November Greetings to
all you Pen Dames Readers!
You're in for a real treat
this month with a visit from Paula J. Braley, who also writes as P.J. Braley.
Today, we're featuring her stand-alone book, but also part of a series,
FINDING PERSEPHONE
BOOK BLURB
Caroline Taylor is very good at pretending.
The polished surface of her life appears perfect until the
morning when a smitten grad student brings the cracks in her illusions into
sharp focus. No longer willing to live a lie, Caroline's journey of
transformation sets her on a collision course with Dr. Grant Gates. Blinded by
his quiet power, good looks, and impressive credentials, Caroline fails to see
that Grant is also very good at pretending.
Created from flesh and fire, Grant has a past he would like
to forget, an assignment he cannot reveal, and a forbidden obsession with his
newest client whose beautiful eyes miss nothing. As the enforcer of an
underground brotherhood, he must protect their secrets at any cost, but
Grant is determined that Caroline will not become his next victim. Striking a
devil's bargain to keep the woman he has been searching for safe from his
brothers' plans, Grant struggles to hide who - and what- he is until he becomes
her only hope of escape . . . but will he let her go?
There's not a chance in Hell.
A contemporary retelling of the Greek myth of Hades and
Persephone with a conflicted yet compelling male protagonist and a voice-driven
narrative from the woman's perspective. Finding Persephone is the twisting tale
of an alien assassin's search for mercy and the woman whose love lies at the
heart of his redemption.
Short Excerpt
"It's dreaming time," I said.
"I don't understand."
"Early evening. It's my favorite time of day. . . I call it dreaming time. The day hasn't surrendered the light, the night hasn't quite conquered the day. It's best in the summer, when it lasts for hours, lots of dreaming time."
"What do you dream of Caroline?"
"What did I use to dream of, or what do I dream of now?"
"You dream differently now?"
"Oh yes," I said, smiling slightly. "Before I dreamt of how wonderful it would be if Dan came home and just once said, "Hey sweetheart, what would you like to do tonight?" and I would imagine the things we would do together. . . silly things, romantic things, you know, just sharing the joy of each other in the ease of half-light. But, you know," I swallowed back sudden tears, "he never did."
"Fool, then, to have missed one moment with you."
"No, blind. He never wanted me in his life, only my role in it. It hasn't been a marriage so much as a semi-successful stage play."
He held my hand next to his eyes. "And now?" he asked.
I turned my palm next to his face. "I don't have to dream it, Grant. I live it." I brought my lips just close enough to him to feel their warmth.
"Grant, will you do me a favor?"
"If I can."
"Tell me when it's okay to love you," I said softly. "I don't want to miss one moment of you."
What's your writing space like?
Just imagine the messiest stacks of books, papers,
and random dog toys all squished together in a bay window, and you've got it!
Do you wish to donate one of your e-book titles to
a randomly selected winner?
I would be happy to donate both The Fire
Slayers and Finding Persephone to either one or two
winners.
What can you tell us about YOU that will allow us to get
to know you better-- where you live, your background, jobs, interests, etc.?
I live in Inverness, Florida, where my husband, Jim, and I moved after we retired. Unfortunately, our plans clashed with COVID-19, which made everything more difficult. To complicate matters further, Jim was diagnosed with cancer, and the logistics of not only moving, but also his healthcare, became my sole responsibility. It was the hardest year of my life. Jim passed away about eight months after we moved into our new home, so I have spent most of the last two years forging new friendships. . Soon after our move to inverness, I was blessed with finding Citrus Writers - a group of wonderful, kind, and patient writers who were helpful and encouraging at a time in my life when I didn't care if I ever wrote another word. The last twenty-five years of my administrative career, I was the Senior assistant to the Director of the International Studies Program at the University of Dayton. While I worked there, I finished my B.A. and went on to earn a master's degree in English. It had always been my plan to write, and one day, I realized I could put it off no longer. Luckily, I took a lot (really, a lot) of writing classes at U.D., and with the feedback I received from my professors, I felt prepared to transition into a second career as a writer.
My first book, The Fire Slayers, was published by Between the Lines Publishing at the height of COVID in November 2020. My second novel, Finding Persephone, was published just after we moved to Inverness in June 2022. I am happy to add that the third book, Persephone's Children, will be released in mid-November, 2024. I also have two manuscripts (book four of the Fire Slayers series and a stand-alone about 1940s, Tampa) that will be released next year. I love living in Central Florida, and when I'm not writing, socializing, or working with the wonderful authors at Citrus Writers of Florida, I am either reading, having tea with friends, playing with my two rescue mini Aussies, Nymeria and Kaela, and counting my blessings.
What genre is your book? What do you like about writing in that genre?
The Fire Slayers series is a science fiction love story that explores the different sides of love, such as romantic love and family love, and how they contrast with duty and responsibility. The eternal struggle between deciding whether to follow your heart or your mind -- and the results of those choices. Writing science fiction is a good fit for me for a couple of reasons. One is research. I love researching subjects I have never read about before and have found many of them endlessly fascinating. In The Fire Slayers, I learned about the geography and people who live in Northern Africa; I researched the bloodlines and history of Arabian horses, and the traditional clothes people who lived in the Levant wore in the 1980s. While writing Finding Persephone, I learned about genomes, testing, and anatomy. Those are not the main reasons, however. I chose science fiction because it is the best genre to represent my theme: how other species see climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the growing human population. I expanded on that theme by creating a secret underground alien society that is (one) fully aware of the fate of the planet if the current course is not corrected, and (two) are not afraid to do something about changing the future. Another reason I like writing science fiction instead of fantasy, for example, is because genre relies on scientific facts to carry the narrative and not enchanted elements or superpowers. This reliance on facts lends, I believe, a certain validity to the theme.
Is your book part of a series or a stand-alone? If it is
a part of a series, briefly describe the series.
Although written as stand-alone books, The
fire Slayers, Finding Persephone, and Persephone's
Children are all part of the Fire Slayers series and can be read in
any order. Two additional novels, tentatively titled Training
Ground and The Retribution, are in final draft form
for a total of five. The sixth one is percolating in my mind . . . but
not much has been written yet. The overall narrative of the series tells the story of the three
main characters. Novels one through three describes the life of the
protagonist/villain, Grant, an alien assassin who tries to balance the love of
his human parents and his responsibility to his alien brotherhood; books two
through four focus on Caroline, the human woman he loves, and the lengths to
which Grant will go to protect her freedom; and three through five describe
their son's tumultuous life from his untimely birth to adulthood as a soldier
with a human wife amid an alien apocalypse. So, although written as a series,
it can also be read as three overlapping trilogies.
Describe your main character -- life, personality,
motivation -- whatever you think will make us want to get to know the person.
In Finding Persephone, Grant seems to personify Shakespeare's "plain-dealing villain," a man who kills without negotiation, mercy, or compassion. It is hard to defend an assassin -- or is it? Although many villains are one-dimensional killing machines, Grant is much more complicated than the word may imply. Plagued by physical and emotional pain from his past (The Fire Slayers), Grant believes the only way to overcome his unending regret is to focus on his new assignment: protecting the colony's secrets by any means necessary. When Grant falls in love with Caroline, he tries to reclaim what little humanity he has left to become worthy of her, and his attempt at metamorphosis endangers both of their lives. The only thing that keeps Grant from becoming the definitive villain his past would dictate is the price he is willing to pay to save Caroline from his brothers' plans.
What writing projects do you have on the horizon?
As I mentioned earlier, Training Ground will be released next year as the fourth book in The Fire Slayer series. It's about the trials and joys of raising four alien children in the Midwest. The narrative is mostly epistolary, told with letters, journal entries, documents, and various vignettes over a period of twenty-five years. Writing in this style was new to me and Training Ground was the hardest book of the series to write because, although it is told primarily from Caroline's point of view, the story is interspersed with different voices. I found keeping everyone's voice progressing in a continuous narrative without branching into digression very challenging.
What is your best advice for aspiring writers?
My advice for aspiring writers is to read as much as
possible, write whenever you can, and get feedback. Lots of feedback -- and not
from your mom or best friend. Moms and best friends are great for brainstorming
ideas, but most do not understand a narrative or character arc, subtext, or
world-building. The kind of feedback I refer to comes from professors, other
writers, and editors. It is important to grow as a writer, so take classes,
join writers' groups like the Citrus Writers of Florida, or the Florida Writers
Association, and put your writing out there.
Which authors/books are on your keeper shelves?
The books I will keep forever are mostly classics from Jane Austin (Sense and Sensibility is my favorite.), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (which I have reread many times), and early 20th century novels written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Those novels sound very staid, but on the other hand, I have every book written by John D. MacDonald, Dave Barry, Tim Dorsey, and Carl Hiassen; they are all occasionally sexy, always humorous, and sometimes downright irreverent! As a Florida native, I cannot help but be a fan of Florida fiction.
If you could meet any author, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Desiderious Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) is well known as the heart, soul, and pen of the Renaissance. Erasmus was one of the first humanists, a monk, a priest, a scholar, a writer, a teacher, the scourge of the Catholic Church -- and its ardent defender -- and his arguments with Martin Luther regarding the concept of free will are legendary (see more at https://pjbraley.com/hello-world/writers-words/erasmus- es/). What, you may ask, would we talk about? We would speak of the love and layers of language. Erasmus was a linguist who loved language so much that when he completed his first Latin translation of the New Testament, he continued to research church documents to ensure that his translation was as accurate as possible so that the scholars who came after him would have the best source for translations into common languages such as English, French, and German. Among many other academic, intellectual, and spiritual pursuits, Desiderious Erasmus spent a lifetime searching for the best words and phrases and wrote with future readers in mind. I think we would begin our conversation there.
What is your favorite marketing tip?
I have only one marketing tip: never shy away from
an opportunity to get your work, your name, or your brand out in front of the
reading public's eye. I know you would rather be writing than talking about
writing, but regrettably, the days are gone when writers can ignore the
importance of every promotion opportunity. Remember, even Stephen King has
an X (formerly Twitter) account.
Your website/blog and social media links ---
https://www.facebook.com/PJBraleyAuthor
Buy links for your featured book ---
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