Authors To Watch: Taking Control: Rick's Story by Morgan Malone @mmaloneauthor

Morgan Malone is the pen name of a retired lawyer who turned in her judicial robes to write romantic memoir and sexy contemporary romance, which always features silver foxes and the independent women who tame them.

Morgan fell in love with romantic heroes after reading her mother’s first edition of “Gone with the Wind” when she was 12 years old. Rhett Butler became the standard by which she measured all men. Some have met the mark, most have failed to even come close and one or two surpassed even Rhett’s dark and dangerous allure.

Morgan lives near Saratoga Springs, NY with her beloved chocolate Lab. She can be found on occasion drinking margaritas and dancing at local hostelries, but look for her most often in independent book stores and the library, searching for her next great love in tales of romance, history, adventure and lust. When she can’t find the perfect man, she retreats to her upstairs office and creates him, body and soul, for her pleasure and for yours. Remember: love, like wine, gets better with age.

Her recent novel is the contemporary romance, Taking Control: Rick’s Story.

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Summer on the Jersey Shore and all Rick Sheridan wants is some solitude at his beach house. Then he spots a lean, leggy blonde coming out of the surf and his plans are shot to hell. And the dangerous looking knife strapped to her arm tells him this is no damsel in distress. As a not-so retired Marine, at 51, Rick’s learned that nothing is for certain, plans can spin out of control and shit happens.

Wounded and weary from one too many wars, Britt Capshaw thought a summer at the Shore, hanging out in her family’s beach cottage, would help her heal. And figure out what to do with the rest of her life. Out of the military, disillusioned and distrustful of any two-legged male, Britt’s one love is Alex, the yellow Labrador retriever she rescued from Afghanistan.

Rick and Britt are immediately attracted to one another, but after years in combat, they are wary of letting down their guard, of giving up control. The summer heats up and fireworks are flying between them even after the Fourth of July. But, ghosts from their pasts haunt them and finally bring them face to face with some dark secrets that may destroy the fragile trust they’ve built.

Can Britt trust Rick with her dangerous past? Will Rick be able to let go of the rigid control he needs to keep Britt and himself safe from more heartbreak? These two brave souls fight against surrendering their hearts and finally finding love. Who will win?

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We welcome you to My Bookish Pleasures! Can you tell us how you got started writing fiction?

Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. I started writing fiction in the second grade when I won a New York State Creative Writing Award and my story was published. Fast forward about 50 years and I am retiring from a thirty-year career as an administrative law judge and counsel to a small government agency. I’d been writing for thirty years; not fiction but legal decisions and treatises. I decided to take a creative writing class to lose my lawyer’s voice. We learned by writing memoir. My essays over the next three years became a book-Cocktales: An After-50 Dating Memoir. The publisher of that book asked if I had anything else and the door was opened. I had found my voice and an audience! I wrote my first romance novel, Out of Control: Kat’s Story, to be published at the same time as my memoir, in 2015. I’ve been writing romance ever since.

Describe your writing process. Do you plot or write by the seat of your pants? When and where do you write?

I’m a pantster. I have an idea. I write most of the book in my head before I sit down at my computer with a few notes that I’ve written down. Then the story just comes. I keep a notebook to remind myself of changes I’ve made and to keep track of the ideas the characters give me. I’m retired so I write throughout the day, sometimes in the middle of the night, in a small guest room I’ve turned into an office. I have to write at a desk with a desktop computer; I don’t do well with a laptop in bed or at the kitchen table. Too many years sitting in an office, I guess. And I focus on characters who are in their prime. All my heroes and heroines are in their late 30’s, 40’s or 50’s. I think there is a real need for main characters who are not millennials. We baby boomers want some relevant romance, too!

Can you tell us about your most recent release?

My latest release is Taking Control: Rick’s Story. Rick was a character in my first romance novel, Out of Control: Kat’s Story, and my readers wanted him to have his own HEA. It took me awhile to sit down to write this book because I couldn’t imagine the proper heroine for Rick. He is 51, a battle-scarred former Marine, who walked away from his last chance at love. My son, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told me about a blonde nurse he had always looked for in Kandahar when he would return from a mission. There was just something about her. She became Britt, also a veteran of too many battles, who Rick meets when he returns to his cottage on the Jersey Shore. They both have a lot of baggage and they dance around each other, attracted but afraid of losing their hearts.

How did you get the idea for the book?

Rick was a character in Out of Control: Kat’s Story. He was the “one who got away.” He was not ready to commit to Kat and that was fine with me because I had the man imagined who would give her the HEA she deserved. But, Rick stayed in my head and in the hearts of many readers. I brought him back to his favorite place this summer determined to have him finally fall in love. As I said, my son gave me the idea for the way Britt would look but her character was inspired by the woman warriors of the Army’s Cultural Support Team I discovered in Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s book, Ashley’s War.

Of all your characters, which one is your favorite? Why?

I still love Naomi, the heroine in Unanswered Prayers. She is my favorite. I started writing her story over ten years ago. She’s 36 and a single mom. She’s had a messy divorce and while she has a successful career as a writer for Rolling Stone, she has a lot of self-doubt. Naomi’s Jewish and she’s not slim or traditionally pretty. She is not looking for love and is certainly not interested in an aging Country singer on a comeback tour. I love her intelligence, creativity and courage; nothing has been able to destroy her. And she is the perfect match for Sam, an unlucky-in-love Country singer, who is my homage to Garth Brooks. Their love story, set in the summer of 2001, still gets to me.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing your book?

The most challenging aspect was finding the right woman for my hero, Rick. I knew him pretty well from the start but I wanted him to change a bit from who he was in Out of Control: Kat’s Story. He had some baggage he had to put down so he could finally open his heart. Britt, my heroine, came to me in bits and pieces. I did a lot of research into women in the military because I knew she had to be a veteran, too. Once she and Rick were in the book together, their relationship developed slowly, but steadily. I still hadn’t decided what would be the pivotal moment. Then I learned about Saratoga WarHorse Foundation, located virtually in my backyard. The Foundation matches retired thoroughbred race horses with veterans suffering from PTSD in a unique program that has helped almost 1000 veterans to date. That program was my answer. I am such a believer in Saratoga WarHorse that I am donating 25% of my proceeds from the sale of Taking Control: Rick’s Story to the Foundation.

What projects are you currently working on?

After two years of research, I have just begun writing Treasure, a novella, that will be the prequel to a three-book Pirate series. I am already in love with this book and I can’t wait to finish it…I love the ending! And I can’t believe how many readers love Pirate romances! I promise the novella will be done by December and I hope the first of the Pirate novels will be finished by June 2019.

And I am in the process of getting my three Barefoot Bay sexy silver fox novellas ready for re-release in September 2018.

What advice would you offer to new or aspiring fiction authors?

Write the story you love. Those stories have the most heart and soul. Then edit, edit and proof. Nothing annoys a reader, editor or agent more than a sloppily written manuscript. And become active in your local romance writers’ organization. Workshops and conferences have taught me so much over the years about craft and marketing.