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Chatting with donalee Moulton, author of Conflagration and Hung Out to Die

 

 Welcome back to amazing Canadian author, 

donalee Moulton who I first met  through 

Crime Writers of Canada.

donalee’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. Her second book, Conflagration, was published in December. 

“Swan Song” was one of 21 short stories selected for publication in Cold Canadian Crime, an anthology published by the Crime Writers of Canada. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Awards of Excellence. A second short story featuring the Nunavut-based character in “Swan Song” was published in Black Cat Weekly. A literary short story, “Moist,” was published this spring in After Dinner Conversation and reprinted in The Antigonish Review. It has also been selected for inclusion in two anthologies. 

donalee is the author of The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say and co-authored Celebrity Court Cases. She is an award-winning freelance journalist. Her byline has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Lawyer’s Daily, National Post, and Canadian Business among other online and print publications. 

donalee lives in Halifax happily surrounded by family, friends, pets, and words of all shapes, sizes, and syllables. 

What was the most difficult section/piece you ever wrote? What made it difficult?

I wrote an article early in my career about an infant born several months prematurely (with only a tablespoon of blood in its entire body if I remember correctly) and the fight to save the little one. I recall drafting the article with tears streaming down my cheeks. In that moment I realized, for me, that journalism was about moving people as well as informing them.

What sort of research do you do for your work?

There were key elements to my first mystery book Hung Out to Die that had to be authentic, at least in a fictional context. I have done a lot of reporting on the cannabis industry and have had the opportunity to tour a cannabis-production plant before it opened. Likewise, for years as a freelance journalist I wrote on the health sector and health issues, including mental health and personality issues. As a communications specialist, many of my clients were from this sector. All of this research fed into Hung Out to Die. Even more was required for my second book Conflagration!, a historical mystery set in 1734. Accuracy is paramount.

Which books and authors do you read for pleasure? Is there an author that inspires you?

I relish reading. I was a judge in the Crime Writers of Canada’s Awards of Excellence last year, and I got to dive into more than 40 fabulous – and very diverse – books that kept me on my toes and my eyes glued to the page. When I was younger and I was discovering the wonder and wow of the mystery genre, I devoured authors like Tony Hillerman, Martha Grimes, Ruth Rendell. More recently I have discovered writers like Richard Osman. And Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing was nothing short of joyous.

Was there a person who encouraged you to write?

My mother taught me to love language – and to respect it. She cared about words and getting the words right. She was my greatest influence.

What would you say are your strengths as an author?

I always find it easy to get distracted when I am writing. As a freelance journalist, however, I learned to stay on track. Working to deadline meant there often wasn’t time to travel down interesting but non-essential paths. You are also working to a specific word count as a journalist so you know no matter how interesting the asides, they will not make it into the article for length reasons. Rigor is required.

How often do you write, and do you write using a strict routine?

I am not a marathon writer. I am a sprinter. I can’t sit and write for hours at a time. I break up my writing by taking a yoga class, soaking up some sunshine, checking email, doing some paid work. I do try to write 1,000 fictional words a day. Some days I achieve this. We don’t need to talk about the other days.

 

CONFLAGRATION!

On a warm spring day in April 1734, a fire raged through the merchants’ quarter in Montréal. When the flames finally died, 46 buildings – including the Hôtel-Dieu convent and hospital – had been destroyed. Within hours, rumors ran rampant that Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman fighting for her freedom, had started the fire with her white lover. Less than a day later, Angélique sat in prison, her lover nowhere to be found. Though she denied the charges, witnesses claimed Angélique was the arsonist even though no one saw her set the fire.

In an era when lawyers are banned from practicing in New France, Angélique is on her own. Philippe Archambeau, a court clerk assigned specifically to document her case, believes Angelique might just be telling the truth. Or not. A reticent servant, a boisterous jailer, and three fire-scorched shingles prove indispensable in his quest to uncover what really happened. 

Angélique’s time is running out as Archambeau searches for answers. Will the determined court clerk discover what really happened the night Montreal burned to the ground before it’s too late?

 

HUNG OUT TO DIE

Meet Riel Brava. Attractive. Razor-sharp. Ambitious. And something much more. 

Riel, raised in Santa Barbara, California, has been transplanted to Nova Scotia where he is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation. It’s business as usual until Riel finds his world hanging by a thread. Actually, several threads. It doesn’t take the police long to determine all is not as it appears – and that includes Riel himself.

Pulled into a world not of his making, Riel resists the hunt to catch a killer. Resistance is futile. Detective Lin Raynes draws the reluctant CEO into the investigation, and the seeds of an unexpected and unusual friendship are sown. Raynes and Riel concoct a scheme to draw a confession out of the killer, but that plan is never put into place. Instead, Riel finds himself on the butt end of a rifle in the ribs and a long drive to the middle of Nowhere, Nova Scotia.

ALL EBooks and Print:

https://www.amazon.ca/Donalee-Moulton/e/B09WVR3K44/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk

 

Writing With Your Muse, a Guide to Creative Inspiration by W.L. HAWKIN

 

Writing With Your Muse

A Guide to Creative Inspiration 

A spiritual guide of creativity by critically acclaimed author,

W.L. HAWKIN 

Released and published by Bluehaven Press!

The book will be available worldwide in digital and print January 2024

 

Writing with your Muse offers techniques, strategies, tools, tips, and stories to help you tap into creative inspiration. You don’t have to be psychic to be successful with these techniques, although that natural ability exists in all of us, and these techniques will help you develop your sixth sense. There’s even science to back it up. This book will help you if you hear words or see images but find it difficult to get the text on the page, you’ve written and published but are searching for something fresh and different, you have ideas but don’t know how or where to begin, you want to write but have no ideas, or you’re suffering from a bad case of writer's block. 

Writing with your Muse: A Guide to Creative Inspiration - Kindle edition by Hawkin, W. L.. Reference Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. 

Writing with your Muse: A Guide to Creative Inspiration eBook : Hawkin, W. L.: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

This book is a must for writers searching for new ideas and methods to release their creative energy. Hawkin is refreshingly honest about her own experiences, establishing her expertise with gentle humor and humility. The book is packed with options and ideas to encourage writers to explore their own inner spiritual and creative sides. If writing is a journey, then Hawkin is the perfect guide to its unexplored and untamed reaches: inspiring, forthright, and inventive.” Marie Powell, author of The Last of the Gifted series

“I’m so thankful Hawkin wrote this unique and beautiful writing book. It is, at once, a craft tool and a spiritual journey guided by a skillful, compassionate mentor. Hawkin’s gentle approach to teaching (she's a former academic and teacher) makes this stand out from other writing craft books.” Sionnach Wintergreen, author of Men of the Shadows series

 

MORE FROM W.L. HAWKIN:

 

“From Iron Age Ireland to modern-day Vancouver, Hawkin takes readers on a wild ride fueled by love, revenge, and ecstasy ... a tall, sexy drink of satisfaction.”—JP MCLEAN, DARK DREAMS SERIES

“Great characters that are incredibly well-built. A depth of emotional description that will surprise you. Drama, lots of drama. A connection with Nature that will have you looking around with new eyes. Great erotic scenes of intimacy, many of which aren’t even “sexual” per se.”—JULIO CARLOS, SCRIBBLE’S WORTH

“This story reads like a journey, and one with exactly the kinds of people you’d want to be on an epic adventure with—complex, intriguing, and with enough nuance and contradiction to, like the plot itself, add a frisson of unpredictability at interesting moments.”—JUNIPER GREER-ASHE

ABOUT W.L. HAWKIN :

                     

W. L. Hawkin writes the kind of books she loves to read from her home in the Pacific Northwest. Because she’s a genre-blender, you might find crime, mystery, romance, suspense, fantasy, adventure, and even time travel, interwoven in her stories.

If you like “myth, magic, and mayhem” her Hollystone Mysteries feature a coven of West Coast witches who solve murders using ritual magic and a little help from the gods. The books—To Charm a Killer, To Sleep with Stones, To Render a Raven, To Kill a King, and To Dance with Destiny—follow Estrada, a free-spirited, bisexual magician and coven high priest as he endeavors to save his family and friends while sorting through his own personal issues.

Her standalone novel, Lure: Jesse & Hawk (2022) won a National Indie Excellence Award, a Gold Reader's Choice award from Connections E-magazine, a Crowned Heart Review from InD’tale Magazine, and placed as a finalist in The UK Wishing Shelf Book Awards. Lure is a small-town romantic suspense story set on a Chippewa Reservation in the American Midwest near the fictional town of Lure River.

As an intuitive writer, Wendy captures what she sees and hears on the page, and allows her muses to guide her through the creative process. In her newest book, Writing with your Muse: a Guide to Creative Inspiration, she explains her writing process and offers tips and techniques to help writers get their words on the page.

Wendy needs to feel the energy of the land so, although she’s an introvert, in each book her characters go on a journey where she’s traveled herself.

If you don’t find her at Blue Haven Press, she’s out wandering the woods or beaches of Vancouver Island with her beautiful yellow dog. 

To request additional review copies or an interview with W.L. Hawkin, please contact Mickey Mikkelson at Creative Edge Publicity: mickey.creativeedge@gmail.com / 403.464.6925.  

We look forward to the coverage!

Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, featuring short fiction releases from Shadowpaw Press

 

Fourth entry in powerhouse anthology series features short fiction by some of today’s top writers of science fiction and fantasy and original artwork by Alberta artist Wendi Nordell 

Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth in a series of anthologies featuring short fiction by some of today’s top writers of science fiction and fantasy, releases everywhere January 23, 2024, from  Shadowpaw Press in Regina, Saskatchewan. 

Edited by Edward Willett, award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, the anthology was successfully Kickstarted earlier this year. Like the previous three volumes in the series, the anthology features work by authors who were guests on Willett’s Aurora Award-winning podcast, The Worldshapers (www.theworldshapers.com), which focuses on the creative process of writers of science fiction and fantasy. For the first time, the anthology also features artwork, with each story receiving a unique black-and-white illustration by Calgary-based artist Wendi Nordell. 

Shapers of Worlds Volume IV features new fiction from David Boop, Michaelbrent Collings, Roy M. Griffis, Sarah A. Hoyt, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Noah Lemelson, Edward M. Lerner, David Liss, Gail Z. Martin, Joshua Palmatier, Richard Paolinelli, Jean-Louis Trudel, James van Pelt, Garon Whited, and Edward Willett, plus reprints by James Kennedy, Mark Leslie, R.S. Mellette, and Lavie Tidhar. Among those authors are several international bestsellers, as well as winners and nominees for every major science fiction and fantasy literary award. 

From the farthest reaches of our galaxy to the cozy-yet-mysterious spaces under beds and behind sofa cushions, from mystical realms of fantasy to the here-and-now and the very near future, these nineteen authors offer readers a kaleidoscope of fantastical adventures in the company of unforgettable characters. 

The editor of a tyrannical bestselling author thinks she's finally escaped their hellish relationship when the author dies . . . but she couldn't be more wrong. A retired ghost-hunter's life takes an unexpected turn when an immensely valuable magical vase from the nineteenth century is brought to her attention. At the end of a millennia-long journey to the edge of the galaxy, a man who has lived a hundred lifetimes is reunited with his first true love in the midst of a battle for survival. Scarecrows that appear overnight on a lonely man's lawn prove to be far more than the teenagers' prank he thinks them to be. A man travels back in time to confront the attacker who destroyed his life, only to make a horrifying discovery. The Monster Under the Bed finally meets his match . . . 

Travel into the past, the present, and the future in stories set in our world, in deep space, in worlds scattered across the multiverse, and in worlds that exist only in the imagination. 

An unforgettable journey awaits. All you have to do is turn the page. 

Praise for Shapers of Worlds Volume IV 

“One of the most overall enjoyable anthologies I have had the pleasure of reading . . . You are in for a wild ride from one end of the universe to the depths of hell, and I think that the editor says it best in his introduction: this collection is like a grand feast, made of many varied splendid ingredients, and you are quite sure to leave happy and satisfied when you are done . . . Overall, I highly recommend this fourth volume of Shapers of Worlds.” – Tangent Online

About the editor 

EDWARD WILLETT is the Aurora Award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, including twelve novels for New York’s DAW Books. A past president of SF Canada, he is currently vice-president of SaskBooks, the professional association of publishers in Saskatchewan. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan. 

About the artist 

WENDI NORDELL has been drawing for as long as she could hold a pencil. It has always been a favourite pastime and eventually became an occasional job. While her three children were growing up, she painted many murals, including the pediatrics wing in a hospital, a school entrance, and in many homes. She also attended festivals and craft shows, selling hand-drawn gift cards, bookmarks, and illustrations. Now that her children are grown, she has pursued an illustration career, illustrating a dozen books in the last five years, mostly for children, but also including Edward Willett's science-fiction and fantasy poetry collection I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust. Recently, she returned to the Alberta University of the Arts, pursuing a degree in illustration. 

About Shadowpaw Press 

Shadowpaw Press was founded in 2018 by Edward Willett. A member of Literary Press Group (Canada) and the Association of Canadian Publishers, Shadowpaw Press publishes an eclectic selection of books by both new and established authors, including adult fiction, young adult fiction, children’s books, non-fiction, and anthologies. In addition, Shadowpaw Press publishes new editions of notable, previously published books in any genre under the Shadowpaw Press Reprise imprint.

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For more information:

Edward Willett

ewillett@sasktel.net

306-536-5421

www.edwardwillett.com

www.shadowpawpress.com

www.theworldshapers.com

Americana: Stories, a testament to the culture of America by Bill Hemmig

 

Americana: Stories 

A collection of stories that is truly unique and is a testament to the culture of America by critically acclaimed author, Bill Hemmig 

Released and published by Read Furiously

The book is available worldwide in e-format and paperback

 

Read Furiously is proud to announce its newest title: Americana: Stories by Bill Hemmig. Bill Hemmig is also author of Brethren Hollow, part of Read Furiously One ‘n Done series and a contributor to the Life in the Garden State anthology series.

Welcome to Bill Hemmig’s Americana, a collection of snapshots that capture everyday American encounters. From filling the bird feeder to a realtor conference (behind) the happiest place on Earth to the picturesque canals of Venice, each story celebrates the eccentricities hidden inside the fabric of an ordinary life.

 

Americana: Stories is not just a collection of tales; it’s an invitation to experience the magic and diversity that make America truly special. Immerse yourself in the authentic voices, vivid landscapes, and raw emotions that define its citizens. Each page turn will leave you craving for more and enthralled by Hemmig’s unparalleled storytelling prowess. 

Through his signature playful satire, first introduced in Brethren Hollow, Hemmig effortlessly captures the essence of American culture, taking readers on a mesmerizing journey filled with love, loss, resilience, and the indomitable human spirit. With an incredible depth of characters and a keen eye for detail, Hemmig brings to life the untold stories of everyday people, each battling their own demons, chasing dreams, and navigating the complexities of life. 

Aside from Read Furiously, Bill Hemmig’s work also appears in the Toho Publishing anthology, The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia, 2021. He has had stories published in the journals The Madison Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Children, Churches and Daddies (cc&d), and he is a three-time finalist in the New Millennium Writing Awards. By day he is Dean, Learning Resources & Online Learning at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania.

Americana: Stories [ISBN: 9798986119939, LCCN: 2022946350] has a retail price of $16.99 and is available wherever books are sold. 

In his new collection, Americana, Bill Hemmig explores the psychological complexities of modern life. In these keenly observed stories set in familiar surroundings—the interior of a bathroom, a daily commute along a two-lane highway, a garden designed by a former homeowner--Hemmig creates landscapes that are continually shifting, in which characters, sometimes tragic, sometimes comedic, live in a state of emotional uncertainty as they move back and forth between reality and imagined worlds. “Life happens inside us,” says one character, as Hemmig explores with acuity and deep intelligence the tension between these two and how to live with the inevitability of death, Cheryl Baldi Author of The Shapelessness of Water 

Inside, outside, upside down”—such are the dizzying and often tumultuous lives of the characters in Bill Hemmig’s story collection, Americana. Often with humor, sometimes pathos, and always with passion, ~Julie Cooper-Fratrik Author of The Space of Appearances

About Bill Hemmig:

Bill Hemmig is the author of Americana: Stories and Brethren  Hollow, both published by Read Furiously. His short stories appear in Read Furiously’s Life in the Garden State anthologies, The World Takes and Stay Salty, and in the Toho Publishing anthology, The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia, 2021. He has had stories published in the journals The Madison Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Children, Churches and Daddies (cc&d), and he is a three-time finalist in the New Millennium Writing Awards. By day he is Dean, Learning Resources & Online Learning at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania.

 

About Read Furiously: 

In 2012, Read Furiously published its first title, the graphic novel series The MOTHER Principle. Today we dedicate our time and energies to publishing titles that offer a new perspective on the world through a roster of fascinating voices. 

Our goal at Read Furiously is to create a new generation of readers (lovingly referred to as “Furious Readers”) who view reading as a necessity for this busy world. We believe that reading is more than performative - reading is an activity that brings people together to help us make sense of where we come from and where we are going. Every Read Furiously title is curated carefully to reflect these values. 

With every title we publish, Read Furiously donates 5% of our net proceeds to various literacy programs and book-related charities, and we also invite our talented creators to do the same. We also work with Little Free Libraries and book donation programs throughout NJ. We understand that reading can be a form of activism and we take this responsibility very seriously. 

Through our published titles and community efforts, Read Furiously recognizes that reading is a personal and social act. If we are successful in combining the two, being a Furious Reader will be another way we can change the world - one book at a time. We strive to celebrate diverse voices and encourage a sustainable reading journey. 

Enjoy the journey, Furious Readers! 

To request additional review copies or an interview with Bill Hemmig, please contact Mickey Mikkelson at Creative Edge Publicity: mickey.creativeedge@gmail.com / 403.464.6925.  

We look forward to the coverage!