M. S. Spencer, @msspencerauthor, #Pit&thePassion, #MSSpencerbooks, #Floridafiction

I’d like to welcome M. S. Spencer, author of The Pit and the Passion: Murder at the Ghost Hotel, to my blog today.

RW:    How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing?

MSS:  A lot! As you can see from my biography, I’ve led a rather eclectic life full of travel & adventure. While every novel I write is fiction, bits of experiences do crop up in them. Lapses of Memory is particularly rife with actual experiences. I figure, this way I don’t have to write my autobiography.

RW:    Tell us about your latest book. What motivated the story? Where did the idea come from? What genre is it? Does it cross over to other genres? If so, what are they?

MSS:  Flotsam & Jetsam: the Amelia Island Affair, is a murder mystery/romantic suspense novel set on Amelia Island, southernmost of the Sea Islands on the Atlantic coast. I went to a book signing event there a couple of years ago and fell in love with the island’s quirky history. It’s been conquered and reconquered by not just countries, but pirates and mercenaries. I wanted to write a contemporary story, but one that draws on that history.

Here’s the blurb:

Who’s littering the park with corpses?

State Park Rangers Simon Ribault and Ellie Ironstone are used to dealing with messy campers and ravaging raccoons, but when three bodies wash up on the beach, they mobilize all their powers of deduction. Who are they and how did they get to the shore of Amelia Island? Are they connected to the secretive League of the Green Cross? Or linked to a mysterious Jamaican drug ring?

Ellie, new to Amelia Island, must penetrate a close-knit community if she wants to find answers to the mystery, all while deciding between two rivals for her affection: Thad, the handsome local idol, and Simon, the clever, quirky bookworm.

Simon, for his part, will have to call on his not-so-well-honed romantic prowess to lure Ellie away from Thad and at the same time use his wide-ranging research skills to solve the case.

RW:    How many books have you written, and how many have been published?

MSS:  Flotsam & Jetsam: the Amelia Island Affair will be released this year. It marks my twelfth published book, all romantic suspense or murder mystery. I wrote one other full manuscript—a murder mystery set in Williamsburg, Virginia—that sat in a drawer for a couple of years until my husband inadvertently (Or not? The jury’s out.) threw it out.

RW:    What book for you has been the easiest to write? The hardest? The most fun?

MSS:  The easiest was probably The Pit & the Passion, released in January. The characters practically wrote themselves and the setting (a grand hotel in ruins that circus man John Ringling built in the 20s) so much fun. I even managed to set a scene or two in my beloved Paris.

The hardest was definitely Flotsam & Jetsam: the Amelia Island Affair, which is due out before the end of this year. That’s the first time I’ve tried a male POV. I had to worry that I was feminizing him too much—plus there are surprising gimmicks I had to ditch—like how to describe the characters. Men usually tell women they have beautiful hair/eyes, etc., thus providing a description for the reader with little effort. But women don’t do that—so how to provide an image of the hero to the reader? We’ll see if it worked.

RW:    Which comes first, the story, the characters, or the setting?

MSS:  I usually like to set a story where I’m setting 😊 but sometimes I get an idea while fiddling around on the internet. I’ll follow research leads until something jumps out. I was reading about John Ringling’s Ghost Hotel—a Ritz-Carlton he started in 1926 and left unfinished for decades when it struck me—what do you find at a ghost hotel? Anyone? The Mason’s Mark: Love & Death in the Tower, is set at the Masonic Memorial and has lots of Masonic intrigue. It came to me when I was reading about a real life renegade Mason with an incredibly flamboyant (& wicked) history.

RW:    Are you in control of your characters or do they control you?

MSS:  Oh, they definitely control me—even to their names. My hero/heroine are literally called “/name/” up until about the third chapter, when they are fully formed little beasts who insist on going their own way. Sometimes they even bring in relatives I didn’t know they had! In Dear Philomena, my Chincoteague mystery romance, Dagne drags her no-good father right onto the page and made me write him in.

RW:    A biography has been written about you. What do you think the title would be in six words or less?

MSS:  Been there, done that.

RW:    If you were stranded on a tropical island, who would it be with? You can choose any living, deceased or mythical figure.

MSS:  Samuel Johnson, definitely. He had an opinion about everything and was the greatest wordsmith ever. I could listen to him for hours. He didn’t mind a dram or two either.

RW:    What’s your most embarrassing moment?

MSS: Hard to choose among so many! But one time—I had my family with me (husband & two young children). We were heading into DC for a victory parade and the subways were packed. Finally, I went full Nike (goddess of Victory, not the shoe) and pushed my way onto the car proclaiming that “I had children with me” as though I expected them to make way for the royal family. I managed to squeeze us in, turned around, and had a full-blown panic attack. In the same stentorian tone I announced that we had to get off RIGHT NOW. I grabbed one child and plowed through the quickly parting sea of people. Once out, I absolutely, positively died of embarrassment. Especially once I realized we were six miles from home. And that I’d left my husband and son on the subway.

RW:    I love pizza with (fill in the blank).

MSS:  Anchovies, bacon, and pickled jalapenos. Don’t argue with me 😊

RW:    Those are all the questions I have for you. Thank you for speaking to me.

THE PIT & THE PASSION:

MURDER AT THE GHOST HOTEL

The Plot

At midnight, in the darkness of a deserted hotel, comes a scream and a splash. Eighty-five years later, workmen uncover a skeleton in an old elevator shaft. Who is it, and how did it get there? To find out, Charity Snow, ace reporter for the Longboat Key Planet, teams up with Rancor Bass, best-selling author. A college ring they find at the dig site may prove to be their best clue.

Although his arrogance nearly exceeds his talent, Charity soon discovers a warm heart beating under Rancor’s handsome exterior. While dealing with a drop-dead gorgeous editor who may or may not be a villain, a publisher with a dark secret, and an irascible forensic specialist, Charity and Rancor unearth an unexpected link to the most famous circus family in the world.

An Excerpt:

That Hot Heavy Feeling

He scratched his neck. “You are no fun at all.”

She smiled with satisfaction. “Good.”

“Because you see, while you with such easy indifference relegate Tommy T to a mundane accident and the benighted Biddlesworth to a watery grave, you haven’t answered the question of my grandfather’s disappearance.”

“Am I supposed to?”

He stopped. An uncertain look passed over his face, catching Charity off guard. “I…I thought we were in this together?”

A feeling she couldn’t name rushed through her, one that filled every pore with a heavy sort of heat. It weighed her down, made her sluggish. Time slowed. She watched with vague interest as her knees buckled, and the floor rushed toward her. Just before she smacked into it, two strong arms caught her, lifted her up, and held her in a crushing grip. “Charity? Are you alright?”

“Yes. Yes. Oh, Rancor.” After that she couldn’t talk because her lips were smashed against his and her chest against his and she couldn’t breathe at all, but she didn’t really need to because he was breathing for the both of them.

A while later, they sat down on the couch. Rancor traced her cheek with his finger, his eyes wondering. Charity felt at peace. She had recognized the hot, heavy feeling and accepted it. Now to explain it to Rancor.

“Rancor? I—”

The phone rang.

M. S. Spencer

Bio

Although M. S. Spencer has lived or traveled in five continents, the last thirty years were spent mostly in Washington, D.C. as a librarian, Congressional staff assistant, speechwriter, editor, policy wonk, non-profit director and parent. She has two fabulous grown children and a perfect granddaughter. Ms. Spencer has published twelve romantic suspense/murder mystery novels, and currently divides her time between the Gulf coast of Florida and a tiny village in Maine.

Book Links:

The Wild Rose Press: https://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/all-titles/5533-the-pit-and-the-passion-murder-at-the-ghost-hotel.html

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pit-Passion-Murder-Ghost-Hotel-ebook/dp/B078JY8RLY

ITunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-pit-and-the-passion-murder-at-the-ghost-hotel/id1332026896?mt=11

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-pit-and-the-passion-m-s-spencer/1127750685?ean=2940158925351

KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-pit-and-the-passion-murder-at-the-ghost-hotel

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/M_S_Spencer_The_Pit_and_the_Passion_Murder_at_the?id=F-tGDwAAQBAJ

Indigo: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-pit-and-the-passion/9781509218424-item.html

Contact M. S. Spencer At:

Blog: https://msspencertalespinner.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/msspencerromance

Twitter: www.twitter.com/msspencerauthor

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/msspencerauthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msspencerauthor/

Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MSSpencerauthor

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/m-s-spencer

https://www.bookbub.com/m-s-spencer

Author Pages

The Wild Rose Press:

http://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/1360_m-s-spencer

Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/M.S.-Spencer/e/B002ZOEUC8/