FUNNY HOW THINGS WORK by B La Mazza

Please welcome Bernadette La Mazza to The Roses of Prose!

Twenty years ago I had just started college in Virginia and was writing novels left and right.  Some great, some downright awful, others exercises in the craft.  Rejection after rejection piled up but I kept at it.  In order to boost my dialogue I went back to one of my old hobbies – writing plays. 

It worked!  My dialogue got better and I got to see my plays put on in various theaters.  The best part?  Experiencing how the audience understood the play, their emotions, their responses; how the actors and directors interpreted what I put together and how they brought out the emotion of the comedy or drama – the connection.

Always up for a challenge I thought I would take a break from plays and focus back more pointedly on my novels.  It had been a couple of years, there were many manuscripts I’d written that were 75% completed or less, just not finished.

I got some requests for my next novel.  This time it was for a small dusty town, government intervention/conspiracy, two types of love – one with a friend, one with a lover, and a mission to Mars.  Sounds crazy I know, but it all ties in. 

The result?  My newest book: Secrets and Stones.  The first novel, since my break from plays. 

Two weeks ago I was given the opportunity to go to a conference in Nashville, Tennessee.  It had been over fifteen years since I had been in the south, having moved out to the southwest after college.  Being back there this week – enjoying the Country Music Hall of Fame, Hermitage Mansion and all that Nashville has to offer, and yes, learning some fantastic things from that amazing conference, felt like going back to college.  Going back to the time when I wrote novels and let the reader cuddle up with a good cup of hot chocolate or in the summer a sun brewed iced tea, and have the reader connect with the story, feel the emotion, and go along for the ride.

Funny how I finished my novel just in time to go back in time, back to the south.  Where in college, twenty years ago, I finished writing my first book. 

Funny how life is.

Bernadette La Mazza

My newest book Secrets and Stones can be purchased on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Stones-B-E-Mazza/dp/1515055442/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437619311&sr=8-1&keywords=b+la+mazza&pebp=1437619314602&perid=1KJPW939H4E9Y2HYXNFK

Book Blurb:

Mona Duncan was content with running a youth dance academy in Nowhere, Arizona. Far from distractions, far from the chaos of the city, and far from everything. The small town of Cubre was the perfect place for her to focus on building a dance program and making it her own. The last thing she expected was to be caught up in the excitement of a local boy, Rowdy Johnson, done good - selected as the Commander for the historic mission to Mars.

Agent Sam Temple walked into Cubre on a mission. Find the stolen military secrets, destroy them, and get out of town. That was until he laid eyes on the intelligent and witty Mona. Duncan. How did one simple slip land her and her academy in the middle of a complicated web of deceit, greed and lies? Those simple stones set off a chain reaction that led all the way to Washington D.C.

Temple knows he can only locate the stones and destroy the secrets with Mona at his side, tough to do when she wants nothing to do with him. Will Temple locate the secrets before it's too late? Will the mission to Mars fizzle and fade? Leaving Mona stuck in the dust of the desert in a tumbleweed town. Nothing is at it seems where there are secrets and stones.