CAROL ANN: Hi! **waving at audience** It’s Thursday and another wonderful audience to welcome my guest interviewee for the day. I have to tell you how much fun it’s been to interview all these authors since the first of the year. There are a lot more to come over the rest of the year. I’ll be taking a few weeks off for vacation here and there, but I have a different author lined up for most Thursdays through August and part of September.
**applause**
CAROL ANN: Okay, first an announce of my own. Tomorrow my short story THE FADED PHOTOGRAPH will be launching at The Wild Rose Press. I’m very excited about this one. It’s not your typical romance. This one is written in the male point of view. It’s about a forty-nine year old widower who has been living a secluded life for several years after the death of his beloved wife. His only child, a daughter, has moved to California and she keeps prodding her father to sell the old homestead and move west. Then he receives a phone call that “rocks” him out of his sedentary life. He’s going to be a grandfather. Life has just thrown him a lemon, for now his daughter is more convinced that he needs to move to California. James Carter has other plans though. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens when he decides to try and find a woman in a faded photograph—his first love.
**applause, applause** **Carol Ann bows** Thank you so much!!!
I have another big announcement which I’ll be making this weekend. So be sure to stop by.
Okay, now it’s time to welcome my guest for today. She’s a multi-published author with many books, short stories, and poems to her credit. Please put your hands together and give a blog studio welcome to…Gracie McKeever!!
**Audience gives a standing ovation**
**Gracie joins Carol Ann in the chairs on the stage**
CAROL ANN: Gracie, thank you so much for joining me in the studio today. I’ve been looking forward to interviewing you. And what’s even more exciting is you have a new release coming April 1st. Tell us about that, won’t you?
GRACIE: I’d love to. MANIFEST DESTINY is the third book in my The Matchmaker series. All books in the series are stand alone. Manifest Destiny involves a May/December, east meets west romance between a city-bred, through-and-through city slicker in hard-on-the-outside business woman, Evelyn Vega and dyed-in-the-wool cowboy and country boy, Jason Makepeace. This is the story of Angela Calminetti, mother of five, New Age practitioner and gifted psychic and telepath, who is proud of her family ties and does everything she can to make sure that all of her younger siblings are as happy in love and marriage as she is…whether they want her to or not.
Just-turned forty-three Evelyn Vega is beginning to wonder if her time for love and romance has past. No one who knows her would believe the heart of an idealist beats beneath the tough-as-nails, Wall Street broker exterior. No one, that is, except her oldest matchmaking sister Angela Calminetti who negotiates a deal with Freeborn ranch owner Montana Phoenix to get Evelyn and Freeborn's cow boss, Jason Makepeace together.
Orphan at eleven, divorced at twenty-one and lovelorn after Montana falls for Seth Phoenix, Jason has been as unlucky in love as he has in every other facet of his existence. The two things he wants most in life but that have eluded him for the last twelve years are a spread of his own and a woman to love and share the rest of his life with. This is all about to change when sexy city slicker Evelyn struts into his life.
CAROL ANN: Sounds like a wonderful book. Full of fun and lots of romance. Tell me what the word romance means to you.
GRACIE: Romance to me means dedication and hard-work. It's not all roses and romantic dinners and horse-drawn carriage rides. It's work; wanting to be around for the long haul with the person you love and care about; willing to sacrifice for that person and build a life together.
CAROL ANN: I’ve been to your site and you have lots of books to your credit. What was your first published work?
GRACIE: New Life Incognita, a New Age paranormal urban romance that's still available. It was my first cross-genre work involving a wiccan, psychic, reincarnation, sex-swtich and an interracial relationship. At the time, I didn't know about the term "cross-genre" or that there was even a market for this kind of work. I just knew what I liked to read and write and wrote the book of my heart.
CAROL ANN: Awesome. So many times we never get the chance to publish the book of the heart that all writers complete at some point in their career. Do you write full time or do you hold another job as well?
GRACIE: I have a full time job.
CAROL ANN: Sounds like you are very busy. What do you do for fun when you aren't writing?
GRACIE: **laughs** Read. Okay, okay, I do other things. I spend time with my family. I love going to movies for fun and inspiration. I love sports, both playing and watching on television, but deep-down I'm a couch potato and love television period. If I don't make myself work out everyday, I won't.
CAROL ANN: Wow, you work out, too? I get tired just thinking about your routine. All right. Another question. If you could meet anyone at all, living or dead, who would it be? Why? What would you talk about?
GRACIE: Oh, let me think. ** Gracie taps her pursed lips** I guess it would be Octavia E. Butler because her work has inspired me and my own work so much. We would, of course, talk about books, specifically world-building and character delineation. I would just basically like to pick her brain, hear about her life's experiences and see where her creativity comes from.
CAROL ANN: So when you are just sitting on the couch being a potato **winks at the audience** and you are feeling kind of down, who can make you laugh?
GRACIE: Well, maybe not on my couch, but when I’m feeling low, my younger brother, Jerome and my mom can make me smile.
CAROL ANN: I have another question that gets some fun answsers. Do you collect anything?
GRACIE: Besides books? That's not an "official" collection, I know, and unless you count being a pack-rat as a "collector" then I don't really collect anything, except dust maybe. **laugh**
CAROL ANN: Hey, I’m with you. I seem to collect a lot of dust as well. I interviewed Christine Columbus and she collects dust bunnies.
Okay, time is running out. Where does the time go? I have to ask you this. It’s a question I ask every author who comes to the studio. Do you believe the pen is mightier than the sword? Why?
GRACIE: Yes I believe the pen is mightier then the sword because when all is said and done, after men have died and blood has been spilled, words live on to incite and inspire future generations and "fight" another day.
CAROL ANN: **claps** Excellent answer. Gracie, once again, thank you so much for joining us today. Audience, here is where you can learn more about Gracie and her great books. Carol Ann leans over and whispers to Gracie…by the way I sent an invitation to be my friend on My Space last night.
http://www.graciecmckeever.com/
http://www.myspace.com/graciecmckeever
No comments:
Post a Comment