Author Spotlight: Margo Bond Collins

Introducing Margo Bond Collins, whose novel Waking Up Dead is being released today (October 8)!

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
In my other life, I’m a college professor; I teach English courses online. I live in Texas with my husband and our daughter and a number of thoroughly silly animals. Waking Up Dead is my first published novel. My second novel, Legally Undead, is an urban fantasy forthcoming in 2014 from World Weaver Press. I got the offers to publish the two novels in the same month. That was officially the best month of my life!

2. When did you start writing, and why?
I’ve always wanted to write. For as long as I can remember, I have made up stories. When I’m driving (which I find immensely dull), I amuse myself by making up characters and figuring out ways to make their lives difficult. The first story I remember writing was basically fan-fiction of The Wizard of Oz. I wrote it in long-hand in a yellow legal pad. I’ve been writing ever since.

3. What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
I write all kinds of things! I write heavy-duty academic articles about eighteenth-century British literature and I write lighter academic articles about popular culture, particularly supernatural television shows. In my fiction, I write paranormal mysteries, urban fantasies, and contemporary romance. I love figuring out a character’s motivations and watching while the story unfolds in front of me.

4. What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
Waking Up Dead will be released on October 8, and it is about a young woman from Dallas who dies and wakes up as a ghost in Alabama. Legally Undead is the first of the Vampirarchy series, set in the Bronx in New York, about Elle Dupree, a reluctant vampire-hunter, and it is due out in 2014.

5. "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
In Waking Up Dead, Callie Taylor doesn’t know why she wakes up as a ghost in Alabama, but once she sees another woman murdered, she knows she has to let someone know what happened.  Her world is very much like our own, except she can’t figure out how and why she ended up where she did. She’s stuck as a ghost in small-town Alabama, a place she never even visited when she was alive.

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6. Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
Callie’s the narrator. She’s basically a light-hearted person, despite being in a terribly strange situation and having experienced pretty much the worst things possible. She befriends Ashara, a young African-American woman who is one of the few people who can see and hear Callie. Ashara’s outspoken grandmother Maw-Maw encourages the two of them to work together to solve the mystery of a local woman’s death.

7. A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
As I was writing Waking Up Dead, I had to find out when the thousand-dollar bill was discontinued. It was last printed in 1946 and totally discontinued in 1969.

8. Blog/site link, and where your book is available.
Amazon

Connect with Margo:

Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com
Website: http://www.MargoBondCollins.com

Twitter  @MargoBondCollin | Google+ | Goodreads Author Page
Facebook Author Page | Facebook Novel Page | Tumblr | Pinterest

Be sure to add Waking Up Dead to your Goodreads bookshelves: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18428064-waking-up-dead

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