MY BLOGGER BUDDIES - M.GRAY: GUEST POST, INTERVIEW AND GREAT GIVEAWAY!

After meeting Helena Harper last week, this weekend I'd like to introduce another special person I've recently met through my blog: M. GRAY who  lives in the outskirts of Washington D.C., in Manassas, Virginia and is a stay-at-home mom with two kids -one's 5, the other 2 . However M. Gray is also a blogger and  a writer with her first book scheduled for release this fall by WiDo Publishing. The title is TBA, but it is a Suspense targeted toward the upper young adult market. She is currently working with an editor to make her story the most fascinating book you’ll ever read.

Little by little we have discovered we shared many things starting from blond hair and ending with our initials, MG! Jokes apart, let's get to the serious matters. A GREAT GIVEAWAY offered by M.Gray .

Read this interview and comment to enter a chance to win a FREE copy of the BBC’s 2004 adaptation of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell . Don't forget  to leave your e-mail address. Winner will be announced on Friday 22nd January.

Why has M. Gray chosen this gift for you? The answer is in the interview below. Enjoy it!

Mary, what would you like to accomplish as a writer?

You know when you’ve had a wretched day, you’re exhausted and you should really get to bed, but all you want to do is open a book or watch a movie? We simmer within: “I need a good show. Give me something worth reading. I don’t care if Janie said it’s brilliant—just make me fall in love.” We want to be obsessed. So much that it intoxicates us, causes us to rip through the door after work, sprint down the steps when the kiddos are in bed, and do a jig in the living room because we get to watch our show, read our story. We get to enjoy our escape.

I want to offer that. I want to deliver a book that makes people decide they can suffer through whatever day lies before them just as long as they get to indulge themselves on a great story later on that night.

Great story, you say? Have you written it?
I would love to boast that I have, but if I say too much now my editor may show up at my door with a machete!!

But you Maria Grazia are a doll and … didn’t you say you will allow me to come back in a few months and tell you all about my tale after I’ve come along a bit further in the editing process?

Your book doesn’t sound like my typical fare. I’ve been to your web site—Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, and Pathos becoming superpowers. Why are you on my blog anyway?

Well, I have a shocker for you. We all know, Maria Grazia, your favorite drama of all time is Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. Well, guess what movie I finished watching the very night I penned my story’s first lines? It was when Margaret Hale and John Thornton finally came together that I needed to write my characters’ romance. I started the very night John said, "I don't want to possess you, I wish to marry you because I love you." And, "Look back at me." And "You're coming home with me?"

My hero has many of the same sentiments. So you see it really is quite possible you, Maria Grazia, might like it.

I'm sure I will. If John Thornton was your inspiration, I bet I'll like him. Now, where did you get the idea for a book about Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle?

It started with my first class in college, English 115. I was assigned to teach the class about Aristotle’s ethos (morality), logos (logic), and pathos (logos). I made a horrid demonstration of a triangle with uncooked spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. Wow, what an embarrassment.

Five years later, I became obsessed with the idea of making Aristotle’s rhetorical elements into super powers. A year later I read Twilight and decided I would write my book. I was just one more writer to be inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s story, and after watching North and South I had the inspiration to begin.

So books and movies are your inspiration for writing?
Always. Music, too. I have such eclectic tastes, but great works of art are what get the juices going for me.

Favorite movies?

So many BBC adaptations: Charles Dickins’ Bleak House, Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and anything Jane Austen. I also love the suspense of M. Knight Shamylan’s movies, and the passion of any violent epic movie.

Favorite shows?
Alias, Lost, House, Prison Break.

Favorite music?
Muse, Frou Frou, Blue October, Norah Jones, Maroon 5, Rachmoninoff, Chopin.

Favorite books?
Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, The Hunger Games, the Twilight series, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Little Prince, The Mistborn series.

Have you written anything else?

I have one other published work, A Sudden Resolve, which is a short story included in a Christmas anthology entitled Stolen Christmas and other stories of the season. Christmas just passed, but it is still available on Amazon.com. Something for next year? Visit Stolen Christmas at Amazon.

Where can we visit , you M. Gray?
I would LOVE to make new friends! My  blog is THE ETHOS, THE LOGOS, THE PATHOS .



Thank you so much M.GRAY! We'll wait for you  back on Fly High when your novel is released . And I can't wait to read it of course!