The name may seem a bit familiar to you.  Approximately a month ago, Mary was my guest for Sunday’s Shining Star and I had the pleasure of introducing and showcasing her as a blogger.  Today I am even more excited, because this time I am welcoming her back to the CMash blog as a Guest Author!!!  So I sincerely ask, to help welcome Mary Tabor back today!!

Mary adores her children: a daughter-philosopher Sarah Hammerschlag, who is a professor at Williams College, and is married to the philosopher (yes, the two philosophers married each other) Ryan Coyne, who is a professor at the University of Chicago; her son-wine importer Ben Hammerschlag, who has appeared in Food and Wine’s Best Under Forty among other worldwide recognitions for his work; her stepson-military attaché Chris Persinger, who is currently on assignment in Iraq, and his wife Jess, who has the honorable-and-today-rare title of Stay-at-Home-Mom. Mary has three grandchildren: Jericho Persinger and Madisson Lorimar, the precious progeny of Chris and Jess, and Lila Anastasia Coyne who arrived in the love of Sarah Hammerschlag and Ryan Coyne on April 28, 2009.

She couldn’t have taken the risks she took without the love of these incredible people in her life.

The love of her life will always be Del Persinger: The complex story of their marriage and separation is the stuff of her memoir: (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story. The memoir, a story of the good, the bad and the foolish after Del said, oh, so Greta Garbo, “I need to live alone” pulls no punches. Mary tells the story of her four-year separation from Del, her Internet dating, the sex, the falling in and out of “love,” and the redemption of her marriage against all odds. She rediscovered life, sex and love after sixty. Join her on the journey that unfolds in this story she wrote “live” as a blog while she lived it and ultimately discovered the meaning of commitment—with all its difficulties and joys.

Mary and her husband live downtown in the bustling Penn Quarter of Washington, DC where they recently renovated two adjoining condos.
You can visit Mary at the following sites:
http://maryltabor.com/
http://twitter.com/maryltabor

(Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story is one of those stories you just couldn’t make up. This memoir, the second book by Mary L. Tabor, transports the reader in a most unusual way through a remarkable journey of redemption after a 21-­‐year marriage crashes and burns when her husband “D.” announces, so Greta Garbo, “I need to live alone.” She craters, then embarks on a relentless dash through the hazards of Internet dating, the loving, the illusions, and through it all a hard look at herself—her foibles, whimsy, desolations, indomitable hope when all was hopeless, and ultimate self-­‐discovery. The origin of the writing as a live blog is apparent in a book that is, as Marly Swick has said, “uniquely beautiful and moving in both its form and its content.” This deeply personal memoir is shared wholeheartedly with brutal honesty and incredible intimacy.

A series of men appear—all identified as a lower-­‐case first initial—while the upper-­‐case D. weaves out and in, as both he and Mary maneuver through the separation. Along the way are the Internet dates, emails, T.S. Eliot and Nietzsche, romantic comedies and the Grimm Brothers, photographs, recipes, dreams, Obamas, and yes, even the kitchen sink. Her journey moves from her home in Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia and eventually to Paris, a visit that offers a stunning surprise that changes her life. As Randall Brown says, “In this extraordinary memoir’s jigsaw pieces, Mary has found a way to translate the desire to be found into her own modern fairy tale.”

This is a story for everyone, with laugh-­‐out-­‐loud humor, pain, despair, desire and understanding told in free flowing beautiful prose. To read her book is to feel as if one has, as described in a Flash Fiction review: “sat with Mary in the ‘chef’s kitchen’ she so often references, strolled the streets of Paris along side her, cried with her over the inability to cram a lifetime of memories into a storage-­‐lacking flat, or pondered right along with her about unfulfilled desire. Her honesty is refreshing, witty and full of intimate wisdom. There are lessons for all of us.”

The universal appeal of this raw, unfiltered, wise book is best expressed by publisher Kelly Abbott: “As the title of her book would suggest, she’s older than we are, but challenges us in her youthful understanding of the world. And by youthful, I don’t mean naive. I mean unblemished. I mean optimistic. I mean joyful and carefree and without pretense or fear. Mary is a breath of fresh air.”

Book available at:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Re-Making-Love-After-Sixty/dp/0982592612/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
Barnes and Noble here http://search.barnesandnoble.com/BookMary-L-Tabor/e/9780982592618/?itm=2&USRI=re+making+love

The name may seem a bit familiar to you.  Approximately a month ago, Mary was my guest for Sunday’s Shining Star and I had the pleasure of introducing and showcasing her as a blogger.  Today I am even more excited, because this time I am welcoming her back to the CMash blog as a Guest Author!!!  So I sincerely ask, to help welcome Mary Tabor back today!!

Mary adores her children: a daughter-philosopher Sarah Hammerschlag, who is a professor at Williams College, and is married to the philosopher (yes, the two philosophers married each other) Ryan Coyne, who is a professor at the University of Chicago; her son-wine importer Ben Hammerschlag, who has appeared in Food and Wine’s Best Under Forty among other worldwide recognitions for his work; her stepson-military attaché Chris Persinger, who is currently on assignment in Iraq, and his wife Jess, who has the honorable-and-today-rare title of Stay-at-Home-Mom. Mary has three grandchildren: Jericho Persinger and Madisson Lorimar, the precious progeny of Chris and Jess, and Lila Anastasia Coyne who arrived in the love of Sarah Hammerschlag and Ryan Coyne on April 28, 2009.

She couldn’t have taken the risks she took without the love of these incredible people in her life.

The love of her life will always be Del Persinger: The complex story of their marriage and separation is the stuff of her memoir: (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story. The memoir, a story of the good, the bad and the foolish after Del said, oh, so Greta Garbo, “I need to live alone” pulls no punches. Mary tells the story of her four-year separation from Del, her Internet dating, the sex, the falling in and out of “love,” and the redemption of her marriage against all odds. She rediscovered life, sex and love after sixty. Join her on the journey that unfolds in this story she wrote “live” as a blog while she lived it and ultimately discovered the meaning of commitment—with all its difficulties and joys.

Mary and her husband live downtown in the bustling Penn Quarter of Washington, DC where they recently renovated two adjoining condos.
You can visit Mary at the following sites:
http://maryltabor.com/
http://twitter.com/maryltabor

(Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story is one of those stories you just couldn’t make up. This memoir, the second book by Mary L. Tabor, transports the reader in a most unusual way through a remarkable journey of redemption after a 21-­‐year marriage crashes and burns when her husband “D.” announces, so Greta Garbo, “I need to live alone.” She craters, then embarks on a relentless dash through the hazards of Internet dating, the loving, the illusions, and through it all a hard look at herself—her foibles, whimsy, desolations, indomitable hope when all was hopeless, and ultimate self-­‐discovery. The origin of the writing as a live blog is apparent in a book that is, as Marly Swick has said, “uniquely beautiful and moving in both its form and its content.” This deeply personal memoir is shared wholeheartedly with brutal honesty and incredible intimacy.

A series of men appear—all identified as a lower-­‐case first initial—while the upper-­‐case D. weaves out and in, as both he and Mary maneuver through the separation. Along the way are the Internet dates, emails, T.S. Eliot and Nietzsche, romantic comedies and the Grimm Brothers, photographs, recipes, dreams, Obamas, and yes, even the kitchen sink. Her journey moves from her home in Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia and eventually to Paris, a visit that offers a stunning surprise that changes her life. As Randall Brown says, “In this extraordinary memoir’s jigsaw pieces, Mary has found a way to translate the desire to be found into her own modern fairy tale.”

This is a story for everyone, with laugh-­‐out-­‐loud humor, pain, despair, desire and understanding told in free flowing beautiful prose. To read her book is to feel as if one has, as described in a Flash Fiction review: “sat with Mary in the ‘chef’s kitchen’ she so often references, strolled the streets of Paris along side her, cried with her over the inability to cram a lifetime of memories into a storage-­‐lacking flat, or pondered right along with her about unfulfilled desire. Her honesty is refreshing, witty and full of intimate wisdom. There are lessons for all of us.”

The universal appeal of this raw, unfiltered, wise book is best expressed by publisher Kelly Abbott: “As the title of her book would suggest, she’s older than we are, but challenges us in her youthful understanding of the world. And by youthful, I don’t mean naive. I mean unblemished. I mean optimistic. I mean joyful and carefree and without pretense or fear. Mary is a breath of fresh air.”

Book available at:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Re-Making-Love-After-Sixty/dp/0982592612/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
Barnes and Noble here http://search.barnesandnoble.com/BookMary-L-Tabor/e/9780982592618/?itm=2&USRI=re+making+love

Today I have the honor of introducing all of you to a very busy and talented author, Ms. Liv James.  Please help me give her a very warm welcome to the CMash blog!!!

diet, where everything you eat and drink is grown within 100 miles of your house.

So then I thought, what if an interesting couple – Josie and Jeff – with a great country inn decided to take on the 100-mile diet and all the other things that would make their inn green? And what if they did such a great job that they received fantastic publicity?

And then I thought, what if that publicity backfired?

That’s when things started to get interesting.

At the same time I was publicizing our new green building out here in the real world, I was also reading a lot of romantic suspense books and couldn’t find any in which the love story centered on a married couple. That piqued my interest because, if we’re lucky, we spend a whole lot more time in a marriage than in the stages leading up to the marriage.  So I thought, what if a married couple had fallen into a hum-drum existence and suddenly something – or someone – came along and shook it up?

In the Trouble With Green, that someone is Nathan Brown, who knows Josie’s secrets and doesn’t hesitate to share them with her husband, Jeff.

Finally, I heard about a father who lost his oldest son in a kayaking accident after the son had managed to save his girlfriend from drowning. I was so moved by the tragedy of that story, and by the weight of being the girl who was saved, that I brought it into the novel.

I intertwined those three snippets – the green inn, the rekindling of a marriage, and being “the girl who lived” – and The Trouble With Green was born.

Synopsis (borrowed from author’s blog):
When Josie’s earth-friendly inns get national press it seems like a good deal all around. So much of a good deal, in fact, that her architect husband gets a new gig … on the other side of the country. And the owners of one of her best inns go missing, just days after the feature appears. And then there’s the long-forgotten Nathan Brown, whose appearance on her doorstep can only mean trouble. Josie must overcome the ghosts of her past if she has any hope of keeping her marriage and her business alive.

Today I have the honor of introducing all of you to a very busy and talented author, Ms. Liv James.  Please help me give her a very warm welcome to the CMash blog!!!

diet, where everything you eat and drink is grown within 100 miles of your house.

So then I thought, what if an interesting couple – Josie and Jeff – with a great country inn decided to take on the 100-mile diet and all the other things that would make their inn green? And what if they did such a great job that they received fantastic publicity?

And then I thought, what if that publicity backfired?

That’s when things started to get interesting.

At the same time I was publicizing our new green building out here in the real world, I was also reading a lot of romantic suspense books and couldn’t find any in which the love story centered on a married couple. That piqued my interest because, if we’re lucky, we spend a whole lot more time in a marriage than in the stages leading up to the marriage.  So I thought, what if a married couple had fallen into a hum-drum existence and suddenly something – or someone – came along and shook it up?

In the Trouble With Green, that someone is Nathan Brown, who knows Josie’s secrets and doesn’t hesitate to share them with her husband, Jeff.

Finally, I heard about a father who lost his oldest son in a kayaking accident after the son had managed to save his girlfriend from drowning. I was so moved by the tragedy of that story, and by the weight of being the girl who was saved, that I brought it into the novel.

I intertwined those three snippets – the green inn, the rekindling of a marriage, and being “the girl who lived” – and The Trouble With Green was born.

Synopsis (borrowed from author’s blog):
When Josie’s earth-friendly inns get national press it seems like a good deal all around. So much of a good deal, in fact, that her architect husband gets a new gig … on the other side of the country. And the owners of one of her best inns go missing, just days after the feature appears. And then there’s the long-forgotten Nathan Brown, whose appearance on her doorstep can only mean trouble. Josie must overcome the ghosts of her past if she has any hope of keeping her marriage and her business alive.

What a day today is!!! I am beyond thrilled!!! I even checked my Thesaurus and couldn’t find a word to express what I am feeling. I am now a tour host for WOW-Women On Writing and what a way to start! Please help me give a very big and warm welcome to today’s guest, Madeline Sharples, as she stops by while on virtual tour, to talk about her inspirational memoir.

Madeline turned to another type of writing, memoir, as she grappled with her older son’s bipolar disorder and subsequent suicide. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, California, a small beach community south of Los Angeles. Her younger son Ben lives in Santa Monica, California with his bride Marissa.
Just Thought You Should Know:
More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, most leaving behind grieving families. Teenagers make up 5,000 of this group.

You can visit Madeline Sharples at her websites:
http://madeline40.blogspot.com/
www.madelinesharples.com

Sharples explains: “I write about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help me forget. Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain.”

What a day today is!!! I am beyond thrilled!!! I even checked my Thesaurus and couldn’t find a word to express what I am feeling. I am now a tour host for WOW-Women On Writing and what a way to start! Please help me give a very big and warm welcome to today’s guest, Madeline Sharples, as she stops by while on virtual tour, to talk about her inspirational memoir.

Madeline turned to another type of writing, memoir, as she grappled with her older son’s bipolar disorder and subsequent suicide. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, California, a small beach community south of Los Angeles. Her younger son Ben lives in Santa Monica, California with his bride Marissa.
Just Thought You Should Know:
More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, most leaving behind grieving families. Teenagers make up 5,000 of this group.

You can visit Madeline Sharples at her websites:
http://madeline40.blogspot.com/
www.madelinesharples.com

Sharples explains: “I write about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help me forget. Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain.”

If you are a regular follower of this blog, then you know how amazing the people from The Hachette Book Group are.  Brianne from Hachette is on virtual tour with author, Jami Alden, and today they are here talking about Ms. Alden’s new book and it sounds fantastic!!!!  So, please, help me welcome both Jami Alden and Brianne.

Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by Kathleen Woodiwiss – The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk and still score straight A’s. I started to imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere, writing romance novels.

It took me quite awhile to pursue my dream. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career in marketing. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but at least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the phrase “and her loins melted like hot wax” into any of them.

During my stint as the world’s surliest receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.

Then in fall 2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from my marketing job. I decided it was time to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the arts.

Four years later, I sold my first book and I’m pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write romance. I don’t live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband, sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and help me work out plot points. When I’m not writing sexy romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network and bad reality TV.

1. Beg for Mercy was originally going to be set in California. However, once I started doing research about California’s death row and the appeals process I realized my heroine would be about sixty years old before the action in the book could take place! I quickly realized I had to change the setting to a state where things moved a bit faster. Hence, the book takes place in Seattle.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m the only parent in my son’s preschool class who has called the Washington State Penitentiary to inquire about visitation rules for death row inmates.

3. When my boys, ages 3 and 5 first saw the cover they asked if I had written a book about Avatars.

4. At least fifty pages of this book were written in a remote cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter. How remote? It’s 25 miles from the nearest town and you have to fly in a plane and/or ride a snow machine to get there.

5. I rarely get emotional over my own writing, but I teared up a little when I wrote the scene that reveals my villain’s backstory.

Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn’t just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn’t have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO.

Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can’t stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city’s elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey.

If you are a regular follower of this blog, then you know how amazing the people from The Hachette Book Group are.  Brianne from Hachette is on virtual tour with author, Jami Alden, and today they are here talking about Ms. Alden’s new book and it sounds fantastic!!!!  So, please, help me welcome both Jami Alden and Brianne.

Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by Kathleen Woodiwiss – The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk and still score straight A’s. I started to imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere, writing romance novels.

It took me quite awhile to pursue my dream. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career in marketing. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but at least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the phrase “and her loins melted like hot wax” into any of them.

During my stint as the world’s surliest receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.

Then in fall 2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from my marketing job. I decided it was time to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the arts.

Four years later, I sold my first book and I’m pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write romance. I don’t live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband, sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and help me work out plot points. When I’m not writing sexy romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network and bad reality TV.

1. Beg for Mercy was originally going to be set in California. However, once I started doing research about California’s death row and the appeals process I realized my heroine would be about sixty years old before the action in the book could take place! I quickly realized I had to change the setting to a state where things moved a bit faster. Hence, the book takes place in Seattle.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m the only parent in my son’s preschool class who has called the Washington State Penitentiary to inquire about visitation rules for death row inmates.

3. When my boys, ages 3 and 5 first saw the cover they asked if I had written a book about Avatars.

4. At least fifty pages of this book were written in a remote cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter. How remote? It’s 25 miles from the nearest town and you have to fly in a plane and/or ride a snow machine to get there.

5. I rarely get emotional over my own writing, but I teared up a little when I wrote the scene that reveals my villain’s backstory.

Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn’t just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn’t have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO.

Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can’t stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city’s elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey.