Tag: Mally Becker

 

Good day, my bookish peeps. I hope everyone of you is safe and warm. Can you believe we’ve almost made it to the end of the second month of 2021?! I know most of you are avid readers like myself. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably curious about what author’s do when they aren’t writing. Is writing their only career? Do they have other work responsibilities and write on a part-time basis? Did they wait until retirement to begin writing? Did they wait until their children had graduated from high school (or its equivalent) before writing or are their children still at home and in school? Inquiring minds want to know…okay, my inquiring mind wants to know. Thankfully, today’s guest author will reveal a few answers to these questions. Please help me welcome freelance journalist turned attorney turned children’s advocate, Mally Becker. Ms. Becker’s historical suspense novel, The Turncoat’s Widow was recently released. I hope you’ll enjoy Ms. Becker’s words of wisdom and that you’ll follow the blog tour to read some enlightening reviews of this book. Thank you, Ms. Becker, for visiting with us today. The blog is now yours.

Don’t Give Up On Your Dreams

by Mally Becker

My 18th century heroine, Rebecca Parcell, is a young widow and an outsider in her hometown. The War for Independence is literally on her doorstep, there’s a growing whisper campaign that she’s a Loyalist sympathizer. Becca is angry, defensive, and scared. Who wouldn’t be? But she manages by the end of the book to reinvent herself as she faces each challenge.

I still don’t have my heroine’s hard-won confidence. But I’ve reinvented myself, too, as I wrote my historical mystery, The Turncoat’s Widow, and here’s the lesson I want to share: Don’t give up on a dream, whether or not it has anything to do with writing, even if it seems – or is – out of reach today.

Writing isn’t my first career. It’s isn’t even my second. Like so many others, I’ve always imagined writing a novel one day. I nibbled around the edge of that wish for a long time, crafting a few freelance pieces for my local newspaper, starting then shelving the beginnings of other stories.

But I finished The Turncoat’s Widow, and my story was published about a week ago. So what changed? How did I change? In retrospect, I can point to three things, and I think they apply to more than writing.

Enjoy the ride. I was 30 pages into my first draft when a mystery writer said to me at a writers conference, “If you’re not having fun writing, just don’t do it.” I had let myself become too judgmental about my own beginner efforts. I’d almost forgotten that I loved to write, forgotten how remarkable it is when a character veers off in a direction I hadn’t considered until my fingers hit the keyboard. That writer’s message came at the right time.

I stopped stressing over whether what I wrote was any good or whether I’d be published. I focused on my story and having fun figuring out what would happen next. I would think about the rest later, I told myself, or maybe I wouldn’t. I was just at the keyboard to have fun and keep writing.

Focusing on the process and not the outcome sounds simple, right? It was, and it wasn’t. But it was liberating to think only about the next sentence, the next scene, the next chapter. I couldn’t control whether a publisher would eventually want to pick up my book or what readers will think now that it’s launched. But I could control whether I sat down in front of my laptop to write each day.

Studies show that feeling in control is a major component of happiness. Writing regularly–focusing on what I could control–made me happy.

Find your people. Writing is a lonely business, or so the cliché goes. Except it is a cliché and not always true. Talking to people whose goals were similar to mine kept me motivated. I still sit in on virtual weekly workshops at The Writers Circle in New Jersey, where I found my tribe. I also searched online for free and low-cost options for writers. Maybe the only upside of Covid is that so many writing conferences and authors’ readings are available online for free now.

Be kind to yourself. Some people carve out writing time while they’re working full time, raising a family, and volunteering a favorite charity. Nope. Not me. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t beat myself up for “failing” to write more when I was doing all of the above. I didn’t find the energy to focus on The Turncoat’s Widow until our son had graduated from high school.

“Trust the process,” another writer told me. It sounds like something Yoda would say in a Star Wars films, right? But life has its seasons, and is there anyone who gets to do everything they’ve ever wanted to do all at the same time? I didn’t realize back in the day that the low-cost writers conferences I attended, the short articles I wrote and the journals I filled were like a pianist’s finger exercises. They were just enough to keep my writing muscles limber until the right idea and time presented themselves.

Are you moving closer to a goal you’ve had for a long time? What keeps you going?

 

Synopsis:

Recently widowed, Rebecca Parcell is too busy struggling to maintain her farm in Morristown to care who wins the War for Independence. But rumors are spreading in 1780 that she’s a Loyalist sympathizer who betrayed her husband to the British—quite a tidy way to end her disastrous marriage, the village gossips whisper.

Everyone knows that her husband was a Patriot, a hero who died aboard a British prison ship moored in New York Harbor. But “everyone” is wrong. Parcell was a British spy, and General Washington – who spent two winters in Morristown – can prove it. He swears he’ll safeguard Becca’s farm if she unravels her husband’s secrets. With a mob ready to exile her or worse in the winter of 1780, it’s an offer she can’t refuse.

Escaped British prisoner of war Daniel Alloway was the last person to see Becca’s husband alive, and Washington throws this unlikely couple together on an espionage mission to British-occupied New York City. Moving from glittering balls to an underworld of brothels and prisons, Becca and Daniel uncover a plot that threatens the new country’s future. But will they move quickly enough to warn General Washington? And can Becca, who’s lost almost everyone she loves, fight her growing attraction to Daniel, a man who always moves on?

Praise for The Turncoat’s Widow

The Turncoat’s Widow has it all. A sizzling romance, meticulous research, and an exhilarating adventure. Becca Parcell is too independent for both 18th-century Morristown and her feckless English husband. Her individual plight when she is pressed into service as an unwilling spy after her husband’s death reflects the larger situation of colonists during the American Revolution, whose lives were upended by a political fight they cared nothing about. Becker balances the ruthlessness of George Washington and the underhanded charm of Alexander Hamilton with the excesses of the British, as part of a detailed picture of how the colonies were governed during a war that was far from a simple fight between two opposing nations. But historical exactitude is balanced by dashing romance between Becca and Daniel Alloway, the escaped prisoner charged with protecting her, and plot full of bold escapes and twists. A great series debut. I can’t wait for the next installment.
– Erica Obey, author, Dazzle Paint (coming 02/2021), The Curse of the Braddock Brides, and The Horseman’s Word.

An exciting Revolutionary-era thriller with a twisty mystery, great characters, and historical accuracy to boot.
– Eleanor Kuhns,author of the Will Rees mysteries

The Turncoat’s Widow reminds readers that treachery from within and without to our republic were real, and those early days for American independence from the British were fragile, the patriot cause, unpopular. This is a rousing debut novel with insights into the hardships of colonial life, the precarious place of women in society, while giving fans of historical fiction a tale with suspense, surprises, and anoutspoken and admirable heroine in Becca Parcell. Mally Becker is an author to watch.
– Gabriel Valjan, Agatha and Anthony-nominated author of The Naming Game

Book Details:

Genre: Historical Suspense / Mystery
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: February 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953789-27-3
Purchase Links: Amazon || Goodreads

 

Author Bio:

Mally Becker is a writer whose historical suspense novel, The Turncoat’s Widow, was published in February 2021 by Level Best Books. She was born in Brooklyn and began her professional career in New York City as a publicist and freelance magazine writer, then moved on, becoming an attorney and, later, an advocate for children in foster care.

As a volunteer, she used her legal background to create a digest of letters from US Supreme Court Justices owned by the Morristown National Park. That’s where she found a copy of an indictment for the Revolutionary War crime of traveling from New Jersey to New York City “without permission or passport.” It led her to the idea for her story.

​A winner of the Leon B. Burstein/MWA-NY Scholarship for Mystery Writing, Mally lives with her husband in the wilds of New Jersey where they hike, kayak, look forward to visits from their son, and poke around the region’s historical sites.

Catch Up With Mally Becker On:
www.MallyBecker.com
Goodreads
BookBub
Instagram – @mallybeckerwrites
Twitter – @mally_becker
Facebook – Mally Baumel Becker

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

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Enter To Win!:

This is a Rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Mally Becker. There will be Five (5) winners for this tour. One winner will receive a $20. Amazon.com Gift Card, Two (2) winners will each win a physical copy of The Turncoat’s Widow by Mally Becker (U.S. addresses only), and Two (2) winners will each win an eBook copy of The Turncoat’s Widow by Mally Becker. The giveaway begins on February 22, 2021 and runs through March 21, 2021.

Void where prohibited.

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