Today’s Friday Five focus is Craig A. Hart, author of literary fiction short stories, novellas, and novels.

Craig A. Hart is the stay-at-home father of twin boys, a writer, editor, Amazon bestselling author, lover of the arts, and only human. He has served as editor-in-chief for The Rusty Nail literary magazine, manager for Sweatshoppe Media, and director of Northern Illinois Radio Information Service. He lives and writes in Iowa City with his wife, sons, and two cats.

In his debut novel, Becoming Moon, a boy struggles to be himself amid pressure from a repressive family. His desire for success causes him to betray his principles, but brings money and recognition. He is given a final chance to prove himself—but only if he is able to set his past aside. Becoming Moon can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

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1. Why should people read YOUR stuff? Who’s your target audience and why?

I try to write fiction that is so honest it hurts. I don’t avoid topics just because they’re difficult; in fact, I’m drawn to difficult, uncomfortable topics. I don’t promise an easy, heartwarming read, but I do promise to be straightforward and present the truth as I see it. If that’s your jam, come on over!

2. What are three things on your bucket list?

Spend some time writing in France.

Live in a cabin on a lake (preferably Lake Michigan, which I love).

Circle the globe and write a travel book about the experience.

3. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had and why? What was the best thing about that job and why?

The worst job I ever had was doing telephone surveys. There were no redeeming qualities. I lasted one day. I also drove a delivery truck in Michigan for a few years. That was difficult, because it was very physical work performed in almost every imaginable weather situation: snowstorms, sub-zero temperatures, pouring rain, heat, humidity. The good part about it was that it also gave me a lot of time to think about writing.

4. What’s your current writing project and what are your writing plans for the near future?

I’m currently working on a book that takes readers back to the town in which Becoming Moon is based. It isn’t a sequel, but it uses certain aspects that will be familiar to fans of the first book.

5. Thinking about the stuff you’ve written, who’s your favorite character and why?

My favorite character is Moon, of the eponymous novel. Nigel Moon is an aging writer who has seen success and failure, and understands the life of a writer like few others. He is a character I’d love to sit and drink with, and one I’d love to become some day.

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Becoming Moon is currently available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Barry Metcalf, author of mystery/thriller/crime novels.

Born in 1943 into a working-class family with middle-class aspirations, Barry began writing stories while at school and finally ventured into novels when he retired from teaching in 1997. The result was a series of murder mysteries/thrillers set in Australia featuring two unorthodox investigators who work for the fictional Strange & Obscure Cases (SOC) Unit, an autonomous offshoot of ASIO.

Three times married, with four children, Barry live in Morwell, Victoria, Australia.

In his latest, Spirit of Warrnambool, still believing their nemesis Wanda Jean is dead and buried in Broome, Martin and Claire are sent to Warrnambool to investigate a savage and despicable murder. Before they have time to collect their thoughts, more murders occur—each more bizarre than the last. Little do they know Wanda Jean is behind the latest killings, constructing a web of intrigue designed to draw the agents to her and to, ultimately, dispose of them. Have Claire and Martin finally met their match?

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1. Thinking about the stuff you’ve written, who’s your favorite character and why?

My favourite character from the Oz-Files is the evil witch, Wanda Jean. To me she is everything a woman should be–beautiful, desirable and not satisfied with being second best. She’s also the most evil creature inhabiting the earth. She won’t be satisfied until she rules the world and everyone worships her.

2. How much of your published writing is based on personal experiences?

All of my characters are based on people I know. I tend to describe friends, family, work colleagues or those I meet socially. Then I add characteristics from someone else so that no one is likely to recognise themselves. I’ve been to all the places in my novels. That way I am better able to help my readers feel as if they are actually at that location.

3. What was your attitude towards reading when you were a kid?

I don’t recall reading a lot when I was young, but after I started high school I developed an avid interest in all kinds of fiction. I used to borrow up to 5 books a week from the school library, and I would read every night until I’d finished them.

4. What genre do you currently read most and why?

These days I mostly read mystery/crime/ thrillers by a wide variety of authors. I think I enjoy these because they tend to delve into the human psyche and show human nature in its worst and best lights. I am intrigue by trying to work out why people behave the way they do.

5. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

My favourite super power would be mind control. Wanda Jean has this ability. She’s able to move objects without touching them, bend people to do her bidding and create fake scenarios that seem totally believable to those entrapped inside them.

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Spirit of Warrnambool is currently available through Amazon.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Corinne Morier, author of fantasy and YA short stories and novels.

Corinne Morier is a bibliophile-turned-writer with a penchant for writing stories that make readers think. In her free time, she enjoys blogging, playing video games, and swimming. Her motto is “Haters gonna hate and potatoes gonna potate.”

“The Photo” is a flash fiction story about a ghost who can’t pass on to the afterlife because he still has regrets in this world. It was published on Roane Publishing’s blog as a part of their Flash Fiction Friday series.

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1. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had and why? What was the best thing about that job and why?

I don’t want to say “worst job,” because there were a lot of great things about this job. Also, I’m not one to badmouth my former coworkers. But last year, I worked as a camp counselor for a summer program, and the program wasn’t very well-organized. I would say that I spent the length of the program very dissatisfied with multiple things, such as how solutions were implemented and how the counselors themselves, who worked directly with the students, were able to receive updates and information from the program directors. But I do look back on that job with great fondness – I met a lot of wonderful people, and my students were all fantastic. I don’t regret working there at all. And the best thing about that job was definitely the students – I loved interacting with them and hearing all their experiences. They really felt like my kids.

2. What’s your current writing project and what are your writing plans for the near future?

Right now, I’m working on revising and perfecting the first book in a fantasy trilogy I call The Red Sorcerer Trilogy, in preparation for publishing it. After I finish Book One, I’ll work on Books Two and Three, as well as write a few other projects I’ve got in the works, like a novel-length adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and a book about a girl who goes to Japan to study abroad. A group of my writer friends and I are planning to publish an anthology of fairy tale retellings, and December is our tentative release date.

3. What is the most important thing that people DON’T know about your subject/genre, that you think they need to know?

Fantasy and science fiction are two different genres. When I go to the library or the bookstore, they’re always shelved together, but they have one crucial difference. While they may seem like the same thing in that both can have dragons, spaceships, aliens, or whatever else have you that doesn’t exist in the real world, fantasy doesn’t have to explain why it happened. In science fiction if you had dragons in your story, you’d have to also present a scientific reason for them to exist; for example, they evolved from dinosaurs, or something along those lines. But in fantasy, you can just say “Here be dragons” and as long as the world you create could potentially have dragons, you don’t have to explain how they evolved from pterodactyls and managed to survive all these years without detection by humans. The reader will just accept that they exist in the world of your story.

4. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever researched for your works or biggest/most out-of-the-ordinary thing you’ve done while researching?

Well, just this morning, I was looking up Australian fairy tales and found one about a family that gets eaten by a dog and then the dog gets cut up or something. I don’t remember the exact details, but I asked an Aussie friend and he says that’s about right for a fairy tale.

5. Where do your inspiration and ideas for your stories come from?

That’s very simple. There’s a company called Writer’s Inspiration, Inc. in Colorado. Every so often when I’m itching for a new story idea, I send them the processing fee of $15 and they send me a list of ideas I can use in a novel or a story.

That’s just a nice way of saying my muse is a jerk. My ideas come from all around me – my fantasy trilogy stemmed specifically from wanting to create my own roleplaying characters. My Little Mermaid novel adaptation stemmed from being eternally pissed at the ending to the Disney movie, and I decided to write a better adaptation that didn’t have a cop-out for an ending. My book about a girl who goes to Japan to study abroad stemmed from the Genki series of textbooks we used in our Japanese class in my undergrad. It all starts with that little voice inside me that goes “What if?” If I can’t shut that voice up, I write a story to answer that question. Sometimes I’m not even looking for them and I find new story ideas. My muse makes me write them all, and I want to punch him. He’s such a jerk.

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“The Photo” is currently available to read from Roane Publishing.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Misty Urban, author of literary, historical, and contemporary fiction short stories, novellas, and novels.

Misty Urban’s short stories have appeared in various journals and her debut collection, A Lesson in Manners, won the Serena MacDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. She teaches English and coordinates the Writing Center at Muscatine Community College in Muscatine, IA.

The ten stories of A Lesson in Manners offer a how-to manual for dealing with love, lies, loss, and loneliness.

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1. What was your attitude towards reading when you were a kid?

I was born reading. I grew up in a book. My mom says I started writing stories for my younger sister at age 5. (She was 3 1/2 at the time, and apparently already reading, so, way smarter than I was.) I loved nothing more than disappearing into a book and staying there for hours.

2. What are three things on your bucket list?

Wear the Crown Jewels, swim with sharks, and breathe fire.

3. Is there a certain type of scene that’s harder for you to write than others? How do you deal with this?

I’m terrible at sex scenes. I always end up laughing and cutting them out. For a long time I wanted to be a really famous romance author, but my sex scenes are always overblown and ridiculous.

4. What do you want your tombstone to say?

“Lived well, loved much.” “Had a good time.” “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

5. What do you want your readers to take away from your works?

That no matter the depths of our staggering loss or profound loneliness, we have got to continue to breathe and look for the lifelines of beauty around us.

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A Lesson in Manners is currently available through Snake Nation Press’s website.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Jodie Toohey, author of historical fiction novels and poetry.

Jodie Toohey is the author of five books, two poetry collections – Crush and Other Love Poems for Girls (2008) and Other Side of Crazy (2013) – as well as three novels, Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters (2012), Melody Madson – May It Please the Court? (2014), and Taming the Twisted (2015). When she is not writing fiction or poetry, Jodie helps authors, soon-to-be authors, and want-to-be authors from pre-idea to reader through her Wordsy Woman Author Services company.

In Taming the Twisted, the fictional 17-year old Abigail Sinkey finds herself entangled in abandonment, her parents’ death, a murder, scandal, and romance after a tornado destroys her town of Camanche, Iowa, on June 3, 1860.

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1. If you could pick just one book to read for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

That would be pure torture! Maybe the Bible. I’m not a religious person, but I’ve never read it, I assume it would take a long time to read it, and it might help me to remember other stories I’ve read which reference it.

2. What is the most important thing that people DON’T know about your subject/genre, that you think they need to know?

I’m not sure about the genre in general, but about my writing in historical fiction, I want them to know that I do my absolute best to make every detail historically accurate, even a lot of them they probably wouldn’t care about.

3. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

To be able to travel in time, not to be in that time period, but just to observe. It would make research so much easier.

4. What genre do you currently read most and why?

I currently usually have a historical fiction book, a business/marketing book, a research book, and a poetry book going. Because I help authors with marketing, I like to stay up to date on the industry. The research book is for the latest project I’m working on (right now, immediate post-civil war). Historical fiction and poetry is because that’s what I like to write so I like to see what others are doing; plus I simply enjoy them.

5. Why should people read YOUR stuff? Who’s your target audience and why?

My target audience is women who like to read good stories with a lot going on and learn something in the process. They are also more likely to live in, around, or at least be familiar with this geographic area.

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Taming the Twisted is currently available through Amazon.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Ciara Ballintyne, author of fantasy novels, novellas, and short stories.

Ciara Ballintyne grew up on a diet of adult epic fantasy, leaving her with a confused outlook on life – she believes the good guys should always win, but knows they often don’t. She is an oxymoron; an idealistic cynic. She is a browncoat, a saltgunner, a Whedonite, a Sherlockian, a Ringer, a Whovian…and an INTJ. Her alignment is chaotic good. Ciara lives with her husband, two daughters, and a growing menagerie that unfortunately includes no dragons. She published her debut work, Confronting the Demon, in 2013.

In the Company of the Dead is her first book with Evolved Publishing. As Death’s Left Hand, Ellaeva is forbidden to hunt down her parents’ murderer—until duty and revenge lead her to the besieged castle where Lyram Aharris serves out his exile. Together, they must fight against jealous princes and clashing gods—but the greatest threat comes from an unexpected quarter.

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1. Thinking about the stuff you’ve written, who’s your favorite character and why?

Right now it would be Ellaeva from In the Company of the Dead, and why is because she is the most like me—not me, just the most like me. You’d think that would make writing her easier, but it actually makes it harder. You know how to write the character, but you feel more exposed doing it. I love that she’s tough and independent but vulnerable at the same time. But she’s not all emotional and illogical the way some people claim women are—her ability to make the hard, right decision will take your breath away, even as it tears her apart from the inside. Now that’s strength.

2. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

If I could have any power at all, it would be the ability to turn into a dragon. And with anything involving dragons, the question is not ‘why?’—it’s ‘why not?’

3. What are some of your favorite words and why?

Defenestrated. It’s just so deliciously and explicitly threatening. I’m not just going to kill you—I’ll defenestrate you. Also, it tickles me that there’s actually a word for this.

Susurration—doesn’t it just totally evoke the very thing inside your head?

Dearth—can’t really say why, I just think it’s a quirky little word you don’t hear enough now and that has such a cool meaning.

4. What literary character are you most like and why?

Literary characters like me are hard to find, and when you do find them, they are often villains. I’m an INTJ on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. You know who in fiction is an INTJ? Hannibal Lector. Magneto. Emperor Palpatine. The Master. Tywin Lannister. Are you getting the vibe yet? It took me a little while to find some better examples. Snape. Gregory House. OK, marginally better. Kate Beckett from Castle. That’s better, but while I like her I don’t really identify with her. Rand al’Thor from The Wheel of Time. Took me a while, but I can see it now. Still, we share certain tendencies but we’re not really alike. Oliver Queen. That was a little uncomfortable, especially in Season 3 when he appeared to have betrayed his friends—because I would have done it too.

But the one I feel is most like me? Carol in The Walking Dead. That episode with the little girls? I knew what she would do, because it was the only logical thing to do, the only real option in a post-apocalyptic world—it was the thing I would have done. Not necessarily proud of that, but there you have it.

What’s right, and what needs doing, aren’t always the same.

5. What’s your current writing project and what are your writing plans for the near future?

I am currently writing On the Edge of Death, which is the sequel to my soon-to-be-released In the In the Company of the Dead. They are the first two books in The Sundered Oath series, and I’ll be working on this series for the foreseeable future. There will be four books in total, with release dates each April until 2019. The books follow the tale of Ellaeva, the strong but lonely Left Hand of Death who has to make all the hard choices nobody else can—or will—and Lyram Aharris, a military genius exiled for breaking his prince’s nose and intent on drowning himself in a whisky bottle following the murder of his wife.

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In the Company of the Dead is currently available at Amazon.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is Marlin Desault, author of science fiction novels.

Marlin studied German and German literature at Georgetown University and served with US Air Force intelligence services in Europe. He return to the US and enrolled in the University of Wyoming engineering program. His coursework included advanced physics and mathematics. He received his master’s degree and accepted an invitation to teach German and electrical engineering at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He left the Air Force for a management career in aerospace and high tech. Currently, he resides in southern California, where he writes novels when not indulging his passions for sailing, skiing, and reading.

In Shroud of Eden, Starship captain Scott Drumond finds a tunnel through a space-time barrier. Beyond the barrier he finds a colony of humans who hold the secret he needs to depose a tyrant on Earth and defeat aliens swarming out of the cosmos.

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1. Where do your inspiration and ideas for your stories come from?

I read science articles and often ask myself what if and where to from here questions. I think: Quo Vadis? which in my mind means ‘to where from here?’

2. What genre do you currently read most and why?

I read mostly science fiction, but I also read quite a bit of high adventure such as works by Clive Cussler and Lee Child. I’ve read most of the classic adventures of Jack London, Ernest Hemminway and John Steinbeck.

3. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever researched for your works or biggest/most out-of-the-ordinary thing you’ve done while researching?

Probably the most unusual thing I researched was time travel into the past. Time travel into the future, aside from the technical issues, doesn’t seem to pose a logical problem. Time travel into the past confronts the grandfather paradox making the concept illogical. In my story, Shroud of Eden, I had to present the reader with a logical explanation for how my characters traveled into the past and avoided the paradox.

4. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had and why? What was the best thing about that job and why?

By farmy worst job was working odd hours of the day and night during my work gathering intelligence during the cold war. The best thing about the job, if you can say there was a best thing, was discovering the curious activities of other countries.

5. What do you want your tombstone to say?

He made me think of the possible beyond the impossible.

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Shroud of Eden is currently available at Amazon.

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Today’s Friday Five focus is K.M. Hodge, author of women’s fiction, thriller and suspense, and crime novellas and novels.

K.M. Hodge grew up in Detroit, where she spent most of her free time weaving wild tales to spook her friends and family. These days, she lives in Texas with her husband and two energetic boys, and once again enjoys writing tales of suspense and intrigue that keep her readers up all night. Her stories, which focus on women’s issues, friendship, addiction, regrets and second chances, will stay with you long after you finish them. She also co-writes her Book Cellar Mystery Series with author and good friend Melissa Storm.

In her latest novel, book #1 of the Syndicate-Born Trilogy Red on the Run, agent Bailey and his partner uncover evidence against a major crime ring and is placed in the witness protection program. In what becomes the most dangerous investigation of his career, Alex must ask himself how far he is willing to go to stop the Syndicate and keep his partner safe?

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1. What was your attitude towards reading when you were a kid?

I was slow to get into reading. It took me a long time to learn how to read and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t until I was nine on a road trip from Ohio to Maine that I discovered the joy of reading. After that I couldn’t stop.

2. Is there a certain type of scene that’s harder for you to write than others? How do you deal with this?

I have a hard time writing action sequences. I have been working on making them more present. Editors are paramount for helping writers to over come whatever challenges they might be working on.

3. What are three things on your bucket list?

1) Go to Ireland

2) See my book in a brick and mortar store

3) Get a van. LOL

4. What’s your current writing project and what are your writing plans for the near future?

I am currently working on editing the three books in my Syndicate-Born Trilogy and am outlining book #2 of my Book Cellar Mystery Series. After my two series are finished I will be working on a letter writing novel and a cop serial.

5. What author has influenced your writing style/subject the most and why?

When I was younger I would read Nancy Drew. I then graduated on to Agatha Christie, John Saul and Robin Cook. I would pride myself on solving the mysteries as early as possible. It became almost a game for me. It should come as no surprise then that I chose to write the mystery and suspense genre. I will read almost any kind of genre, but my heart will always remain with my first love of mysteries.

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Red on the Run is currently available on Amazon.

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