Literary Nymphs Interview
Title:
Maple Lane
Home for Retired Supernaturals
Author: Cree Publisher: Naughty Nights Press
Genre: Paranormal Romance/Comedy
Release Date: July 26 2013
Do you write in more than
one genre?
Yes, under a different pen name.
What if any, is the hardest
part of writing for you?
Honestly it seems to be about 20 to 30,000
words in. I have no trouble coming up with ideas or endings but it’s the middle
part I’m most afraid of. I scared to bore my reader.
What inspired the story?
There is a hundred and twenty-five year old
mansion in my home town that I have been in love with since I was a little
girl. It has been for sale for several years and on a whim I asked the real
estate agent if she’d be willing to show me the home in the name of literature.
To my surprise she agreed.
When I went to see the house, I was
actually writing another book with this house in mind but after seeing it I
went home trying to devise ways in which I could afford this house. I fell
asleep with this in mind and suddenly I woke up with the title, Maple Lane
Manor, Home for Retired Supernaturals, ringing in my memory. I rushed to the
computer telling myself that I was only going to write the premise. Four hours
later I had a little more than that.
Blurb:
Maple Lane returns to the retirement home
where she grew up, after ten years away, and must face the music. How can she
rebuild the dilapidated building, repay a massive mortgage, and restore her
residents’ faith in her with her arch-nemesis – Stacy Three Names – breathing
down her neck, hungry for an artifact said to grant immortality? As Stacy
sabotages Maple’s efforts, the gorgeous new handyman Derek complicates matters
with his demon blood and hot attraction.
How
can Maple and her residents fight Stacy, find the artifact, and save their home
with the rich and powerful of the town arrayed against them?
…And
can she trust a demon to help her?
EXCERPT:
Chapter One
As of about four and a half minutes ago, I
officially quit college. I’ve decided that after attending not one but two
separate colleges during my nine…okay ten years of switching majors and still
not knowing what I want to be when I grow up, that I was never meant to be a
serious intellectual. I was not designed to run a corporate enterprise or wow
the art world with genius sculpture and paintings. I was studying to become a
teacher until I realized I don’t like children. I would have made an excellent
veterinarian, except I’m allergic to cats. Or, more accurately they are
allergic to me. I wanted to be an engineer, but it turns out I’m also allergic
to math, which also eliminated almost all science and accounting. I even tried
psychology, caseworker, and business major. So after trying everything that
ever caught my attention, I switched to a technical college, where I discovered
I had no talent for mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, heating, or cooking
anything in an oven. And I literally flunked out as a dental assistant when I
vomited on a patient while I was cleaning his teeth during final exams. So
because of this, or rather despite all of this, I’m going into the family
business.
My decision for this very sudden and life-altering
change might have been prompted by the three-page, single-spaced letter I am
now holding. It’s written in legal speak and since I did a very brief stint in
law – after watching a marathon of Law and Order while recovering from a
vicious and unprompted cat attack – I will summarize; “Your grandmother is
dead, and she’s left you the house and its current occupants.”
This is the letter telling me that my Granny Nan
has passed away. It was unexpected, and I’m not saying unexpected as in she was
always so healthy and she never said she was sick. No, I’m saying unexpected
because she was a vampire. Granny Nan was the
first in our family, full born. She came with all the perks of the undead. She
could turn into a bat and she never aged. She drank the blood of the living,
but she never took more than necessary. She could hypnotize people with a wink
of her long black lashes, and any whispered suggestions she made became the
victim’s lifelong mission to fulfill. She stayed inside on sunny days and
avoided anything resembling a wooden stake. On top of all of this, she was very
fast and very smart and very full of life.
She raised me from six months old, as my mother had
met her untimely demise in an unfortunate car accident involving a truck
transporting picket fence posts. As far as anyone knew in the small town where
I grew up, Granny Nan wasn’t my very young-looking, nearly two hundred year-old
grandmother. She was just my mom.
I’m a second-generation vampire. Vampires aren’t
made, or even bred. As far as we can tell, they just happen once in a while,
and the only way they can have children is if they choose to do so with a
human. Long story short, that makes me a quarter vampire. Meaning I don’t get
to live forever, I can’t turn into any cool animals, and I will never be able
to hypnotize people with a look or a whisper. The only thing I got from that
side of the family is that I have to wear sunscreen year round and I’m mildly
anemic. I don’t drink blood, but I like my steak extra rare. I have a pretty
good metabolism, but unlike Granny Nan I do have to burn a few calories on the
treadmill a few times a week if I want to eat cupcakes.
Having been raised in a retirement home, I am
probably more aware of my own mortality than most. What I learned from my
somewhat different childhood experience was that I didn’t want to die without
living a full and happy life. The only problem was I seemed to be having
trouble getting that life of excitement started. I was so scared to make the
wrong move that I ended up not moving at all. So at twenty-seven – okay
twenty-eight, I was now the newest caretaker of Maple Lane Manor, Home for
Retired Supernaturals.
About
the Author:
What
I like…
Red
Maple
Lane Manor, Home for Retired Supernaturals
Hanging
out with Corey and Titan
Memoirs
of a Geisha
Molly
Harper
Favorite
Saying, Reality TV kills brain cells faster than crystal meth.
Autumn
time
Football
Dogs
Jack
Coon
Things
I dislike,
Reality
Television
The
words, I can’t
Skinny
jeans on adult men
Books
or movies with talking animals unless it’s a cartoon…don’t ask me why
Hard
Candy
Dusting
The
fact the pretty much anything that’s ever been FDA approved can give you
cancer.
Blatantly
rude people
People
who hate other people based on physical appearance, sexuality or creed.
Dieting
Website
http://creewalker.wordpress.com/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/CreeWalker1
Giveaway: Comment for a chance to Win
A Maple Lane Manor Tote Bag !
Giveaway: Comment for a chance to Win
A Maple Lane Manor Tote Bag !
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