In this weeks Writer Wednesday please welcome Laina Turner-Molaski. She is the brilliant and lovely (totally love her author photo!!) author of Stilettoes and Scoundrels. I'll be reviewing it in April. So more about that later. Now lets get to know Laina and what she has to say about how much real life affects her fiction life.
Laina Turner-Molaski is a businesswoman, mom, author, Professor, and a major supporter of shopping. She has an undying love for shoes and coffee, which is why she created her main character and alter ego Presley Thurman.
With a lot of letters after her name and a ton of student loan debt, she is always working to pay the bills. While she enjoys her day job, her passion is writing, and she uses a lot of company time writing her fiction or working on her social website for women, Chiczofrenic.com. She is hoping to sell her book before she gets fired from her day job for goofing off.
Laina is currently living in Indiana, with her family, and is always writing something, whether it’s blogs, articles, business journals and books or ideas for her next novel. She is continuously doing what she loves which is writing or drinking coffee.
www.lainaturner.com
How much real life is in my fiction writing?
Someone asked me the other day how much of me and/or my friends pop up in the characters I create in my fiction writing. My answer is more than I realize after I read what I wrote. Funny how personal details just seem to sneak in when you don’t expect it.
It’s normal to take the familiar and put a fun twist to it. I have friends who ask to be a character in my books. They find it fun to be a part of something fictionalized. They give me all sorts of ideas on what they want their characters to do, which is a great help. I have a friend who in some form or another has made his way into almost every book I have written. No one but the two of us would ever be able to tell because it mannerisms, habits, personal type details that are slipped in, but we know the details are there and it’s fun.
I also ask my kids for ideas or to help me decide what hair color or eye color to give a character. It makes it a fun family event and increase my mommy cool factor.
Other real life aspects I utilize for my writing is just people watching. I love when I fly because airports are the best places to study people and write down observed eccentricities I may want to use later. Life is much stranger than anything I could ever make up and being observant to details and nuances is what makes me able to write what I do.
Laina
Presley Thurman, a sassy, thirty-something red-head, was looking to reinvent herself. She didn’t allow the fact she was recently fired to bother her – she was ready to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. Presley was a lover of shopping and Starbucks, and even though she sometimes had bad taste in men, she always had great taste in clothes.
Not looking back on corporate America, Presley decided to follow her dream. With her feisty nature and a spirit to not “sweat the small stuff,” she was ready to tackle any challenge (even if she had no idea how she would pay the bills). When her friend Trevor offered her a job with his online magazine to interview public figures, she jumped at the chance.
However, the new job turned into something unexpected when the U.S. Senator she was slated to write about was murdered – in her home town! Presley was excited – she hadn’t seen so much buzz since the spring sample sale at Saks. She was ready for this adventure, even if it didn’t seem to fit neatly into her life. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be in the middle of the buzz.
Presley was determined (not to mention curious) to find the killer and write her story. After all, she couldn’t afford her shoe habit without a job and she was certainly not one to shy away from danger. The only thing standing in her way was an old high school fling, Cooper Sands, head of the Senator’s security. He was not actually standing in her way, but because of his good looks, he was the biggest distraction and one she was having the hardest time overcoming. Cooper felt it was too dangerous for Presley to look for a killer and tried to distract her with reliving the past; which Presley found more dangerous than any killer. While she attempted to resist Cooper’s good looks and charm, Presley was able to discover the Senator’s wife, Helen, had been having an affair… with her best friend’s boyfriend! Did Helen kill the Senator? Or was it the Senator’s love of gambling that got him killed? And what was Cooper’s secret tie to the mob boss Garrison Palazzo?
Presley’s betting her favorite pair of Manolo’s she will find the killer… but will time run out!
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Stilettos-Scoundrels-Laina-Turner-Molaski/dp/0578034077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286689942&sr=1-1
Twitter:http://twitter.com/#!/lturnermolaski
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/lainaturnermolaski
Thank you Laina for coming by and sharing your own experiences of real life and fiction silently infiltrating the other. I can definitely relate to that. How about any of you other authors? Has that happened to you?
"Antony had rushed down the roads leading from his estate back to the cobblestoned streets of Rome when he got the phone call. His contact in the Carabiniere called about an American woman using his name. On the drive back to the city, time crawled like the rotation of the earth for him.
