Book Description:

Morgan: I'm so happy to be here to talk about "Seasoned Romance." I have children older than the heroes and heroines of most contemporary romances. Also, after becoming a widow the age of 35, I started dating again in my 50's. Finally, I retired ten years ago from a thirty-year career as an Administrative Law Judge and Counsel. I was looking for romances that featured characters older than my kids, celebrated the notion that woman who were Baby Boomers could have an active romantic life and were about women who were not just looking for a man to support them, rescue them and make decisions for them. Ten years ago, I began writing romantic memoir and racy romance that featured women like me, my friends and colleagues. Along the way, I discovered many other authors and hundreds of readers who were looking for the same thing. We have some great groups on Facebook, like Seasoned Romance and Romance In Her Prime.

Morgan: I am a pantster-I write by the seat of my pants. That being said, as a former lawyer and judge, I am detail-oriented. For Taking Control: Rick's Story, I spent time reading about military ranks, pay grades and retirement benefits to make sure my heroine could afford to live on the Jersey Shore. I looked into how dogs the troops adopt in Afghanistan can be brought back to the States. I even checked out local bars and diners near Surf City, New Jersey. My next project involves pirates...my office has stacks of pirate books that threaten to topple over every time my grandson comes toddling into the room.

Morgan: I write most of my novels in my head before I ever sit down at my computer. Rick, the hero of Taking Control, was a character in my first romance novel, Out of Control: Kat's Story. As they say, he didn't get the girl in that book and many readers have approached me over the last few years asking if Rick was ever going to have his own HEA. I knew that he was, but I couldn't get the feel for who would be the perfect woman for him. A passing conversation with my son, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave me the idea for Britt, the heroine of Taking Control. Once I sat down to write the story of Rick and Britt, the characters took over and the story went in a direction that I had not planned, but I think is a much better romance than the one I originally envisioned.

Morgan: I'm not a loner by nature...except when I'm writing. I don't do well in a writing group or at a writer's retreat when I am actually trying to get the words out. Before and after, I'm pretty much a people person, but I like to write in solitude. Until last month, my only company was my beloved chocolate Labrador Retriever, Marley. Sadly, Marley passed away in July at the age of 13. I've been having some difficulty coming up with words for my next project since then, so I have been editing and researching. I've just started on my new book and I am missing my furry brown muse a lot.

Morgan: Rick is 51. He is a former Marine, who acts asa consultant on motion pictures but is also often sent out to hot spots by Uncle Sam because of his years in active combat and clandestine operations. He has returned to his cottage on the Jersey Shore in time for his Fourth of July birthday. All he wants is some peace and quiet. Then he spots a woman emerging from the surf in the early morning light-a striking woman with scars, a nasty diving knife strapped to her arm and a rambunctious yellow Labrador Retriever. He discovers she is staying in the cottage next door. Britt is in her forties, an Army veteran, who was badly wounded and betrayed in Afghanistan. She, too, seeks peace at the beach with her beloved dog, Alex. But, this is a romance novel so sparks fly upon their first meeting. Rick and Britt are wounded warriors who dance around each other, neither willing to let their guard down and make the first move. Once they are in each other's arms, barriers start to disintegrate and their feelings begin to emerge. But, there are ghosts from their pasts that they both have to put to rest before they can find their happy ever after. I love that Britt and Rick explore some of the serious issues facing our veterans of past and recent wars. Also, the book is set on the Jersey Shore, one of my favorite beach locations so it is a great summer read. Finally, a character emerges in this story who I had not planned: Mick, who is Rick's former comrade-in-arms and a widower living on the Shore. I already have Mick's book outlined; I just fell in love with him.

Morgan: Rick has control issues. He was into a lot of control, domination, really, ostensibly to protect himself and the women with whom he became involved. Because of his control issues, he left Kat, the heroine of Out of Control, before he could fall in love with her. I wanted to find a way for Rick to lose some of his need to dominate and open himself up for love. In Taking Control. Rick lays out his need to control their intimacies in a pivotal scene with Britt. Britt then shares with Rick an experience that changed her life, with the unspoken inference that maybe the same experience could help Rick. Britt participated in a program for veterans that was created by Saratoga WarHorse Foundation in Saratoga Springs, NY. The program matches vets suffering from PTSD with retired thoroughbred race horses in such a way that the vets experience a repair of the emotional short circuit they suffered when they experienced their traumatic event during their military service. This is a program that is local to me and is near and dear to my heart. I did research with Saratoga WarHorse and pledged to donate 25% of my profits from the sale of Taking Control: Rick's Story to the Saratoga WarHorse Foundation. What I learned from them changed the outcome of Taking Control: Rick's Story in ways I could not imagine when I started writing this book. The story is more than I ever imagined.

Morgan: I'm in final edits for The Dance, a memoir about my late husband. I'm also writing Treasure, a novella featuring a couple in their fifties, which is the present-day prologue to my long-planned Pirate trilogy. And, of course, Losing Control: Mick's Story, the final installment of the Love In Control series, is just waiting for me to let the words out of my head. So many stories, so little time. I'll just have to learn to get by with no sleep at all.

Thank you for this opportunity to chat with you.

Remember: Love, like wine, gets better with age

Morgan

Marty: Thanks for having me! I think I've taken something useful from every job I've ever worked, different things from different jobs. Acting is really just story-telling in a different form. Creating a character on stage has helped me create characters on the page. I'd always felt that if, as an actor, you have no idea what makes a character tick, and don't find ways to physically show an audience, they won't get it. Writing is much the same. Working as a security guard trained me to watch people and discern their behavior. And tending bar and waiting tables was a treasure trove of human interactions and behaviors, not to mention more than a few stories I might adapt and use.

Marty: Yes. The trick for me, though, is choosing the right details to include. It is, I feel, possible to include too much detail. The reader should have room to let their imaginations breathe a little. Too much detail can be stifling. There are exceptional writers who pack tons of detail into very thick books. Tom Clancy, whose work was stellar, somehow wove piles of technical information into gripping thrillers. I can't do that. I remind myself in the editing process that every single word has to fight for space on the page. If it's not absolutely necessary, it's got to go. I like an analogy I once read about how writing is like carving an elephant. First, you get your block of wood—that's the first draft—and then you chip away everything that doesn't look like elephant. But not enough detail can leave a story mushy or blurry… is that the elephant's trunk or its tail? It's all about the right details.

Marty: Mortal Foe morphed into a novel from a short story I wrote called Popcorn. My main idea for that story was a father and son taking in a baseball game, and the son runs across a paranormal entity there. That was it, written and done. But my friend and writing mentor Anne Underwood Grant said to me, "This is a novel." Other aspects of the story came to me as I fleshed out the characters before writing. I always do that because often, for me, a character's personality, their psychology, might take the story in an unexpected direction. That was the case with Foe. I did have an outline to start, but as I added characters and their quirks, that outline changed a lot before I got going on the first draft. So, it wasn't hard for me to start once I created the characters.

Marty: Maybe. As an actor I indulged in a lifestyle that's very different from the way I live now. Performances were almost always followed by a few beers at the bar across the street, or cast parties. There was a lot of socializing. Now I'm content to hang out quietly with my wife, Becky. And when she's not around, I'm usually working on some writing project or another, and will do so without really thinking I'm alone even though I am. It's not that I've become a loner, really. I still socialize, but not as often and not in the same way as I used to.

Marty: Mostly my family background. My parents immigrated from Transylvania—yeah, there is such a place, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. I've been there, and it is a deeply superstitious place. There was in fact a Dracula, but he wasn't a vampire and did far more horrifying things than Bram Stoker ever had nightmares about. His nickname was Vlad the Impaler. 'Nuff said about that. My mom loved horror novels, so growing up I had easy access to whatever she'd just brought home from the local library. I also have to mention my faith here. I don't just read the Bible, I study it. And folks who have never read the Bible might be surprised at some of the paranormal passages in it. What could be more terrifying than watching a mass of dried bones re-connect and come back to life? Or a living mist that wipes out tens of thousands of sleeping soldiers in the dead of night?

Marty: I'll try to do this without giving too much away. Buddy Cullen, the main character, is a young journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He's a die-hard Cleveland Indians fan (the Indians just lost the 1995 World Series). He's an agnostic, had a Catholic upbringing but is a believer in only what he can see and feel. Kelly Byrne is Buddy's gorgeous girlfriend—his Kryptonite, really. Buddy feels she's out of his league but doesn't question their relationship; it's enough that they're together. RJ is Buddy's best friend since grade school, an intern at a local hospital. They get together for a weekly game of darts and a few beers. RJ's younger sister Erika is one of Buddy's students. She's naturally curious, and laser-focused on the Who-What-When-Where-Why-How of journalism. And Buddy's dad Michael is a damaged Vietnam War vet who runs a dive bar in Downtown Cleveland. He fights internal demons, but doesn't put stock in external ones.

Marty: Early on, Buddy is sitting in a church at a funeral service, his mind wandering until he starts getting the nagging feeling he's being watched. The feeling grows in intensity until he can barely stand it any more. But my favorite chapter as far as can't-put-it-down moments comes later, when Buddy tracks a paranormal entity in an old-style, retired bus back to its lair late one night.

Marty: I'm currently working on a sequel to Mortal Foe. Foe takes place in 1995. The sequel is in the present day, and the son of a Foe character is a Cleveland police officer dealing with simmering racial tensions stoked by another paranormal entity. I do believe Shakespeare had it right when his Hamlet says, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Her latest book is the Scottish Historical Romance A Highland Emerald.

Brenda: I recently finished a novella in the Highland Treasures series entitled, A Highland Bride. Next I plan to write a novel or novella in the post-Civil War series, The Wades of Crawford County.