Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Christine DePetrillo

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.

Fall into Danger

I live a pretty safe life. My neighborhood is located in Suburbia, USA where getting my mail at 4:30 instead of 4:00 is the biggest danger I face. Police sirens are rarely heard, criminals don’t run rampant in the streets, and my super huge German Shepherd, aka The Werewolf, has only squirrels to scare away. I can walk The Werewolf at midnight on the streets surrounding my home if I want to and not worry that I’ll be abducted or something equally as heinous.

I work in a safe school in a safe town, surrounded by safe colleagues and safe students.

Bottom line? My life is basically populated with fuzzy pink bunnies. For the most part I like it that way. I do.

But…

I am a writer, you know. Sometimes I fantasize about danger. It’s kind of my job to do so as a fiction author. I imagine scenarios that are jam-packed with suspense, action, life-and-death decisions, and of course gorgeous men that are at the center of it all.

That last part is my favorite. I’ll admit it.

I can be engaged in a mundane task like weeding my yard. A truck will drive by and even though I know exactly which neighbor is in that truck and that it drives by at precisely the same time every single weekday, I’ll pretend the driver is a 6’4” ex-Marine dressed in all black. He’s wearing dark sunglasses covering sharp, blue eyes. A scant beard circles his full lips, and he’s got a gun on the passenger seat. A gun he plans to use. He peels around the corner in front of my house, screeches to a stop, and jumps out of his truck. And it’s a big manly truck. Black. Tinted windows. An engine that growls. Angry rock music fills the cab. In three long strides, he is standing beside me, the tips of his black combat boots touching my pile of yanked dandelions.

“Let’s go,” he says.

I look up with a you-talking-to-me expression on my face… and streaks of sweat and dirt no doubt from my toiling in the yard.

“There isn’t much time. They’ll be here any minute. I’m your only chance.” He extends a big, sturdy-looking hand to me.

I gape at it, mesmerized by the size of his fingers and the calluses on his palm. Man hands. Oh, boy, do I love some man hands.

Sliding my soil-covered hand into his, I let him pull me to my feet. I’m wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, but somehow I’m pulling off a cute, girl-next-door look and not the sloppy gardening dork look I’m usually sporting.

He whisks me into his truck, hops into the driver’s seat, and we’re off.

Away from danger.

Or perhaps into it.

Either way, I’ll be on an adventure—if only in my mind—until my weeding task is done. Then I’ll most likely be attacked by fictional ninjas while I’m folding the laundry.

Danger. It’s nowhere… and everywhere.

For more fictional danger, try my Maple Leaf Series. Each contemporary romance has a dash of suspense to take you out of your everyday world. My upcoming release in this series is More ThanCocoa in which Boston Detective Rachel Lorensen and ex-con Harris Wilder team up to save seventeen abducted women… well, actually it’s eighteen women when Rachel becomes one of them.

More Than Cocoa is available for pre-order right now! I will also be selling and signing print copies of it, along with print copies of all my other books, at the 3rd Annual Rhode Island Author Expo on December 5, 2015 at Lincoln Mall. Check my website for more details on this spectacular chance to meet Rhode Island authors.

Book One in my Maple Leaf Series, More Than Pancakes, is always FREE in ebook. It costs you nothing to give it a try. Enjoy, and try not to get too hungry or thirsty with this series.

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Christine DePetrillo writes stories to make you laugh, cry, possibly sweat, and definitely make you believe in the power of love. She’s tried not being a writer several times, but the Voices won’t leave her alone. They insist that she tell their stories, and so she does. 

You can find out more about her other books at her author website and follow her at her Facebook author page. She also blogs on the 4th and 14th of each month at The Roses of Prose blog.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Victoria Corliss & Leigh Brown

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.

We’ve all heard the expression, ‘many hands make light work.’ As co-authors, our four-hands and two brains may not make our job of writing novels any easier, but it’s definitely more fun! With a shared love of reading and writing, and respective careers in marketing and finance, we are a balanced blend of creative and business-minded, of friendship and professional partnership.

How do two people write as one voice? If we had a nickel for every time we are asked that question; even we’re not fully certain of the answer, but we do know that it has a lot to do with the respect we have for one another, both as friends and co-authors.

When we are working, there is no such thing as a bad idea. That’s not to say that we love every creative idea or suggestion the other one comes up with, on the contrary. But even when we disagree, we always manage to work through it using skilled persuasion, healthy discussion and debate, and as a last resort, coercion and bribery.

In our case, the pros of being co-authors far outnumber any possible negatives. For one thing, the odds of both of us having writer’s block at the same time are incredibly slim. Thus far at least, when one of us was buried in a fog devoid of creative thinking, the other was there to guide her out of it. We’ve also honed our skills as devil’s advocates, pointing out the absurdities of the other’s ideas with minimal ridicule or insult. More often than not, when it comes to story development, we are literally and figuratively on the same page. When the ideas and words start spilling out of us in a unified clip, Leigh, the official note taker, is hard-pressed to get it all down on paper.

Both of our novels, Second Chances and The Pie Sisters, sprang from infinite pages of notes scribbled onto lined paper like spaghetti thrown against the wall. Not all the ideas stuck, but the ones that did moved onto the next stage of our writing process: the outline. If it’s not in the outline, it’s probably not in the book either; our outlines are so incredibly detailed. Like an inverted pyramid, we begin with a broad story outline, followed by individualized character descriptions, and chapter-by-chapter development. Only after every emotion, every nuance, every plot twist-and-turn has been crafted in full, do we actually sit down to write.

We divvy the chapters between us and write separately from our respective Rhode Island homes. Leigh is a fast-paced visual writer, putting the story into words as she watches it unfold, movie-like in her head. Victoria writes methodically like a farmer, carefully choosing her words and planting them in neatly rowed sentences until the pages are filled. Two people, two different approaches, but together we create seamless, universal-themed stories that all women can enjoy.

In a few short weeks, 2015 will be coming to a close. Hard as that is to believe, we are also excited to welcome in the New Year, for 2016 will find us writing our third novel, together. As co-authors, we’ll be working hard, as friends it will feel like we’re hardly working.

Rhode Island writers Leigh Brown and Victoria (Vikki) Corliss are friends who became co-authors in 2009. Soon after, they published their first novel, Second Chances, followed by The Pie Sisters in 2015.

Active speakers and book event participants, they are often asked: 1) Are they sisters, and 2) How do they write novels together? In fact, they are sisters in spirit only. To learn more about how their collaboration works, visit their website. Invite Leigh and Vikki to speak at your next book club event. Contact them at browncorlissbooks@gmail.com. You can also like them on Facebook.