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New Release: Stones:
Coming-of-Middle-Age Fiction
Coming-of-Middle-Age Fiction
Stones is a humorous coming-of-middle-age women’s fiction
about closure.
New Adult fiction seems to be all the rage these days. Well,
I’m starting a trend of my own—Old Adult Fiction.
Or more accurately, Coming-of-Middle-Age-Fiction. Stones features women of a certain age. Before being published by The Wild Rose Press, the manuscript, which finaled in the Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Award for Excellence, was called The Colonoscopy Club.
So you have an idea of what age I’m talking about.
Or more accurately, Coming-of-Middle-Age-Fiction. Stones features women of a certain age. Before being published by The Wild Rose Press, the manuscript, which finaled in the Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Award for Excellence, was called The Colonoscopy Club.
So you have an idea of what age I’m talking about.
In Stones, readers are introduced to the concept of closure
in the very first paragraph.
“Thank God for LINT. It’s the one area in my life where I’ve
been able to achieve closure. I can wash a load of towels, toss them into the
dryer, fold them, and, after opening the lint filter, peel back a glorious,
thick, colorful strip of lint, admire it, and throw it into the wastebasket.
Then I can cross that task off my to-do list. Now, THAT is closure! And, by the
way, I have a new dryer that gives really good lint.”
Back of the Book blurb:
When Julie Paver’s husband Matt moves his business to
Atlanta, she is forced to leave behind her thriving jewelry boutique, Stones.
The move threatens their twenty-five-year marriage, because now if Matt isn’t
out of town negotiating a merger, he’s spending late hours on overseas phone
calls with his sexy-sounding second-in-command. Feeling neglected and unloved,
Julie seeks closure by reconnecting with her first love, Manny, when he pursues
her with his Internet innuendos. Manny is unaware he’s the father of Julie’s
son, and Julie contemplates revealing the secret to him on the eve of their
son’s wedding. But would such a walk down memory lane be worth the cost? Julie
and Manny finally meet at her oceanfront condo — in the midst of a hurricane —
and elements collide to create the perfect storm in a coming-of-middle-age
crisis.
Excerpt
To go or not to go to Palm Coast is no longer the question. The
question is what will I do once I get there? Will I really have the nerve to
reconnect, or as my daughter Natalie likes to say, “hook up,” again with Manny
Gellar? How will I feel tomorrow when I see him alone for the first time after
twenty-five years? Will I finally reveal what I feel compelled—no, what
I’m busting a gut—to tell him? That he has a beautiful son,
that our son Josh is getting married in just three months? I’m probably
rationalizing, but I think he finally has a right to know.
If I could, I’d fix what is wrong with my marriage and put
it back the way it was before, as easily as Ricardo fixed my washing machine. Before
Matt yanked me out of Miami by my roots as if I were a noxious weed he was
tossing out of a flower garden and carelessly transplanted us to Atlanta.
Before we moved a state away from my family and my best
friend and a business I’d worked a lifetime to create. Before Matt sold his
freight-expediting business to a German conglomerate for mega-millions and
agreed to run the company for them from Atlanta for the next two years, barely
consulting me. Before the German occupation, or rather before he became preoccupied
with his sexy-sounding German second-in-command, Gretchen. Before
he stopped sleeping with me in the biblical sense. Before I turned fifty.
All I really want is closure. I’m convinced that meeting
Manny Gellar again is the only way I will ever come full circle and reconnect
with my life.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Romancing the “STONES” Novelist Interview:
What draws you as a ‘reader’ to the romance genre?
Reliving that feeling of “first love” and attraction, reading about how the couple overcomes obstacles and gets their happy ending.
Reliving that feeling of “first love” and attraction, reading about how the couple overcomes obstacles and gets their happy ending.
What is the most difficult part of writing a love story?
Building tension in the relationship. I always want things to happen too quickly.
Building tension in the relationship. I always want things to happen too quickly.
Is creating a book title easy for you? Tell us about the
process.
Coming up with the title is the first thing I do before I can even start writing the book. Anything can inspire me. I may overhear a word or a phrase and it triggers an idea. When a title pops into my head and I know it’s the right one, then I can begin. My background is Marketing and Public Relations so for me, writing a creative title is the easy part. That said, in my eighth book with The Wild Rose Press, which is under contract, the original title was “Murder on the Repositioning Cruise,” and I had to shorten it to Killer Cruise, because it was consistent with the other two-word titles in my psychic mystery series: Sixth Sense and Homecoming Homicides. And not everyone knew what a repositioning cruise was. But by the time I renamed it, I had already written the book. Other than that, all of my books retained their original names. One of my favorite titles is Murder at the Outlet Mall, a shopping suspense tale I co-wrote with my sister, a Florida artist in Ponte Vedra Beach.
Coming up with the title is the first thing I do before I can even start writing the book. Anything can inspire me. I may overhear a word or a phrase and it triggers an idea. When a title pops into my head and I know it’s the right one, then I can begin. My background is Marketing and Public Relations so for me, writing a creative title is the easy part. That said, in my eighth book with The Wild Rose Press, which is under contract, the original title was “Murder on the Repositioning Cruise,” and I had to shorten it to Killer Cruise, because it was consistent with the other two-word titles in my psychic mystery series: Sixth Sense and Homecoming Homicides. And not everyone knew what a repositioning cruise was. But by the time I renamed it, I had already written the book. Other than that, all of my books retained their original names. One of my favorite titles is Murder at the Outlet Mall, a shopping suspense tale I co-wrote with my sister, a Florida artist in Ponte Vedra Beach.
Do your characters love the direction you take for them or
do they have other ideas?
The characters always have other ideas. And I usually go along with them. The characters will have complete conversations in my head and when that happens, I just listen and write it down.
The characters always have other ideas. And I usually go along with them. The characters will have complete conversations in my head and when that happens, I just listen and write it down.
Any tips for writers that you’d love to share?
Many people have said this, but it’s great advice: Finish
the book. The best way to promote your book is to write another one. Hang in there. Don’t give up on your
dream to publish. You may be the last one standing, but eventually you will get
published if you are persistent. Stones was some ten years in the making. And
these days authors have so many paths to publication.
Marilyn will give away a PDF copy of Stones to one
commenter.
Stones is available at the following sites:
Amazon (Kindle and Paperback):
Barnes & Noble Nook:
The Wild Rose press (EBook, Paperback and other outlets): http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=195&products_id=5817
My Author Web site:
About Marilyn
Marilyn Baron is a public relations consultant in Atlanta,
Georgia, and the author of humorous women’s fiction, historical romantic
thrillers, a psychic suspense series, supernatural short stories and a musical.
She has won or finaled in writing awards for Single Title, Suspense Romance,
and Paranormal/Fantasy Romance and just finaled in the Georgia Romance Writers
2014 Published Maggie Award for Excellence in the Novel With Strong Romantic
Elements category.
Marilyn has published six books with The Wild Rose Press
(TWRP)
http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=marilyn%20baron&inc_subcat=0&sort=20a&page=1,
She is under contract for two more books, The Widows’ Gallery, part of the new
Lobster Cove series with TWRP, and Killer Cruise, A Psychic Crystal Mystery,
Book Three. She has published four humorous paranormal short stories with TWB
Press http://www.twbpress.com/authormarilynbaron.html
and co-authored three books with her sister, award-winning Florida artist
Sharon Goldman.
To find out more about Marilyn’s books, stories and upcoming
releases, visit her Web site at www.marilynbaron.com.
Visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marilyn-Baron/286807714666748
and follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MarilynBaron.
