Interview of Erika M. Szabo

Interview with Erika M. Szabo

Questions: R. Murry

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

Thank you for inviting me to your website Roy.

I’ve been writing Alternative Medicine related books in English and Hungarian. I love healing as passionately as I love to write and read. I was playing with the idea of writing a fantasy story peppered with historical facts for a while. The history of the Huns always fascinated me - they were my ancestors – and one day I started writing my Ilona the Hun trilogy.

Do you remember the first story you wrote?

I must have been about nine or ten; we had an assignment in school to write about our favorite pets. I wrote a 30 pages long story about my black Puli Crumbs about his ability to herd the chickens, his sneaky ways to steal food and how protective he was towards family members and our house and property. My teacher gave me an A+, but my friends hated me because there was not enough time left for them to read their stories.

Were you inspired by someone or something?

Growing up in Hungary greatly influenced my writing. I learned the benefits and uses of herbs from my mother and grandmother as a small child. I furthered my knowledge of Alternative Medicine by receiving a PhD in Naturopathy. My Hungarian heritage influenced my novelist side as well. In my contemporary fantasy trilogy, Ilona the Hun contains a lot of legends, historical facts and beliefs.

What do you like about writing a story?

I love using my imagination when creating a story. I ask the question “What if…” and the story, characters and scenes come to live.

Can you tell us about your book?

Two books from my Ilona the Hun trilogy, Birthright Bestowed and Secrets Revealed (available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble) the third book Destiny Altered is coming in December are based on my Hungarian heritage and working in the medical field all my life, combined with fantasy elements such as magical healing, time travel, ancient secrets and mystery with romantic love story.

What genre best fits for the book?

Contemporary fantasy, alternate history

Are you working on something new at the moment?

I started writing a ghost story after asking myself, “What if” and, “Why not?”

Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

Follow your dreams and don’t let anyone stop you.

Where can people go to read your work?

AUTHOR WEBSITE: http://tinyurl.com/kmphe8m

FB AUTHOR PAGE: http://tinyurl.com/jwdg529

FB BOOK PAGE: http://tinyurl.com/kuzqc5h

BOOK ONE OF ILONA THE HUN NOVELS:

AMAZON: http://tinyurl.com/mw66yzb

BARNES & NOBLE: http://tinyurl.com/lllr3fk

ITUNES: http://tinyurl.com/lnkhj7l

PRINT: http://tinyurl.com/l5l8xva

BOOK TWO OF ILONA THE HUN NOVELS:

AMAZON: http://tinyurl.com/lccfpoj

BARNES & NOBLE: http://tinyurl.com/mbszacr

PRINT: http://tinyurl.com/kxgtumb

Review of Turnabout Is Fatal Play

Review of

Turnabout Is Fatal Play

Written by Glenn Harris

Reviewed by R. Murry

Rick said at the end of Casablanca to the chief detective, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” is an appropriate quote to describe the relationship between the main characters in Mr. Harris’ novel, McCall, and Malone, private detectives.  It is also true for the reader who loves detective stories because this series beginner endears you to its characters.

Clint McCall and Devon Malone combine to unravel some situations that range from funny to gruesome.  Even though their styles are clearly different, they mull over events, concluding where the circumstances may end.  Like any partnership, all doesn’t always end the way one may want.

Glenn Harris has put in place the start of a series that flows with some sparks flowing between the main protagonists up to and including the last scene where all seems well in their little part of skillfully defined Portland, Oregon.

Their relationships, future mishaps, and Portland’s landscape will be the base of upcoming episodes, which Mr. Harris has skillfully put in place.

With this background, the gamut of characters come alive, propelling events into action that our detectives fence against. Their duels are sometimes physical, mental, and cute. Whatever the situation, McCall and Malone find a way to deal with it, which is why I feel you’ll admire their accomplishments.

If you’re looking for a series that will keep you attentive, I recommend that you look into this one.

Glenn's books are currently available only in electronic form. There are links on my website, www.glennharris.us, to Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Barnes and Noble (for Nook owners). 

Interview with Glenn Harris

Interview with Glenn Harris

Questions: R. Murry

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I was born in Illinois and grew up in the Midwest. Since my late 20s I’ve lived on the west coast, first in Berkeley, California, and for more than thirty years now in Hood River, Oregon. I’ve been a writer since experiencing the thrill of having a “poem” published in my second grade newsletter. I’ve been a journalist, editor of a weekly newspaper, had my own public relations and (very small-time) publishing business. I’m only recently a published author for the first time but I plan to make up for it with a long series of detective novels.

Do you remember the first story you wrote?

Vaguely. My parents bought me a typewriter when I started high school and one of the first things I wrote on it was a “science fiction story” about a kid who stowed away on a spaceship. Not too surprising, since I was at the time a kid who desperately wanted to stow away on a spaceship. I actually sent it in to a pulp magazine but it was mercifully rejected and I didn’t save it.

Were you inspired by someone or something?

So many things. First of all, my mother reading books like Black Beauty to me when I was very small. Too many teachers to name even if I remembered all their names. Perhaps most importantly the librarian at the local public library when I was in elementary school. I particularly wish that I remembered her name, but I don’t. She was a big woman with gray hair and glasses, always wearing a print dress—the perfect grandmotherly type. And she indulged me like a grandmother with those books. The limit was supposed to be three at a time. She let me take home a shopping bag full every week—and I read them all every week. It was there that I discovered all the wonderful worlds of the old Winston Science Fiction series and the simple but compelling mysteries of the Hardy Boys. I wanted to live in those worlds and solve those mysteries myself.

What do you like about writing a story?

That’s really it. I get to create my own worlds and solve their mysteries. Not long ago I described it in a blog post this way: In the beginning there’s a wonderful new story forming in your imagination, growing and blossoming and spreading out like the most beautiful flower you’ve ever seen. (Yes, it’s that good.) There are fascinating characters with compelling lives and terrible conflicts and great loves and greater danger and consequences that could not possibly have been known before you came along. It’s a heady time, looking forward to filling all those pages.

Can you tell us about your book?

It’s the first book in what will be a series featuring two Portland, Oregon, private detectives named Clint McCall and Devon Malone. In Turnabout is Fatal Play, they each have a client who wants to catch a cheating spouse—and it turns out the clients are married to each other. This is what brings the two of them together and they ultimately find themselves trying to stop a serial killer who is targeting young women in downtown Portland and might have his eye on Malone.

What genre best fits for the book?

It’s a classic private detective story with some elements of romantic thriller.

Are you working on something new at the moment?

Just finished the second book in the series, Decease and Desist; I expect it to be available in September or October. I’ve started working on the third, entitled One Deadly Game.

Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

Live a wide life. Pay attention to people. Write rather than planning to write or talking about writing. Write.

Where can people go to read your work?

My books are currently available only in electronic form. There are links on my website, www.glennharris.us, to Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Barnes and Noble (for Nook owners). Free apps are also available so that you can read them on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows phone, Android tablet or Blackberry.

Do you have anything to add?

Only that I’m very grateful for this opportunity to visit with you and let more people know about what I’m doing.

Review of Someone Has To Pay

Review of Someone Has To Pay

      Written by Joe McCoubrey

Reviewed by R. Murry

Without prejudice, Mr. McCoubrey weaves a thriller that a non-follower of the events that led up to peace in the Isles of Ireland and Britain over separation can assimilate to.  That being the control over one’s own destiny and what one will pay for that freedom.  In this case, what will an Irishman pay for the right to be independent?

Joe McCoubrey, an Irishman, from the town of Downpatrick, writes a tale of a high level British operation that is used to propel the peace process forward by fending off the IRA’s activities that are on a different level and are supposed to have the same effect.

On each side of the divide, a champion has been picked - a man who gets the job done.  These agents had met once is part of this fast pace action drama and that fact is only known to them.  If and when these two meet again, is the secondary plot and is one of the reasons the British agent got involved.

As the main plot thickens, the general populous lives are disrupted with bombings, general killings, and assassinations.  Operational plans are made by both sides to capture political sympathy for their cause – separation or not.  When will the conflict end is not part of Joe’s novel, only hope.

Both sides converge at an unlikely place.  All havoc commences and the reader is on pins and needles awaiting the last shot to be made.  And that shot is made thrice in a lethal triangle shape leading to an ending the reader can live with after all the political postulating that follows.

Mr. Joe McCoubrey has put together plausible events in down to earth English we all can understand.  Those events could have helped lead both sides out of their turmoil.  I was convinced.  However, it was fiction.  Wasn’t it?

Joe McCoubrey’s interview: http://
bit.ly/1o392Yn

Interview with Joe McCoubrey

INTERVIEW with JOE McCOUBREY

Questions: Roy Murry

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

These days I am now a full-time action thriller writer, although in a sense - as a former Irish newspaper editor - I always was! In the early seventies I was working in the Civil Service based at Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland government, and was watching behind the scenes as some of the country’s most momentous events unfolded. These were the early dark days of the “troubles” — events that reverberated around the world, and somehow served to push me towards my real passion of writing. I became a newspaperman, started my own media business, and took a front row seat as history was played out in Ireland.

I have lived all my life in the beautiful Irish town of Downpatrick, made famous by its association with the national patron saint, St. Patrick. I have three wonderful daughters and two grandsons.

Do you remember the first story you wrote?

Goodness, that’s almost too far back! I used to relieve the urge to write by penning a number of short stories – anywhere between 500 to 2,000 words. I never published any of these and, sadly, I’ve since lost the manuscripts which were produced on an old portable typewriter and boxed away in an attic. There was no such thing in those days as saving work to a file and uploading for safe storage on Cloud!

They were, however, an excellent way to develop my writing style, as well as learning how to overcome some pretty basic early gaffes that paid scant attention to POV, head-hopping and other such pitfalls.

Were you inspired by someone or something?

The first big influences on my writing could not have been farther apart when it comes to style. They were romantic novelist Jane Austen and action guru, Alastair Maclean. With Austen, there is a constant sense of how captivating the written word can be, while with Maclean there is the sprinkling of drama, tension, and pathos that often make the words come alive on the page.

Over the past number of years I've enjoyed the styles of Lee Child, Matt Hilton, the late Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, David Baldacci, and James Patterson. They produce works that are not only a great read but succeed, where too many others fail, in putting the reader into the heart of the action. You can learn a lot from the style of writers like these but budding authors should never try to emulate. It’s important for an author to find his or her own style – without it I would suggest it is almost impossible to pen a credible story.

I guess the biggest influence was being in the heart of the Irish troubles. These were horrific times but, perversely, they produced fertile ground for fiction storytelling – not least because so many incidents and experiences could be based on fact. In those days it didn’t need much imagination to come up with plausible plots for a range of action thriller scenarios.

What do you like about writing a story?

I love the freedom that writing provides in being able to take my imagination into dark and dangerous places! I am not one of those authors who like to storyboard or plot out their book before committing the first words to paper. I like to fly uninhibited, letting the story move off in different directions, almost on a whim. I think it adds to the creativity of a story line if you can suddenly decide to open a new angle, or kill off a character simply because the point at which you are in a story demands it. Pre-planning or pre-plotting would, for me, destroy this ad hoc excitement.

Can you tell us about your book?

My first book – SOMEONE HAS TO PAY – has its background in the last days of the Northern Ireland troubles.  Essentially, it is about how the British Government and the IRA tussle for superiority as the clamour for peace points inexorably to a permanent ceasefire. Both sides know they are heading for peace talks but each are determined to hold all the aces when the time comes to get around a table.

The follow-up book – ABSENCE OF RULES – is more global. In many ways it is a bit of a throwback to James Bond, brought up to date with current current-terrorism campaigns against the like of al-Qaeda. The action takes place in Paris, London, Moscow and various parts of the USA.

Review of Where the Secret Lies

Review of Malika Gandhi’s

Where the Secret Lies

Reviewed by Roy Murry

India is still a mysterious place to most people in the west even though its population is over one billion.  This ambiguous thinking on the part of us Americans and others is due to the lack of understanding of India’s culture which emanates from the Hindi and Muslim religions.

Ms. Malika Gandhi’s Where the Secret Lies, in a two story package, allows her reader into that culture.  One story is the romantic journey of a young lady vacationing in India from England with her Indian family, circa 2000.  The other is that of a young lady’s plight during the conflicts of the Indian and Pakistani partition in 1947.  The stories converge into an unlikely ending.

Ms. Gandhi’s stories are well thought out and detail so the reader will not get lost in cultural differences.  Love is the same in all cultures.  It’s only the norms set down by our elders that dictate how we are to love.  Here is where Malika has shined in her storytelling.

The romantic clashes make one think – how could this be?  In both stories the love triangles are full of emotional conflicts, because of the cultural miss understanding of the parties involved in a male dominated world vs. the new world order where women have their say in their destiny.

Ms. Gandhi’s two stories converge because of one common element.  That being, the young lady of present has a common spirit with the young lady of the past.  And that mysterious question is answered when a door that has been unopened for years, because of a murder, is opened by a spirit.

I enjoyed Ms. Malika Gandhi’s tale on two levels. One being the way she explains the culture of India through her prose and the other being the detail of that prose.

Ms. Gandhi’s links are below in her interview:  http://bit.ly/130CEiq

Interview with Malika Gandhi

Interview with Malika Gandhi

Author of Where the Secret Lies

Questions by R. Murry

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I am a young author of one and bit years and I love it. I am also a wife, and a mother to two boys. 

Do you remember the first story you wrote?

Yes! I was in junior school then. My story was about a monkey called Manglu and a dried up watering hole! I had the book laminated and wrote Author: Malika Gandhi on the back. I knew then on that I wanted to be an author.

Were you inspired by someone or something?

I was (and still am) an avid reader. I used to read a lot of Roald Dahl and C.S Lewis books then. I think they were the ones who inspired me.

What do you like about writing a story?

I love how characters take over and tell their story themselves. I like to add a little drama and bring the characters to life.

Can you tell us about your book?
My second book which is Where the Secret Lies is about two women who share a connection. They are from two different eras but a secret binds them together. The eras are 1947, which is the start of India's partition and 2012, with a modern take on India.

What genre best fits for the book?
Paranormal Romance.

Are you working on something new at the moment?
Yes. I am writing a trilogy based on Fantastical creatures, witches and powerful spells. The story focuses on two worlds: Earth and another which is fictional. I am very excited about this project as it new territory for me!

Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

Be true to yourself. The thing about being an indie author is patience. Being indie is not just about writing the book but also marketing it. You are the creator from start to finish.

Where can people go to read your work?
My books are available on amazon, iTunes, Barnes and noble, Kobo and other leading book sellers.

Do you have anything to add?
Love your writing and don't ever let anything stop that. It is a unique treasure we hold.

Review Passion, Power & Sin

Review of Mike Wells’

Passion, Power & Sin

Books 1 & 2 of

A Series

Reviewed by R. Murry

A simple act of receiving an E-mail, which most people would consider spam, is the catalyst of these thrilling introductions into this five book series written by Mr. Wells.  His main character, Heather, is a resourceful intelligent red head, who has a stressful money problem. 

Because of her family’s financial turmoil, she opens a second E-mail because the first message came true to her amazement and made her angry she didn’t take advantage of its fruition.  This is when her adventure into the world of international monetary affairs turns into nerve raking events for her and the reader.  However, there are some pleasant moments she encounters.

Mike pulls his readers in and keeps them glued to the page hoping Heather will reach her goals.  Each endeavor seems strange at first glance.  Heather overcomes obstacles by wit, fate and luck.  Mr. Wells writes each event in a way that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, wondering if Heather’s world wind will come to an end, solving her problems. 

There is a love affair in the background of this nail biting suspense story.  It’s kept there, because Heather is doing her thing globe hopping to resolve her problem first, keeping her lover in the dark of its existence. The affair culminated to her satisfaction.

We all want an underdog story to come to a happy ending.  This one may because of the lead character’s ability to go with the flow of events and not get bogged down in self-pity. She moves on, knowing she has the strength inside her to handle what is thrown at her even to the doubts of her friends.

Mike Wells has me hooked into finishing this series.  If you are not prone to heart attacks, this series should be on your “Series to read list.”

Check him out: http://
amzn.to/1hjPrhk

Review of Something Great

Review of Something Great

Written by M. Clarke

Reviewed by R. Murry

Romantic stories are now geared to the young, because they are the only ones who fall in love?!  The one difference I see in Contemporary Romance vs. any other Romance novel is gadgets used to upscale the plot.  In Mary’s novel Something Great, that gadget is a Smart Phone, with people using texts to convey information.  I’m old school and don’t text. 

Mary has done an excellent job using this communication media to enhance the story of her two lover’s journey.  Using this new way to snappily deliver one’s thoughts brings different emotions into play which a face to face directness diffuses.  The author uses wisely the differences of those exchanges to develop the storytelling.

In M. Clarke’s version of a love story, there is playfulness, teasing, giggling, winking, and the old standby of kissing one’s lover in the place that drives them crazy.  Effortlessly she leads the reader on through a story made in heaven and we all know that when that happens, there is always the pit falls.

The main character armed with a family of three friends, who have a group text site to speed up communications between them, falls heads over heals for the perfect man, albeit some say he is a women magnet and has slept with many of them.  He, on the other hand, has emotions that he never had before, which impedes his directness.

Their affair is sometimes torrid but mostly cute and moves along smoothly.  He uses his position to show his affection and she uses her friends for advice to understand it.  M. Clarke does a fine job of writing an uncomplicated story that becomes complicated because of her intended character’s communication skill and style.

This novel is for the young and old romantics.  It resonates on all levels.  An enjoyable summer afternoon read