Featured Interview With Ophelia Kee

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I have recently relocated from my longtime residence in El Paso TX to Longview TX, but I was born and raised in Tennessee. I have four papillons, two akitas, and a pug. I am a bit of an urban homesteader and am very seriously pursuing my Indie Author career. No big publishing houses. It's all me. I write because I love to tell a good story. Draoithe is a dream. Feel free to pick up a book, find a comfortable spot with a good drink and step into the dream for a great escape.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have been a bookworm my whole life. But I started writing in the middle of a horrible repetitious meeting that I had been required to sit through for the fifth time. I could not exactly pick up my Kindle and get away, but my laptop was available. I was sitting in the back, bored. So I started Eli Miller's story.

It was awful. I mean, I think a kindergartner could have written a better story. I deleted everything but the first chapter, left the whole thing on the backburner and focused on the 9-5. But Eli had a story. So I went back and started again. The second time was good. It was really good. It was so good in fact that my friends who read it wanted to know what happened next so I wrote The Council then Magic Calls to Magic. It was just going to be a few books, a lark. Then I had to write a couple more books to explain the Ruiri, but dragons showed up and wow! I was eight books in and still writing.

That's when another friend said, "Why don't you publish?" But that was really expensive until I found KDP. So Indie Author Ophelia Kee became a real thing, and Draoithe became a published paranormal series. The stories have not stopped. A web page and social media developed, and nine books of the series are out with a prequel and a forbye as well. Book trailers are now on Youtube, and I am looking into making audible books.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love fantasy and romance. How long can the list be? Tolkien, Sanderson, King, Heaton, Shen, March, Jordan, Woods, Rose, etc…

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Dream Therapy will be out in January. It's the rest of Leon Vadim's story as it impacts Draoithe and Jace Weda's pursuit of the deaf designer. Dream inversion gets explained in depth and the elementals are able to bring the gargoyles to life, but not before some other people need help from the pack. The magic is still calling to magic as the mor tuath continues to grow.

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Ophelia Kee’s Website

Ophelia Kee Facebook Page

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Featured Interview With Molly Jebber

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
My Amish Historical Romance books have been featured on Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Ten Recommended Reads, USA Today’s HEA, Romantic Times and in the media throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
I signed another contract for three more books for the Amish Charm Bakery series which will total six for this series.
HANNAH’S COURAGE releases in stores and online January 28, 2020. MAGDELENA’S CHOICE will release Jan. 28, 2021.
I tour and speak about Amish history/traditions, writing, marketing, publishing, and about my books throughout the US. Check my website for future classes. I love God, family, and friends. I enjoy swimming, golf, reading, and I say yes to butterscotch pie and parasailing, but no to coconut and skydiving!
My husband, Ed, and my daughter, Misty, support and encourage me along with many readers. The best thing about writing is meeting readers and getting to know them through events and social media.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I didn't tell anyone about my interest in writing, but I've always wanted to write since I was in high school. I told my husband in 2014 I wanted to write, and he said, "You should do it!" And that's when I started attending conferences and classes to learn how to write fiction! It was harder than I thought!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Mary Sue Seymour of the Seymour Agency met with me a few times at conferences, and she edited some of my work to teach me more about writing. She also gave me great advice. Sadly, she went to Heaven before I was ready for an agent. But I have a wonderful agent now who encourages and supports me. I love books by Janet Oke, Mary Ellis, and so many more! I also love mysteries!

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book is about Hannah. She works in the bakery, but she also tutors children with their schoolwork. She's the friend everyone wants to have in their corner. She's wise, supportive, a good listener, and loyal. But she procrastinates to a fault. Hannah Lapp’s life, like a long-cherished recipe, is satisfying just the way it is. She enjoys whipping up desserts at the bakery, tutoring local children, and socializing with dear friends. One of those friends, Timothy Barkman, has made his interest in Hannah clear, but she’s been in no hurry to change her circumstances.

No sooner does she feel ready to grow closer to hard-working, handsome Timothy than Hannah finds she may have waited too long. Charlene Shetler intends to become Timothy’s fraa. It’s little wonder he’s attracted to such a pretty, forthright young woman, but is the newcomer all that she seems? Only when Hannah is willing to confront some difficult truths can she move bravely toward a life of abiding faith and love . . .

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Featured Interview With Daphne Moore

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in northern Ohio, in a small town next to the lake. I moved to go to college, and have stayed in that city ever since. I love cats and dogs, but one of my children is developmentally delayed and can't walk, so pets aren't possible right now.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I learned to read at six and it was all over; I was already telling my younger siblings stories based on Godzilla movies, and the realization that there were all these stories I could just read was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love science fiction and fantasy, enjoy romance, either modern or historical. I like mysteries and thrillers, too. It's hard to find a book I won't read, though military history is really hard for me to get into.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
It's a mashup! A technological world that experienced a magical apocalypse- an alternate future for earth. The protagonist is a smart mouthed competent woman; she's also one to solve problems in a direct (often physical) fashion. So she ends up in situations where that's not her best choice, and really struggles.

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Daphne Moore’s Website

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Featured Interview With Richard Thomas Lane

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1947 and went to parochial schools through high school. In 1966, at age 19, I volunteered for the Marine Corps and was stationed in Hawaii, Cherry Point North Carolina, and Okinawa before serving as a battalion message center chief outside Da Nang in Vietnam in 1970. Upon discharge I lived for two years in San Diego before moving to San Francisco where I graduated from San Francisco State University with a major in sociology and a minor in philosophy. I moved to New York City and, in 1979, became an alcoholism counselor. In 1984 I married my wife Pam. I earned my MSW from Fordham University in New York and then trained with Harville Hendrix, PhD to become an Imago Relationship Therapist.
From 1990 to the present I've worked as a psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in the areas of addiction, trauma and couples therapy. (A client once described me as a cross between Clint Eastwood and Mr. Rogers.) Now in my 70s, I have more time to pursue my passion for writing. I wake up every morning feeling blessed I'm married to my amazing wife, Pam.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I never remember a time when I wasn't reading, but a turning point came when I was about ten. I got a set of Tarzan books for Christmas. Soon after I tried my hand at writing one and quickly learned what I've been learning ever since: it's much easier to read a novel than to write one. In high school I dreamed of becoming a novelist. All through my years in the Marine Corps, I tried my hand at little sketches. At that time, I was still a drinker, and I'd take a notebook with me, sit in a corner and try to get some experience or fantasy down on paper. In college I took some creative writing courses but didn't find much help there. No one told me a writer, like other artists, needs to go through an apprenticeship, that it takes a long time to learn the craft. And longer for me than for many other aspiring writers. Not just learn the craft, but to roam around enough in different genres to find where I wanted to settle in and call it home. Home is now Historical Fiction. At least in terms of writing. As I reader, I still roam a lot.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Mika Waltari's "The Egyptian," which I read as a teenager, and James Clavell's "Shogun" have profoundly shaped my sense of what is possible in my chosen "area of endeavor," i.e. historical fiction. With almost seven decades of reading behind me, like most writers, I've traversed a lot of ground. From Tarzan, the Count of Monte Cristo and James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye in my teenage years to Irving Stone's biographical novels "Lust for Life" and "The Agony and the Ecstasy " in my 20s, In Vietnam I read my first Donald Hamilton "Matt Helm" novel along with William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and "Hamlet." When I got back to college after Vietnam, I was one of the most active participants in a literature class until we were assigned Heller's "Catch 22." That was too close to the bone. In the first 30 pages I found incident after incident that brought back the craziness that goes on in a military that's fighting a war. I read classics, sci-fi and hard-boiled detective fiction throughout my 30s, 40s and 50s. For a while I got hooked on Louis L'Amour westerns. I'd bounce from them to "The Great Gatsby" or the early works of Willa Cather, Stephen Crane and Joseph Conrad. It's still that way. One day I'm reading Michael Connelly and the next William Faulkner or Tolstoy — or George R. R. Martin.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
I'm writing a multivolume saga about "Jonas Stuyvesant." Jonas came to me in a "waking vision." I had been struggling for years to write a series of historical novels about the Stuyvesant family and their involvement in the oil business from right after the Civil War through Post-9/11. (I was here in New York City for 9/11.) Then Jonas came to me. He was off on an altogether different mission: Fighting the Chinese Communists. This was a "waking vision" so I just had this image of him and a sense of what he was about. So I had to ask "Why?" Why was he so focused on the Chinese? The answer that the deeper levels of my mind gave me was: he was a POW during the Korean War. That gave me a time frame. So I set about writing a single volume with a backstory set in a POW camp in North Korea in the 1950s. But pretty soon I was immersed in the history of the Korean War, our "Forgotten War." I wanted to do a single novel that covered Jonas's combat and POW experiences. But the combat took up a whole volume of its own. That's how I came to write "Forgotten Valor: A Novel of the Korean War." I'm working on the sequel, "The Forgotten Americans" which treats Jonas's POW experience. You can learn more about the whole project by watching my YouTube video: The Jonas Stuyvesant Saga, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlwSAmm4N4&t=73s. Or you can access it through my website at richardthomaslane.com.

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Richard Thomas Lane’s Website