When they bump into each other at the soup kitchen, Frank offers Chloe a glimmer of hope that she can pull her life back together. She rekindles his lost sense of self-worth by taking his mind off his own problems. But they will not meet again until Frank is riding high as a working man, and Chloe has hit rock bottom.

By helping Chloe rebuild her broken life, Frank banishes the demons from his own past. Unfortunately, the past comes strolling back into their lives, threatening to destroy the happiness they have finally found.

I’ve provided links for five authors you might want to check out.

I would also like to thank Patricia de Hemricourt for inviting me to participate in this blog hop.
Click the links below to find out about Patricia’s children book, a healing allegoric story about divorce – “The Divided Island” – or visit her blog and learn more about the other work she has in the mix:
Official Author Page

http://www.epublishabook.com/2011/05/25/876/

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00B15W0RE

Website & Blog:

http://www.epublishabook.com/

In this particular hop, I have answered 10 questions where you can learn about my current work as well as some insights into the writing process, from characters and inspirations to plotting and cover decisions. I hope you enjoy it!

What is the working title of your book?
My new book is called Losing It All.

What genre does your book come under?
Losing It All is mainstream drama.

How did you come up with the idea for Losing It All?
I saw this abandoned cinderblock house out in the woods near my home. The windows had been broken, and the house was overgrown with blackberry brambles and honeysuckle. But when I went inside, the structure seemed sound. It got me thinking, if someone fixed this place up, they could probably live here for free.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A homeless man helps a woman and her two small children get off the streets.

Can you tell us some more about Losing It All?
The story is about a Vietnam vet who comes back from the war both physically and emotionally wounded. Frank can’t seem to function in the working world, so for the past 12 years he has lived on the streets of Atlanta.
He eats in a soup kitchen, and he collects aluminum cans to get money for cigarettes. He and some buddies have cobbled together some shanties from scrap materials.
Chloe, on the other hand, is the mother of two young children. When her husband abandons her, and she is evicted from her apartment, she is totally unprepared for the life of night shelters and predators.
So, you have Frank, who is pretty much at the lowest point in his life, while Chloe is just beginning to descend into her own personal hell. They meet at the soup kitchen, and from that point on, Frank’s life starts to improve, while Chloe’s continues to slide until she hits rock bottom.

How did you come up with the cover design?
For my first book, I tried my hand at designing the cover, but since then, I’ve turned the job over to a professional. She and I talk about the book, and then she designs the cover. And I think she does a splendid job.

What does the title mean?
Obviously, Chloe is losing all that she has. But you would be surprised at how much Frank still has to lose before he starts getting his life together.

When will Losing It All be released?
It’s coming out this May, just like my last two books.

And what else do you have in the works?
I’m trying my hand at screenwriting again. Now that I understand the process, I’m interested in revisiting that medium. Even if the screenplay doesn’t work out, I’ll have an excellent outline for my next book. So I can’t lose.

Below you will find fellow authors who will be posting this Q & A on their website Wednesday, Feb. 6. Do be sure to bookmark and add them to your calendar for updates on WIPs and New Releases! Happy Writing and Reading!

Mark Rudolph             True to Type                                            http://markrudolph.wordpress.com/

Anjali Enjeti                 She Started It                                          http://anjalienjeti.com/

CJ Martin                      CJ Martin’s Books                                   http://cjmartinbooks.com/

Pam Funke                    The Four Horsemen Series                http://thefourhorsemenseries.blogspot.com/

Mark All                        Mark All Paranormal Thrillers          http://www.markallauthor.com

In honor of the virus that has helped me sell millions of books—(well, hundreds)—I thought I’d give you some fun facts about the flu.

Every year, some kind of flu slithers up unsuspecting noses causing untold horror and sometimes even death. This is the proverbial ‘seasonal flu’. But every now and then, the flu virus mutates, creating a new virus our bodies have never encounter. We aren’t immune to its affects, so our bodies aren’t prepared to fight it. That’s when we get hit with the dreaded ‘pandemic flu’. (Cue music: dum-dum-dum DUM.)

Famous pandemics of the 20th century:

Spanish Flu (H1N1) in 1918, which killed between 20 and 100 MILLION people worldwide. (Yeah, that’s quite a discrepancy in numbers, but remember, we didn’t have the Internet back then to get an accurate count.)

Asian Flu (H2N2) in 1957, which killed 2 million

Hong Kong Flu (H3N2) in 1968, which killed 1 million

Swine Flu (H1N1) in 2009, which killed a whopping 18,036. (A bit anti-climactic for a pandemic, right? But it was a new strain so it gets the coveted classification.)

What are those crazy Hs and Ns for anyway?

The H stands for hemagglutinin and the N for neuramidinase. These are sugar proteins on the surface of the virus. There are 16 types of H proteins, and 9 N proteins, so according to the CDC, that makes 144 different combinations possible.

For my novel, I decided to play on the H1N1 combo, and make the virus in my story H10N1. I thought it would sound ten times worse than H1N1, even though the numbers don’t indicate intensity.

Because of all those possible combinations, the medical profession recommends that we get a flu shot every year.

Flu vaccines—what’s the deal?

Every year, the WHO (World Health Organization) decides what type of flu they think we’ll get when the season starts the following winter. I’m not sure if they use darts, or a spinning wheel, but they decide on three likely strains of the virus (representing an H1N1, an H3N2, and a B strain).

Pharmaceutical companies inject these three strains into chicken eggs (say what?) and grow the vaccine. From what I understand this is a slow process and that’s why they have to get started early. So by the time January rolls around and everyone is hacking and coughing in your face, you cross your fingers and hope the vaccine that was incubated 10 months ago is the right one. If not—you better go grab some Tamiflu and Kleenex.

And here’s an interesting tidbit. Since the vaccine is grown in eggs, vegans sometimes object to getting vaccinated. (Think I’ll stay out of vegetarian eateries during the winter.)

Now you may ask, ‘If I get a flu shot every year, does that build up my immunity?’ According to a spokesperson from the CDC, there is some benefit from prior years’ vaccinations, but only if you get a similar flu strain in that year. They still insist that you need this year’s flu vaccine to protect you against this year’s flu, even though they guessed what this year’s flu would be. (Yeah, my tongue’s in my cheek, too.)

Flu shot vs nasal spray.

If you’re squeamish about getting shots, you now have the option of getting your vaccine in a nasal mist—sort of. There are quite a few restrictions on FluMist.

First of all, you should note that a flu shot contains a dead flu virus, while the mist is alive! (Muwa-ha-ha.) So obviously, there can be more severe side effects to the mist. The mist cannot be used on children under 2, or adults over 50, or in the case of my neighbor Marty, children over the age of 50.

In adults, side effects include runny nose, headache, sore throat, and cough; in children, side effects also include wheezing, vomiting, fever, and muscle aches. (Somehow, suffering through these symptoms so that I can AVOID similar symptoms seems a bit redundant.)

But you decide. If you’re going to be a big baby about a little pin prick, then by all means, take it up the nose.

Time to scare the beejesus out of us all.

The flu season usually starts in January, but this year it started early. 8 states had already reported outbreaks in November. The last time that happened was the 2003-2004 season, which happened to be the dreaded H1N1 pandemic.

And since there hasn’t been a major flu pandemic in many years, experts believe that we are due for one. (Cymbal crash, please.)

Fifty-seven year old Robert Malone is the CEO of a successful clothing store chain and married to a former model. When his doctor tells him he is dying of cancer, he refuses to go quietly.  Instead of death, Robert choses cryonics. He knows it’s a long shot. His frozen body will be stored in liquid nitrogen for the next seventy-five years, and then he’ll wake up in the future. Maybe. If technology figures out a way to bring him back.

He’s willing to take that gamble.

What he doesn’t realize is that he won’t lie in some dreamless state all that time. His soul is very much awake, just like the others who were frozen before him.

He discovers that he can ride in the cockpit with the pilots, but he can’t turn the page of a magazine. He can sit in the oval office with the president, but he can’t prevent a child from dashing in front of a car. He doesn’t work, or eat, or sleep. These obstacles make it difficult to fall in love, and virtually impossible to reconcile with the living.

Over the next several decades, Robert Malone will have plenty of time to learn The Ups and Downs of Being Dead.

For fifteen years, I had been an elementary school cafeteria manager, but this was the worst destruction I’d seen so far.  The rats didn’t choose one pack and eat everything. No, they nibbled through several packs, contaminating the whole lot. Maybe they were looking for the whole wheat?

Our solution was glue boards, or what I called sticky pads. These are shallow plastic trays about 8 inches long and 4 inches wide. They are filled with this incredibly sticky glue. You place them along the walls, where rodents scurry by.

The idea is that the rat will step a foot into the glue – panic – and use his other foot to pull himself free. Of course, now he has two feet stuck, and being the highly-intelligent creature he is, ratty will bring up a hind foot to free his front feet. In no time, ratty is hopelessly stuck.

I put several sticky pads on the floor. I also put one up on the breaker box on the wall. The exterminator had noticed an opening in the ceiling where the power line came into the kitchen, and thought the rats might be shinnying down the pole and into food central.

The equipment in the kitchen was centered in the room in two back-to-back rows. Two industrial ovens, and a large steamer were on one side. The fryers and three steam kettles faced out on the other. All of these cookers stood on legs about 6 inches off the floor.

Between these two rows of equipment, were several one-inch pipes. They came up out of the floor and bent at right angles to carry gas, water, or power to all the units. These pipes ran parallel to the floor, about 4” to 6” up, so we could hose out errant French fries and lost chicken nuggets.

Each morning I checked my traps for ‘activity’ and sure enough, one morning the sticky pad on the breaker box was missing. With some trepidation, I went searching for the trap, knowing there was a big, ugly rat stuck in the glue.

I spotted the sticky pad leaning against those pipes between the rows of equipment, but it didn’t look like there was a rat attached. Using a broom, I knocked the plastic pad free for a closer examination. The glue was covered with fur!

This is what I envisioned happening. The rat came down the power line, and maybe got one foot stuck in the glue. Startled, ratty lost his balance and fell to the floor dragging the sticky pad with him. Then he might have rolled around until his fur got good and stuck in that glue.

Now in panic mode, the rat made a run for the shelter of the equipment in the middle of the room. The clacking of the plastic board on the floor, and the weight of this thing on ratty’s back no doubt added to the frenzy.

He ran beneath the oven, and made it under those pipes running parallel to the floor—but the sticky pad did not. Now I don’t know who came up with this theory of physics, but it goes something like: a freaked-out rat in forward motion tends to stay in forward motion.

If ratty had backed up, he would have at least been free of the pipes. But once that rodent got going he just kept going, and his fur stayed in the glue. Ole’ ratty hauled his freshly-waxed bare butt out of my kitchen as fast as he could.

I learned something new about rats after that. I knew that they leave a scented trail so all their buddies can find the land of plenty, but evidently they can also leave a trail that tells their friends, “stay away from here”, because we never saw any sign of rodents after that.

BTW – I transferred to another school the next year.

The Korean sauna (jim jil bang) hubby chose was no hole-in-the-wall Asian joint crammed between a dry cleaner and a Chinese Buffet. This was a Walmart-sized establishment that’s open 24/7.

At the reception desk, we were handed spa wear (shorts & shirt), a locker key for our personal belongings, and a tooth brush. (These folks are way into cleanliness)

I headed for the women’s locker room, hubby went to the men’s. I think he had visions of us soaking in some mud bath while sipping green tea and becoming one with the universe. It didn’t happen.

My guide told me to take EVERYTHING off and follow her into the sauna area where other women, also with EVERYTHING off were sitting in hot tubs, sweating in saunas, or relaxing under infrared lights.

I don’t want to appear lascivious, but I saw everything from a bony little eight-year-old girl, to a woman whose breasts literally sagged to the first crease of her protruding belly. There were women with no ass; big thighs; itty-bittys; and yes, fabulous figures.

(Imagine hubby over in the men’s area trying to avert his eyes from all the dangling wankers and hairy butts!)

There were three hot tub choices: Hot, Hot, or Freezing. Actually, my guide said hot, warm, or cold, but trust me, the ‘warm’ was plenty hot. After 15 minutes, it was actually refreshing to hop quickly into the cold tub. (Also known as the ice plunge.)

Next, I was ushered into a smaller room with eight massage tables, where seven naked women were splayed, getting their elbows, and knees, and bellies scrubbed with loofa mitts. The Korean women doing the scrubbing were dressed in bras and panties. (I guess to make us less conscious of the fact that we were all naked.)

Believe me when I say that every square inch of my body was scrubbed. (Okay, she didn’t hit the booty, or the twat, or the nips. Everything else was fair game.) Sometimes she would dip a pan into warm water and splash me to wash away what she’d scrubbed off. Then she scrubbed some more.

When she was done, I could actually see brown bits of me on the table that had been ‘exfoliated’. I was afraid she’d completely removed the tan I’d gotten this summer.

The spa also offered massages, and something called a hip bath. Women in the hip bath area sat on a stool like a toilet. A pot of steaming herbs was placed on the floor beneath their lady parts, and the women were wrapped in a pink shower curtain cinched at the neck while said parts got rejuvenated.

After my scrub, I dressed in my spa shorts and shirt to join hubby in the co-ed section of the spa. (He’d skipped the body scrub, and the massage with no modesty sheet.)

This common area had three huge stone igloos with different types of saunas: rock salt to increase blood circulation, charcoal to absorb your body’s toxins, semi-precious stones with calming powers. There was a swimming pool, restaurant, exercise room, even TVs where couples and friends relaxed on the heated floors. It could easily be an all-day affair.

All-in-all it was an exhilarating and relaxing experience. Hubby even got his happy ending. Although that was later when we got home.

I couldn’t agree more with Steven Soderbergh’s premise of single touch transmission, first two people are infected, then four, then sixteen. Within just a few weeks, millions of people are carrying the virus. And keep in mind that for the first 48 to 72 hours, no one knows they’ve been infected, so they don’t take precautions. They continue to spread the disease.

What I don’t agree with is how far he carried the story. Contagion is more like a sampling, an overview of what could happen. It takes us to the brink of disaster and then pulls back.

In real life, I don’t see that happening. For instance, in the movie, Matt Damon and his daughter are running through their neighborhood. A house is on fire, and the daughter asks, “Where’s the fire department?”

As a virus becomes epidemic, fire departments, and police departments, will suffer casualties just like the general public. As manpower drops, these departments will have to be more selective. A single dwelling will be left to burn because firefighters are busy with a blaze at an apartment complex or an office high-rise.

Here comes the next glitch. Sure, public buildings have automatic sprinkler systems, but when you have multiple fires out of control because there are too few firemen to respond, how long before water pressure is non-existent? And how long before employees of the water company, and the electric company, and the phone company are all down with the flu and we lose these services altogether?

So now we’ve got uncontained fires keeping pace, or accelerating beyond the initial disease. And I haven’t even touched on the most insidious aspect of a pandemic.  The spread of panic and carnage. I’m talking about the looters here, and the damage they will inflict on the world.

It starts out innocently, squabbling over the last case of bottled water at the grocery store, or cutting in line for one of the remaining 25 bottles of Theraflu at the pharmacy. But then looters will escalate from stealing food to grabbing armloads of designer blue jeans and DVDs. People will die over i-Pads.

The mob mentality that we humans are so good at, will quickly become the driving force in any pandemic.

I watched the footage of the aftermath of Katrina. A man was wading waist deep in water with a television balanced overhead. Where was he going to stash that TV for safe keeping? What was he going to plug it into? Who was going to steal if from him in the next block?

What about the riots in London? Cars were overturned and set on fire, buildings were looted and burned. For four days, citizens rampaged over the shooting of a 29 year-old man.

This looting factor will be the ultimate destruction of the world’s population, not the virus. And it will be impossible for the police, or the military, to control this lawlessness. They simply won’t have the manpower.

So once all the stores are gutted, the delivery trucks hijacked, and the warehoused ransacked, where will the looters turn next? To your neighbor’s house? To yours?

I wanted to yank off the fetal monitor strapped to my bulging belly and twist it around his neck. Later, when I was in a more lucid, less homicidal state, I realized that he really was just trying to help.

And let’s face it, we’ve all said something like that at one time or another. We don’t necessarily mean that we actually feel their pain, their sorrow, their anguish. By the time my newborn son drew a breath and cried out, my pain was gone. And even though I can commiserate with other women about childbirth, I’ve never been able to recreate that pain in my mind. (Thank God!)

What we mean is—I  understand you’re going through something terrible.

When my son started kindergarten, he suffered with separation anxiety. While other kids assembled letters into words, and colored outside the lines, he sat in misery at his desk. Then he noticed another little boy crying. My son went over to the boy and asked, “Do you miss your mom, too?” Through his tears, the boy nodded yes.

Later, when my son’s teacher told me the story, she mentioned that the boy’s mother had died the month before. I was mortified. How could my son possibly think he understood what that boy was feeling?

But you know what? Those two little boys helped each other get through the day. And I guess that’s all we can do. Whether it’s a tweet, or a covered dish, a hug or a phone call. When life gives us a punch in the gut, it’s nice to have someone say, “I understand what you’re going through.”

There are all kinds of people in critique groups.

• The pompous ass who thinks his writing, and opinions, are brilliant
• The nit-picker who deconstructs each paragraph a word at a time
• The shy guy in the corner who never reads his own work or makes comments on others (but probably has the best advice)
• The gabber who is compelled to remark on EVERY piece
• And a few genuinely helpful people who manage to get a few words in between the gabber, the nit-picker, and the pompous ass.

Here’s an example:

The brush of his hand upon her cheek created a frisson of excitement that she could not ignore. Pushing him down onto the sofa, Lolita raised her skirt and straddled his legs.

4 people comment on this paragraph.

• 1^st person: Love the use of the word frisson
• 2^nd person: Frisson is so overused these days. Find another word.
• 3^rd person: Would the mere touch of his hand bring on this kind of reaction?
• 4^th person: What color was the sofa?

And of course, in these groups, you get people reading poetry, non-fiction on the history of demi-tasse cups, newspaper articles on toe fungus, along with fiction writers of everything from zombie romance to 22^nd century science fiction. So you’re not always getting the best feedback on your novel about being raised in Budapest by your grandmother.

It took the humbling experience of a mountain of rejection letters to realize that my writing needed work.

My point here – and yes, I do have a point – is that critique groups are fine, but they may not be your best avenue for feedback on your writing. And please don’t think that asking your mother, brother, wife or boyfriend to read your work constitutes good feedback. Come on! My husband refuses to read my stuff because he enjoys good food and sex too much to go out on that limb.

If you can find people who will read with a critical eye, and you listen to what they say, you’re on the right track to producing good work. But after you’ve rewritten and edited and fine-tuned, and you’re still getting rejected, maybe it’s time to call in the professionals.

You just might have to pay an editor to look at your manuscript and see what is ailing your story.

Otherwise, your just wasting time listening to the nitpicker ask you to describe how the man groaned when Lolita pulled up that skirt.

Let’s take a look at some of Mommy’s most deadly human wipeouts:

Plague of Athens – 430BC

Typhoid fever struck a quarter of Athens population. What’s interesting is that this bacterium – salmonella – killed off its hosts (humans) at a rate faster than it could spread. Good news for the rest of the world. Bad news for Athenians.

Antonine Plague – 165-180

Smallpox hit Italy, killing up to 5 million people over a 15 year period.  According to Wikipedia, during the height of the pandemic, 5,000 people were dying daily in Rome. Even during the 20^th century, 300 – 500 million deaths were attributed to smallpox.

*In 1979, this infectious disease was officially eradicated.

 * * * Time for a brief notation here about plagues * * *

In non-specific terms, the word is used to describe an epidemic of any infectious disease. Thus the Plague of Athens was really typhoid fever, and the Antonine Plague was caused by an entirely different bacterium, smallpox.

In specific terms, we get THE PLAGUE, caused by  enterobacteria. This is sometimes called Bubonic Plague, however, (my finger is raised here), plagues are categorized by the part of the body infected.

Bubonic Plague attacks the lymph nodes

Pneumonic Plague is in the lungs

Septicemic Plague occurs in blood vessels

 One of mankind’s first biological weapons.

In 1346, the Mongols catapulted the dead bodies of bubonic plague victims over the walls of a sieged city in Crimea. There were also incidents of using infected animal carcasses like horses and cows to contaminate water sources.

Black Death – 1347-1351

This was a particularly virulent strain of bubonic plague that started in China. It reduced the world population by 100 million in three years. Symptoms included buboes, (which are huge blisters in the armpits and groin), abscesses, rashes, and my favorite – carbuncles. Oh, and bleeding from the ears.

15^th & 16^th centuries – When Europeans began exploring Central and South America, not only did they carry food supplies aboard ship, but also smallpox, measles and typhus. At one point, the population of Mexico dropped from 20 million to 3 million. Thanks for coming!

Influenza – 1556-1560

The first time this virus hits Europe, an estimated 20% of the population dies

Smallpox – 18^th century

That crazy variola strikes again in Europe, killing another 60 million. If you survived, you had a 30% of being blinded.

Tuberculosis – 19^th century

This disease of the lungs culled out a quarter of the adult population in Europe. At its worst, one in six deaths in France was caused by this bacterium

Spanish flu – 1918

The Spanish got a bad rap from this virus, because it was knocking down the population of the U.S. and the rest of Europe long before it swept through Spain. An H1N1 subtype, this stinker killed 50 million people in 18 months. Some estimates go as high as 100 million worldwide. As many as 25 million died in the first 25 weeks. It’s believed that this influenza pandemic was spread more quickly because it occurred toward the end of World War I. All those soldiers crammed into unhealthy quarters and massive troop movements carried the disease all over the place.

 *  *  * Some interesting statistics on deaths during wars *  *  *

The Crusades – during fighting between Spanish Christians and Muslims in 1489, the Spanish lost 3,000 troops in battle, but 20,000 troops to typhus

The Thirty-Years War – say bye-bye to 8 million Germans who died of either bubonic plague or typhus

World War I – 16.5 million deaths attributed to fighting. 50 million deaths worldwide from H1N1

And infectious diseases are only one way Mother Nature is trying to slough-off her surface vermin like a bad case of fleas. Don’t even get me started on the plant kingdom.