UFI welcomes Mary Behre Author of The Tidewater Series. Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?
I worked and volunteered for Disaster Services through the American Red Cross for years. Best job, ever! The work was tough, exhausting, had the worst hours (because disasters don’t typically happen during normal business hours), and the most rewarding work experience of my life. The only reason I’m not active now is that I have children at home. The way I work, I can only do one 24/7 job at a time and right now, motherhood is it for me.
What do you enjoy doing on your down time?
I love spending time with my children and my husband. I’m enjoy reading, tending to my small spring/summer porch garden, crocheting baby blankets, and if I can do all these things Oceanside, that makes it all the better.
What is your Favorite part of writing?
When I’m at my computer and the real world fades away. That’s when the words flow and I have to work to keep up with the action playing in my head.
Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?
Well, I treat my career like any other job. I have normal business hours that I work, 9-5 Monday-Friday. I cannot write in a vacuum, so I play one short instrumental piece on a constant loop while I work.
What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Genres?
I have every book in the Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands and every book in the Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I also love Damon Suede, Kelly St. John, Suzanne Brockmann, and Beverly Barton’s paranormal books.
How would you pitch your Tidewater series to someone who has not heard of it before?
Humor, suspense and a psychic love-connection…The Tidewater Series.
Can you tell us a little bit about the world that Tidewater series is set in?
Tidewater is a fictitious city based on the real Tidewater area in Virginia. The real Tidewater isn’t on a map but it’s generally believed to encompass the cities Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and sometimes Suffolk. In the real Tidewater people move easily (traffic notwithstanding) between the cities all the time. Since beta readers indicated a marked confusion about why people would live in one city, work in another, have brunch in a third, see a play in a fourth, and attend a sporting event in a fifth, it was just easier to make Tidewater its own city in my series, sharing landmarks with the real cities.
The Tidewater series is set in present day. In Tidewater, a small ocean front city, there are a lot of quirky characters, some of whom are endowed with unique crifts (cursed gifts) such as telepathy, psychometry, psychokenesis, pyrokensis and hydrokenesis. In SPIRITED, our heroine, Jules, possesses a form of telepathy that allows her to see, hear, and speak to ghosts.
Do you have a favorite scene in Spirited ?
The scene in the hallway right after Seth and Jules met for the first time. It cracked me up when I wrote it.
How many books do you have planned for the series?
As many as the readers and my publisher are willing to read. Tidewater might be a small city but that’s still a lot of stories. J
Which character has been your favorite to write about so far? What about the hardest to write about?
My favorite character was Sam the homeless war vet. When I sat down to write that first scene with him, it just flowed. His part in the story was only supposed to be one scene but there was so much there, I couldn’t not share it.
The hardest character to write was Seth’s. He did and said things that I didn’t always agree with, but when I tried to change them, the results didn’t ring true. So I let him have his way.
What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?
Book 2 in the Tidewater series, GUARDED, releases August 5, 2014. This story is centered around Jules’s middle sister, Shelley. She’s a telepathic vet who speaks to animals. When zoo animals start to disappear, she becomes suspicious and contacts her old friend Dev (Seth’s partner from SPIRITED) to help her solve the mystery. Old attraction burns hot but will it go out when Shelley is accused of murder and Dev is forced to choose between his budding relationship and his career?
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Her debut paranormal romance, SPIRITED (Tidewater Novel #1) was an award-winning manuscript before it sold to Berkley Sensation. The Tidewater Series is mix of humor, suspense, and a psychic love-connection. The first three stories are about three sisters separated years before in the foster care system. As they search for love, each other, and a way to live with their psychic abilities, they’re tossed into the middle of mysteries that only their unique gifts can help solve.
Mary is represented by the fabulous Nalini Akolekar of Spencerhill Associates.
SpiritedTidewater #2
She’s running from who she is…...
All Jules Scott wants is to live a normal, quiet life—preferably one that doesn’t include ghosts. Jules’s talent for communicating with the dead has brought her nothing but trouble. Despite her best efforts, needy spirits always find her and draw her into their otherworldly drama. When one implicates her in a series of deadly crimes, she may need to entrust her secrets to the person least likely to believe her.…
He’ll do whatever it takes to catch her.
Detective Seth English can’t get distracted from the big case he’s working on, not even by his alluring new neighbor. He doesn’t believe that Jules had anything to do with the string of robberies-turned-murders that he’s investigating, but when she keeps showing up in all the wrong places, his gut tells him she knows more than she’s letting on. To solve his case, he’ll need to expose what the sexy redhead is hiding—no matter how impossible the truth may be….
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