Latest / The Fresh Fiction Podcast / Marie Force: Writing Romance, Building Empires, and Keeping It Real
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to the Fresh Fiction Podcast, your go-to spot for book buzz, author chats, and all the fangirling we can fit into one episode.
- 0:11I'm your host, Sarah Reyes, and today, oh my gosh, you are not ready for this one.
- 0:18We are joined by the one and only Marie Force.
- 0:22Yes, that Marie force, the powerhouse behind the cassette.
- 0:28Island series, the Fatal series, the first family series, and so many of our favorite binge-worthy romances.
- 0:38In this episode, we get into all the good stuff.
- 0:42What inspires her steamy storylines, how she juggles multiple bestselling series without losing her mind and the book, she never thought that she'd write.
- 0:54Plus she shares some real talk about the ups and downs of publishing, the love she has for her fans and the emotional stories that keep her coming back to the page.
- 1:07So if you've ever sworn over, Mick and Natalie wished you lived on Ette Island, or just wanna peek behind the curtain of a romance writing legend, this episode is everything.
- 1:22Let's dive in.
- Hi, everyone.
- It's Samantha tenant and welcome to another fresh fiction video book club.
- Tonight's guest is force.
- She is a New York Times bestselling author of more than a 100 contemporary.
- Romantic suspense, erotic, just wonderful romance books.
- More than 15 million copies published worldwide.
- I have been reading Hurt for years based on a friend's suggestion and we will get into that.
- But Marie, first of all, it's so good to see you.
- Thanks for joining us.
- Thank you.
- And I want to add, I had this on my calendar for next week, which is why I don't have a lick of makeup on.
- Don't have my hair brushed.
- What is what you get.
- See is just raw honesty when we're doing fresh fiction stuff.
- Good thing I was working late tonight.
- Don't you find nowadays, I mean, you're almost always connected in some way.
- I mean, good or bad.
- It's there's always some way somebody can get in touch with you.
- Definitely.
- Yeah, it's it's pretty all consuming.
- When you're working, I mean, do you make an effort to somehow get unplugged so that you're not as disturbed or do you just yeah, I'm doing everything all at once.
- Are you able to focus then on your writing or are you because you have so many novels? I mean, are you working on 1 at a time or are you doing the writing and then editing and then marketing? What is your general process like? Yes, all of that every day, every single day there I touch on at least some portion of everything that you listed.
- I like doing it all.
- It's never feels like a problem to me or I love it.
- I love everything about it.
- I'm that rare author.
- I like the marketing.
- I like the videos, the images.
- I love doing it all.
- Yeah, I have no complaints about my job.
- That's 1 of the things, too.
- I mean, I know I've learned over the years to how important your readers are to you and that you have and sponsor various reader events that some of our readers have also gone to.
- And I hear wonderful things about them.
- I mean, what was that impetus for you to give that additional extra back and really connect with your readers in that way? As opposed to just the writing element.
- I have to say that the initial impetus for that was extremely selfish on my part because my children were still in high school at the time that we started this.
- In fact, my son would have been I think a sophomore in high school.
- And my daughter was in college, but just a few hours from us.
- But I was very determined that I was not gonna be away.
- From home while they were still home and she was home a lot while she was in college.
- I wanted to be with them and so I could have gone somewhere every weekend if I wanted to different event, book signings, conventions, whatever.
- I said no to everything and said to my assistant who I worked with at a previous job Julie, who she's a certified meeting professional, which that she comes from the conferences end.
- And I was in the communications end for the company we work for before this.
- And I said, let's bring them to me because I just can't travel right now.
- And I actually traveled a lot when I was younger because my husband was in the Navy.
- We lived overseas.
- We were back and forth on military transport planes and we did a lot of, Here, there and everywhere.
- And the last thing I want to do anymore is go anywhere.
- So I've become a super duper homebody.
- So the fact that, we could have an event where, the readers could come to me was really key for me at that time and what's come of it is something that neither of us could have ever imagined in 2014 when we started this was that the readers who come every year, So have become like family to each other.
- And I'm telling you, no more is it about coming to see me.
- It's about coming to see each other.
- And so we did not, we're not having it this year and I'm holding off on signing a contract for next year because things are a little unsettled in the world right now.
- So I'm not sure when we're going to resume, maybe 27, we'll see.
- But it's been really an unbelievable, we did 10 years in a row, except for 2020.
- And it's been incredible.
- We've I've made some incredible friends through that group.
- In addition to them being my readers, they're my friends.
- And I always like to give this one example.
- We had a teacher come one year from Wisconsin and every year she came once with her husband.
- She was adorable.
- We all loved her.
- We loved them both.
- He surprised her with the trip.
- It was great.
- And course, she like, became friends with everyone, and we're all friends on Facebook and whatever.
- And every time she puts up her wish list for her classroom every year, the Reader Weekend crowd like buys it out like within an hour, like they've got her set up for the year.
- I mean, it's that kind of thing.
- There was another reader who came to that event.
- Who comes every year and she told me that the only gifts she got for her 50th birthday were from her reader weekend friends.
- It's really become something so much bigger than what we initially envisioned it as this way for me to connect with the readers, but it's become so much more than that.
- Something that Julie and I are very proud of.
- Yeah, and I think that's an amazing element with these types of events is that you can bond because you're coming in already with that one thing in common of nothing else but the loving of reading and certain books.
- They are all just the nicest people you will ever meet.
- It's like the nicest people.
- And I say that not just of the people who come to the weekend, but like all of the readers that I And connected to they're just so they're lovely people that I very rarely get anything other than.
- Beautiful, lovely involvement from my readers every so often.
- Oh, my dog's gonna start coughing.
- He's 17.
- He makes a lot of noises.
- Some of them don't sound too good.
- Yeah, I mean, I've just been so blessed.
- I mean, every so often I'll get some snarky, crappy email from somebody.
- But for the most part, I've been extraordinarily blessed with the most lovely readers.
- How do you think those events and having such a close interaction with your readers have influenced your writing, especially when you have such long, ongoing series? Every so often a book comes out of my interactions with them.
- I'm trying to think of a recent one example I can give you was years ago, like in 2011, I post, I published the first three books in my treading water series and in that series, the, in the second book, which is the second book I ever wrote after the first there's a major, there's a age gap romance in there and it's, Extreme.
- It's like she's 18.
- He's 40 something and it's a friend of her dad's that he asked to look out for her while she's in a different city and she falls in love with him.
- And at the end of the second book, they don't end up together.
- And I, cause I mean, I was thinking at the time who's going to think that's going to work, but the most requested thing I have ever had in my entire career.
- Was they wanted them back together? And I think it was because I made him a sympathetic character.
- He had lost his wife years earlier in a car accident when he had a young child that he raised on his own.
- And I think people really liked him.
- And they didn't care that he was older than her.
- Because she was like, The one going after him to, so I wrote a book where 10 years later, they got back together and the readers were so like, they were so happy about that.
- They wanted that so badly.
- And I don't know if you guys have seen in the last couple of weeks Abby Jimenez, there's a big dust up about her doing an age gap romance on.
- It was all over threads and people were all wigged out about it.
- I'm thinking to myself that's nothing.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- I had an 18 year old with a 40.
- I think he was 44.
- Okay.
- Way back in 2011.
- Relax people, and then 10 years later.
- Yeah, it's okay, Whatever, as long as everyone's a consenting adult, but it was so funny to me to see that because I'm just like it's not like it's never been done.
- It's been done since the beginning of time, and I don't know.
- It's just, it was, it's just funny to me to see people wigging out about.
- I think her age gap was something like, Okay.
- 23 to 40 or something like that.
- I'm like, girl, sit down.
- I got one.
- I got one for you.
- I met girls, the people that were freaking out about it, not Abby, but just so funny to me.
- And honestly, like it was still to me to 13 years later, one of the biggest surprises ever was that they wanted that couple back together.
- They wanted them back together.
- So I couldn't believe that.
- Alas, give the people what they want.
- Yeah, I mean, really I like to listen to stuff like that.
- I'm trying to think, there was another example of a book that was influenced by something that they said.
- Oh, I know this book, State of Alert.
- There is a murder that happens in that book that has an incredible twist that was the result of the readers freaking out about that character.
- off at the end of book seven.
- And this is book eight.
- So yeah, I had a little fun with that in a way that I absolutely would not have done or even thought to do if they hadn't responded the way they did, because I like to end the first family books with like literally a cliffhanger.
- That's a single sentence.
- It's not like some huge unfinished.
- I don't do unfinished, the cliffhangers that piss everyone off.
- I do more of a, end of a TV show where there's a little something That makes you, oh my god, I gotta, I want to, can't wait to read the next book.
- It's a sentence, and so I don't want anyone to get it the idea, I'm not a big cliffhanger person.
- But I'll tell you what, ending the first family books with a little something.
- Has really been beneficial because the pre orders and the sales of that series is unlike anything I've ever seen they are so rabid for more of those books, and I can't help but think it has something to do with that little tiny little nugget.
- When do you come up with that part of it then? Is it something that you're going in after the fact of okay, now I've gotten everything.
- Now, here's the kicker or I, it's just at some point.
- I can't even say when it happens.
- It's sometimes I know maybe 3 quarters of the way in that it would be cool if such and such a thing happened or whatever at the end, but I I'm not really sure when it's sometimes it's.
- During sometimes it's at the end.
- I don't know.
- Sometimes I pull it out of thin air.
- 1, 1 of the cliffhangers at the end of the 1st family books is that there is a bomb at the gate to the White House and that literally came out of nowhere.
- I mean, I don't know another time there was they have taken in orphaned twins as of book 13 in the fatal series.
- And so now that they're at the White House, the twins grandparents are suing for custody, like that was the cliffhanger at the end of the first book in this new first family series because they don't want the twins living at the White House, but really what they want is their hands on the late billionaire father's money that, that had the readers Flipping out for months until the next book came out.
- So from April to December, every day, that was what we talked about.
- Every day.
- Yeah.
- And then they keep wanting me to tell them, okay, so they're not going to actually get Custody of the Twins, are they? I'm like I really don't know.
- And they're like, what do you mean you don't know? And then I've got a vice president in this series, Gretchen Henderson, who's my character, Sam, who for people who haven't read the series, Sam is a lieutenant with the D.
- C.
- Police Department Metro PD and she has retained her job as First Lady with a Secret Service detail and She took one look at the woman that her husband chose to be his vice president because he became president when the previous president dropped dead and shockingly, and he became president overnight, and then he had to pick a vice president.
- So he picks, he wanted to have be the first to have a woman.
- Vice President, and so he picks this real firebrand and she's, beautiful and Sam takes one look at her and just has this like visceral negative reaction to her.
- And there you should see like the conspiracy theories.
- Oh, my God.
- It's like they're so off.
- I've got to the point where I can't even look at them because they make me laugh so hard.
- They are all the way down the road.
- I can't even tell you some of the stuff they've come up with.
- And then they'll say to me, are we close? And I'm like, I have no idea.
- And they're like, what do you mean? What do you mean? And I'm like, I won't know until she does, if there's an issue with this person I'll find out when she does that.
- They're like, what does that even mean? It's I can't explain it with them a little bit of like, what do you mean? You don't know me.
- Isn't all this stuff ironed out, but on the flip side, I realized, I mean, and it's fantastic that there's still so much excitement with this series, and I am thrilled to hear, the uptakes and how everyone's just constantly going in.
- Okay.
- Where's the next one? Yeah, this was okay.
- Sam and Nick, I mean, It was the fatal series where I first learned about you, and this is back when it first came out a friend from book club.
- It was summer.
- She came back and said, oh, you've got to reinforce the fatal series.
- She was after me.
- Always.
- Okay.
- Have you read it? Have you read it? Okay.
- Come on.
- So this.
- Between the Fatal Series and The First Family, I mean, this is over 26 books now? I'm writing the 25th.
- And then there's also two novellas.
- Yeah, 26 ish.
- But I'm writing the 25th full length right now.
- Yeah, and since in 15 years, yeah, in 15 years, and I can show you to celebrate that we're doing special editions, which I happen to have right here.
- Let me put an actual light on, you can see them now.
- We're going to be making some changes to the spines, but this is this is the last book and they're really beautiful.
- I've just gotten all the proofs.
- So this is what they look like on the inside.
- You can tilt it down a little bit more.
- There you go.
- Yeah.
- Oh, yeah.
- They're gorge.
- Oh, wow.
- So all the spines, when they come together, we'll make a an image of DC that is really cool.
- But we're making a couple of changes to the spine, yeah, I don't have a bookshelf here.
- I'm actually away from home at the moment.
- So that's that's the best I could do is just stack them up like that.
- But yeah, so they've been, the proofs have been coming to me.
- Here, and I I can't stop staring at them.
- They're just gorgeous.
- So it'll be 15 years on June 20th since Fatal Affair was released.
- And Sam and Nick are still very much a part of my life 15 years later.
- So I've been writing them for 17 years.
- And do you find it sometimes challenging of, okay, and what are we going to do next? Where is it going to go? I don't know why I don't know why I've already got an idea for the next one.
- I'm like, gonna start laying some groundwork for that.
- And this one, I mean, they are just the gift that keeps on giving, I'm never going to run out of stuff to write about for them because they have two jobs that are nonstop, between his career and hers and then all the associated people around them and story that there's just so much, I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to keep the books to the length that I try to keep them to, which is like between 100 and 110, 000 words which is long in this day and age.
- Yeah.
- People consider 50, 000 a full length novel anymore.
- So basically I'm writing two full length novels for everyone.
- And then I had this just arrived too.
- This is my next book, which is book nine in the quantum series.
- And the couple on the cover is my, are my parents best friends from the night before their wedding in 1958.
- And this is like a old time Hollywood couple who hit a big.
- big marital roadblock the night, the day before their 50th anniversary.
- Yeah, like a blast from his past, like erupts out of nowhere.
- And yeah, so somebody in Hollywood is writing a tell all memoir that's going to blow the lid off a secret he's kept from his wife for 50 years.
- Yeah, so different series.
- I mean, is that do you see those as a break almost? Or is it another recharge? Or is it like, oh, I can't get can't wait.
- Quantum was done right? Quantum was finished in 29.
- Teen with Famous, book eight.
- And I have to say if you guys haven't read me, go read those eight books, because I just reread them, and I flippin love those books.
- I they're the steamiest things I've ever written.
- There's a little kinkiness in there.
- That was way outside of my comfort zone, but boy, oh boy, do I love those books.
- They're, I want to say they're six of the best romances I've ever written.
- Just unbelievable, like I love them.
- Because I just had to reread them for the first time in years.
- And I was like, oh my god, I've missed these people so much.
- I wasn't going to write another book in that series until I saw that photo.
- Cause she's still living.
- She's going to be 98 in May.
- And she showed me that photo a couple of years ago when I was like, Oh my God, I want to do something with that photo.
- I want to do something with that photo.
- And from that came the idea to write a story for my main character in the quantum series.
- Flynn Godfrey is a world famous movie star.
- And His parents are Max Godfrey and Stella Flynn, so the combination of their names was, is his name, and he's an Academy Award winner multiple times over, and huge star, and he's the, he's like like the main character of Quantum, him and his wife, and His girlfriend and then his wife.
- But these are his parents that are the featured in illustrious.
- And the, and yeah, like that picture gave me the idea to do something with them and it took off from there.
- And then.
- My friend Arlene, so her husband died in 2015.
- Both of my parents are gone.
- And so Arlene is the oldest of all of them and the last one standing.
- She keeps saying to me, like, when are you going to write that book with us on the cover? Because I'm not going to live forever.
- Okay.
- Sharp as a tack, still going strong, out at the casino, doing just, yeah.
- But I'm going to be able to give her a copy of that book next Thursday, so I'm very excited about that.
- Yeah, she's already gotten bookmarks in the mail.
- It's going to be different when she actually is able to hold it in her hand.
- I can't wait.
- I'm literally cannot wait.
- I'm so excited to see her like she lives.
- She's I'm in Florida right now and she is at her daughter's two towns over from us.
- So we're going to get together next Thursday.
- So I'm really excited about that.
- Yeah.
- I love that.
- That's going to be awesome.
- Yeah, I can't wait because it's I don't remember a time when they weren't part of our lives.
- I really don't.
- And she has 4 daughters who I refer to as my sisters and I'm the 5th daughter.
- And we've just always been stayed very close and, i, we have, she and I have so much fun together, but I can't wait.
- I just literally cannot wait to give her this book.
- So I had a couple copies sent to me like overnight so that I could get one to her right away.
- And then she couldn't do it till next Thursday.
- 21:27I'm like, hello, what do you mean? She goes, oh, we've got a lot going on.
- I'm like, you're 97.
- You're supposed to be available at a moment's notice.
- I want to switch over to what we call our Fresh Fiction Facts.
- These are a series of quick, off the top type questions.
- Some of them we've been known to stump people, but that's not really the intention.
- So just what immediately comes to mind, okay? Alright, you've been kidnapped, but they return you two hours later because you will not stop talking about what? Harvey Specter from Suits? Hey, that's worth it.
- Okay, yeah.
- Alright, you can go with that one.
- There's so many reasons they'd bring me back, okay? Literally, I wish my cousin was here right now.
- Oh my god, she'd be rolling.
- She'd be screaming with laughter.
- She's that is the least of why they'd bring you back.
- First of all, I need a bathroom every five minutes, okay? That alone is gonna be a problem for my kidnappers.
- Excuse me, I have to pee.
- Wait, we just stopped for you.
- No, again.
- This is why, There's a lot of this going on.
- You're supposed to hydrate, people.
- Okay.
- Yes! Yes.
- Okay, what is something that you own a ridiculous amount of, other than books? Boats.
- 22:53Boats? I have three boats.
- I have three boats.
- But what's funny about that is I inherited my dad's My parents boat, when my dad died, it's a 36 footer, okay, everybody thinks, oh, wow, that's amazing, right? I saw a boat for sale in our area of Rhode Island, where I live, year round, and it was, like, the same era of boat, all the same bells and whistles, the engines are much newer, for 16, 000.
- I'm like, okay, so I have the fanciest, most worthless boat on the planet.
- Along with two smaller ones.
- So my husband and I joke that we have 67 feet of boat, but that's worth a grand total of maybe 20, 000 and that's 2 outboard motors.
- So I have a ridiculous amount of boats.
- You have options.
- It's just so funny.
- People hear 3 boats.
- They're like, oh, look at you.
- I'm like, worthless.
- 23:56They are worthless.
- And actually the big boat is like a Millstone around my neck it's like having another child that I have to tend to.
- Because you can't just put a two ton object just anywhere, okay? Accommodations must be made.
- So stupid.
- As my husband and I call it, that frickin boat.
- And you have that painted on the side, huh? No, I don't, but I should.
- I should have a big middle finger on the side.
- And you know what's really funny is, I, we've, that boat, this will be our 37th year with it in our family, right? Which is just ludicrous, okay? People don't keep boats that long.
- We do.
- And the whole time my dad died at 84.
- So from the minute he was like 75 on, he was over it.
- And I'm like, what do you mean you're over it? I'm not over it.
- So he literally kept it because he knew I would want it.
- And now I've had seven years of full time ownership of that boat, and oh my god, I'm like, dad at 80.
- I'm like, ugh.
- Suddenly, I'm like an 80 year old going, Oh, we got to go deal with the boat.
- It's literally, it's a beautiful, lovely, wonderful thing when from in July and August in Newport, Rhode Island, it's lovely and fabulous.
- The whole rest of the year, it's okay, they say, um, it's a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.
- And that is.
- That is true, but I've, we've always had boats a whole time growing up, so I don't know what I would do without one, but I'm actually getting to the point where he might like to find out.
- Would you rather travel back in time and meet your ancestors or go forward in time and meet your descendants? Ancestors.
- About how far back do you want to go? I would like to go back one generation and meet the grandfather I never knew.
- Who died when my dad was 19.
- Died suddenly when my dad was 19.
- And I, he's there's like this missing piece.
- And I would like to meet him.
- And I'd like to see my other grandparents again too.
- That would be good enough.
- I don't like to know what's going to happen in the future.
- So I would never want to go forward.
- If you knew it was going to be real, would you rather run into a ghost or an alien? Is neither an option.
- It's a very good option.
- Yes.
- Yeah, I have no suspension of disbelief button, which is why I can't read fantasy or paranormal or I just would be like, whatever.
- If I ran into a ghost or an alien, I'd be like, no, you're not.
- What is the book that you keep going back to, that you're most dog eared in, be it either for research or just to read for pleasure? See, this is always tough for me because.
- Writing these long series that are like ones at 28 books and ones at 25 books, and then there's others with, I read very little.
- That isn't something I wrote myself because I'm constantly having to reread for continuity.
- And so I don't really have 1 book that I will say I have an original 1972 1st edition of Love Story.
- That is one of my prized possessions.
- I always loved that book and I found that at a yard sale like 40 years ago or something like that.
- And I still have it.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- This is taking me on another tangent other than fresh fiction facts.
- So movie or book? Okay.
- If you have the love story book, did you also enjoy the movie? I did enjoy the movie.
- I liked vintage Ryan O'Neill.
- Before he became a complete jackass.
- Liked him both.
- Oh my god, love means never having to say you're sorry.
- And yes.
- Did you read Oliver's story? I did.
- I did.
- I've read all of his books.
- Yes.
- I I was, yes.
- I was a big fan of that book back in the day.
- Yeah, that's me.
- He's you need to read this.
- I'm like, okay, it was great.
- Oh, my God.
- It's amazing.
- And it's, it's 1 of those books you can read in 2 hours.
- It's it's amazing to me.
- Like, how quick of a read it is.
- And I still remember 1 of the main lines, like, when he Did something that he'd never done in his father's presence, let alone in his arms, and he sobbed, and just, ah, so I mean, it was so good and, but I also think like books like that and early Danielle Steele, I really give early Danielle Steele a lot of credit for me wanting to do this career.
- Like books like way back.
- Okay.
- Way back.
- Season for passion where the woman is faithful to the football player husband who had a brain injury and she goes to visit him.
- And like, just there, then perfect stranger, the woman who has the old man, husband, who's confined to the bed and she sneaks out to meet this other guy.
- And I still, I can vividly remember just the absolute impact of those books.
- You know what I mean? Like just, and I, like books that she wrote 40 years ago are books I'm talking about here, going home, the promise now and forever.
- I was all in on her, all in.
- And and it was, I remember to say that this was, I read these books, like, when I was a kid 40 years ago more than 40 years ago, who am I trying to fool? A lot of years ago and I still remember the plots what does that tell you? They made a mark, and just Love Story, and another favorite of mine from my early reading years was the Thorn Birds okay.
- So you want to hear a good story about that.
- So I read it the summer.
- I was 14.
- I was raised as a good Catholic girl in a nice Catholic family.
- And if you know about the thorn birds, it's about a priest who falls in love with a girl whose family lives on a sheep station in New South Wales, Australia.
- And it's very scandalous.
- Okay.
- So my mom who basically made me the reader that I, and the writer that I became she was so proud of me carrying that brick of a book around because the thing is about this thick, right? All summer long.
- She'd be like, just telling everyone.
- Look at her.
- She's a reader.
- I'm so proud.
- And then she's so what's it down? I'm like, Oh, it's a book.
- She goes, I go, it's about a sheep station in Australia.
- She goes, and you're finding that interesting? I'm like, yeah, I really am.
- And then she read it after me.
- Yikes.
- Just a little bit.
- You told me it was about a sheep station.
- I'm like it was.
- Yeah, technically, yeah, it was.
- That wasn't a lie.
- I could still hear her screaming in her bedroom.
- Her 14 year old had already read this book.
- My favorite things ever.
- Yeah, I had a couple of those with my mom, too.
- She was so proud.
- Look at her.
- She's been carrying that book around.
- She wanted us both, my brother and I, to both be readers.
- She was, Bragging on you the entire time and pointing out to everyone.
- Oh, look at what she's reading.
- Isn't this fantastic? I know.
- I wonder how many of the people she told it to were like, It was so funny because she wanted my brother and I to be readers.
- She used to put us to bed with books while our friends were still outside playing and we could hear them.
- And we used to, we never let her forget that.
- We were all over her about that.
- And to this day, neither one of us can go to bed without reading something.
- In fact, my brother said to me once, if I ever end up in prison, make sure You get me my Kindle.
- And I'm like, why are you going to be in prison? He's that's not the point of this story.
- Okay, because it's like the one thing I wouldn't be able to be without, so yeah, we're both big readers.
- And my mom actually died before all of this book writing thing happened.
- She died in 2004.
- And I wasn't I didn't finish my first book until 2005 and wasn't published until 08.
- So she missed this whole thing.
- But I like to think that maybe she's making it happen, so yeah, I was able to read some of your initial chapters, though.
- She was, yes.
- Just the very, very beginning of Treading Water.
- Yeah, which was my first book, and she said it made her cry, and I, that was like the same month she died that she read that, yeah, but I like to think that maybe people say to me, where do you get all these ideas? I'm like, I have no idea.
- I'm like, maybe it's coming from her, so I'd like to think so.
- If you suddenly get some other inspirations about, a sheep farm.
- Oh, I'll never forget this.
- I swear to God, in my mind's eye, in my mind, I can hear her shrieking.
- Falls in love with the girl! In fact, that book was recently a a sale at Kindle, and I grabbed it just to have it on my Kindle.
- Maybe I'll reread it and freak out all over again like I'm her.
- It's I read this when I was what? Oh my gosh! And then when my husband and I were first married we lived in Spain because he was in the Navy and we were in Spain for three years and a big part of it, we lived off base, which means we had no real TV.
- We only had Spanish TV.
- So we had a TV and a VCR.
- And we could rent movies back in the day when you still rented movies.
- We watched, one of the first things we ever did when we'll be married 33 years.
- We watched the Thorn Birds.
- And we watched Roots.
- We watched all the long, North and South, and all the big mini series that were on video at the time.
- But Thorn Birds was one of them.
- And I have to say, that what's his name, Richard Chamberlain.
- He did a good job in that part.
- Yeah, I've been watching some other older Richard Chamberlain, because my dad's a big fan of Shogun, so with the remake, we had to go back and he kept on saying, oh, you got to watch this other one, and then it's okay.
- I was just looking at that on Hulu.
- I might watch the new one.
- I've never watched the old one, but I might watch the new one.
- This is still a recorded portion, but I'll tell you, my dad was a much bigger fan of the older version.
- Okay, The new one won all kinds of awards.
- All kinds of awards, but very, Again, it depends on what you're going for.
- The new one a lot more realistic.
- The older one has all the romanticism, grandeur.
- Yeah, I would like that more.
- Plus it has Richard Chamberlain apparently.
- Okay.
- Where is the best, one of the most important questions is where is the best place for readers to keep up with you and find out what's coming next, what's going on.
- I update my Facebook almost every day.
- So Facebook is go to my page I, my profile I keep for personal people that I know so go to my pages at facebook.
- com slash MarieForceAuthor.
- You can also subscribe to my newsletter, which goes out weekly.
- At marieforce.
- com slash subscribe and you can see a full list of my books at marieforce.
- com slash books.
- Awesome.
- Marie, thanks for joining us and to all of our readers and listeners, be sure go out.
- There is a lot of books that you can choose from by Marie, lots of series and the latest of course is state of alert in the first family series.
- It's awesome.
- I've been reading this series pretty much since it came out.
- So this has been a long time, 15 years.
- And you can also, most of my books and series are in KU as well.
- I want to say that.
- So almost everything is in KU.
- Everything, really everything is in KU.
- Yeah, except for the books that I don't control.
- There's still six books that a publisher has that I can't seem to wrest back from them.
- But those are the only books that are not in KU.
- So again, state of alert.
- Fantastic, best selling, New York Times best selling author, Marie Forse.
- Makeup free, hairbrush free, honest, real life stories.
- And that's a wrap on this episode of The Fresh Fiction Podcast.
- Huge thanks to Marie Force for joining us.
- We're still spooning.
- This episode was brought to you by Fresh fiction and the fresh fiction box, the perfect gift for the book Loving Mom in your life.
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- Thanks for listening, and until next time, happy reading.