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Seminar:

Self Publishing Made Easy

Mia Crews loves writing, editing and teaching about writing, but not necessarily in that order. She sold her first story, Race the Tide, to Silhouette Books at Simon & Schuster. She then sold four more to Silhouette after the line became part of Harlequin Books. By that time, she and her husband settled on Florida’s Space Coast, where she returned to her alma mater to study journalism and graphic design. She spent a year in graduate school before writing for The Florida Today newspaper, part of the USA Today newspaper chain. She covered local news and wrote three features a week, spotlights on Employee of the Week, Student of the Week and Volunteer of the Week. She also taught creative writing at a local college.


She went on to help found the SpacecoasT Romance Writers, a chapter of the Romance Writers of America and served as president, with Karlene Conroy serving as Vice-President. The two became friends whose lives took similar turns-–caring for their elderly widowed mothers, grown children who boomeranged in and out of home before eventually getting married to raise children of their own. The two friends became the poster girls for the Sandwiched Generation.


Adding to the mixture, frustrating issues cropped up around their town where Mia’s husband was then mayor. It was the perfect storm, one they learned to cope with by, yes, writing what they know!


Soon they gave life to Paradise, Florida, a fictitious town filled with quirky characters not unlike the ones impacting their own lives.





But because Mia and Karlene write fiction, crazy characters started to creep into the storyline–-a dark secret one of the friends has been hiding for twenty years, a scheming mother-in-law, an FBI agent who retired to get away from criminals, and an ex-husband from hell who threatens someone close to all four heroines. Ultimately, Last Stop Paradise is the story of enduring friendships and devotion to family.


Writing their book provided the two authors respite from the stress of lives filled with unpredictable events. Finishing the book, however, became frustrating as their lives took turns for the worse-–both mothers became ill, and Mia and Karlene soon found themselves meeting in hospital and rehab center corridors, their mothers just rooms apart. Mia’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease, and mother and daughter entered a new phase in their relationship. This experience crept into the book, too, in the portrayal of Leah’s experience with her widowed mother.


Mia and Karlene are both book editors, each  with  a growing list of happy clients.


Mia presents a seminar on “Self-Publishing Made Easy” where authors can learn how to format their books for CreateSpace & Kindle–for free. Also available from Mia is a DVD for home viewing of her seminar, plus templates for a cover and the interior formatted as a .docx.  Click here for more information.





 

One dirty little secret + two mothers out of control + three grown kids behaving badly + four best girlfriends who flee town to get away from it all. Toss in three romantic heroes, a bad guy and a mysterious yellow bag, and you have a never-a-dull-moment adventure.

To discover what’s really in the yellow bag,  buy the paperback or Kindle at Amazon.com Writing Chick-lit Southern Style! Welcome to . . .

Read an excerpt from Last Stop Paradise at

www.laststopparadise.com