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Martin
Bodenhamsays:I am a writer of financial crime
thrillers.
My
debut novel, The Geneva Connection, was published by Musa Publishing in
December 2011. The main character is John Kent, who thought he had it
all. The phenomenal success of his private equity firm has propelled him
into the world’s wealthy super-league. Self-made and from a poor
background, he’s living his dream. Then he discovers his financial
backers are a front for the world’s largest organized crime group, the
Mexican Caruana drug cartel. It is run by Felix Safuentes, also known as
“Jivaro” after the South American tribe famous for decapitating its
enemies. Kent’s nightmare hasn’t even started...
I was born in
Leicester, England in 1959. My American father was in the US Air Force
while my British mother sterilized telephone handsets. I was educated
at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Kent and at the
University of Leicester, where I read economics.
After university, I trained as a chartered accountant,
working in the UK and USA. I have spent the last twenty-five years in
private equity, working either as an investor or advisor. Today, I am
the CEO of Advantage Capital, a London-based private equity firm. Along
the way, I have been an investor at 3i and Close Brothers, and a
corporate finance partner at both KPMG and Ernst & Young.
I am
married to Jules. She is a psychotherapist and keeps me in check. We
live in Rutland, England’s smallest county.
Writer, teacher, and pastor Leaf
Seligman is the settled minister at First Parish Church, Unitarian
Universalist, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She has a master’s degree in writing
from the University of New Hampshire, and has taught writing at that university,
at Franklin Pierce University, at Keene State College, and in New
Hampshire prisons and jails.
Her essays have been published in Creative
Nonfiction and New Thought Journal. A graduate
of Harvard Divinity School, where she won the Billings Prize for
Preaching, she has served as a chaplain in both a hospital and a jail.
Her book, Opening the Window: Sabbath
Meditations, is a collection of sermons that invokes poetry,
thinking from diverse spiritual traditions, and stories from her own
journey through life. It aims to help people find meaning in their lives
and in the world.
Leaf lives joyfully with her dog among the trees
of southwestern New Hampshire.
High-tech
becomes high-risk in Denise
Robbins' novels. The New Hampshire-based author uses two decades
of experience in computers to explore the killer possibilities in
technology. Denise integrates her knowledge of computers and technology
along with secrets, intrigue, suspense, and even a little romance
into all of her techno-romantic thriller novels. Readers and reviewers
agree Denise writes stories that will keep you at the edge of your seat
and clamoring for more.
Her fifth novel is about to be released and she's
already at work on her sixth.
From
her back deck, she sits outside, listens as the old roller coaster from
the local amusement park inches its way up the wooden structure on its
clanking chains, and waits to hear the kids scream in terror and
delight. The best mental therapy a girl could ask for. The long, cold
winter nights in New Hampshire provide the serenity
and motivation to write excitement into the night.
In addition to writing, Denise
enjoys scuba diving (only in warm water), snowboarding,
running, and playing in her
garden.
Michelle McCorkle
always wanted to be a teacher and used to
set up her dolls and teddy bears as if in a classroom. She gave them
tests and corrected them with a red pen. As a teen, she wrote a lot of
poetry and kept a daily diary.
Writing always came easy for Michelle. She read
Sidney Sheldon’s Master of the Game in 8th grade and she
was hooked on the plot twists. It was then she dreamed of writing her
own stories. Life in the Fast Lane and Another Life in the
Fast Lane are Michelle’s first two books. For her third book,
Michelle was inspired by her own experiences with ghosts and has tied
some of that experience into Angel of Mercy. Michelle's second
ghost story is her fourth novel,
Voices from Beyond. It released in December 2011.
Michelle has been teaching middle school English
for 16 years including a Health curriculum for 6 years. She finds that a
lot of parents don't like to talk to their children about adolescent
issues because
they're too embarrassed, but this is where communication needs to be the
strongest. She usually likes to incorporate touchy adolescent topics
and realistic experiences of what it was like growing up in the '80s
into her books.
Michelle lives in New Hampshire with her husband
and 4 daughters.
C. Hope Clark is founder of
FundsforWriters.com, a well-known writer's reference for grants,
contests, markets, publishers and agents for the serious writer. The
website and newsletters have existed for a dozen years and been
recognized by Writer's Digest Magazine in its 101 Best Websites for
Writers for eleven of those years. 41,000 writers receive her
newsletters each week. She's published in Writer's Digest, Writer's
Market, Guide to Literary Agents (by Writer's Digest), The Writer
Magazine, as well as multiple trades, glossy mags and numerous Chicken
Soup books. She's interviewed often by both writing and business
websites and speaks to writing conferences throughout the United States.
Her book The Shy Writer: An Introvert's Guide to Writing Success,
continues to sell steadily.
She is also author of The Palmetto State Mystery Series. Lowcountry
Bribe is the first in the series published by Bell Bridge Books. The
mysteries describe federally employed Carolina Slade's sleuthing
abilities throughout rural, rarely seen South Carolina settings, facing
crimes not found in your typical mystery. Lowcountry Bribe can be
purchased mid-February 2012 via all typical book venues to include
http://www.bellebooks.com/ .
Hope Clark lives in rural South Carolina, on the banks of the beautiful
Lake Murray, amidst her wildlife and gardens, alongside her federal
agent husband and chickens. Contact her:
Barry Willdorf was born in New York City and grew up in Malden and Gloucester, MA, where he was
one of the earliest surfers on the North Shore. He graduated from Colby College
in 1966 with a B.A. in History and earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School in
1969. He also attended the University of Manchester in England in the
mid-sixties.
Barry began his
career as an investigator for the New York Legal Aid Society. In 1970,
after a stint as a public defender, he founded the Southern California
Military Law Project, to represent members of the armed forces
court-martialed for opposition to the Vietnam War and/or racial
discrimination. In 1972 he co-authored a legal self-help book for
military personnel: Turning the Regs Around. Barry continued
court-martial defense until 1975. In 2001, he published a
semi-autobiographical novel, Bring the War Home!, fictionalizing
his experiences at the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton. (Currently
available as a free download on Scribd.)
Barry’s
legal publishing credits include co-authoring How To Pass the LSATs,
Monarch Press, 1969, contributions to content in Matthew Bender,
California Forms of Jury Instructions and engagement as a
contributing editor for Matthew Bender’s, Trial Master series. He
has also has published several shorter works on the Second Amendment.
During a legal career spanning
four decades, Barry has been lead counsel in well over 100 trials. He
has extensive forensic experience and has often analyzed or discovered
incriminating evidence of all kinds. His practice has run the gamut from
every type of criminal offense to civil fraud, medical and legal
malpractice, securities violations and complex real estate schemes. He
enjoys the highest attorney rating (AV) given by Martindale and Hubbell.
In 2005, the San Francisco AIDS Legal Referral Panel named him “Attorney
of the Year”. He has been an acting judge and a certified arbitrator for
many years. Barry draws on all of this education, training and
experience to craft his fiction.
This summer, Barry received a Global
E-Book Award (best historical
literature) for his novel,The Flight of the Sorceress. (Wild
Child Publishing, 2010.) He is currently a finalist for a “best
historical novel” award for 2012 from the Electronic Publishing Industry
Coalition (EPIC). Set in the fifth century, The Flight of the
Sorceress, recounts howthe newly-empowered Roman Catholic
Church combined with the Roman Imperial government to wage religious war
against women, pagans, dissenters and “heretics”.
Barry's most recent novel, Burning Questions, (Whiskey
Creek Press, August 1, 2011) is the first part of the “1970s
Trilogy”. Based on an actual homicide, as well as the author’s
recollections of growing up in Gloucester MA, Burning Questions is
a mystery-thriller involving teenage suicide, corrupt real estate
dealings and class prejudice. Part Two, A Shot In The Arm, is
presently in editing for publication.
Barry is a member of the San Francisco Writers
Workshop, The Blackpoint Writers Group and is represented by The Krista
Goering Literary Agency. He and his wife Bonnie live in San Francisco.
Mary Johnson
joined the Missionaries of Charity, the
group commonly known as the Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, at age
19. For fifteen of Mary Johnson's twenty years as a sister, she was
stationed in Rome and often lived with Mother Teresa for weeks at a
time. Johnson also lived and worked as a nun in the South Bronx,
Washington DC, and Winnipeg.
Mother Teresa sent her to study theology at Regina Mundi, a
pontifical institute aggregated to the Gregorian University in Rome,
where she received a diploma in religious studies. Johnson was assigned
to compose and revise some of the governing documents of the
Missionaries of Charity, and for six years was responsible for the
formation of sisters preparing to vow their lives as nuns.
After leaving the sisters in 1997, Johnson completed a BA in English
at Lamar University and an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College.
She also married. A well-respected teacher and public speaker, Johnson
has led retreats, workshops, classes, and training sessions of various
kinds for nearly thirty years. Most recently she has taught creative
writing and Italian to adults and is Creative Director of A Room of Her
Own Foundation's (http://www.aroomofherownfoundation.org/)
retreats for women writers.
Johnson's memoir, An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa
in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life released in the US
in September.
Gary
Braveris the pen name of
Gary Goshgarian, the author of eight
critically acclaimed suspense novels: three under his own name--Atlantis
Fire, Rough Beast and The Stone Circle--and five under his
pen name--Elixir, Gray Matter, Flashback, Skin Deep,
and Tunnel Vision.
He is also the author of six popular college writing
textbooks--Exploring Language, The Contemporary
Reader, Dialogues, What Matters in America,
Readings for Today, and
Dialogue as Argument: A Concise Guide.
In
the 1970s, Gary took up scuba diving and joined an Earthwatch team
looking for Phoenician and Roman shipwrecks off the Spanish island of
Mallorca. They discovered two Roman wrecks as well as modern-day pirates
who attacked them underwater with anchors dragged behind fast
speedboats. Unbeknownst to them, their little expedition had trespassed
into the middle of an antiquities blackmarket involving dealers who were
stealing booty from Mediterranean shipwrecks and selling it to museums
around the world. Gary vowed that if he got out of that alive, he’d
write a book about it. He did and moved the locale to the majestic
island of Santorini, the ancient outpost of the Minoan empire. That book
is called Atlantis Fire,
which
Stephen King called “a fine thriller seasoned with wit and
sensibility…it blew me away."
His archaeological thriller,
The Stone Circle, got good reviews and, for
awhile, had attracted the interest of Jack Nicholson who was looking to
do a horror movie on the success of “The
Shining.” He eventually passed, choosing to make “Wolf” (1994) instead.
In 1995, Gary's next novel
Rough Beast was published. Because of its
reception, the publisher asked that he do more of the same—high concept
bio-medical thrillers centered on the family. That led to
Elixir, which got optioned for a movie by
director Ridley Scott. Because of that option and the publisher’s
perception that the book was going to take off, Gary was asked to adopt
a pen name to fool the bookstore chains which base their prepublication
purchases on the sales figures of an author’s previous title. Thus, Gary
Braver was born. The movie was not
made, even after a second option, but Elixir
did well.
Gary then published more thrillers—Gray
Matter, Flashback, winner of the 2006
Massachusetts Honor Book Award, and Skin Deep,
a psychological thriller centered on cosmetic surgery. His newest
thriller, Tunnel Vision,
released in June 2011.
Gary is an award-winning professor of English at
Northeastern University where he teaches Fiction Writing and courses in
popular culture (Science Fiction, Horror Fiction, Detective Fiction,
Modern Bestsellers, and Edgar Allan Poe.) He has taught fiction-writing
workshops throughout the U.S. and Europe.
He lives in Massachusetts.
Beth
Groundwater's first forays into fiction
writing were her Freddie stories when she was in fifth and sixth grade.
Her protagonist, Freddie, had all sorts of wild adventures, including
visiting an underground mole city after burrowing down in a giant
screw-mobile. Freddie was a boy, because back in the sixties, Beth
thought girls weren't supposed to have adventures. She knows better now!
She obtained a college degree in Psychology (useful in character
development) and Computer Science. She wondered why she double-majored
in the two fields that attracted the weirdest students at the college.
She now thinks it's because of her lifelong interest in developing
solutions to convoluted puzzles, be they software algorithms,
understanding what makes a person tick, or solving a mystery story's
"what if?"
She's been a software engineer and software project manager. Once
management discovered she was a rare commodity--a software engineer who
could write--she wrote countless manuals, design documents, final
reports, marketing proposals, and technical papers. She also married,
obtained a Masters Degree, and produced two children.
Beth has been writing fiction since retiring and has finished six
novels, a novella, and numerous short stories. She was active in two
critique groups for over five years, but now meets with one. To learn
the craft, she studied writing books, took workshops, went to
conferences, and entered contests, some of which she won or placed in.
She's a big believer in networking. She belongs to the following writing
organizations: Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Pikes Peak
Writers, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and the Short Mystery Fiction
Society.
Between writing spurts, she defends her meager garden from marauding
mule deer and wild rabbits, and tries to avoid getting black-and-blue on
the black and blue ski slopes of Colorado. She also loves water sports,
particularly whitewater rafting/canoeing and snorkeling. If a water
slide is around, she's on it--more than once. Growing up as a military
brat, she enjoyed and thrived on travel. She's the family travel agent
and has planned trips for her family to Europe, Australia, New Zealand,
and all over the USA, including Alaska and Hawaii.
Beth's newest Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventures
mystery, Deadly Currents, released in March. Her novel A Real
Basket Case was nominated for Best First Novel Agatha Award in 2007
and releases in paperback in November.
John Everson
is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of
the
novels Covenant, Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren and The Pumpkin
Man, all released in paperback from Dorchester Publications. Limited
collector's hardcover editions have also been released from Delirium,
Necro and Bad Moon Books.
He has had several short fiction collections issued by independent
presses, including Creeptych, Deadly Nightlusts, Needles & Sins,
Vigilantes of Love and Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions. Over the
past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in
more than 75 magazines and anthologies. His work been translated into
Polish, Turkish, Italian and French, and optioned for potential film
production. He is also the founder of the independent press Dark Arts
Books (www.darkartsbooks.com).
John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo
and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal
fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's
also a mounted Chinese fowling spider
named Stoker courtesy of Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom
mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his
son Shaun likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife Geri is
surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house,
but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid
the onerous task of writing, he holds down a regular job at a medical
association, records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments
with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno,
designs photo collage art book covers for a variety of small presses,
loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent
excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of '70s euro-horror DVDs
with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.
For information on his fiction, art and music, visit John Everson: Dark
Arts at www.johneverson.com .
For a list of other guests who have graced us with their presence, click
here.
THE
WRITER'S CHATROOM
