Author: Babs Mountjoy on
Thursday, July 19, 2012
This is an article that appeared in our local paper--something very similar appeared in the Peru Tribune a month or so ago. But because neither made their stories available on the Web, I wanted to share them with you here. I was pretty tickled!
Most authors are excited to publish one novel, or maybe two
in a lifetime. Writer Barbara Mountjoy will see six novels published this year,
two of them this month.
Mountjoy, a family law attorney in Meadville, Pennsylvania
and mother of seven, is pleased to be a working novelist at last.
“This is definitely my life’s dream come true,” she said.
“I’ve written legal briefs, I’ve written articles and reviews, but seeing my
novels come to reality makes all the work worthwhile.”
Because she still practices law, she uses pseudonyms for her
fiction work, Lyndi Alexander for her fantasy and science fiction stories, and
Alana Lorens for her romances and women’s fiction.
“If I were writing legal thrillers, like John Grisham, I
might use my professional name, but when I’m writing about elves, space battles
and other fantastic stories, it felt right to create another identity.”
She wrote her first novel at the age of fourteen, but didn’t
receive a contract for one to be published until 2010. Plenty of rejections in
the intervening years discouraged her from time to time, but she persevered,
knowing there was a market out there for her work, and readers who would be
delighted by her words. The five-star reviews she’s received for the novels
already out show her determination has paid off.
June brings the romantic suspense novel CONVICTION OF THE
HEART from the Wild Rose Press, the first in the Pittsburgh Lady Lawyers
series, a book that draws heavily on her twenty-five years’ experience as a
family law attorney to set up the story about a lawyer who takes on a case
involving domestic violence and politics, nearly losing her client’s life and
her own in the process.
Then in July, SECOND CHANCES, a women’s fiction novel about
a lawyer who gets laid off during the economy downturn, and recovers her life
with the help of a young Iraq
war veteran with cancer. The two help each other cope with the tragedies
impacting their lives, in this second volume in the Pittsburgh Lady Lawyers
series, released by Zumaya Publications.
“Lawyers often are exciting heroines for novels, and these
two are no different. They hold a position in society that hangs between a seat
of power and a genuine vulnerability,” Mountjoy said. “Both stories involve a
real sense of danger, generated from the cases the lawyer takes on. In the
family law arena, the stakes for your clients are so high that emotions and
trigger points are quite volatile.”
Mountjoy has been a published writer for more than
thirty-five years, publishing her first paid piece in the Peru Tribune in 1975.
She completed a novel as her senior honors thesis at Kent
State University
in 1977, and went on to work as an editor and reporter at the South Dade News
Leader in Homestead, Florida
for several years before law school at the University of Miami.
Since then, she’s practiced law in Florida and
Pennsylvania,
but her first love has always been writing.
Her urban fantasy books, the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot
series, are set in the forests just north of Missoula, Montana,
and her first science fiction novel, TRIAD, was released in February of this
year.
There’s no indication that the prolific writer will slow
down any time soon. “Now that I’ve finally hit my stride, I don’t intend to let
up. Not as long as stories are still coming to my fingertips!”
Still coming this year are LOVE ME, KISS ME, KILL ME, a
horror story with vampires coming in August, and contemporary romance THAT
GIRL’S THE ONE I LOVE in September.
Scheduled for 2013 are the first two books in a
post-apocalyptic young adult series, THE COLOR OF FEAR—PLAGUE, and THE COLOR OF
FEAR—SURVIVORS, and also the fourth book in the Clan Elves series, THE ELF
GUARDIAN. She has also just signed a
contract for a contemporary romance with Desert Breeze Publications, BY ANY
OTHER NAME, that will be released in March 2013 as well.
Category:
Alana Lorens,
clan elves of the bitterroot,
Conviction of the Heart,
Lyndi Alexander,
novel,
Second Chances,
success,
Triad,
Wild Rose Press,
writer,
Zumaya Publishing
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