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Author Interview: Martin Roy Hill

3/31/2016

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Meet Martin Roy Hill, Author of The Last Refuge
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BBB: Tell us about yourself.
 
MRH: Well, I'm one of those rare Southern California natives. I was born and grew up in the Los Angeles County community of Redondo Beach and, other than military service, lived in SoCal my entire life. I currently reside in San Diego. I started writing as a teenager, studied journalism in college, and worked in that field for some twenty years; including working as an investigative reporter for San Diego Magazine back in its heyday, and as editor of the San Diego Business Journal.
 
After that last gig, I decided to change careers. I went to work for the Navy as an analyst in combat medical operations. I've been a medic of one sort or another in the U.S. Coast Guard, the Navy Reserve, the San Diego Sheriff's wilderness search and rescue detail, and a couple of disaster response teams. Most recently, I was a medical service corps officer with a component of the California National Guard and trained combat medics for Iraq and Afghanistan. Then a couple years ago, I retrained as a military policeman and I now serve as executive officer of a state military police battalion – not a bad background for a writer of thrillers and mysteries, eh?

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BBB: What inspired your book The Last Refuge?
 
MRH: The Last Refuge is a sequel to an earlier novel, Empty Places. Both are mystery thrillers with a little social commentary about the greed and corruption seen in the 1980s and early 1990s. Today, that period is cynically called a golden age in America by certain political interests. But I was journalist covering that period in history. In fact, it was a time of great corruption and scandal – illegal wars in Latin America, secret government involvement in the cocaine trade, wasteful defense spending scandals, not to mention economic turmoil that resulted in what was then called the Great Recession. Then after the Cold War ended, there was further economic turmoil as the defense industries collapsed. I tried to capture all that in both books with a noir style. The title for The Last Refuge comes from Samuel Johnson's criticism of politicians who tried to hide their corruption behind a curtain of patriotic fervor: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
 
 
BBB: Tell us about your main character.
 
MRH: Peter Brandt made his first appearance in my mystery thriller Empty Places. After a failed marriage, Peter got a job with a news service covering the proxy wars in Central America during the 1980s, exposing him to the horrors and brutality of war and leaving him scarred both physically and emotionally.
 
Peter is world and war weary, sarcastic and sardonic, with more than a little PTSD. But he also has a finely honed sense of right and wrong. In Empty Places, when Peter learns his ex-wife – a woman he still loves – has been murdered and the local police are doing nothing to find the killer, he sets out to find the culprit himself despite the jeopardy it puts him in.
 
In my latest book, The Last Refuge, Peter has given up war reporting after covering the First Iraq War – Operation Desert Storm in 1991 – and now works as a freelance journalist in San Diego. He's hired to do a story on a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government and a local defense contractor by the widow of an American engineer killed by friendly fire during the war. When Peter discovers a cover up of the deadly incident, his digging uncovers a massive scandal involving greed, corruption, and government secrets.
 
BBB: What other books have you written?
 
MRH: Besides Empty Places and The Last Refuge, I have published three other books. Duty is a collection of previously published and new suspense short stories dealing mostly with military service. My next novel was The Killing Depths, a military mystery thriller dealing with a serial killer aboard the first U.S. attack submarine with a joint male and female crew. The last book I published was Eden, a sci-fi novella about a small unit of American soldiers in Iraq who stumble onto an ancient secret about the beginnings of mankind.
 
BBB: How can readers discover more about you and your work?
 
MRH: The easiest way to learn more about my work is to visit my website at www.martinroyhill.com, which not only features my books but also my blog about writing and books I've reviewed. While there, readers can also sign up for my monthly newsletter. You can also find me on Goodreads, Twitter (@MartinRoyHill), and Facebook (www.facebook.com/Martin.Roy.Hill), LinkedIn and Google+. 

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Author Interview: Kalynn Bayron

3/28/2016

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Meet Kalynn Bayron, Author of Six Points of Light Hook's Origin
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BBB: Tell us about yourself.

KB:
name is Kalynn Bayron and I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado with my husband and our 4 kids. I grew up in Anchorage Alaska. I’ve always been a creative person. In addition to writing, I love music. I’m a classically trained Soprano, and my favorite opera is Donizetti’s Lucia Di Lammermoor. I studied ballet for many years and was a student at the Oregon Ballet Theatre when I was younger. Six Points of Light:Hook’s Origin is my debut novel and is represented by Booktrope.

BBB: What inspired your book, Six Points of Light:Hook’s Origin?

KB
: I love origin stories. I love understanding where fairy tale characters come from. I’m a huge fan of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, which is what sparked the idea for Six Points of Light. When I saw Once Upon a time, the television show, I knew I had to write the story of a character that I’ve always been curious about. They had their version of Captain Hook, but I wanted to go back to the very beginning of Captain’s Hook’s life. And I wanted to tell the story from his point of view with Peter Pan as a supporting character.
So many “fairy tales” have ominous undertones and I have always been fascinated by that. I like stories that don’t go the way you thought they would. This is not the story of how James Cook becomes the Captain Hook we all know. It is the tale behind that flawed myth.


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BBB: Tell us about your main character.
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KB
: My main character is James Cook. He is fifteen when we first meet him and a permanent resident of St. Catherine’s orphanage. He is highly intelligent, soft spoken, and loyal to a fault. He is also quite sickly and so no one has taken the opportunity to adopt him. He is torn between his loyalty to Sister Maddie, his caretaker who loves him like a mother, and a young boy that he has taken under his wing…Peter. Over time James blossoms into a strong young man with a love of books and sailing. He faces many challenges that test his loyalties and his sanity. He is thrust into a world he didn’t even believe existed and is deeply affected by a crushing betrayal on Peter’s part. James struggles with his feelings of anger and resentment while trying to find a way to make a life for himself. Let’s just say that things don’t turn out the way he expects. In my story, the captain is not the villain we have him pegged to be. He is a complicated character with a slew of emotions that drive his actions. He is a human being who goes through so much in his young life that he cannot help but be changed by it. 
 
BBB: What are you currently working on?

KB:
I just finished the second book in the Six Points of Light series. It has taken me the better part of a year to finish the first draft and now I’m working on some revisions before I send it up to my editor. I’m also working on building my network of readers, fellow authors, and friends in the publishing world. 
 
BBB: How can readers discover more about you and your work?

KB:
I have a website www.kalynnbayron.com where you can follow my blog and get all the latest news and updates. I have a dedicated Facebook author page at www.facebook.com/kalynnbayron. I’m on Twitter @KalynnBayron and I’m on Goodreads too!

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Author Interview: Brittney Mulliner

3/9/2016

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Meet Brittney Mulliner, Author of Begin Again
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BBB: Tell us about yourself.

BM: I’m a born and raised California girl that is now living 700 miles from the beach. I recently graduated with a degree in Global Studies because I listened to the idea that you should study what you love. So after four long years of interesting classes I have a degree I’ll never put to practical use, but that’s just fine since I discovered my love of writing halfway through my senior year. Three of my favorite things are rice crispy treats, reading, and dogs. If I could have all three simultaneously my heart would explode.
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BBB: What inspired your book, Begin Again?

BM: I’ve been writing for almost two years. It all started with a crazy dream that I couldn’t get out of my head. Finally I wrote it down and it turned into a novel and then a series.

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BBB: Tell us about your main character.

BM: Aubrey, is a seventeen year old that overcomes her past instead of letting it define her. She makes new friends, meets lots of boys, and has to get used to living with her older brother. There’s drama, angst, romance, and a twist.

BBB: What other books have you written?

BM: The second book in the series, Live Again, is available now but is also getting re-released under my publisher, Booktrope, this spring. The final installment is currently in the works along with a few other titles.

BBB: How can readers discover more about you and your work?

BM: Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Brittney-Mulliner/e/B00P46A2PS/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brittneymulliner/
Website: http://brittneymulliner.com/
Twitter: @Britt_Mulliner
Instagram: BrittneyMulliner

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Author Interview: Lory La Selva Paduano

3/7/2016

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Meet Lory La Selva Paduano, Author of The Legacy of a Legend, The High Priestess, and Wonderland Series
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BBB: Tell us about yourself.

LLP:
I am a writer with an ancient soul ( above all else ). I’ve been in love with the “written word” for decades now. I’ve been married to the pages long ago, I was meant to decorate them with words, to add great purpose and deeper meaning of History mended with my own creative story telling. I know many hated History as a subject while in school, I always thought it was fun to bring my favorite subject to life, with my own views, my ideas, with amazing plot twists for the world to read, I can assure you my stories are grand adventures and not “text book” style at all!”. I’m just me… living my passion!

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BBB: What is the inspiration behind your books?

KLP: Inspiration for me comes in limited “increments” as I call them. My muse - manifests its self as a photograph at first, and usually a 3D one. I build a world from there on. I start with color first, characters that are relate able, descriptive settings, the purpose of their roles and so on. I strive to be better than the day before, television series, documentaries even, will cause the blockage in my mind ( at times ) to erupt and the molting lava will make its way to the pages as they should. My fourth book entitled ‘The High Priestess’ was challenging to write after my ‘Wonderland Series’, my first three-books-in one was written, I knew from that moment that pushing my boundaries was a must and stepping out of my comfort zone a little was the way to pursue exceptional writing.


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BBB: Tell us about your main character.

LLP:
Khafa ‘The High Priestess!’ What a woman she is! I keep saying ‘’she’s everything I’m not” but if you really think about it and others read up on her, not many of us are, or… we are, but modernized!? Whatever it is, she was designed to take on a powerful country and not always with the best of intentions, she’s a ‘’femme fatale” and I had so much fun writing about her as a “villain” some have said, and because her main objective was the art of survival! I think I’m well versed in those skills.


BBB: What other books have you written?

LLP:
 As I mentioned above, ‘Wonderland Series’ a book I brought back to life after decades of hiding in the deep crevices of my mind, as well as my fifth book ‘The Legacy of a Legend’.  


BBB: What do you think readers will find most appealing about your book?

LLP: 
The fact that the book is written in “narration style” told by a grandmother to her only granddaughter Elizabeth, who finds life in Egypt ( among other things ) is captivating. Grandma Anta is a likable character who tells a story of her ancestors and that includes the story of The High Priestess, adding History and the debut of free masonry to the plot as well.

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BBB: How did you come up with the idea for your book cover?

LLP:
Gazing at pictures, that’s the first order of business for me. Other writers are drawn to different objects, maybe the sound of music, it can be a million things that spark the desire to write. My purpose is always with the intention to entertain of course in a dramatic way, I look at the depth of an existing story line sometimes, and wonder how I can make a difference by adding my input.


BBB: What are you currently working on?

LLP:
I’m working on a “Mystery duo” named ‘Mancini & Maddox Mysteries’ who resemble a modernday and more mature version of Scooby-doo! I thought it would be unique to bring back the idea of Nancy Drew, The hardy boys as a concept or theme one might say, they will cover Historical Enigmas and Urban Legends! It’s a different avenue for me, and again even though it’ll be written under my pen name of Liliana L.S., it is still the same hands and brain that will manoeuvre the outcome.  


BBB: How can readers discover more about you and your work?

LLP: 
You can take a look at my web site of
www.lorylaselvapaduano.weebly.com, you can find me on Facebook also at www.facebook.com/KingCamden, and all my books are on amazon.com/ca for the moment. We are working on getting them back  on different retailers and platforms as they were once. www.serendipitybooksandmore.com Will have them on their shelves and on line as well. I’m always available for any questions from the events I cover, my books etc. Please feel free to drop us a word by email also at lorylaselvapaduano@gmail.com
. Happy reading world!!


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Author Interview: Kay El Magnus

3/3/2016

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Meet Kay El Magnus, Author of The Adventures of Darla & Mickey
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BBB: What inspired your book, Raven Midnite?
 
KEM:
About five years ago, my daughter Raven Alexandria and the two parakeets I bought for her actually inspired me to write my Darla and Mickey series, with Raven Midnite being the second volume in the series.
 
BBB: What other books have you written?
 
KEM: I’ve written a nursery rhyming e-book titled What Do Babies Dream, volume 1 of The Adventures of Darla and Mickey: The Bird Fountain, and I’ve put together a photography e-book titled, The Natural World Around Us. All are available at www.amazon.com

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BBB: What do you think readers will find most appealing about your book?
 
KEM:
Aside from the wonderfully entertaining story:) I’ve added an educational page at the end of the book called ‘Bird Words’ which encourages children to seek out the definition of the particular birds whose names are mentioned and color-coded within the story. The Bird Words page is and will be a reoccurring theme in every volume to come.
 
BBB: What are you currently working on?
 
KEM:
I’m currently putting together multiple volumes of my photography e-book, The Natural World Around Us. I personally love the beauty of nature and think that it ought to be shared with the rest of the world.
 
BBB: How can readers discover more about your work?
 
KEM:
Everyone can visit my website at www.kaylmagnus.com And also feel free to follow me on twitter @klmagnus, and give my facebook page a like at Kay El Magnus.

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