Lets give a warm welcome to Mark Casigh! Thanks so much for stopping by today, Mark. It's great to have you here. Lets learn a little bit about you...
Mark Casigh
1. Tell us about your latest release.
* Under the Mistletoe, 1945
Well, lately I’ve had two
launch in recent weeks, both Christmas stories.
I had one story, “Under the
Mistletoe 1945,” that launched on November 2, which is a very, very Romantic
story! This is the story of a Sailor,
Ken Casey who was declared Missing in Action (MIA), Presumed Dead. Then, three years later, after his POW Camp
is liberated upon the Japanese surrender, he arrives home. Fresh from the grave.
He reconnects with his old
High School Girl Friend, and the girl he thought to be the love of his life,
the beautiful and wise well beyond her years, Miss Brandi Elliot. But the world has moved on, and it’s been
three years! For cryin’ out loud! How long is a girl supposed to wait?
It’s been said a thousand
times: “Time waits for no man!” But is he an exception to that rule?
This story was based on my
Grandmother’s Brother, Ken Casey who was declared MIA on August 8, 1942, and
this was my effort to give him a life and a love that he so richly deserved,
but did not get the chance to have in reality.
* My Secret Santa
As one may be able to tell, this
is another tale of Christmas Erotica, which I seem to be writing a lot of these
days… Go figure.
“My Secret Santa,” is a story of
a young black girl’s return to her home in Detroit for the Holidays, and the
surprise reception she finds there.
While sleeping with her nightshade in place, she is joined in bed by a
mysterious stranger, who plays her body like a fiddle at a family ho down!
He brings her to climax after
climax, her orgasm crash upon her body leaving her wanting more. But who is he? She runs through her list of suspects; The boy next door (lover Long ago), Tyrece,
her High School Boyfriend, (Lover Past), or her current boyfriend who just
arrived last night, (Lover yet to be)?
OR!!! Is it somebody else?
Follow Keisha’s search for
answers in this Christmas Mystery of love and Blistering HOT EROTICA! This story is soooo HOT! And it has quite a bit of something for
everyone! And for $1.99? How can you go wrong?
2. What kind of research did you do?
A Lot!!! Sometimes, it can almost become an obsession! And there may come a point where I have to
say, “Alright, you’ve done enough. You
have plenty, more than enough to finish your story, GET BACK TO WRITING IT!”
Such as, once again, I got
dragged kicking & screaming into another writing project. I had no story. NONE.
Nor did I have even the slightest smidgen of an idea. But November is National Novel Writing Month
(NaNoWriMo), and the objective is to write 2,000 words every day, so that at
the end of the month, you have at least 50,000 words and hopefully something to
submit to a publisher.
But, I was talking with a very
good friend of mine, after I got dragged into it, Dawn Kennedy, and she said,
“Vampire stories are done to death.
Besides, I don’t like them, not at all.
You need to write a werewolf story, in the late 1800s and it should
involve a fairly pretty poor girl, of mixed race (which Dawn is), and she
should probably be Irish, and her name should be Maggie, and she fell in love
with a man of some note, some power and influence, and he should be a
scoundrel! It should be in
someplace… very metropolitan, like
Paris, or London… And she should fall
madly, head-over-heels in love with the hero who liberates her from the
clutches of the scoundrel.”
Two minutes later, I had an
outline. Dawn had it all scripted out so
well in her head as she was reading off her litany, making it up as she goes,
Maggie Kennedy, a mixed race poor Irish girl in Victorian London, at the time
of the Jack the Ripper slayings was born!
Now because I tied it in with the
Ripper slayings, I had to be meticulous in my time-line as I wanted to be true
to history also.
3. What process did you use to pick your
characters’ names?
Character names are always tough
for me! That’s why 99 44/100% of the
time, I’m going to use REAL PEOPLE!
Also, because I think real
people are so much more interesting, multi-dimensional and sexy-as-hell, more
than most of my one page synopsis-worksheet characters are going to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I can come
up with some interesting products of my own imagination, but I really do enjoy
using real people.
And yes, my characters in “Under the Mistletoe, 1945,” are all
real, none of them are in “My Secret
Santa.” Now in my previous Christmas
stories? Yep, they are all real.
Those would be, “Auld Lang Syne,” and “The Penitent.” “The
Penitent,” is set in Detroit, my hometown and “Auld Lang Syne,” is set in Brooklyn, New York.
I used to work with one girl in
one story and went to school with the girl from the other story. No, I won’t tell you which is which.
4. Are your characters based on anyone you
know?
Nearly all of them, and yes, I
get the person’s permission before I use them.
I think that a lot of people would love to be able to brag that they had
a book/story/novella written about them personally! And while my subject matter is not for the
young, it would be something to brag to and boast about to the kids &
grandkids.
5. Did any of your characters sometime take
over and write the book themselves? Who?
Yes, a friend of mine, Kathleen
Troutman, who is quite a fantastic writer in her own rights, really lets her
characters steer the story, which I think is extremely interesting.
Me? Not so much, Yes, they have their own
personalities, and therefore their own traits that will be aching to come out. Such as;
In “Under the Mistletoe 1945,”
one of my favorite characters, Brand, is a young girl from the farm, a little
on the shy side, doesn’t have an abundance of self-confidence, but in the
presence of the man she loves, that she knows (def; v, to be certain, to have no doubt), loves her to her very core, no
matter what, she feels emboldened, completely uninhibited. A seductress is born!
That is a character that I can
write volumes on! She is that beautiful
and what I’ll call a ‘Subtle-Sexy,’ because it doesn’t hit you like a 2 x 4 to
the head, but it’s clearly there!
6. What do you prefer: e-book or print? Why?
Well, I guess for my own ego’s
sake, I’d prefer to see my stuff in Print, just for the satisfaction of seeing
a book with your story and your name on it.
However, because of the minimal
overhead in E-book production, I get to keep a greater share of the royalties,
which is nice. Less overhead, more
profit. That works for me. However, that also makes for lower cost, so
we are talking about a larger percentage of a smaller purchase price.
7. How long have you been writing? When did
you decide to become an author?
I’ve been writing since 2010 and
it’s funny you should ask, because it’s nothing I planned on and just sort of
fell into it. A very good friend of mine
asked me to write some short stories for her own amusement. So I did, and they were all so scorching
HOT!!! They could all bring tea kettles
to boil and water to steam!
On a lark, I sent them all into
a Publisher and they got accepted! “Awakenings:
Cozumel, Mexico,” was born.
However, my friend had some pretty tight story restrictions and
specifications. For example, she would
say, “Okay, a three-way, Girl/Boy/Girl, three to four pages, go!” Then next say, “Okay, Girl/Boy, Shower/Pool/Bath/Fireplace
scene, three to four pages, go!” And it
was that page count restriction that kept me from doing more character
development and scene setting.
None the less, there it is, and
it is SOOOOOOOO FLIPPIN’ HOT!!! That
story really needs to be an E-book since that story is so combustible!
8. What did you do when you received your
first Acceptance Letter?
I was a little surprised by not
much, I mean, I knew they were hot stories and that it was all well written, so
I wasn’t really too surprised. I guess I
was a little surprised to get accepted with the first publisher’s that I sent
to. I was expecting a ton of rejections
first. But no such luck, no
disappointments.
I still have it, because it came
by E-mail and it’s saved in one of my folders.
9. All writers suffer from writer’s block at
least once in their career. What’s your go-to cure?
Naturally, and I know this is
going to sound like it’s going to sound:
But sometimes, the best thing to do is just sit down and start
typing. A Lot of times, once the words
start flowing, they just keep coming.
That’s why those ‘Springboards
for Writing,’ work so well for me.
10. Sometimes the romance genre gets a bad
reputation for being cliché and full of Fabios. How do you respond to that?
Yeah, actually I get that a
lot! When I tell people that I write
Romance, more specifically erotica, most people just roll their eyes and they
give me a sideways grin and go, “ohhh, that…”
And to those people I say, “Hey!
Everybody reads it, in some form or fashion, everybody reads it. Weather they are reading a steamy novel or
they are reading ‘Penthouse, Letters,’ men read it a lot too!”
Besides, it’s not really just
about sex. I mean, Boy meets girl, boy
fucks girl, does nothing for anybody.
It’s really all about the story surrounding the relationship. It’s about the buildup, the journey, not the
destination.
11. We all need a little inspiration in our
lives. What’s your favorite quote and why?
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody
you meet.
-- General
James N. Mattis, USMC
12. Any advice for the aspiring authors out
there? Particularly those who are feeling a little discouraged.
Yes! Come on in!
The waters is warm! There is no
better time to become an author, there are now so many publishers out there, of
every stripe and strength, that you are sure to find one that will both fit you
and take you!!!
If you want to be an author, NOW
is the time!
I’m really very partial to our
most recent publisher; http://BooksToGoNow.com/ I say ‘our’ publisher because I know you have
books with them too. But don’t
misunderstand! If your story is for
shit, they are not going to take it blindly!
This is not an author mill. Make
sure you have a good story first! Then
submit, if they don’t accept, it may be your story is for shit, or it may be they just don’t have an audience for that
genre. Find another publisher.
You should also brace yourself
for the rude awakening that just because you are now published, doesn’t mean
that your books will become a best seller.
Nor does it mean that you’ll make any real money at it.
You can always drop me an E-mail
at: MarkCasigh@yahoo.com
13. What is your favorite book and author?
Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain and yes, he is one of my absolute,
all-time favorites! When I was reading Tom Sawyer, I was maybe twelve years
old, and at some point, I developed a sort of kindred spirit… no, more honestly, I guess it was really just
a schoolboy’s crush on Becky Thatcher.
I remember when Opra had a bunch of people on her show
who wanted to strip Twain out of all the Public Libraries and Chicago Public
School Libraries because it had the word “Nigger,” in it!!! These “enlightened liberals” probably never
read any of Twain’s work, would never be able to see how integral the character
Jim, was in the story and probably believe that Twain was forced to put him in
the book because of some 10% Federal Mandate, and I’m sure they would
absolutely never consider themselves to be Nazis!
Mark Twain is the American
Shakespeare, because all of his stories will remain timeless classics. Why?
Simple, he and Shakespeare didn’t write about topics relevant to the
day, they wrote about the one thing that would remain timeless and consistent
throughout the ages, that being Human Nature.
I’ve heard so many of the “enlightened liberals,” spew, “oh! OMG! He’s
so boorish! He’s an oxcart in a nuclear
age, who needs ‘em? I mean, who talks
like that? It’s so goash, ‘take thee to
a nunnery,’ but he doesn’t mean a convent…?”
Gee, if only I were as smart as
you imbeciles…
14. Where
can we find your books?
You can always find all of my work at my website:
My college classmate, friend and fellow Muse It Hot Author,
Richard Burns has also said he will carry my books at his website:
15. How
do you market your books?
Not well, as my sales demonstrate. I have to develop a better marketing plan,
but since I’ve never seen one… It’s a
work in progress.
I built a webpage, created facebook pages for my books,
which is about the extent of my advertising budget. However, I’m told radio spots are relatively
in-expensive. I guess that would depend
on what market you are advertising in.
Wonderful words and insights.
Thanks again, Mark, for stopping by my blog. I hope you had fun!
