Books-n-Kisses is excited to have one of my favorite authors Molly Harper and her amazing narrator Amanda Ronconi on the blog to talk about Molly’s new release The Single Undead Mom’s Club
When
Molly Harper was eight years old, she set up a “writing office” in her parents’ living room, complete with an old manual typewriter and a toy phone. And she (very slowly) pecked out the story of her third-grade class taking a trip around the world and losing a kid in each city. She had a dark sense of humor even then.
When Molly was considerably older, she headed for Western Kentucky University, where she majored in print journalism. After graduation, she landed a job with The Paducah Sun and married her high school sweetheart, David, a local police officer. After six years at the newspaper, Molly took a more family-friendly secretarial position at a local church office.
Her husband worked nights and Molly was alone with their small child in the “The Apartment of Lost Souls.” A big fan of vampire movies and TV shows, she decided to write a vampire romance novel. Molly created Jane Jameson, a bit of an accidental loser. Jane is single, almost 30, and a librarian working in Half-Moon Hollow, Ky. She has become a permanent fixture on her Mama’s prayer list. And despite the fact that she’s pretty good at her job, she just got canned so her boss could replace her with someone who occasionally starts workplace fires. Jane drowns her sorrows at the local faux nostalgia-themed sports bar. On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer and shot by a drunk hunter. And then she wakes up as a vampire. The three-book Jane Jameson series–which includes Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs,Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men and Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever—was released in 2009. A fourth and final installment, Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors, was released in 2012.
Molly continues stories in the Jane Jameson universe through her Half-Moon Hollow series,Driving Mr. Dead, The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires, Undead Sublet, and The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire. The next title, The Single Undead Mom’s Club will be released in October 2015. Molly updated her popular Naked Werewolf romance series in 2013. How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf, was released in February 2011, quickly followed by The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf. A third installment, How to Run With a Naked Werewolf, was released in December 2013. Her first-ever “haunted house story,” Better Homes and Hauntings, was released in June 2014.
Molly’s books are published by Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. They are available in print, as e-books and audio books at major book stores and on Amazon. Molly is a native of Kentucky. She lives in Paducah with her husband and children.
You can find Molly at Website |Facebook |Twitter | Goodreads |Audible | Tantor
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Amanda Ronconi: Amanda is an actress, narrator and writer who divides my time between New York City and Upstate New York. She has a BFA from NYU where she studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory. Amanda has performed in theaters around New York City as well as regionally at The Alley, Capital Rep and many productions at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.
Amanda’s Off-Broadway solo comedy, Shirley at the Tropicana, received critical acclaim and was subsequently featured in The New York Times. Film and TV credits include Daydream Believer (Slamdance 2001’s Best Dramatic Feature winner), The Understudy, Deadly Sins (ID Discovery), IFC’s Get Hit and Chasing Paradise. National network and regional commercials include Chase Bank, Sony and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Her voiceover work encompasses over 70 audiobooks available on Audible.com.
Amanda’s newest solo show, Kempner, will debut in 2015. You can learn more about Amanda and her awesomeness here: Website| Facebook | Goodreads | Audible Page
Now that you have met the ladies lets get started.
Hi Molly and Amanda,
I am super excited to have you both on the blog again. I love you both dearly!!! I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to sit down and talk with me about Molly’s newest release The Single Undead Moms Club and of course the amazing Amanda will be narrating this book.
Ladies, for my follower who missed how much I love you too or for my new followers can you each tell me a little about yourselves.
Molly: I’m a former newspaper-reporter-turned-church secretary-turned-romance-writer. (That’s the normal career trajectory, right?) I’m the author of the Nice Girls vampire series and the Naked Werewolf series, plus several contemporary romances. I live in western Kentucky with my high school sweetheart/husband and our children.
Amanda: I grew up in the country in upstate New York without a TV, so reading Molly’s books (with her references to the deep cuts of American pop culture) has forced me into many searches of the internet-machine to look up TV of the 20th century that I missed growing up. Thank you, Molly. I am an actor who ended up getting to do audiobooks, which is a great pleasure of mine. Early on in my audiobook career I got my first Molly Harper book to narrate. And I knew immediately that it was special.
Molly, can you tell us what we can expect from Single Undead Moms Club.
Molly: Adorable and preciously snarky children! Hot tattooed single dads! Mean girls in the PTA!
Oh, and our hero and heroine have sex in an abandoned tobacco cult barn. I always forget that one.
Amanda, I heard a rumor that this story may or may not have made you cry a time or two. Can you confirm these rumors?
Amanda: Wow. There are no secrets around here! I get teary when people overcome adversity in a more supernatural and less whiny way than I would.
*looks around* Is that Molly’s evil laugh in the back ground?
Molly: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Amanda, what is your favorite thing about narrating Molly’s stories?
Amanda: The characters are great. The humor, of course, is fun and the writing is just so smooth and emotionally true, which makes it a joy to read.
Molly, what is your favorite things about having Amanda narrator your books and bring your characters to life for your readers?
Molly: She totally gets the inflection and the timing needed to get the humor right. I swear, you would think that she’d spent hours talking to me to get that tone down, but she did it without even contacting me once.
Can you share a snippet of The Single Undead Moms Club?
Suddenly, the door popped open and smacked me in the forehead, knocking me back on my heels.
“Oof!” I cried, clutching my face. Thank goodness I had rapid healing powers, because I was pretty sure I’d just sustained a concussion.
“Are you OK?” a gruff voice demanded.
“What the hell— Who are you?” I demanded.
“I’m the guy with the keys to this closet. Who are you?”
My eyes went wide. This was the school janitor?
The contemporary school janitor was made from a slightly different mold. Tall, lean, almost wiry, with respectable cords of muscles rippling over arms covered in a swirling cloud of colorful tattoos. His face was long and lean, with sharp features only softened by a scruff of white-blond beard and longish darker blond hair that brushed against the collar of his T-shirt. If Thor had a pissed-off, tattooed younger brother, he would be the guy blocking my exit from the supply closet.
“I came in here for a fresh shirt,” he said, nodding toward the flannel shirts hanging neatly from hooks on the closet wall. “The air conditioner was on the fritz . . .” He stared down at the ruined doorknob. “What the hell did you do to the door?”
“Nothing!” I exclaimed, but I hid my hands behind my back as if it would keep me from being caught red-handed.
“What are you even doing in here?” he demanded. “You don’t have any good reason to be in here, damaging school property. What the hell is wrong with you parents? Ya know, just ’cause you pay taxes doesn’t mean you own the school!”
“I got turned around.”
“Well, turn back around and get out.” He jerked his thumb toward the open door behind him as he shrugged out of his sweat-stained gray Half-Moon Hol- low Howlers T-shirt and into a blue cotton uniform workshirt with “Wade” stitched on the breast pocket.
My jaw dropped. Who the hell was this guy, and who did he think he was, bossing me around? Nobody had talked to me like this in . . . well, I couldn’t remember the last time someone talked to me with such an irritated tone, certainly not since I became a tragic terminally ill widow. I’d been treated with kid gloves lined with cotton balls for the past two years.
And holy Hades, he had even more tattoos underneath the shirt. Even with my super-vision, I couldn’t take in the details in the brief glimpse I got. Still, I got a good look at the big picture, and the picture was pretty damn nice. Long, sinewy arms, a broad chest, and a flat stomach tapering to hip bones that jutted out just a few inches above the waistline of his worn jeans.
How perverse was it that between the pretty face, the tattoos, and the surliness, I was actually beginning to feel the faint stirrings of attraction? Fine, they weren’t so much faint stirrings as a deep, reverberating echo between my thighs, like a super-dirty version of those Tibetan meditation bells.
“Just as an FYI, in case the policy manual is outside your reading-comprehension level, most school employees don’t strip in front of parents.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. Why had I said that? That was mean. But my insult hadn’t even fazed “Wade,” who was waving me toward the door. “Keep walking, Bree.”
“My name isn’t Bree.”
He scoffed. “Your names are always ‘Bree’ or ‘Krissy’ or ‘Elizabeth.’ And then you slap it on everythin’ you own, including those stupid little stick figures you stick on the backs of your minivans.”
“It’s Libby,” I shot back.
“Which is short for Elizabeth. Thanks for proving my point.”
“Do us all a favor and try to develop a nicer attitude before the kids come back to school.”
“I don’t need to. The kids know better than to go where they’re not wanted!” he shot back as I walked out to find a bemused Jane Jameson standing outside the closet.
Molly: When writing a Jane or Half Moon Hollow story do you ever think “Oh, poor Amanda is going to kill me for that”?
Only while writing sex scenes. I know that humorous stuff, she will throw her voice into whole-heartedly. But there are times when I’ll use a certain word or describe an act and think of poor Amanda trying to make eye contact with the sound engineer after recording it.
Amanda, Is there ever a time when you are narrating and you think “What the heck Molly?” or “Do I really have to read that part out loud?”
Amanda: Nah. I used to get all blushy about the sexy stuff, but I am mature now. And I can handle it.
Molly, what is the best or hardest part of writing The Single Undead Moms Club?
Molly: Getting Danny (the son’s) voice right. Because he’s based on my own 7-year-old, Carter, and while Carter has this wonderful dry and creative sense of humor, I realize that not all kids sound like him when he speaks. Also, I wanted to balance those heartwarming moments of parenthood without coming across as too schmaltzy.
Molly, what is next in the Half-Moon Hollow Series?
Molly: FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES, a flashback story featuring Dick and Andrea, comes out in print, ebook and audio in November.
Molly: What other secret projects are you working on?
Molly: I’m working on something for a younger audience. That’s all I can say.
Molly, because I love hearing all about your kids. Please ask them: My mom is the best mom ever except when she…….
Darcy: Does the “I told you so” dance. She even does jazz hands.
Carter: Tells me I can only have one dessert.
Let’s take a look at The Single Undead Mom’s Club
In the next book in Molly Harper’s Half Moon Hollow paranormal romance series, Libby (a widow-turned-vampire) struggles with her transition, and finds out it sucks to be the only vampire member of the PTA…
Widow Libby Stratton arranged to be turned into a vampire after she was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. It wasn’t the best idea she’s ever had, but she was desperate—she’s not about to leave her seven-year-old son to be raised by her rigid, overbearing in-laws.
On top of post-turning transition issues, like being ignored at PTA meetings and other mothers rejecting her son’s invitations for sleepovers, Libby must deal with her father-in-law’s attempts to declare her an unfit mother, her growing feelings for Wade—a tattooed redneck single dad she met while hiding in a closet at Back to School Night—and the return of her sire, who hasn’t stopped thinking about brave, snarky Libby since he turned her.
With the help of her new vampire circle, Libby negotiates this unfamiliar quagmire of legal troubles, parental duties, relationships, and, as always in Harper’s distinct, comedic novels, “characters you can’t help but fall in love with” (RT Book Reviews).
Order here: S&S | Amazon | B&N | BAM| INDIEBOUND | IBOOKSTORE (ebook) | GOOGLE PLAY (ebook)
Here is an audio sample from The Single Undead Mom’s Club
Let’s learn a little more about Molly
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