Interview with A. Wayne Gill

Today author, A. Wayne Gill stops by for a chat about his legal thriller, The Runner, and his writing... 

An Interview with A. Wayne Gill

Why don’t you begin by sharing a little about yourself?

Hello, I am Wayne Gill. I am a commercial lawyer and have been for twenty years now. Also, I am a beginning author.

Can you tell us about your book, The Runner?

Certainly, The Runner is a legal thriller that in addition has a spiritual message. It is centered on a recent college graduate named Michael Knight and his quest to find himself.

Why did you decide to write this book?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I used to write as a child through college I was an English major. I really felt a need to convey the message of The Runner and put them down on paper.

Did anything surprise you about the process of writing your book?

The most surprising thing was the discipline needed. An author must teach themselves to carve out time and just write that was difficult for me.

What was your greatest challenge in writing The Runner?

Again, I would have to say the discipline and just the overall amount of time it took to rewrite and edit the book.

As a lawyer you are of course familiar with the legal world you portrayed in this book. How much, and what type, of research outside the legal profession did you need for your novel?

My research focused on the Christian aspect of my book. I researched the culture of churches. The main character’s father is a minister and I wanted to delve into the culture and way of life for children of a preacher. Also, the town, Ozark Falls is very small. I looked into the background of small towns.

When did you realize you wanted to write?

I was 6 years old and had entered a poetry competition at my school. I had written a poem on Martin Luther King. I ended up winning first place. The writing bug has never left me since.

Who are your writing inspirations?

Too many to name! If I had to mention a few, I would say Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jimmy Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Stephen King.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

I enjoy spending time with my family. We can be on vacation or watching a movie on the couch just that quality time is priceless to me.

Are you working on another book?

Yes, currently I am finishing up the follow up to The Runner.

Author Bio:

A. Wayne Gill is the Managing Partner and CEO of the Gill Law Firm. which has offices in Florida and Georgia. throughout the United States. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the South Florida Minority Supplier Development Council (SFMSDC), the Black Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach County, Inc., and the Oasis Compassion Agency, which he co-founded with his wife Sharon, in 2002.
He obtained an English degree from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut and his law degree from George Washington University in Washington DC. There, among other things, he served as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Arthur L. Burnett, Sr. of the DC Trial Court and in the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the District of Columbia, Civil Division. He is also a graduate of the Advanced Minority Executive Program at the Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
He is a frequent speaker, moderator and author.  He’s also published articles and written Continuing Legal Education materials for the National Business Institute. His published books and e-books are available by title at his website:  www.waynegill.com

You can also find The Runner on Amazon

Interview with Sylvia Ramsey

Today a guest stops by for an interview.  Please welcome author Sylvia Ramsey to the blog:

1- Why don’t you begin by sharing a little about yourself.

Hello, my name is Sylvia L. Ramsey. Thank you for having me as a guest. I live in Georgia, but I grew up in a very rural area in Southeast Missouri. When I am writing or blogging, I work full-time at a two-year liberal arts college. I am a communications professor and the coordinator for the Academic Resource Center/Library. I am the advisor for our campuses newspaper, the GMC Journal. I am the vice president of the American Bladder Cancer Society, and a seventeen year survivor myself.
I was a mother of two before I married my husband Tom, and now I have gained five more.  Therefore, I am a mother of seven, grandmother of twenty-seven, and a great-grandmother of six. I love to paint and sculpt.  I have some example of my work on my current book's webpage, that is the same name as my new book.  My poetry has been published in over one-hundred literary magazines, and my short stories in several more.  I have been published in academic journals as well.  I am currently working on marketing my new book, Traveling a Rocky Road with Love, Faith and Guts. I interact with my peers on LinkedIn in various author and publishing groups, Facebook and Twitter
Many may wonder why I am so adamant in my support of bladder cancer awareness. I think it is because I remember only, too, well how badly I needed to talk to someone about it, and to find information that would help me understand what was happening to me. However, when I was diagnosed there were none of these things available. I had great medical care, but there was no informative or emotional support. I decided to try to change this if I could. Since that time, things have changed some but not nearly enough. My quest has only just begun. That is why the sales of my books are given to the American Bladder Cancer Society. 

2- Can you tell us about your latest book?

My newest book is a memoir, Traveling a Rocky Road with Love, Faith and Guts.  The book is a journey though time from childhood to mature adulthood. The stories and poems in this book reflect the lows and highs of life. The loving memories, the hardships and the things we learn as we travel the road of life. It covers an abusive mother who had mental problems because of being abused as a child, childhood polio, a rocky marriage with a husband who was often abusive, the role of caregiving, death and grief, coping with bladder cancer, asthma, losing a home and more. Therefore, to not to scare you off with gloom and doom, there are funny stories along the way and an ending that I never dreamed would happen. My hope is that the book will bring about understanding to others, and be inspiring to even more. Our journey in life has a purpose, finding it is often the most difficult task of all.


3- What drew you to writing non-fiction and what influenced you to write a memoir-style book?

Traveling a Rocky Road with Love, Faith and Guts, was inspired by a young man that has some very serious heart problems, and all the people I have met over the years as a teacher, mentor and a bladder cancer survivor. I have tried my best to encourage them, and to give them hope. To not give up on themselves or life. As I have traveled along life’s highway, I keep running into people who have let the rocks that have been thrown in their life’s road giving up on themselves, or life in general. The truth is that life is harsh, and it is not like the movies that give a false impression that it is smooth sailing. Being the hero that toughs it out and keeps on regardless of the situation is difficult, but with faith, it can be accomplished. It often takes a backbone, humor and a wishbone to survive it all.


4- Can you tell us about your writing process? Do you have a certain writing routine?

I write every day, but I wouldn't classify it as a "routine." I write in my home office at the computer usually in the very early mornings, and again in the evening. My day job requires a lot of writing as well.
However, there have been times when I have had an idea, I have written things down on anything I could find. When I was working on my second book, An Underground Jewell, I drove about forty-five minutes to and from work. I would use my small tape recorder to plot out the scenes, the characters and ideas of where I wanted to take the story next. Once I had time to write, I would listen back to the recording and take it from there.


5- What is your greatest challenge as a writer?

Having more time to write. I could do it all the time. I have more books and in my head, and I want to get them told; written. The next thing is marketing. I have learned a lot in the past few years, but there is so much more to learn. Time is often the biggest hurdle.


6- How much research do you do for your books?

It depends on the book? I write from the soul. I get started on a story idea, a poem, or whatever and it is as if someone else takes over. I think we call it the muse.


7- What is the best advice you received as a writer, and what kind of tips would you give to new writers?

I think the theme of my latest book says it all, keep trying, keep writing. Find your voice and tell your stories.


8- How would you describe your books, and what type of readers do you believe are your target audience?

Each book has its own target audience. For example:

An Underground Jewell is set in a possible near-future, and is about a female sleuth who must clear herself after being accused of espionage by hacking into the national computer system. What if all the western world's information is eventually located in a central computer center, and a terrorist faction has infiltrated several of our government agencies? How much worse could it be? Just recently in the news, an illegal was discovered working at a nuclear power plant. Another aspect is the change of language. We have another famous novel that covered this: Orwell's 1984. Today we have Double Speak and many other things in our high-tech world that is changing our language. Language has an effect on our perception and our perceived reality. This is a possible scenario, and I think we may find we have reason for concern. The target audience here would be people who are interested in possible future scenarios, science fiction fans and those who read espionage novels.

My children's book,  Merchild Land, is obviously for children.  However, it is directed to young children rather than older.

The poetry book, Pulse Points of a Woman's World, is a walk though life. The book is unusual into days publishing world because it is fully illustrated with art nouveau illustrations that carry the theme of each section of the book as well as each of the poems in that section. The sections are Pulse Points of Youth, Pulse Points of Love, Pulse Points of Reality and Pulse Points of Wisdom. Many people think the poems are just for women, and I felt that was probably true, however; I have had several men who have read it and have said that they think the poems are more universal.

To answer your question about current book, Traveling , may best be answered by a couple of people who reviewed the book.

"Taking the rocky road with Sylvia is a joyful challenge. It takes the reader through the most common and uncommon hardships, but at the conclusion of this delightful journey, the reader feels more joy and satisfaction: Love, faith, and incredible guts turn the rocky road into an assuring path that all of us so humanly desire. This book is so uniquely universal in every essential aspect that I enthusiastically recommend it to all readers regardless of their age, gender, and race." ~ Dr. Aman B. Kay

"This is a tale of strength in the face of adversity. How one woman survived psychological and physical blows to her psyche and health to overcome them with courage and resilience. Sylvia faced many challenges in her life, from childhood trauma, to difficult times in her marriage, then with personal health. It was heartbreaking to learn that both received news, on the same day, that each one of them faced a cancer diagnosis--her husband prostate cancer and Sylvia's bladder cancer. Sylvia was already taking care of her husband with COPD and now prostate cancer, facing bladder cancer herself, and having to deal with her full-time, job and the only wage earner in the family.

This amazing book has it all, from terrible news to lighter humor. It all happened when a large raccoon was found on their exercycle in the morning room. He was sitting on the bike with his hands on the handle bars trying to figure out how to work it. This book is a valuable addition to those suffering from cancer and at the same time for those who have their health. Many times in life we agonize over the small dramas and forget the most important thing: that we're here on earth to enjoy life as best as we can and to forgo the insignificant events in our lives. This book teaches just that". ~ Lilian Gafni


9- What’s next for you?

Right now is getting the new book launched, and marketing. In between, I will begin to write my other stories I have yet to tell. Continue being an advocate for bladder cancer support, and try my best to be as good of a role model as my father.



You can learn more about Sylvia and her books at:

Traveling a Rocky Road with Love, Faith and Guts

(A blog about my newest book)

http://love-faith-and-guts.blogspot.com/

Thoughtful Reflections Blog

http://wwwthouhtfulreflections.blogspot.com/

Authors' Den Page
http://www.authorsden.com/sylvialramsey1

Amazon Author's Page - All books

http://www.amazon.com/Sylvia-L-Ramsey/e/B002BMJ5NI/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1305578084&sr=1-2-ent

Interview with Author Doug Simpson

Guest time again, with author Doug Simpson stopping by for an interview.  He chats about his debut novel, Soul Awakening,  his writing and a little bit about himself:

Interview with Doug Simpson

1. Why don’t you begin by sharing a little about yourself?

I am a retired high school teacher who always wanted to be a writer but never seemed to find the time and inspiration to accomplish much while teaching full time and raising a family. Retirement blessed me with a retirement income and a bucket full of free time, so after forty years of dreaming and procrastinating, I finally sat down and achieved my dream.

2. Can you tell us about your debut novel, Soul Awakening?

Soul Awakening is the story of three strangers, who are brought together by accident, or so it appears initially, but who ultimately discover that their unorthodox introductions were arranged by Divine Intervention. Dacque LaRose, the senior member of the trio, is the learned teacher who commenced an educational journey, ten years earlier, a month after the unfortunate passing of his wife, when her spirit appeared in their living room one evening with some inspirational advice for him. Already a casual believer in life after death of the body, Dacque eagerly researched the notion of survival of the soul and spirit after death, and his acquired knowledge led him to the possibility of reincarnation.

Dacque joined the snowbird migration, within a year after the death of his wife, and sold the family home in Ohio and landed in the south in the small retiree’s-dominated city of Anywhere. His research after his move to Anywhere introduced him to a local group called the Reincarnation Enlightenment Group, and he joined up. One of the founding members of the Group is a certified regression therapist who, as part of her research in the area of reincarnation, offers Group members past life regression sessions for free, in her spare time. Dacque requested three regression sessions and discovered ten of his previous incarnations, as well as learning that significant individuals in this lifetime had played primary roles in his earlier incarnations.

With Dacque’s elevated understanding of souls, spirits and life on the-other-side, there grew the realization that he was receiving communications from God, or more likely one of God’s messengers. It was messages from God that led him, in two separate incidents, to the younger members of the aforementioned trio of strangers. God first leads Dacque to befriend Dani Christian, an unemployed and depressed legal secretary who is not destitute but effectively alone in the city. Only days later, through a Divinely-orchestrated nose-dive into the sidewalk on his morning walk, Dacque is introduced to his rescuer, a Good Samaritan named Max Winston.

Over time, Dacque enlightens Dani and Max on his beliefs in the survival of the soul after death and reincarnation. Max and Dani obtain past-life regression sessions and they discover that their souls experienced a previous lifetime together that also included Dacque’s soul. Later Dani, Max and his parents uncover a series of earlier intertwined incarnations where they are descendants of their soul’s earlier incarnations, and also discover some historical previous incarnations that they never could have imagined.


3. Why did you decide to write a spiritual mystery with a reincarnation theme?

I had been familiar with the archived readings of the legendary American mystic Edgar Cayce, for a few decades, and after I retired I found lots of time to undertake a more thorough investigation of the secrets they possessed. Edgar Cayce gave over 15,000 psychic readings in a deep, self-induced, trance-like state. Unfortunately, copies of the earliest readings were not made, and the original was given or sent to the reading recipient. Fortunately, there are copies, tucked away in a vault in Virginia Beach, Virginia, of over fourteen thousand of the later readings. More than ten thousand of the readings are medical readings where the unconscious Edgar diagnosed medical problems the physicians could not pin down, as well as prescribing treatments and prescriptions for the recipients. The second-largest group of readings is life or reincarnation readings, for approximately two thousand different individuals. These life readings revealed only a few of the individual’s previous incarnations, specifically those which were particularly significant for the understanding of the reasons why the individual’s soul had selected this particular body to spend a lifetime in. The reincarnation readings fascinated me the most and I spent many hundreds of hours studying them. That is where the idea for Soul Awakening was hatched.


4. What type of research did you do for your book?

My research and understanding of the Edgar Cayce readings was the primary source of the material I incorporated into Soul Awakening.


5. Can you tell us about your writing process? Where do your ideas originate? Do you have a certain writing routine?

Believe it or not, the primary source for much of the manuscript which became Soul Awakening was inspiration. It was not ‘automatic writing’ but many times, when writing a chapter, words and events would pour out of my fingers which I had never anticipated before I sat down in front of the keyboard. There were times when I completed a chapter and had absolutely no idea what was going to unfold in the very next chapter, but when I arose the next morning I knew exactly what was going to be revealed.


6. You were a high school teacher. Which profession do you find more challenging: being a writer or being a teacher?

Teaching was more of a challenge because you had to know your material and your students, as well as how to bring the two together. For me, writing with unseen inspiration, is much, much easier.


7. How and why did you make the transition from teacher to author?

Retirement on full pension was an easy choice.


8. Who has inspired you as an author?

I never tried to imitate any famous author. My main inspiration had to Edgar Cayce and his amazing material.


9. What’s next for you?

I have already completed two other manuscripts incorporating the three main characters from Soul Awakening, and I am currently working on the fourth installment.


You can check out Doug's website here: http://dousimp.mnsi.net/ or his blog here: http://doug-simpson-author.blogspot.com/    And find Soul Awakening at http://booklocker.com/books/5754.html

Storyteller: Guest Author Sheila Deeth

Please welcome author Sheila Deeth to the blog today.  She is currently on a blog tour for her new book, Flower Child, and she's stopping by today to talk about her books and writing.  Take it away Sheila...

I Tell Stories.

I used to tell children’s stories in church and called them children’s sermons. But I tell stories for littler kids too, with pictures; and big kids’ stories, with words; and grown-up stories, short and long and all points in-between; and they’re all stories. One day I tried to call myself a writer and the first question anyone asked me was, of course,

What do you write?

An answer that covers every possible age-group and genre might not be quite what the questioner’s looking for. So I looked at the books I’ve had “properly” published (as opposed to published by myself). I’ve got three ebooks out with Gypsy Shadow, and tried to decide what genre they’d fit into.

It wasn’t easy. My books don’t seem to have an awful lot in common. Refracted’s set in the future, except it’s the past, and the present, and all points in between. Perhaps it’s sci-fi. Time-travel? Something like that. Meanwhile Black Widow’s firmly set in the past—except it’s a slightly altered past where sorceresses can reinvent themselves and Holy Grails can change the world. My new ebook, Flower Child, is set in the present, except… Well, except it’s a present where a mother grieving her miscarriage can develop a relationship with her unborn child. Maybe that word “except” is the common factor.

Actually, my books do have some things in common. They’re all speculative, in that they all tell about things we can’t analyze or hope to understand. They’re all spiritual too, in that they’re linked by Biblical symbols and hints of stories from the Bible. They’re all fiction—well, obviously. And they all involve some element of someone searching for identity.

In fact, I suspect most of my writing, as well as my search for a genre, has identity issues. I’m not quite sure what that says about me. But at least I have an answer to the question now.

What do you write?

I write spiritual speculative fiction and other things too…



You can find the “other things” as well as the Gypsy Shadow books on my websites:

http://sheiladeeth.weebly.com/

http://www.sheiladeeth.com/

Or find links to all my pages at http://about.me/sheiladeeth.

About Flower Child:
When Megan miscarries her first pregnancy it feels like the end of everything; instead it’s the start of a curious relationship between the grieving mother and an unborn child who hovers somewhere between ghost and angel. Angela, Megan’s “little angel,” has character and dreams all her own, friends who may or may not be real angels, and a little brother who brings hope to her mother’s world. But Angela’s dream-world has a secret and one day Angela might learn how to be real.

Where to find Flower Child:

On Gypsy Shadow’s site: http://gypsyshadow.com/SheilaDeeth.html#Flower

On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Flower-Child-ebook/dp/B005PGMT4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317398482&sr=8-1

On Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/91467

About the Author:

Sheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. Now living in the States with her husband and sons, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, telling stories, running a local writers' group, and meeting her neighbors’ dogs on the green.

Sheila describes herself as a Mongrel Christian Mathematician. Her short stories, book reviews and articles can be found in VoiceCatcher 4, Murder on the Wind, Poetic Monthly, Nights and Weekends, the Shine Journal and Joyful Online. Besides her Gypsy Shadow ebooks, Sheila has several self-published works available from Amazon and Lulu, and a full-length novel under contract to come out next year.

You can find all the stops on her Flower Child Blour Tour Here:
http://sheiladeeth.blogspot.com/2011/09/flower-child-blog-tour.html