Hi, and thanks
so much for welcoming me on your blog!! I have answered a few interview
questions, some in a bit too much detail, but I often get carried away.
1) You’re
marooned on a small island with one person and one item of your choice—who is
that person and what item do you have?
I’m going to
have to go with my husband, Mr. Mia, as my person of choice. I secretly always
thought he would be the guy to win Survivor, if he went on that TV show. Mr.
Mia is skillful and industrious, and very outdoorsy. He is often quite clever
with people. I think he’d keep me safe and he’d keep me comfortable, and for my
one “luxury item” it would have to be a huge bar of chocolate, which would keep
me sane.
2) Which
musical would you say best exemplifies your life – and which character in that
musical are you?
I don’t really
think that Grease exemplifies my life
very well, but I’ve always felt a certain affinity to Sandra Dee. A little bit
too sweet, not particularly cool, wears her heart on her sleeve—yeah, that’s me.
I guess that would make Mr. Mia John Travolta, huh?
3) What is your idea of how to spend
romantic time with your significant other?
Mr.
Mia and I don’t have a lot of time to spend on romance. So, if we were able to
do whatever we wanted, romantically speaking, it would start with my older kids
coming home from college to watch my younger kids so I didn’t have to worry
about them. (Excessive worry over children’s safety and happiness is not
conducive to romance.) Once that was taken care of I would pack a bag for Mr.
Mia and me, and we’d head to the nearby resort town of Meredith, NH. There, we
would check into Church Landing for a long and relaxing weekend stay.
We
would first share some wine and cheese in our cozy lakefront room.
We
would head for the indoor pool and sauna and splash around together without
looking at a clock once.
This
would be followed by a leisurely dinner at the hotel restaurant, The Lakehouse
Grille… with more wine.
And
then back to the cozy hotel room for time spent together with no CELL PHONES or
COMPUTERS. Maybe a movie…or maybe not.
4) When you start a new story, do you begin
with a character, or a plot?
I
always start with a plot. I usually get an idea for a story from a song, or a
current event that is on my mind. So I start with the idea, and then I create
the characters I want to live out my story.
5) If they were to make the story of your life
into a movie, who should play you?
I
think I would like Angelina Jolie to play me. I think she would do a very good
job. (Well, you asked, and I figured, why not reach very high?)
6) Who’s your favorite horror villain and why?
Jack
Torrance of The Shining. It is all in the eyebrows. They are sooo… creepy.
7) Do you have an historical crush and if so,
who is it?
I
am a huge Mahatma Gandhi fan. I can’t get enough of his philosophical
statements. Read The Red Sheet and
you can see some of my favorites in action.
8) Is there a story that you’d like to
tell but you think the world isn’t ready to receive it?
I
truly think I have already told some of these cutting edge stories—for example Us Three, with a YA threesome, and A Package Deal, with an unconventional
“family”, of sorts, and now Inclination,
a YA gay Christian work of fiction. Maybe some people are ready for them, but
there are definitely many readers who are skeptical. My job is to help them to
see love—romantic, religious, and friendship—from my perspective. And if an
idea strikes me in the future that is possibly a bit ahead of its time, I will
not hesitate to write it.
Book
Name: Inclination
Release
Date: February 25, 2015
Author
Name: Mia Kerick
Author Bio:
Mia
Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—all named after saints—and
five nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to saints, Boston
Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty-two years has been told by many that he
has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a sensitive
subject.
Mia
focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their
relationships, and she believes that physical intimacy has a place in a love
story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia
filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of
whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and
stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to
Dreamspinner Press, Harmony Ink Press, Cool Dudes, and CreateSpace for providing
her with alternate places to stash her stories.
Mia
is a social liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of
human rights, especially marital equality. Her only major regret: never having
taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with
two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
Where
to find the author:
Twitter: @MiaKerick
Publisher: Cool Dudes Publishing
Cover
Artist: Louis C. Harris
Blurb:
Sixteen-year-old Anthony Duck-Young Del Vecchio is a
nice Catholic boy with a very big problem. It’s not the challenge of fitting in
as the lone adopted South Korean in a close-knit family of
Italian-Americans. Nor is it being the
one introverted son in a family jam-packed with gregarious daughters. Anthony’s
problem is far more serious—he is the only gay kid in Our Way, his church’s youth group. As a high school junior, Anthony
has finally come to accept his sexual orientation, but he struggles to
determine if a gay man can live as a faithful Christian. And as he faces his
dilemma, there are complications. After confiding his gayness to his intolerant
adult youth group leader, he’s asked to find a new organization with which to
worship. He’s beaten up in the church parking lot by a fanatical teen. His former
best pal bullies him in the locker room. His Catholic friends even stage an
intervention to lead him back to the “right path.” Meanwhile, Anthony develops
romantic feelings for David Gandy, an emo, out and proud junior at his high
school, who seems to have all the answers about how someone can be gay and
Christian, too.
Will Anthony be able to balance his family, friends
and new feelings for David with his changing beliefs about his faith so he can
live a satisfying life and not risk his soul in the process?
Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction,
Romance, Young Adult, Christian, Spiritual
Excerpt:
I’ll pass on the Kool-Aid, thank you
It sounds like a joke, but
it’s all true. Every student who volunteers his or her time on a weekly basis
at an animal shelter, a hospital, or a home for the elderly receives a free
lunch on the last Monday of the month, putting to rest the veracity (got that
word on the last SAT practice test I took at my desk in my bedroom the other
day) of the old idiom, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And as I spend every Sunday afternoon patting
and playing with cats at the Centerton Humane Society, I qualify. If nothing
else, it gives Mom a day off from making me lunch.
“It was so disgusting.”
I drop down into my usual
seat in the cafeteria beside Laz, my tray with the bowl of free macaroni and
cheese, a slice of bread, and milk, sliding onto the lunch table in front of
me. “The mac and cheese?” I ask. “Last time I had it the stuff wasn’t too bad.”
It’s not one of Mom’s gourmet lunches, but it gets the job done.
“No, Anthony.” Emma Gillis
rolls her eyes and swallows her bite of free mac and cheese she earned by
reading classics to the elderly on Saturday mornings at the New Horizons
Elderly Center. She gulps in a breath and informs me with her usual
haughtiness, “I was telling everybody about these two old men I read to last
Saturday who think they are some kind of couple. They actually kissed each other.” She fake-gags.
“I threw up a little in my mouth when
I saw that!”
For my own personal
reasons, I gasp, while everybody else snickers.
“Those old dudes must be
losing it, as in, they could have Alzheimer’s or something, and they forgot
that dudes belong with ladies, not
other dudes.” I glance over at Lazarus, who abruptly stops babbling to suck
down the first of three cartons of chocolate milk. “But seriously, that’s
messed up.” Laz wrinkles his nose in distaste and runs his hands through his
shaggy dark hair, before moving on to carton number two.
I’m basically frozen, my
hand still hovering over the slice of wheat bread on the corner of my tray, my
mouth hanging open. I might even be drooling.
“It’s not their fault,
Emma.” Elizabeth-the-devout always takes the case of the underdog. It’s how
she’s wired. “They’re just sick in their minds.” She sends Emma a
you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of yourself sort of frown. “We, as Catholics, are
called to compassion.”
Everyday single day at
lunch since freshman year, I’ve sat with the kids from the Our Way youth group.
In fact, the other kids in my grade have long referred to our lunch table as
“Our Way to Survive Cafeteria Food”, which somewhere along the line got
shortened to the “OWSCF Table”, which eventually morphed into “awe-scoff”. I
have always felt safe and secure sitting at the awe-scoff table. These are the
kids I’ve prayed with three times a week at
Our Way, and the ones who I was confirmed with in ninth grade. I’ve
collected toys for the poor with these kids—in fact, for three years running
we’ve made sure that no child in Wedgewood missed out on having a small stack
of Christmas gifts, and that brings about some major bonding. We’ve shared
weekends camping in the Maine woods, singing and holding hands and sometimes
crying when the Spirit moved us.
This is my safe spot at school, like my tiny room is my alone
spot at home.
“If you ask me, all fags
deserve to die for going against Christ and everything that’s natural. They
should be forced to drink poison Kool-Aid, like those cultists had to do down
in Jonestown…’member that?” Is that Rinaldo Vera who just suggested mass murder
as the “final solution” to the gay problem?
Sweet, passive Rinaldo—the
gentle giant. Um, not so much.
“I saw a TV movie called
the Jonestown Massacre.”
“I caught that too…those
people were warped.”
The conversation drifts
away from the vileness of homosexuality, toward the disturbing personal stories
of the few survivors of the Jim Jones Cult Kool-Aid Massacre. But I’ve heard
more than enough, in terms of stuff that pertains to me.
Feeling as if I’m going to
lose what little lunch I ate, I jump up off my chair and race toward the boys’
room in the hall near the cafeteria.
Maybe there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Pages or Words: 70,000 words
Tour Dates/Tour Stops:
23-Feb
24-Feb
25-Feb
26-Feb
27-Feb
2-Mar
3-Mar
4-Mar
5-Mar
6-Mar
9-Mar
10-Mar
11-Mar
12-Mar
13-Mar
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Prize: One of three copies from Mia’s extensive backlist
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Congratulations, Mia! It sounds like a great premise...
ReplyDeleteTrix, vitajex(at)Aol(Dot)com
Congrats on the releases Mia! This one sounds awesome too =)
ReplyDeleteH.B.