An Interview with Marilyn Baron Author of Follow an Angel

Q: Please begin by telling us about yourself and how you became a writer.
A: I was born in Miami and started writing when I was 11 and had a poem published in Highlights, the magazine you get in a dentist’s office. In fourth grade, I wrote a story called “East WestIsland,” featuring all the students in my class. My teacher read it during the break in class every day and all the kids liked being
included in the book. I was editor of my junior high school newspaper and feature editor of my high school newspaper. After I graduated with a major in Journalism (Public Relations) and a minor in English
(Creative Writing) from University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla., I went straight to work for AT&T as editor of their Southern Region newspaper and held various jobs there in employee communications, media relations and community relations for 13 years. Then I formed my own PR firm and have been doing public relations consulting for corporate clients ever since. This includes copywriting in such areas as the Web, advertising, magazines, brochures, newsletters, marketing campaigns, etc.  My most unusual job was a one-year stint in the prison system – actually it was doing PR for the Florida Department of Offender Rehabilitation in Tallahassee, Florida. On my first day at work there was a prison break from the women’s correctional institute.It was an exciting time. We lived through a “tent city,” where the inmates were housed in tents because of the overcrowding conditions in the system. I’m married and live in Roswell, Georgia. We have two daughters: one lives in New York City and one in Atlanta. I’m a member of Romance Writers of America, and I serve on the board of Georgia Romance Writers as editor of The Galley, our chapter’s
online newsletter. I write humorous women’s fiction, romantic suspense and supernatural. Many of my heroines are older, because, let’s face it, we’re not getting any younger.I blog at Petit Fours and Hot Tamales at www.petitfoursandhottamales.com and the Roswell Patch, part of Patch.com, a national network of online newsletters that cover community life in 800 towns across the country on the new Local Voices platform, at http://roswell.patch.com/search?keywords=Marilyn+Baron.

Q: Who has been your biggest supporter in your writing career?
A: I’d have to say Georgia Romance Writers. I’ve never met a more supportive group of women. Everyone is eager to help you on your journey to publication. My critique partners have been wonderful and my children are very supportive of my writing career. Of course, there have been wonderful supportive English teachers who nurtured my love of writing and my parents. My husband doesn’t normally read my work, which is why I write a lot about him and tell him if you want to find out what I’m saying about you, you’d better read it!

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
A: I’d have to say read. I read any chance I get. I take a book to the post office, the doctor’s office and even read while I’m watching TV. I fall asleep reading a book. I also love to travel for business and pleasure and eat Italian food. I make a great spaghetti alla carbonara, a recipe I learned when I lived in Florence, Italy, for sixth months in my junior year of college.

Q: Tell us about your latest eBook, the humorous supernatural, “Follow an Angel.”
A: Here’s the blurb for “Follow an Angel.”

Eden Eastman is giving up on love. Despairing she’ll ever find her soul mate, she flees New York City for the Atlantic coast of Florida where she hopes to pick up the pieces of her broken heart. When an angel on a mission drops into her 5th floor condo, all Heaven breaks loose.“Follow an Angel” has a very high-tech touch. It features Facebook and Twitter but also touches on the universal themes of love, loneliness and finding your soul mate. It is very humorous and has a surprise twist at the end that makes many people cry (including my editor – who admitted he teared up). A lot of women identify with Eden and think the book is about them. The story strikes an emotional chord with people (men and women) who invariably ask me how they can find such an angel.

I do take a lot of material from real life, which supports the adage, write what you know.

Q: How did you get the idea for this story?
A: When I visit my Florida Beach condo, I wake up every day to watch the sunrise. One morning, I saw a
deep purple cloud  formation with a distinct scalloped wing pattern descending on the horizon. I took a picture with my cell phone and my publisher ended up using it as background for the book cover.

That’s when the idea for Gabe was born. I wondered what would happen if an angel actually dropped into my condo with a mission to find a million Twitter followers before Eden could Tweet her universal message of love and find her soul mate.

Q: Both of your stories have an Angel theme, will this continue in your writing?
A: Yes, both stories are about angels and both feature or reference a wedding. Both are humorous. Follow an Angel begins with a death and ends with a birth. A Choir of Angels begins with a death and references a birth in the future. It is a heartwarming tale of a family’s tragedy and a wedding promise unfulfilled. How far will a mother go to sing at her daughter’s wedding? Nothing, not even a little thing like death, is going to cheat Rhonda Paver out of celebrating the happiest day of her daughter’s life. Even if she has to cross over to the other side to do it. I just finished my third in the Angel series and it is under consideration with the publisher right now. I think I began focusing on the angel theme after my father died last year. My mother and sisters and I see signs all over of my father’s presence, which I think has subconsciously influenced me. I will finish this trilogy and then return to my romantic suspense and women’s fiction projects.

Q: Can we hear about your latest work?
A: I am currently working on a romantic suspense called “Sixth Sense.” Reluctant Psychic Katherine Crystal, dubbed “Crystal Ball Kate,” is thrust into the national spotlight when she accurately predicts that the young son of actor Vince Rivers will die in a private plane crash. Skeptical Atlanta Police Detective Beauregard Lee Jackson Hale (Jack), who has a deep-seated distrust of psychics, is the by-the-book officer who ignores Katherine’s warnings when shecalls to report her premonition, with disastrous consequences. When Katherine and Jack are invited to Sydney, Australia, to help catch a serial killer who recently fled Atlanta, the brief and fruitful chase leads to romance and the ultimate discovery of a mystery and a murder surrounding Kate’s birth in the quaint spiritualist community of Cassadaga, Florida.

Q: Where can we find your books?
A:  I write for TWB Press, an electronic publisher of science fiction, supernatural, thriller and horror stories and novels. Currently, I have two releases:

                     

Thanks Marilyn for taking the time to do the interview on my blog ! I have enjoyed both of your stories, and look forward 'Sixth Sense.'

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