#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Sword of Senack

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Genre - YA Fantasy 

Rating - PG

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Website http://www.ecwrites.com/

Many readers have used the Page 99 Test to appraise a book before buying it." - Page99Test.com Here, EC Stilson writes about page 99 from her recent release, The Sword of Senack.

As an author I try to make every bit of my book valid, interesting and important. If it’s in there, it’s for a reason either regarding the plot, characterization or entertainment. In page 99 of my novel The Sword of Senack, Aliya, Sky and Vander Fisher find themselves deep in an oceanic cave. They recently discovered they can breathe in water and swim better than most fish.

It isn’t until this very page, that the children finally discover their father used to live in the ocean!

“What? Our Father?” Aliya asks and Calder coolly replies, changing the subject.

“You look like Mer-sons now, that’s all. Wait ‘til Fadon sees you. He’s been waiting years.”

Throughout the story, these young adults slowly discover all the pieces to their own personal mystery. In page 99 I hope readers will start wondering, why didn’t their father tell them he’d lived in the ocean. Had he known they could breathe in water? And why was some man named Fadon waiting for them in the oceanic depths? If I’ve done my job, all of these questions and the fun details of the journey will keep readers turning the pages, eagerly anticipating what strange answers lurk at the bottom of the ocean.

Page 99 is also when Calder, a strong Mer-son with dark blue skin and black hair, reveals that he would have “waited years” to see girls who looked like Aliya and Sky. It’s the first sign that this convicted criminal might have feelings for one of the sisters. Too bad they might both have feelings for him.

The page 99 Test is fun whether you’re a reader or a writer; I encourage you to try it. You’ll be amazed with what interesting storylines you might fall upon.

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Raping Aphrodite

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Genre - Historical Fiction

Rating -  R 

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Connect with Loukia Borrell on Twitter

The 99^th page of the soft cover version of “Raping Aphrodite” takes place in the basement of a coffee house in Cyprus, a Mediterranean island that is under Turkish attack. To give readers a brief history, in 1974, Cyprus was invaded and divided by Turkey, which took nearly 40 percent of the island’s Northern territory. During the invasion, villagers who lived in the North fled to the South, while others were killed or disappeared and never found. To this day, the island – the third largest in the Mediterranean behind Sardinia and Sicily - is still divided in two.

There are two story lines in “Raping Aphrodite.” The first story line is about a present-day art gallery owner, Tash Colgate, who agrees to exhibit artifacts from Cyprus for a show. As a result, nasty family secrets rise to the surface and Tash’s life begins to unravel.  

The second story line involves an American Peace Corps volunteer, Barbra Duffy, who is caught up in the 1974 Cypriot invasion. That is the story line that is on page 99. Barbra has escaped a hostage situation and is walking to get help for those she left behind. She knows she is risking her life, but the alternative would be to stay a hostage and risk being killed anyway. She would rather die on her own terms, trying to reach a solution rather than letting someone else decide her fate.

Barbra walks at night and hides by day. So far, she has eluded Turkish attention but has come across situations that make her realize just how perilous her journey is. One of those events is  her  discovery of a group of villagers who hid in a loft in an abandoned farm, only to be shot and killed. 

Just after she finds the dead villagers, Barbra goes into another village and finds a secret passageway in a café. Up to now, she is tired, hungry, and fearful but the passageway may mean another night of survival. As she enters the basement/cellar, she finds Greek-Cypriot villagers who are being hidden by Turkish friends who also live in the village. She finds a young college student in the group who understands English well enough to help her pass the time and get some rest before going back out to walk.

My reason for putting this scene in the book was to show how help can enter your life in a helpful way, when you least expect it. This is a theme I believe we experience in our daily lives -  that we have to retain some form of faith at all times, even through our struggles. I also wanted to show how civilians you would not necessarily expect to be allies – Turks and Greeks in this case– help each other.

For many years, Turks and Greeks lived side by side in Cyprus without problems. Those same villagers were the innocent Cypriots who were caught up in the island’s political upheaval, which is a recurring theme in war throughout history. Those who cause the divisiveness and those who pay the price generally are not the same people. It is heartwarming to hear war stories of civilians – and officers – uniting in the name of humanity. 


For example,  a Confederate soldier who is friends with a Union officer during the Civil War, or a German official helping a Jew during World War II. Those stories make you feel hopeful and I certainly felt that when I wrote this scene.  Turkish villagers are hiding Greek villagers for all the right reasons – to save lives. There are other instances in “Raping Aphrodite,” that have a similar message. Because I am Greek-Cypriot, I didn’t want the book to come off as a pro-Greek, anti-Turk rant. There is a place for perspectives of both sides in my novel. 

“Raping Aphrodite” is part of a planned trilogy. 

The book is available for Kindle and in soft cover at Amazon.com, and for Nook readers at BN.com. This novel is Historical Fiction and is Rated R for sexual content and language.

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - My Butterfly

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Genre - Literary Fiction 

Rating - R - Strong Sexual Content / Violence

Connect with SJ Byrne on Facebook & Twitter

“Home isn’t a physical dwelling and it isn’t a bond one shares with another individual. Home is a place inside that can never be damaged or taken away...is the gift of an identifiable and unbreakable connection with ones’ self in the face of insurmountable odds...a strong and steadfast sense of inner peace, no matter the outer surroundings.”

My Butterfly is a journey into one woman’s experience with marital abuse and the healing process that changes her life. With intense emotional scenes that required much down time upon completion, it’s little wonder it took five years to write this book. 

Katherine Daniels is the “perfect” southern housewife in a not so perfect marriage. Surviving a vicious beating at the hands of her husband, Katherine leaves behind all she knows to explore life on her own. Reconnecting with her love of art and the creative process, she discovers a way to heal the scars of her past and find forgiveness of self. The road to recovery is different for every survivor - Katherine’s story plunges into a dark and twisted desire cultivated through years of sexual abuse.

On the 99th page of My Butterfly, Katherine has been working throughout the night, painting the walls of her studio, to form a mural of a place that has touched her deeply on a spiritual level. Stretched out on the floor, she has fallen asleep and is dreaming of wandering through a dense fog near a Scottish loch. Not exactly lost, but clueless as to her location, she is startled by a shrill scream that frays the tattered lines of her nerve endings, and a gentle hand brushing down the length of her back. Coming back to herself in the present moment, she discovers the scream to be the ringing of the telephone and the hand to be the waking touch of her best friend.

Up to this point, Katherine has been learning about the woman she might have become had she never married her high school sweetheart. Connecting emotionally with the battered and abused land of Scotland, she clearly sees what living without hope does to a person’s spirit. The dream sequence shows Katherine moving out of the dark fog that has been her life for the last fifteen years. The shrill scream is the wake up call to her soul as a loving hand of friendship guides her through the murky waters of past hurts. 

There is much more to be revealed through this short sequence, but impossible to do without giving away hidden plots within the story. I wish I could say I knew exactly what I was doing when writing this scene, but that would be false. Katherine came to me and shared snippets of her story during my first trip to Scotland. From that moment on, it was her show. Anything I put into the book that was not authentic put a halt on our progression and had to be removed immediately – the entire process was as much of a spiritual journey for me as it was for Katherine. 

My Butterfly , a story of love not for the faint of heart.

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Waiting Game (The Chronicles of Covent)

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Genre - Fantasy 

Rating - PG13

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Connect with JL Ficks & JE Dugue

Website http://www.chroniclesofcovent.com/

Blog http://chroniclesofcovent.wordpress.com/

“Don’t waste your time trying to disarm me with your flattery Warlord Lewd,” Shade growled back, “I came here to do the job and by the moons I’ll get it done.”

Those are the last words on page 98 before turning to page 99. Shade has been summoned by his mark, under a white flag of sorts, to parley with his charismatic target Warlord Lewd. Waiting Game is not your average run-of-the-mill assassination story. It breaks out in bold new directions where two dangerous and colossal egos collide. Lewd is a powerful warlord turned crimelord and he rules the underground Black Markets with an iron fist.

Shade has given his mark a once in a lifetime chance to take him head on, to have a fighting chance. Instead, of going unseen and stealthily stalking his prey as usual, he gets bold. He walks into a bar in the very seat of Lewd’s power and declares his intent to topple the crimelord. Lewd has responded in kind by sending wave after wave of minions after the ballsy assassin, who has simply waited in the bar for him, taunting Lewd for his cowardice in not facing him.

Page 99 is the conversation between Shade and Warlord Lewd himself that in many ways brings the book to a head. Shade is a cocky and infinitely capable assassin, thirsting for a challenge. Lewd is a charismatic enigma. He has gone through great lengths to set up this meeting with Shade in this chapter, even researching Shade’s culture, in an attempt to buy him off. What follows is Shade’s steel will clashing with Lewd’s beguiling flash and flare. They meet over a bottle of wine under an oath that at this meeting neither may harm the other…

So says the dialogue in the middle of page 99:

“Now let’s talk gold,” Lewd said quickly, attempting to smooth over the awkward silence, “how many pounds are they paying you for the hit?”

“There was no specific number,” said Shade, “let’s just say you’re wearing the weight of it on your shoulders.”

Warlord Lewd laughed, “A rather gruesome touch, don’t you think?”

Waiting Game is one action packed book, but I have to say this is one of my favorite scenes. We’ll see if Shade’s boasts can really stand up against Lewd’s power. But this time power is scared. Shade responds with a smooth cool confidence, a cool edge frosting the tips of his lips. It leaves the readers to wonder just how this hit will carry out. Will Shade overcome all of Lewd’s forces foolish enough to stand in his way?

We wanted to do something different with Waiting Game. Not just the usual cloak and dagger hit story, but pit the world’s most invincible assassin against a cruel powerful mobster, just to see who wins. Waiting Game is an explosive mixture of action, cool scenes and colorful characters we hope will draw people into the Chronicles of Covent. We just hope our readers enjoy the ride as much as we do…

PAGE 99 (for reference)
“Disarm you? Why would I seek to disarm you, my dear cutthroat?” Lewd sat back and said with a cool frost to the edge of his lips, “When I already have.” He snapped his fingers.

Shade jumped to his feet, his fingers going to the invisible shadow daggers in the straps of his armor. He glared at Kishrub and Zulbash who did not move. Neither did he pick up on any other movement in the room.

Yessheeran slinked from the shadows his scaly fingers reaching for the bottle of Dark Oliverian Wine. The Syssrah ran a cloth over the bottle and popped the cork. His scaly green lips snaked into a crooked smirk as he filled the two goblets.

Lewd’s own mouth twisted into an equally snaky grin, “Oliverian wine?”

The assassin lowered himself back into his seat. He grabbed his glass of wine and smirked coolly back. He stared the crimelord in the face. Shade brought the cup to his lips and drank slowly. The rich taste washed down his throat. He closed his eyes a moment and thought of home. He saw the glow of the moons dancing off of healthy black rustling leaves. He saw gardens of midnight flowers and the proud towers of moonstone cities shining in the night. Two tears squeezed from his tear-ducts, but he forbade them to fall. He betrayed no weakness.

Shade opened his eyes.

Lewd was staring at him as if to make certain the Dark Elf drank every last drop. He set the glass down half-finished. He smirked as Lewd shifted uncomfortably. The warlord’s eyes lingered on the half-filled goblet. Now Shade’s lips were lined with a cool edge of satisfaction. He suspected the wine had been poisoned.

“Now let’s talk gold,” Lewd said quickly, attempting to smooth over the awkward silence, “how many pounds are they paying you for the hit?”

“There was no specific number,” said Shade, “let’s just say you’re wearing the weight of it on your shoulders.”

Warlord Lewd laughed, “A rather gruesome touch, don’t you think?”

“No more than the trophies mounted above your throne, Lewd.”

“Name your price.”

“I have no price.”

“The weight of one of my bodyguards in gold.”

“And give up the thrill of the chase? You’ve got to be joking.”

“The weight of both my bodyguards in gold,” Lewd offered, “and you come work for me. You have already relieved me of my very best. I could use an assassin of your caliber to dispose of a few manmade inconveniences.”

“I will not play one of your stoolpigeons, Lewd.”

“Surely we can reach some manner of agreement,” the crimelord frowned, “otherwise we’re caught in a deadly waiting game, one in which we will both undoubtedly lose. You will waste my valuable time and resources and I will waste your invaluable talent! Let us not speak of what we cannot do. You desire to move onto the next hit and I desire to move freely among my own chambers and manage my affairs without fear of you.”

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Two Moons of Sera

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Genre - Fantasy Romance 

Rating - PG13 to R

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Connect with Pavarti Tyler on Twitter & Facebook

Since Two Moons of Sera has been written in serial format, the equivalent of page 99 actually comes in Volume Two of the series.  It was interesting to realize how far into the plot we were by the time I reached this point.  I guess things happen fast when you're busy having fun writing J

On Page 99, Tor and Sera have reached a comfort with each other that seems impossible after their awkward beginnings.  But by now, they know about each other's origins, they've escaped the war together and are hiding in the Erdlander Camp, where neither is safe if discovered.  Thrown together by circumstances, its clear fate had a hand in this two.

Sera likes to tease Tor about his taciturn ways, but she's also quite tight lipped when it comes to discussing her lineage.  In this passage she exposes herself to him emotionally for the first time.  He's aware of her physical differences and the effects of the genetic experiments done on her mother resulting in her birth, but he doesn't have any insight into what it was like to grow-up as an outcast, with a mother who didn't completely understand what she was, even if she was loved.

Sera blames herself for her mother's unhappiness and isolation.  Her mere existence ruined her mother's life.  But Nilafay (Sera's mother) loved her none-the-less, even if she didn't know how to show it.  Here we get insight into how that affected Sera's sense of self.

Page 99 Excerpt:

“No. I like that you use my short name.” I pecked him on the lips before propping my head up on my hand. “I’ve never been called anything else, since she was the only one who talked to me, so Serafay would be weird anyway.”

“You never talked to anyone else?”

“No. Sometimes Mother would swim out to meet someone, I went once or twice, but they were always so uncomfortable around me, they wouldn’t really talk.”

“That’s awful.”

“Well, I’m a freak, remember? For me to be with them, with this?” I pulled on my hair roughly. “When I was about nine I cut it all off, tried to cut it short so I’d look like them, but it just grew back.”

Tor’s hand rested on my hip and his thumb rubbed the skin under my shirt. He waited in silence for me to come back to him from the abyss of memories I drowned in. Just watching, he gave me all the time I needed.

“She was really strong, you know? She didn’t have anyone. She was only sixteen, my age, when the Erdlanders captured her. But she fought back, no matter what they did to her, she never gave up.” I shivered, recalling the stories she’d told me. “She broke out.”

“Really?” Tor’s eyes got wide.

“Yeah, and she ran, and made it back to the water, but it was already too late.”

“Too late?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? She got free, she could go home!”

“But she was already pregnant.”

“So?”

“You don’t really know much about the Sualwet, do you?”

“No. All I know is from what I remember from when I was little and read in 

books, but I don’t exactly trust the Erdlander’s accounts anymore.”

“Good.” I smiled. I didn’t want him to think of them the way the Erdlander’s did.

“Sualwet don’t get pregnant, they don’t have live births.”

“I knew that.”

“Well think about it, someone showing up pregnant after so long with nothing like that happening? Everyone got scared and they told her to…to get rid of me. But she wouldn’t. And when I was born, she was alone.”

“Jikma,” Tor swore under his breath. “Lots of Erdlander women die having children. It’s just too hard.”

“When my mother had me, and found out I couldn’t breathe underwater, she found us a home in the cove. She hunted and scavenged and took care of me. And she never complained, but I knew how lonely she was.”

I think what strikes me the most here is how clearly I can see how much Nilafay loved her daughter.  She gave up everything and never once looked back or questioned her decision.  Her culture kept her from really expressing that love to Sera in a way she could understand, but it was there, deep and true.  Nilafay's fear and strength are things Sera can look at and even admire, but like so many of us, she never completely trusts in her mother's love for her, even though it was never anything less than unconditional.

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Bronx DA: Bronx D.A.: True Stories from the Domestic Violence and Sex Crimes Unit

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Genre - True Crime 

Rating - PG13

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Connect with Sarena Straus on Facebook

Website http://www.sarenastraus.com/

There is some kind of amazing karma about me discussing page 99 of my book, because page 99 is about the first kid on a milk carton, Etan Patz, and Patz’s 33 year old murder case was just reopened a month ago when a man named Pedro Hernandez confessed to murdering Patz.

To take a step back, Bronx DA:  True Stories from the Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence Unit is a true crime memoire about my experience as a prosecutor.  The book is structured roughly chronologically and each chapter focuses on a different, pivotal case in my career.  Each case then relates to something else relevant to the law or the borough or to my life and how I became a prosecutor.  

Page 99 is the second page of chapter 6, which is about the first felony trial I did, a domestic violence case featuring some very colorful and quintessential Bronx characters.   It’s one of many cases I had that was as funny as it was sad.  But I begin the chapter by talking about the contrast between my parents’ childhoods, my childhood and the environment in the Bronx in 1997. 

My parents both grew up in New York City – mostly Brooklyn and Queens,  yet they were raised in a place where you could send your kids out on the streets to play unsupervised with little fear that something terrible would happen to them.  Somehow, all of that changed in 1979, the year my family moved from Boston to New York and the year Etan Patz disappeared on his way to a bus stop in Soho.  Page 98 ends with the story of my brother and I watching an episode of “The Hulk” on TV and wondering what kind of crazy place New York City was when no one turned to look at the giant green man running barefoot down the middle of Park Avenue.    We learned just how crazy, and terrifying, it was when we heard about Etan Patz’s disappearance.

“Shortly before my family moved to New York that year, everything changed for us children.  A little boy named Etan Patz disappeared one day on his way to school and was never seen again.”  I continue by discussing some of the details of the case – how quickly a search was mobilized encompassing all of lower Manhattan, by boat and by water.  Toll free phone numbers were set up, posters were hung.  “He was just six years old, just a couple of years younger than me.  He was someone I could have known.  It could have been me.”  Etan became the first missing child to be featured on a milk carton and he was the start of our focusing attention on child abduction and creating plans to address it.

Bronx DA could have been a hopeless book.  I talk about tragedy and heartbreak, rape and murder.  Worst of all, most of my cases involved crimes against children – these are hard things to hear about.  But it was critical to me in writing this book that people see the hopeful side of the story.  The dedication of the people in law enforcement, the great work and progress that can arise from tragedy.  It’s not that no one was taking kids prior to 1979, it’s just that no one was talking about it.  Etan Patz’s parents did not allow that to continue after their son died.  This book is not just about the cases I prosecuted.  Fundamentally, the book is also about hope and prevention and trying to stop crimes before they happen.  Page 99 is really the core of Bronx DA.  It’s about the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of a tragedy when people decide to never let something happen again.  And hopefully it’s about how people can create change for the better without first having to face tragedy.

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - He Ain't Lion

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Genre - Paranormal Romance

Rating -  R 

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Connect with Celia Kyle on Facebook & Twitter

Wow, this is a very scary, hold me in the dark, kind of thing.  Eep! 

Ahem. On to the dissection. 

First, you should know that this is the first time I’ve read this since actually sitting at the keyboard and writing it.  Scary, I know.  Once I’ve written a story, I hand it off to my editor (aka hubby) and let him have at it.  He’s also a writer, darned good editor and knows I don’t like to bother with a book once I’ve finished my part.  So, yeah, let’s read it together, shall we? 

He Ain’t Lion is the story of the Ridgeville pride’s Prime (Alex O’Connell) finding his mate.  Of course, through no fault of her own, the heroine (Maya) wanders into Alex’s club on the night that the pride is set to get super frisky.  This causes lots of sexiness to ensue, more confusion about what has really happened to Maya during the night and OMG she craves a ton of meat when all is said and done. 

I snagged page 9 of my story and, thank goodness, it’s actually interesting.  Here, we find Maya swaying her curvy hips across the club, following the pride’s second-in-command as he leads her to Alex.  She’s eyeing all the hotness and getting excited.  The man leading the way is a prime hunk of furball and Maya is all about wrestling him to the floor for a thorough, hard fuc—  Ahem. 

Little does she know that the man who’ll truly rock her world is at the top of the stairs.

This page is part of the overall setup for the book.  There’s the growly lions, the sexiness of said lions and then the potential for more.  Maya’s on the rebound after her ex cheated on her (hence the “ex”) and she just wanted a good time.  Unfortunately, the “good time” also included permanent fur, but by the end, everyone’s happy.

Page 9 is a peek into the fun in Ridgeville with the promise of more to come.  

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#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Pegasus

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Genre - Adventure / Romance 

Rating - Adult

Connect with Marilyn Holdsworth on GoodReads

Page 99 of Pegasus is a real treat for horse lovers and romantics. Our heroine Hannah, returns from her Austrian trip with Win. While abroad their love for each other has deepened and in Vienna Win has proposed. Now returning home to Win's California ranch, Hannah is eager to see Pegasus, the badly injured horse they rescued and adopted from a Bureau of Land Management holding compound. 

Hannah's loving care and Win's ingenious water therapy system have done much to rehabilitate the horse. But as Pegasus recovers it becomes evident he is not a wild mustang and Hannah resolves to discover his true identity. Her search leads her into a web of crime, endangering herself, Win and Pegasus.

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Author Interview - Janice Kirk & Gina Buonaguro

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Genre - Contemporary Romance
Rating - PG
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 Connect with Janice Kirk & Gina Buonaguro on Twitter & Facebook

Website http://sidewalkartist.blogspot.ca/

If you could travel in a Time Machine would you go back to the past or into the future?
While it sounds romantic to travel back in time to say Renaissance Italy or Tudor England, having done a lot of historical research for our books and after reading The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence by Steven Pinker, it’s safe to say future. As women, we now know we wouldn’t want to live any other time or place than the 21st-century developed world. So we’ll be hopeful and assume the future will be even better!

If you could invite any 5 people to dinner who would you choose?
On this one, we will go into the past. While researching The Sidewalk Artist, we fell in love with the Renaissance painter Raphael. We feel we’re the only ones who really know his true story, and we’d like to see how right we were. Michelangelo, whom we came to love while writing The Wolves of St. Peter’s, would be up there as well, though we’d have to overlook his bad table manners and poor hygiene. Of course we’d love to meet our fictional characters as well - they feel so real to us. 

A dinner with the characters from Ciao Bella would have Graziella cooking and Ugo playing his violin, though we’re not sure if he’d be heard over his quarrelsome sisters. We’d love to have Rain from Falling for Rain for dinner, but we might end up fighting over him, which would not be good for our future as coauthors. There are a good many writers we’d love to meet though we might be too starstruck to eat anything. Two that immediately come to mind are Ann Patchett (we so loved Bel Canto) and R.A. Scotti, whose non-fiction is so riveting we sometimes wonder if there’s any reason to write fiction any more.

If you were stranded on a desert island what 3 things would you want with you?
As we would view this as an excellent opportunity to get some work done on our next book without all the interruptions we have in the real world, we would have to say our laptops (we’ll assume this desert island has a power supply). Some good food and lots of wine wouldn’t hurt either.

If you were a superhero what would your name be?
You mean we’re not superheroes?

Please tell us in one sentence only, why we should read your book.

You will fall in love with Rain.

Any other books in the works? Goals for future projects?
We are juggling several projects right now. We have just finished editing a historical mystery set in Renaissance Rome called The Wolves of St. Peter’s (forthcoming Spring 2013). We have also begun a sequel to that in which the hero detective moves to Renaissance Venice. Additionally, we’re working on another romance set in present-day Venice.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
There have been several milestones, but one that stands out in particular is getting our first novel, The Sidewalk Artist, published. When we saw and held a copy of that book for the first time, we actually cried.

What is your dream cast for your book?
That is a tricky question for this book. For The Sidewalk Artist, it has always been Johnny Depp as Raphael. In Ciao Bella, it’s Owen Wilson as Frank and Gael Garcia Bernal as Ugo, but with Falling for Rain, there isn’t an actor gorgeous enough to hold a candle to our image of him.

What was your favorite book when you were a child/teen?
We didn’t know each other as children, but we both loved to read and reread our favourites many times over. A book that we’ve discovered as adults we both wished we’d read as a teenager was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. It’s about an eccentric British family who live in a ruined castle in England between the wars. It is so engrossing and its characters so captivating, it’s like being there. We both love books that make you forget where you are. It’s that feeling we try to bring to our own books.

What's one piece of advice you would give aspiring authors?
Persevere. That’s why having a coauthor is so helpful. You can share the successes but also support each other when you really just want to give up.

What is your favorite Quote?
We have several, and we always like to preface our books with a quote that we feel adds to the story or sets it up. For Falling for Rain, we chose something from Longfellow: “For after all, the best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”

What movie and/or book are you looking forward to this year?
We both love Woody Allen and Wes Anderson, and so To Rome with Love and Moonrise Kingdom are at the top of our lists. We’re also looking forward to the new version of The Great Gatsby with Leonardo di Caprio. Speaking of Woody Allen, we both adored Midnight in Paris and joke that he must have read our book The Sidewalk Artist, the stories share so many commonalities.

How do you react to a bad review?
We basically feel badly. As authors, we want everyone to like our work. But we have a new take on it after reading a marketing book by John Locke - think of bad reviews as people outside your target audience who mistakenly read your book. That puts quite a different spin on it and helps put bad reviews in perspective.

What do you do in your free time?
We write! And when we’re not writing, we read. We both love movies and traveling too.

What's your favorite season/weather?
We’ve noticed we really like to write about seasons and weather in our books. Falling for Rain, for instance, takes place in November in Ontario with a late-season hurricane thrown in. The weather adds a dangerous element as well as romantic suspense to the story.

Finish the sentence- one book we wish we had written is....
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It’s gorgeous.

Favorite places to travel?
It’s safe to say we love Italy. Many of our books are set there, we can’t seem to get enough of researching and learning about the place, and we’ve both traveled there extensively. Both of the projects we’re working on now take place in Venice during winter (although in completely different time periods), and we’re hoping to both travel there in January to work on it. As we usually travel with our own families, it will be the first time we’ve gone anywhere together. We’re really looking forward to writing in an exciting place, not just writing about an exciting place.

In your wildest dreams, which author would you love to co-author a book with?
Ha - this is a funny one for us! We truly feel we’ve already found the perfect coauthors in each other. We have an excellent working relationship and complement each other perfectly. It was a serendipitous meeting, and we feel very lucky to have found each other.

What inspired you to want to become a writer?
Neither of us can remember a time when we didn’t want to be writers. Neither of us were happy with just reading and wanted to create our own stories.

If you could jump in to a book, and live in that world, which would it be?
We’re both pretty happy in our real worlds, but we do like to “travel” into the worlds of the books we read. We both have a pretty vivid imagination so shy away from the gruesome (though Janice loves a good ghost story). As children, we both wanted to live in Little House on the Prairie. We both love to escape into a good book and when we write, we have a sense of really living our stories. By the time we’re finished writing, it feels like it actually happened.

#OBSummer #Books - Ford 99 - Whorticulture

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Genre - Historical Fiction 

Rating - R - adult themes

More details about the book

Connect with Marie-Anne Mancio on Twitter & GoodReads

Whorticulture is narrated by four different migrant women and, as its title suggests, looks at prostitution in various forms. These include marrying for security and other compromises. By p99, we're at the beginning of Seraphine's story.

Seraphine is what her contemporaries called a quadroon (the daughter of a white man and a mulatta) who arrives at Mrs. Hill's New York brothel with her sister Arlene to look for work. In contrast to the other stories, we're thrown into this environment without being told much about Seraphine's origins other than she is "fled from the South."

When I was writing Whorticulture I knew it was important to get the women's voices right. Katharine, for instance, is a daydreamer who is educated by a lover of literature so her use of language is poetic; Abigail is pragmatic hence her account is precise when it comes to dates and figures; Emily sings so her story creates a kind of rhythm. Seraphine on the other hand is an unreliable narrator:

"Arlene said our father was a low-life carpenter and our mother died long ago so we more or less raised ourselves. It was another lie and I don’t reckon Mrs. Hill believed it any. But if she suspicioned it, she didn’t let on, just set to talking how she runs a fair house and a clean one. That was how we came to stay."

Her story is more conversational in tone than the others (it uses nineteenth century slang) and deliberately less structured. She digresses, she interrupts herself, she draws attention to her own shortcomings as a storyteller. She tells us, on p99, that "Arlene sells her virginity in that brothel just days after we gets there." There's no prelude to this revelation and we soon see there is a curious imbalance in her story between discretion and indiscretion. But she's also direct and often amusing ("In truth, I could smell glorious things and my stomach was grumbling like an old sow’s. The girls was bringing in plates of eggs and ham… I wanted to gobble them down in two mouthfuls but instinct says I had to make like a bird or they won’t like us here") and I hoped this would make her endearing.

As well as establishing the relationship between Seraphine and her sister, p99 also sets up Whorticulture's exploration of historical narratives and history. At the beginning of her story, Seraphine says:

"If I was enslaved, some do-good white up North would make printings of my words – it is a known thing that cruelty makes for most dramatic stories. And though it leaves me uneasy to be dwelling on such like, there is much sympathy for misery and pain. A happy whore is a bad proposition for a book and one likely to offend most all readers."

I don't want to give anything away here but by the end of her story the reader realizes her apparent artlessness is actually very calculated. So in some ways the reader becomes like a client. Seraphine seduces you, not with erotic talk but with her apparent frankness. But once the story is over, you start to question why you let yourself get caught up in it.

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