In her bio Maggie Mae Gallagher says her mom used to say if only she would read the right type of books instead binging her way through the romance aisles at the bookstore, she’d have been a doctor. I am so glad she stuck with romance. Maggie Mae Gallegher writes all over the spectrum. Her latest book is a contemporary romance that seems designed for a geek like me who also loves humor. And she's giving away an eBook copy of The Fixer Upper to one lucky reader.
Maggie Mae, please tell us a little about yourself.
Hi, I’m Maggie Mae Gallagher and I write steamy
contemporary romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. I also write
erotic romance under the name, Anya Summers. I’m a total geek. I love
superheroes, vampires, demon slayers, the Force, and that everyone should Live
long and prosper. Oh thank you, I am a fellow geek. I wanted to marry Spock. Not Leonard Nimoy. Spock. I already have my ticket for Star Wars at The Chinese. And I went to my first Comic Con two weeks ago. (I have to admit I sold more candy bars for my grandson's school that I did books. I was working at selling my time travels ones.)
I love firsts, so tell me about the moment when a publisher
told you they wanted to publish your book.
I will never forget that day. I sat at my computer
reading their email over and over again and crying. Happy tears, of course, but
it had been a long journey to getting published. To give you an idea, I wrote
my first book in 2001. It was 2016 when I was offered my first contract.
What is your favorite pastime, other than writing?
To be honest, it’s reading. I read every day. Even
when I’m on deadline. My day pretty much goes like this. I get up, work out for
90 minutes each day. Do my shower and breakfast. Then I start my day at work by
answering emails, writing blogs, doing any of the things that don’t require my
creative brain. That can take sometimes upwards of two hours and by that time
it’s close to noon, which is when my creative brain comes online. Then I write
usually until 8 or 9 in the evening with a break in there for dinner. I watch
one episode of a show. Right now, I’m hooked on the sitcom New Girl and
watching my way through on Netflix. And then I end my day in bed with my
kitties and my kindle, where I read until about midnight.
How do you motivate yourself when inspiration takes a vacation?
My publishing schedule is rather hefty. I’m
contracted out the next few years with tight deadlines, so I don’t really have
the time for my inspiration to take a hike. I tend to write anywhere from 3000
to 5000 words a day. However, there are days when I do need to nudge myself and
find my motivation. As much as I love my job, it is still a job and there are
days where the last thing I want to do is sit at a computer for hours on end. I
tend to bargain with myself when those days arise. I tell myself just get a
smaller amount of words written today than my averaage and we will call it an
early day. And while I might struggle with the words that day, I still get them
on the page. Often when I do this, I end up blowing past the smaller number, and
it ends up being a great writing day.
Any advice for new writers just starting out?
Develop patience and perseverance. Don’t try to take
the shortcuts just because they might seem easier. Be open to working on your
craft, taking the time needed to truly learn how to create a book. Don’t be in
such a hurry to call yourself a published author that you toss a book up on
Amazon before you’ve honed your skills and neglect part of the journey. It’s a
process. At times, it can be a frustrating one, but I know that looking back I
am glad it took as long as it did to get that first contract, because it made
me learn how to be a writer. Also get the book On Writing by Stephen
King, read it cover to cover, and then pull out periodically to refresh.
Tell us about The Fixer Upper
THE FIXER UPPER, Echo Springs Series,
Book 1
Abby
Callier is more in love with Shakespearean heroes than any real man, and she’s
beginning to wonder if there is life for her outside the pages of a book. It
doesn’t help that her esteemed parents tend to view her as they would one of
their science experiments gone wrong. On the eve of finishing her dissertation,
she escapes her staid existence to live in the house she inherited from her
Great Aunt Evie in the small town of Echo Springs, Colorado. Because, let’s
face it, when a woman starts comparing her life to horror films, it might be
time for a break.
Sheriff
Nate Barnes believes in law and order and carefully building the life you want.
In his spare time, he has been remodeling his house in the hope that one day it
will be filled with the family he makes. But Nate doesn’t like drama or
complications and tends to avoid them at all costs. And yet, when Miss Abigail
Callier, his newest neighbor, beans him with a nine iron, he can’t help but
wonder if she might just be the complication he’s been searching for all along.
It doesn’t hurt that he discovers a journal hidden away by the previous tenant
and decides to use Old Man Turner’s advice to romance Abby into his life.
Abby
never expected her next-door neighbor, the newly dubbed Sheriff Stud Muffin, to
be just the distraction her world needed. The problem is she doesn’t know
whether she should make Echo Springs her home, or if this town is just a
stopover point in her life’s trajectory. And she doesn’t want to tell Nate that
she might not be sticking around—even though she should because it’s the right
thing to do, the honest thing—because then all the scintillatingly hot kisses
with the Sheriff will come to an abrupt halt. Did she mention that he’s a
really great kisser?
Praise
for The Fixer Upper:
"Maggie Mae Gallagher writes with warmth and a
wonderfully compelling voice - I loved The Fixer Upper!" NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR HEATHER GRAHAM
“Maggie Mae Gallagher makes the reader forget the actual
words on the page so they can just enjoy the story as it unfolds.” Nancy
Berland, NBPR, Inc. President
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Amazon Print https://amzn.to/2ZAv3t4
Nook http://bit.ly/2wP9KUD
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Excerpt from THE FIXER UPPER
Abby spent the next hour cleaning her
new room as best she could for the night. She’d work on the full house and give
it a proper cleaning come morning, but she’d spent the better part of the day
in her Rover and could feel the onset of fatigue settling in her bones. There
was a semimodern bathroom across the hall, with one of those claw-foot tubs
she’d take advantage of when she wasn’t dragging her feet and ready to go
horizontal for eight hours.
Settled in for the night, she made
herself a small picnic of her wine and cheese offerings and added hitting up
the local market for all the essentials to her to-do list for the morrow. Her
parents would only shake their heads if they could see her in her thermal
pajamas, drinking chardonnay directly from the bottle that hadn’t even sported
a cork, but a lid that twisted off.
She was toasting her own brilliance
when she heard the creak of the front door opening. Grabbing her trusty nine
iron, a little gizmo she’d inherited from an ex-boyfriend some years back, Abby
cursed at her phone’s low battery.
“Figures,” she muttered under her
breath.
She left her room, tiptoeing down
the stairs, her movements muffled by her thick socks. She rounded the corner,
and a beam of light blinded her.
“Gah!” Screaming, she swung the
iron, ready to take on her intruder. All the self-defense classes her parents
had scoffed at hadn’t been for naught. Who knew that in a sleepy little
mountain town, burglars and vagabonds were a problem? The golf club whizzed
over the intruder’s head.
“What the?” a deep baritone barked.
She swung again, determined to fend
off whoever the hell thought he could invade her aunt’s place with mischief on
his mind. The shadowed outline of a large man loomed behind the beam of light.
When he didn’t back off, only kept advancing, her internal panic button hit
overdrive. The nine-iron connected with flesh with a thudded whack.
“Ow, fuck, cut it—”
“Get out or I’ll call the police!”
she swore, her pulse hammering, her grip on the nine-iron so tight her hand was
fusing into a claw formation. She reared back to strike again when his next
words halted the forward progression of her swing.
“I am the police.”
She blanched, almost dropping her
weapon, but then thought better of it. What if he’d lied to disarm her and then
would attack?
Nice try, buddy. She wasn’t falling
for it.
“Prove it.” She wasn’t the atypical
heroine who idiotically descended into the darkened basement, despite the light
mysteriously not working, to investigate the strange noise. She’d studied
horror films and knew she was not the dumb bimbo, but the smart woman who
survived. His indicating that he was the police was a sub-plot straight out of
a B horror film and was precisely the type of thing the killer would say.
She raised the nine-iron into a
defensive position as the man moved to her right, flipping on the overhead
light while pulling a shiny silver badge from his belt. He held it toward her
so that light reflected off the silver star. Blinking as her eyes adjusted,
Abby wondered if she was dreaming. Cornflower-blue eyes studied her, dressed in
her flannel pink pajama bottoms, tank top, and fluffy purple robe. He was
larger than the darkness had suggested, probably a good six-three, and lean.
His dark midnight hair fell in curly waves to his jawline, which was covered in
dusky stubble. There was a ruggedness to him, indicating that somewhere in his
make-up he preferred life outdoors, and it showed. He reminded her of the men
gracing the covers of the romance novels she’d hidden from her parents growing
up, and still hid from her colleagues.
She’d always had a bit of a thing
for men in uniform, but the only defining mark that even suggested he was an
officer was his black jacket with an emblem embroidered into the right
shoulder. Otherwise, he looked like a mountain man, in a button-up emerald
flannel shirt and blue jeans that rode low over his muscular hips.
Then she focused on the badge. Oh,
sweet heavens! The badge read: Sheriff, City of Echo Springs. Why
did this have all the beginnings of a campy horror flick? Woman goes to the
wilderness to find herself, makes acquaintance with the local law enforcement,
and then the army of dolls stuffed inside the home come to life, possessed by a
demon spawn from hell, to try to kill the heroine.
I am currently neck deep in an Anya Summers title
FAR REACHING CONSEQUENCES and have edits for the next book in the Echo Springs
Series, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, in my que once the Anya book has been submitted. Holy cow! You are one busy woman,
And finally, where can we find
you?
.
Visit her website here:
Visit her on social media here:
Facebook: FB.me/MagMaeGallagher
Twitter:
@magmaegallagher
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Thanks so much for having me, Susan! I'm head over heels for Thorin Oakenshield so I understand.
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