An Interview with Maureen McMahon
Shadows In The Mist
Maureen McMahon
Avid Press, LLC
1. How did you start writing?
I began writing when I was very young. I found I enjoyed writing and putting words on paper. I wrote a novel at the age of twelve (albeit, a rough one!) and the pleasure I got from writing it has kept me at it ever since.
2. What are your goals in writing?
My primary purpose for writing novels is so that I could have more of what I enjoyed reading. I experience my novels and stories while I write them. I crave the experience of a piece of fiction that contains many elements that I personally enjoy. There is, of course, great satisfaction in creating characters, places and situations that come to life in your mind — and there is enormous satisfaction if other readers find they have been touched by the experience, too. I try to keep my goals simple — to please myself first and to hopefully touch others in the process.
3. Do you attend workshops, conventions, seminars, and the like?
Rarely. I do like to take a creative writing class, or be a member of a creative writing group, if I can find one that is suitable. I like the odd kick in the pants to keep me producing. If I know I have to write, I do, but sometimes laziness is a problem.
4. What work are you best known for?
Goodness! This is a toughie. By whom? Ha! I suppose my best known work is Shadows In The Mist, a romantic mystery ala Mary Stewart/Barbara Michaels. It was released last year in the U.S. and western countries, and is soon to be released in Germany. However, my short story, The Wish Fish, has been published numerous times in various magazines around the world, and my short story Joey won Publisher’s Choice Award from Futures Magazine recently. My work with The Electronically Published Professionals (EPPRO) (http://eppro.net) of which I am founder and director with Jude Morris, has brought world recognition for our efforts to bring unity and high repute to the electronic publishing industry.
5. Who are your literary influences?
Mary Stewart is one of my most loved writers, and she has personally responded to letters I have written asking for help in certain areas to do with writing. Her willingness to assist me has inspired me to name my website after one of her novels, The Moonspinners. My website is called: Moonspinners Writer’s Page (http://moonspinners.homestead.com) and is dedicated to the support of all creative writers regardless of the level of expertise.
Barbara Michaels has also influence me with her style and the supernatural elements in her novels.
Others include Jeffrey Archer, Leon Uris, Sharon Pennman, Cyntha Harrod-Eagles, Jane Austen and too many more to mention here. Whenever I read a book, I absorb what I can of the style and it then becomes a tool for enhancing my own style.
6. Do you have writer friends?
Many. All of my publishers have Internet groups for their “stable” of authors, and I belong to a number of author-based groups. This means we can interact with each other online — share our trials and tribulations; good reviews and bad; and help each other out when we’re stuck on some part of our new project.
7. What are you working on now?
I have two books coming out shortly: Return Of The Gulls will be released in September from Avid Press, LLC (http://www.avidpress.com). Shadows In The Mist is available in print or ebook and can also be purchased online at Avid, Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from bookstores in your area. I am currently working on a new romantic suspense set in Australia entitled Apollo Moon. I also have plans for a sequel/series to Return Of The Gulls.
Read an extract:
Looking back I realize that the first time the apparition appeared to me was the night of my father’s death. At the time I thought it was my imagination or some strange hallucination, but now I know otherwise.
I’d rented the cabin as a retreat. The seclusion was meant to force me into completing a second novel that I’d been commissioned to write. Instead it had simply served to accentuate the prickling sense of disquiet that had been afflicting me for months. Since my arrival I’d done a lot of pacing, a lot of smoking and a lot of thinking, but my laptop still lay untouched in its leather case.
It happened on the second night. The cabin, hidden deep in Michigan’s Mannistee Forest, was rustic to a fault: There was no phone, the electricity worked when it felt like it and the water had a tendency to change color daily. I remember there was a chill in the air that night. A mist had worked its way down through the trees and settled in opaque gauze close to the ground. I’d lit a fire in the ample fireplace and it crackled warmly but still I shivered.
I was drawn to the window. Had I heard something? Was it the wind creaking in the boughs? Or the snap of a twig? I turned out the lamp so that I could see more clearly into the darkness beyond. The firelight danced making shadows flick across the walls and ceiling. I cupped my hands and peered out through the glass.
The mist slithered between the tightly packed pines and cloaked the thick underbrush. Fingers of it stretched up trunks and crept across the meager plot in front of the cabin. The pine boughs hung heavy and still, there was not a breath of wind to stir them. The night blackness was dense and impermeable, the tangled forest canopy allowing not a trace of moon- or starlight. The fireglow from my window cut a shimmering rectangle across the needle-strewn yard and lit the encroaching mist into ghoulish patterns.
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Maureen McMahon
www.maureenmcmahon.com
Shadows In The Mist, mystery suspense, Avid Press, LLC
Return Of The Gulls, mystery suspense, Avid Press, LLC
A Nightingale In The Sycamore, short stories & poetry, DiskUs Publishing