Tuesday, October 21, 2014

WIN $10 AND LEARN HOW A DREAMER BECOMES A NOVELIST

NOTE FROM CAROL MCCLAIN: I will have a give away--a ten dollar gift card from Barnes and Noble or Amazon, depending on the winner's choice. In theory, the winner can buy the book and a little something else, but no strings attached.

Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this post!

                               
             
By Carol McClain
I am Carol, and I am dreamer.
More than anything else, I dream. As a child, I'd invent games, make my friends play. I'd create plays and force our parents to pay to endure them. I'd dream I was a character on one of my favorite TV shows and tell myself long stories. When I was eight, I decided to make my daydream a novel. Not a short story, mind you—a novel.
As a teen, I wrote angst-filled poems and read the Russian authors—oh what a morbid child I was. My school never offered any writing direction, and I never knew how to be inspired or how to construct a story. College didn't help.
If one thing blocked my writing, aside from my myriad distraction, it was devising plots.
And thus I am the proverbial seat-of-the-pants writer. Generally, something in the news or my life will trigger a thought. I'll have the basic conflict, and know the end, and then I write and modify as I go. It's all very structured whims, and the beginning and the ends usually change.
That's much of what happened with my debut novel DWF: Divorced White Female. I met my husband online later in life. I imagined what online dating would be like with a crazy family. I found characters who intrigued me and made the serious funny.
DWF:Divorced White Female
            Sassy and unsaved and ditched by a philandering husband, Cheryl Chandler knows only one thing will save her, a man, any man, so long as he's hot.
Finding love in rural New York proves a daunting challenge. Should she find her dreamboat, he must meet her quirky teens whose eccentricities range from New Age ideology, to OCD, to religious fanaticism. And, of course, she can't hide her toddler—her husband’s parting gift. What man would love her and accept them?
Her kids have the solution—online dating.
Here she meets two men. Religious fanatic, Tarrant, charms her, but is too pious.
And mysterious Carleton who’s everything her desperation desires.
However, nothing is as it seems, not even her desires.
You can find DWF:Divorced White Female wherever ebooks are sold as well as at http://www.desertbreezepublishing.com/dwf-divorced-white-female-epub/

Themes
None of my work would be complete without themes dear to my heart. The first is always the redemption—physical, spiritual, emotional—of broken lives.
DWF also explores the true nature of faith, and the concept that sin is sin—no matter who you are or what you believe.


Bio
Diverse. If one word can describe Carol McClain, it's diverse and had been long before diversity became such a pc buzz word. She's a novelist and essayist from northern New York—so far north, she's almost Canadian. Eh?
She plays the bassoon, creates stained glass, cross-country skis, and is an erstwhile marathoner and high ropes instructor. A former English teacher, she now teaches adult Bible studies and edits for fun.
In addition to this, she has served on the North Country Habitat for Humanity board for over ten years. In that capacity, she's held every position except those having to do with money. She may be able to tell you the definitions sesquipedalian, but simple addition baffles her.

She is course coordinator for ACFW. And of course, she writes.

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