ROCCO welcomes author Maya Corrigan to the blog!

ROCCO WELCOMES…MAYA CORRIGAN!

 

Maya Corrigan lives near Washington, D.C., within easy driving distance of Maryland's Eastern Shore, the setting for her series. She has taught courses in writing, detective fiction, and American literature at Georgetown University and NOVA community college. In 2013 she won the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Unpublished Mystery/Suspense. Her short stories, written under the name of Mary Ann Corrigan, have been published in anthologies, including the Chesapeake Crimes series. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, tennis, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Her website features trivia about mysteries: mayacorrigan.com.

 

 

R: Welcome Maya! Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became interested in writing!

 

Thank you, Toni and Rocco, for inviting me to your blog.

I became interested in writing through reading. When I was growing up, I had two libraries within walking distance of my house and visited both at least once a week. I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen and enjoyed watching my friends smile or laugh as they read it. One of them laughed in the wrong places, but I forgave her . . . after about thirty years. The vocational aptitude test I had to take in high school told me to be a writer, and not to even think about being a farmer or a mechanic. Good advice.

 

R:  Tell us about your Five Ingredient mystery series. How did that come about?

 

The series features a café manager and former cookbook publicist who solves murders with help from her curmudgeonly grandfather and her friends from the athletic club café. By Cook or by Crook is the first book in this culinary mystery series. The five ingredients refer to the recipes included in the book, the five suspects in the murder, and the five clues my sleuth, Val, uncovers.

 

The series grew out of a traditional mystery I’d written and put aside for a few years. It was fairly dark, beginning with the deaths of two people close to my main character. When I wrote a culinary whodunit story, “Delicious Death,” for a Chesapeake Crimes anthology, I found my niche and decided to combine food and murder in a longer work. I dusted off that other manuscript, lightened it up by resurrecting the two dead people at the start, one of whom is Val’s grandfather, and revised the book as the start of a cozy series. By the way, you can read “Delicious Death” on my website.

 

 

R: Your series is set in the Chesapeake Bay area. Is that an area close to your heart?

 

My series takes place in a fictional waterfront town, Bayport, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I love the region’s historic small towns. Though not far from either Washington, D.C. or Baltimore, the area is a world away with its peaceful landscapes and water views. It’s a farming and fishing region now as it was in colonial times. It’s also a mecca for tourists who enjoy boating, birding, fishing, hunting, and antiquing. So you have old-timers and newcomers, year-round residents and summer visitors, people who live modestly and those who live lavishly in waterfront mansions--lots of possibilities for conflict and comedy.

 

R: Do you have a favorite Chesapeake Area recipe you’d like to share?

 

Eating Chesapeake Bay specialties often means getting your hands dirty. Hard-shell crabs make the most mess. Peel-and-eat shrimp are a close second. But they’re quick and easy to make because you don’t peel the shrimp. That’s the job of the person who eats them, not the cook.

 

For a pound or so of large shrimp (30-40 count per pound):

Combine a cup of cider vinegar, a cup of water, and 3 tablespoons of Old Bay seasoning. Bring the mix to a boil in a large pot. Add the shrimp, stir, and cover the pot. Once the water boils again, cook for two minutes and drain the shrimp. Cook longer if you use larger shrimp, but be careful not to overcook because the shrimp will lose their taste and become tough.

 

Serve with a cocktail sauce, either store bought or homemade. An easy sauce has three ingredients: ketchup, lemon juice, and horseradish in whatever proportions taste good to you.  

 

Notes:

Some recipes call for flat beer instead of water. I prefer the beer cold and open it when the shrimp are ready to eat.

Old Bay is the most common Chesapeake seasoning you will see in supermarkets, but other companies make it too or you can make your own from recipes online.

 

R:  Do you have an “how I got my agent” story you’d like to share? How did you feel when you got the call your first novel had sold?

 

I heard through Sisters in Crime about an agent willing to represent a cozy mystery series based on a proposal. I reworked that earlier book I mentioned to highlight its cozy elements, wrote a synopsis for two more books in the series, and sent in the proposal. The agent accepted it.

 

When I got the call about the sale, I was driving back from an appointment with my foot surgeon, who told me I could go without a cast or a boot for the first time in two months., so it was already a good day. Then it got better. The caller ID on my cell phone alerted me that my agent was calling. I knew he’d submitted the proposal five days earlier to a publisher, and I figured he wasn’t calling me to give me bad news. 

 

R: What’s a must have for you when you are writing? What aids the creative process?

 

Though I work most of the time in a quiet room, I can write anywhere, including in a hotel lobby or an airport waiting area. When I write, I’m so wrapped up in my story that hours can go by without my noticing. Fortunately, my stomach reminds me to eat often. That gets me walking at least as far as the kitchen and keeps me from getting too stiff.

 

Sleep helps my creative process more than anything else. Sometimes I go to bed with a lingering writing problem. I can’t figure out how to liven up a conversation between two characters or where to insert a clue. The next morning I wake up with a solution to the problem because my subconscious has worked it out overnight.

 

R: If you had access to a time machine, which historical moment would you travel to and why?

The second half of the nineteenth century fascinates me because of the huge social changes that took place: the freeing of the slaves in the U.S., the women’s suffrage movement, inventions in transportation, communication, and energy that changed how people lived. The vibrant literary life of that period also attracts me. When Charles Dickens went on tour in the U.S., he was greeted like a rock star and drew huge crowds.  

 

R: What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

Most people don’t know that I’m shy because I have no trouble speaking to a large group. Belonging to my high school debate team and teaching for 15 years gave me a lot of practice talking to a room full of people. But in smaller groups, I’m often tongue-tied though I love talking to people.

 

R: What is the craziest thing you've ever done? 

Leaving aside my youthful indiscretions, I did something most people would consider crazy as part of the research for By Cook or by Crook. To test if an incident from my first chapter could actually happen, I set something on fire that probably no one had ever before intentionally burned. I recorded the sight, sound, and smell of the blaze so that could put those sense details on the page. If you want to know what I set on fire, you’ll have to read the book.  

 

R: What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

 

You’re never too old to try something new. My sleuth’s sidekick, her grandfather, is in his seventies when he takes up cooking. My father did the same thing when he was in his eighties. He was the inspiration for the Codger Cook. My fiction writing career illustrates the same idea. I had grandkids before my first mystery book was published.  

R: What are you working on at the moment / next?

I’m finishing the manuscript of SCAM CHOWDER, the second of the Five-Ingredient Mysteries, scheduled for publication in June, 2015.  Financial frauds against senior citizens are central to the story. Val’s grandfather has a larger role in this book than in the first one. In fact, Val and I will have to watch him or he might take over the series.

R: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

A plotter when writing, a pantser when cooking. I do a scene-by-scene outline before I start, but it’s fluid: I’ll add or subtract or move a scene as needed as the story develops.  It’s more of a challenge for me to write down everything I’m doing when I prepare one of the recipes that are included with the book.

R: Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

Never give up. The difference between a published writer and an unpublished one is persistence.  A writer also needs feedback, so joining a critique group will push your writing to a new level.

 

Just for Fun:

 

Night or Day?  Day

Dog or Cat? (answer carefully)  I’m too ignorant to choose, having had only one of those as a pet.   

Beach or Pool?   Beach

Steak or salad?  Salad every day, steak rare and rarely

Favorite Drink?  By day, tea (I drink a gallon a week). By night, almost any Italian wine or German beer.

Favorite Book?  Pride and Prejudice

Favorite TV Series?  The Good Wife

Favorite Movie?  Casablanca

Favorite Actor: Johnny Depp

Favorite Actress: Janet McTeer

Dirty Martini or Pina Colada? Pina Colada

Hawaii or Alaska? Hawaii

Finish this sentence:  If I could meet anyone in the world, past or present, it would be Shakespeare.

If I had just one wish, it would be that everyone sign up as an organ donor; It’s a way to save a life that costs you nothing. 

If I could trade places with anyone in the world, it would be any author who writes two good books a year (for example., Anne Perry); I’d like to trade places for a day to learn the secret of writing fast.  

 

Thanks for a great interview, Maya! Folks, you can find out more about Maya here:

 

Website: mayacorrigan.com - http://mayacorrigan.com

 

Facebook: Maya Corrigan Books -

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maya-Corrigan-Books/305167769636032

 

Goodreads Author Page: Maya Corrigan -

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7813064.Maya_Corrigan

 

Maya will give away An Advanced Reader Copy of By Cook or by Crook to one lucky commenter! To enter, leave a comment with your email address in the comments section of this post! For extra entries, you can:

 

* Follow my blog (+ 1 point)
* Follow me on Twitter (+ 1 point) (Link: https://twitter.com/RoccoBlogger)

* Like Maya Corrigan’s author page onFacebook (1 Point)

* Signs up for a newsletter onMaya’s website: mayacorrigan.com (1 point)
* Tweet about the contest (+ 1 point)
* Friend me on Facebook (+ 1 point) (Link: https://www.facebook.com/ToniLotempio)#!/

* Mention the contest on Facebook (+ 1 point)
* Mention the contest on your blog (+ 1 point)

 

Contest open to US residents only and ends midnight, November 9! Winner chosen at random by random.org!

 

Coming in November:

Eve Sandstrom, Thumper, and Twinkletoes and Krista Davis!

And on December 2: in honor of the human’s debut of Meow if its Murder…an interview with yours truly!

 

 

ROCCO

 

Halloween Spook-tacular - Cats in Horror!

5th Annual Spooktacular Giveaway Hop

October 15th to 31st

October’s the perfect time for Horror movies – so I decided to combine my two favorite subjects – horror movies and CATS – and come up with a list of scary movies starring – you guessed it – fabulous felines.  Thanks to IMDB for the synopses!

Cat’s Eye – 1985 – written by Stephen King – starring Drew Barrymore

Three horror-thriller tales revolve around a mysterious stray cat which is attempting to find a little girl in trouble. In "Quitters, Inc.": the cat is picked up by a shady New York "doctor" who uses experimental techniques to get people to quit smoking. His latest client is a man named Morrison, who learns he'll suffer some terrible consequences if he tries to cheat. In "The Ledge": the cat is picked up by Cressner, a shady Atlantic City millionaire who forces tennis pro Norris (his wife's lover), to walk a narrow ledge around his high-rise penthouse apartment. In "The General": the cat arrives in Wilmington, North Carolina, where it is found by Amanda, the young girl it has been sent to protect. What she needs protection from is a tiny, evil troll who lives behind the skirting board in her bedroom.  Do not watch with lights out!

  

The Black Cat – 1934 – Bela Lugosi –Boris Karloff - Based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe

Honeymooning in Hungary, Joan and Peter Allison share their train compartment with Dr. Vitus Verdegast, a courtly but tragic man who is returning to the remains of the town he defended before becoming a prisoner of war for fifteen years. When their hotel-bound bus crashes in a mountain storm and Joan is injured, the travellers seek refuge in the home, built fortress-like upon the site of a bloody battlefield, of famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig. There, cat-phobic Verdegast learns his wife's fate, grieves for his lost daughter, and must play a game of chess for Allison's life.  A good Lugosi-Karloff pairing.

Cat People – 1942 –Simone Simon (remade in 1981)

Irena Dubrovna, a beautiful and mysterious Serbian-born fashion artist living in New York City, falls in love with and marries average-Joe American Oliver Reed. Their marriage suffers though, as Irena believes that she suffers from an ancient curse- whenever emotionally aroused, she will turn into a panther and kill. Oliver thinks that is absurd and childish, so he sends her to psychiatrist Dr. Judd to cure her. Easier said than done... Remade in 1982 with a slight plot change… A young woman's sexual awakening brings horror when she discovers her urges transform her into a monstrous black leopard. Pick one – they’re both scary.

 But by far the winner....Pet Sematary!!!!!!!

1989

Written by Stephen King, Based on the book by Stephen King

Stars Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne

·        Movie sticks pretty much to the plot of the book: After moving into their new home the Creed family's cat is killed after wondering onto the highway. Jud an elderly neighbor shows Louis, the father, to an isolated hill behind the local Pet Cemetery and instructs him to bury the deceased feline there. Not long after the cat reappears at the Creed home, only he is not the same. The docile cat is now vicious and destructive. When their youngest son meets with a fatal accident, the distraught Louis buries him in the same location hoping to revive him. Unfortunately he unleashes far more than he had bargained for.

I had my eyes closed for most of the last half of this movie – THAT’s how scary it is.  And what a perfect touch, having Fred Gwynne portray the neighbor Jud Crandall (he played Herman on the Munsters).  This wins the award for scariest cat horror movie….EVER!

Do you  have any favorite horror movies featuring cats? Or just any movies featuring cats?  Leave a comment below, and we’ll select one winner at random to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card PLUS an autographed ARC of my cozy mystery, MEOW IF ITS MURDER starring Nick, the tuxedo cat!  Contest closes midnight, October 31 – open to US residents only.

MEOW!

Visit other great "spooktacular" hop members here: Blog Hop Link

 

Rocco's Guest...Barb Goffman!

 

 

Barb Goffman likes her crime short and sweet. Well, maybe not that sweet. She’s the author of DON’T GET MAD, GET EVEN, a short-story collection published last year by Wildside Press that recently won the Silver Falchion Award for best single-author mystery collection published in 2013. Barb also won the Macavity Award last fall for best short story of 2012, and she’s been nominated multiple times for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards for her short fiction. To support her short-story habit, Barb runs a freelance editing service, specializing in crime fiction. She also serves as secretary of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Learn more at www.barbgoffman.com and www.goffmanediting.com

 

 

R: Welcome! Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became interested in writing!

 

Hi. Thank you so much for inviting me here. I’m a short-story writer by night and a freelance fiction editor by day (and night). I’m also a co-editor of the award-winning Chesapeake Crimes anthology series. I work from home, which allows me to spend a lot of time with my dog, Jingle, who is probably a beagle/dachshund mix. He’s small, but his bark is big.

 

How I became interested in writing? Well, I’ve always been an avid reader. I remember one day in the mid 1990s reading a book by Barbara Parker and thinking, “I could do this.” Of course, I didn’t actually know how to do it. But eventually I took a class on mystery writing, and that started me on my way. (And I actually got to meet Barbara Parker a couple of years later. What a thrill.)

 

R:  Tell us about your mystery short stories.

 

I’ve been writing short stories for about ten years. They range from cozy to dark, from amateur sleuth to police procedural. A lot of them have involved revenge. I find readers enjoy it when a horrible person gets what he (or she) has coming, and those stories are fun to write. Several of my stories center around teenage girls. Because their judgment isn’t fully formed, they can get into trouble that wouldn’t be believable for adult characters. And a bunch of my stories are set in the South. While I grew up in the Northeast, I sometimes will hear characters’ voices in my head, and they often have a bit of a drawl.

 

R: You do crime fiction editing.  Which do you prefer, writing or editing?

 

I can’t pick. When I’m writing, I love it. I get in the zone and hours pass without  notice. But editing is just as enjoyable. I love helping writers achieve their dreams, and I actually love the work. I do developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing. Last year, after my dog Scout died, I found that copy editing really helped distract me. I couldn’t get anything else done for a while, but I could do that.

 

R: You’ve been nominated twice for an Agatha Award. What was that like?

 

I’ve actually been nominated seven times for the Agatha Award and twice each for the Anthony Award and the Macavity Award. Last year I won the Macavity for my story “The Lord Is My Shamus.” This past August, I won the Silver Falchion Award for best collection of mystery short stories put out by an author in 2013.

 

Being nominated the first time (the Agatha Award in 2005) was thrilling. “Murder at Sleuthfest” was the first short story I’d had published, and I knew very few people in the mystery community at that time, so when I heard I was nominated, it was proof that people I didn’t know had read and liked the story. That was truly a wow moment.

 

Each nomination after that was just as wonderful, and winning the Macavity Award last year was a highlight of my life. My dad died a couple of months after that. He’d always been such a big supporter of my writing, so I’m especially glad I had the chance to share that honor with him.

 

R: Tell us about your latest release!

 

“The Shadow Knows” appears in Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays. This anthology was published October 7^th by Wildside Press. It has mysteries set on holidays throughout the year, including Halloween, Christmas, and Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrr. My Groundhog Day caper story is set in a small Vermont town with its own official groundhog, Moe, who every single year predicts a long winter. Town resident Gus is sick and tired of it, and he realizes that if he’s ever going to enjoy an early spring, he has to get rid of that groundhog.

 

I have a second story coming out in just a few days. “It’s A Trap!” will appear in The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Fourth Meal of Mayhem (Untreed Reads Publishing).This anthology has ten funny Thanksgiving crime stories. In my story, two estranged sisters try to make peace on Thanksgiving. But as you may imagine, things don’t go quite as planned.

 

R:  Do you have an “how I got my agent” story you’d like to share?  How did you feel when you got the call your first novel had sold?

 

I don’t have an agent. My writing focus has been on short stories, and I don’t need an agent to sell them. But I do have a book published—a collection of my stories called Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. It came out last year from Wildside Press. I had been at the closing tea of the Malice Domestic mystery convention in 2012 when editor Carla Coupe from Wildside approached me and said she’d like to talk. I was the convention’s program chair at that time, was exhausted, and thought she wanted to discuss Malice, so I begged off, asking if we could talk later in the week. Imagine my surprise when Carla and I finally touched base and she said that Wildside wanted to publish a collection of my stories. Talk about delayed gratification. I was over the moon.

 

R: What’s a must have for you when you are writing? What aids the creative process?

 

I don’t have any specific thing. Sometimes music helps; sometimes I need silence. I went through a period where I listened to the Ally McBeal soundtrack over and over while I wrote. It helped get me in the zone. If I get stuck I sometimes clean my desk. A clean desk helps me feel more organized and in control and somehow helps me think more clearly. Or at least I tell myself that. 

 

R: If you had access to a time machine, which historical moment would you travel to and why?

 

I would go back to 1937, when my great-grandparents (my mother’s, father’s parents) and several other relatives went on a vacation from their home in Poland across Europe. (I only found out about this trip earlier this year, when my family was contacted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which had come into possession of a copy of home movies taken during the trip. I’d never even seen photos of my great-grandparents before, so to see them on video was amazing.) My relatives traveled throughout Western Europe on this trip, and if I had the chance, I would tell them to keep going west. To come to America. To not return to Poland. Because every single one of them died in the next few years during the Holocaust. My maternal grandfather, who lived here in the United States, used to talk about how he would get letters from his family back in Poland, and then during the Second World War, those letters stopped coming. None of those people was ever heard from again. If I could change that, I would.

 

R: What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

 

This was a hard question to answer, so I turned to my friend author Sherry Harris, whom I’ve known about two years, and I asked her what she’d been surprised to learn about me. Her answer: that I’m an introvert. I’m comfortable with public speaking. And I can come across as very outgoing and chatty at times, particularly on Facebook and with certain people, including Sherry. But with many people, I find small talk quite difficult. I love spending time alone, and if there’s a snowstorm that keeps me stuck inside for a week, I’m okay with it (as long as I had enough time to stock up on Chinese food).

 

R: What is the craziest thing you've ever done? 

 

A couple of years ago, my job as an attorney for a Fortune 500 company was eliminated. Instead of looking for a new position in the legal field, I decided to open my own freelance editing business, offering developmental, line, and copy editing services, specializing in crime fiction. Business is good. I’ve been busy. But whether this decision will ultimately turn out to be one of the greatest or craziest things I’ve ever done remains to be seen.

 

R: What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

I hope they’ll have a smile or a sigh or a dropped jaw.

Many of my stories are funny, such as the stories I’ve had in each of the four The Killer Wore Cranberry anthologies put out by Untreed Reads Publishing. (How often do you read a crime story involving a food fight? Or a murder at a nude Thanksgiving?)

With other stories, my goal is that they resonate with readers. For instance, I when I wrote my story for an anthology called Nightfalls: Notes from the End of the World (Dark Valentine Press), I knew the editor wanted stories set on the night before the world was going to end. I write crime fiction, so coming up with a plot took some thought. If the world is ending, money won’t matter anymore, so all financial-related crimes were out. Ultimately, I realized that in the end, all a person has is love and self-respect. And revenge, of course. There’s always revenge. I wrapped all three things together and created my story “Bon Appetit,” which I’ve been told by a close friend is one of her two favorite stories of mine.  

The dropped jaw comes in when I create a story with a good twist at the end. “The Worst Noel,” “Ulterior Motives,” and “Dead and Buried Treasure” are just three of my stories in which I try to really surprise the reader at the end.

R: What are you working on at the moment / next?

The next story I plan to write will reprise the sheriff and deputy from my story “Suffer the Little Children.” “Suffer” is the only police procedural I’ve written because I’ve always been worried about getting the details right. But I’ve come up with a new idea for a murder that my sheriff, Ellen, can solve using old-fashioned detection, without having to rely on forensics and autopsy results and things of that nature. So that’s what I plan to write next. Fingers crossed the story works and the publisher I send it to buys it.

R: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a plantser. I’m a plotter but at a high level so parts of the story come at the seat of my pants. Before I start writing I need to know who my main characters are and what the gist of the plot is and how it’s going to end. But I don’t need to know every detail of the story. I liken it to a car trip where I know the starting point, the destination, and some of the stops along the way, but I don’t know the entire route before I begin driving.

R: Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

 

Three things: First, read, read, read. Read in the genre you want to write. If you want to write a mystery but never read any, you won’t have any idea of the basic rules of the genre. Every genre has them.

 

Second, write, write, write. Get your butt in your chair and write. It doesn’t matter if your first draft is horrible. Or your second. If you get your story onto paper, you’ll have something to edit. You’ll have something to learn from. You’ll have something tangible, which is so much more than people who merely talk about writing have.

 

Third: Find a class or a mentor or a critique group or an editor—someone who is not a beginner like you, who can give you helpful, honest criticism about your story, enabling you to understand what works and what doesn’t and to learn how to make it better. Then keep reading, keep writing, keep editing, and persevere!

 

Just for Fun:

Night or Day?  Day

Dog or Cat? (answer carefully)  Sorry, but I have to say dog. My dogs Jingle and Scout (who died last year) are my everything.

Beach or Pool?   Beach

Steak or salad?   Steak

Favorite Drink?  Coke

Favorite Book?   Bearing Witness by Michael Kahn.

Favorite TV Series?  Big Bang Theory or Project Runway.

Favorite Movie?  Very hard to choose. Today I’ll go with Music and Lyrics.

Favorite Actor: Sorry, can’t pick one.

Favorite Actress: Ditto.

Dirty Martini or Pina Colada? Coke. I rarely drink alcohol. I’d rather get my calories elsewhere.

Hawaii or Alaska? Hawaii

Finish this sentence:  If I could meet anyone in the world, past or present, it would be my fathers’ parents. They’ve always sounded wonderful.

If I had just one wish, it would be to have unlimited money so I wouldn’t have to worry about things anymore and could hire people to do the things I don’t want to do.

If I could trade places with anyone in the world, it would be Heidi Klum, but only for a day. I’d like to know what it’s like to be hot. And tall.

 

 

Thanks for a great interview!  Here’s all the places you can find Barb!

www.barbgoffman.com

www.goffmanediting.com

Facebook – Please send a message along with a friend request letting me know you read this blog. I’m careful with acceptances, trying to avoid scammers.

 

Barb will give away one copy of Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays. US residents only, please. To enter leave a comment below. Winner will be chosen at random using random.org. Contest closes October 16 at midnight.

For extra entries you can:

 

* Follow my blog (+ 1 point)
* Follow me on Twitter (+ 1 point) (Link: https://twitter.com/RoccoBlogger)
* Tweet about the contest (+ 1 point)
* Friend me on Facebook (+ 1 point) (Link: https://www.facebook.com/ToniLotempio)#!/

* Mention the contest on Facebook (+ 1 point)
* Mention the contest on your blog (+ 1 point)