Welcome to fellow BWL Publishing author, J.S. Marlo!
It's a pleasure to feature you on the blog!
J. S. Marlo grew up in Shawinigan, a small French-Canadian town in Québec. She attended military college for a year, then married a young officer and raised three spirited children. Over the years, she enjoyed many wonderful postings in many different parts of Canada. She isn’t sure where time flew, but decades later, she ended up in Alberta under the Northern Lights, spoiling two gorgeous little granddaughters.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/jsmarloauthor/home
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005715001393
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2079858.J_S_Marlo
How many hours a day do you
write?
I know how many hours a day I
would love to write, but life gets in the way. I don’t have a fixed schedule. I
write around my family activities. When I’m in the creative stage of a new
story, I set myself a goal of 4,000-5,000 good words a week. I will write until
the wee hours to achieve my weekly goal (even if I have to get up at 6:30 to
babysit my granddaughter). It keeps me focused.
What is your favorite
childhood book?
I started reading to my
children and granddaughter when they were infants. They’ve grown up loving
books. To this day, the Robert Munsch children books are the ones I enjoyed
reading to them the most. I would have loved these stories as a child.
Ironically, I don’t remember my
mother reading to me, or me reading books as a child, except for school. As a
teenager, Barbra Cartland, Ian Fleming (James Bond), and Maurice Leblanc
(Arsène Lupin) were among my favourite authors.
What inspired you to write
this book?
In Seasoned Hearts (Love &
Sacrifice 1), my female protagonist has two young-adult children. One of them
is a daughter, Rowan, who decides to go to university in Iceland. Rowan has a
very small role in that book, but I grew attached to her, so I decided to make
her the female protagonist in Wounded Hearts (Love & Sacrifice 2), except I
couldn’t come up with an idea. Besides, she was in Iceland, falling in love
with some dude named Bjorn.
My husband and I just happened
to go on a two-week vacation on Magdalen Islands, a small archipelago in the
gulf of St. Lawrence. We stayed in a cozy Bed & Breakfast on one of the
smaller islands while we tour the archipelago with our own young-adult daughter
who actually surprised us by going to university in Finland a few years later.
(And, no, I didn’t know about daughter’s Finland when I sent Rowan to Iceland.)
Back to our B&B’s
hosts/owners... those two guys were as charming as the old school building they
had transformed into a very unique Bed & Breakfast. They were curious about
all their guests, but I was the first author they had ever met, so they became
even more intrigued. One of them suggested I wrote a story taking place in a
B&B on the island. I loved their idea! By the time I flew back home, I had
a draft written in my head, but I chose a different island in the gulf of St.
Lawrence, one more accessible from the mainland.
So, this is the reason why
Rowan inherits a B&B on Prince-Edward-Island from an estranged aunt who
died under strange circumstances. Now, if you’re curious to know who Rowan
welcomes at Buccaneer B&B, and what happens with the dude named Bjorn,
you’ll have to read the story.
Five years from now, where
do you see yourself as a writer?
I would like to have a few more
books published, but I’ve also been toying with the idea of writing children
mystery chapter books (8-10yrs old). In five years, I would like to have one
written and published.
How many unpublished and
half-finished books do you have?
I have ten published books, two
more scheduled to be published in 2023, and one half-finished book. The
half-finished book is more like a tenth-finished, but I’m working on it.
Was there a person who
encouraged you to write?
Between you and me, I never
thought I would become an author. I’m a Math/Science girl who was never
particularly fond of language, not that I wasn’t good at it, I just didn’t have
any interest in it. That being said, while I was in high school, I enjoyed
rewriting the ending of books or new short stories of my favourite television
shows. At lunch time, my friends would take turn reading the “new” endings or
episodes that I’d written. Looking back, I guess you could say they were my
first “fans”.
Fast forward twenty-five years,
I went to the hospital for what should have been a routine surgery and ended up
fighting for my life. I was in bed for six months. To stop me from being bored,
my hubby bought me a laptop, and I began writing again. I posted these
beginners stories on a free online site where I befriended three amazing women
who wanted to become published authors. We formed a group, some would call it a
critic group, but it was more than that. We learned from each other, we
encouraged each other, and we helped each other. These three women are the ones
who fired up my secret dream of becoming an author. One of them also became an
author while life took the other two women in different directions. It’s been
more than fifteen years since our last group chat, but I still think of them
fondly.
WOUNDED HEARTS – Love &
Sacrifice 2
Faced with the impossible choice
of hurting the man she loves, or leaving him forever, Rowan Kendrick flees
Iceland for Prince Edward Island, Canada. Heartbroken, and unable to forget
him, she finds refuge at The Buccaneer, a bed & breakfast recently willed
to her by an estranged aunt.
Haunted by a fatal shooting,
Avery Stone seeks his escape in Buccaneer's attic room. Despite himself, he is
drawn into the peculiar circumstances behind the previous owner's death and the
strange bones exhumed by Rowan. His dislike for the doctor befriending her
turns to mistrust as matters unravel.
Rowan struggles to cope with
difficult guests, the puzzling Mr. Stone, and her increasingly complicated
family secrets. When she unearths a murderer, is she doomed to death like her
aunt? Or will the men in her life, including the love she left behind, set
aside their own troubles and band together to help her?
Where to buy:
https://books2read.com/Wounded-Hearts
SEASONED HEARTS – Love &
Sacrifice 1
Explosion, arson, and murder
play an integral and entertaining role in Actor Blythe Huxley’s life, but when
his wife is shot, the tragedy becomes real and the decisions heartbreaking.
Love, sacrifice, and duty
aren’t empty words that Riley Kendrick writes in her television scripts. They
are the threads weaving her life together—a life marked by the loss of her
husband in the line of duty, the hardship of raising two children alone, and
the strength to move on.
As Riley offers a friendly ear
to the actor’s difficulties, an arsonist strikes close to home, casting a shadow
on her husband’s death and forcing her to revisit her past. Meanwhile, another
bullet flies in proximity of the television studio, entangling her life with
Blythe’s tragedy.
Can she and Blythe stop the
arsonist threatening her family and the killer set on destroying his life
before they each lose another loved one and have their hearts shattered beyond
hope of repair?
Where to buy:
https://books2read.com/Seasoned-Hearts
