Sunday, January 31, 2016

Interview with Mark Casigh

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:
            http://www.MostEroticBooks.com
My college classmate, friend and fellow Muse It Hot Author, Richard Burns has also said he will carry my books at his website:
            http://www.RichardBurnsBooks.com/

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!

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