or here on her blog.  

Donnie Light - I actually met Donnie through Ophelia. (It's funny how that works in this little community of authors.) Donnie writes horror and thriller novels, and he had a wicked sense of humor. His Ripper's Revenge series features a zombie - killing Jack the Ripper, how cool is that? You can learn more about Donnie at his Website or his Amazon page.

Scarlette D'Noire - Scarlette and I met two years ago when she wrote an amazing review about the Mary O'Reilly series on her blog and then followed up with a message through my Facebook page. She was friendly, delightful and filled with all kinds of information about vampires. Recently, Scarlette offered me the unique opportunity to be part of an anthology about vampires, which was a lot of fun. Now the anthology has been nominated for the Silver Falchion Award for Best Anthology at Killer Nashville! Scarlette is an expert on everything vampire and spends a lot of time encouraging and promoting other authors. She is a gracious and creative author. You can learn more about Scarlette on her author's page on Amazon or on her blog.