What practical advice do you have for beginning writers?

Show your work to people outside your family--preferably to other writers--but don't take other writers' criticism to heart. Examine all of it and look for commonalities before you start editing. Oh, and don't despair if your family doesn't even like your writing. They might not be comfortable with the you the evidences itself within the confines of fiction. Don't sweat it. You will also lose friends over your writing. I did, so I suppose they weren't that good of friends to begin with. Never let a bad review get you down for long. Not everyone will like your writing.

How do you network online to promote your book?

Say thank you to book bloggers, many of whom invest countless hours in the interest of advancing the work of writers like me and providing value to their readers, and Retweet their Tweets (or share their posts on Facebook). Leave comments on others' blogs, talk to people on Twitter, and take a sincere interest in others. Offer to review books for their site or offer a guest post. Do review swaps or swap guest posts with other writers. I know it's hard but try hard NOT to burn your bridges with anyone. Do review swaps or swap guest posts with other writers.

What makes the perfect book blog?

I like bloggers who follow-through when they say they will review your book. For me, perfect blogs are like living rooms you'd feel comfortable settling into for a while, and seem like comfy places to hang out. I like bloggers who respond to your comments and have RSS feeds for their posts you can subscribe to. Sometimes bloggers have cupcakes or coffee cups instead of starred ratings and that is always fun to post on my social media site--that I got four cupcakes.

What inspired you to write your book?

Travel is a muse for me. I was most impressed by Shaker Village when I visited in 2005. I wrote a short story featuring my viewpoint character, then I shared it with my writing group, who said they would definitely read more if I added onto the story.

Whose footsteps would you say you have followed? What authors do you admire?

I have so many authors I admire but some contemporary ones from who I learned a lot are for Karen Joy Fowler for The Jane Austen Book Club (CLEVER!), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto(blending beauty and grit), Judith Guest for Ordinary People (authentic, meaningful, and powerful dialogue), and William Goldman for The Princess Bride (sheer, playful ingenuity).

Gale Martin is an award-winning writer of contemporary fiction who plied her childhood penchant for telling tall tales into a legitimate literary pursuit once she hit midlife. She began writing her first novel at age eleven, finishing it three and a half decades later.

Her first novel, DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, is a humorous homage to Don Giovanni, Mozart's famous tragicomic opera about the last two days of Don Juan's life. It was named a Finalist in the 2012 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Fiction. Her second novel GRACE UNEXPECTED is wryly witty women's fiction featuring Grace Savage, a 30-something protagonist with a heart of gold, wrapped in lead.

Gale would commit a misdemeanor to score some Babybel cheese and goes weak-kneed for hummingbirds. She is a wife and mother of one and a communications director by profession.

She blogs about opera--the art form, not the platform and is an opera reviewer for Bachtrack, an online site featuring classical performance worldwide. She can name any aria in three notes. Okay, five notes, perfectly sung, with full orchestration.
She has a master of arts in creative writing from Wilkes University. She lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which serves as a rich source of inspiration for her writing.

Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say “I do”. In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she learns that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy.

When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to a new plan – the Shaker Plan – despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, an anthropology professor. Both men have soul mate potential to test her newfound Shaker-style self-control, and Grace seems to be on the fast track to a proposal… until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.

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Ellie Overton, my viewpoint character in Who Killed ‘Tom Jones’?, is twenty-eight years old, never married, and longing for one of those white-hot romances she’s read all about in romance novels. So, Ellie is intrigued by each man who crosses her path. And I made sure I threw as many men into her path as possible. That meant creating male love interests with different personalities and motivations, which required doing some research about men—a tough job, I know, but someone had to do it.

Here are some of the things I learned:

1.       The most important factors men look for in women are a positive outlook and self-confidence. Women who think knock-out looks are their greatest asset are probably putting way too much pressure on their physical features at the expense of developing other desirable and enduring qualities. Besides giving Ellie fulfilling relationships with the senior citizens she worked with, I also gave Ellie an essentially upbeat outlook on life and the chance to improve her self-confidence.

2.       Men's feelings change much faster than women's. There are more points at which men may fall out of love with their wives and girlfriends and fall in love with someone else as compared to women. The men in Who Killed ‘Tom Jones’? fall hard for Ellie, and initially, she has trouble accepting their feelings. Of course, Ellie will make mistakes, but I did give her the chance to learn an invaluable lesson during the book--not to take a man or his feelings for granted.

3.       Men want their women to talk less about the relationship they’re in and simple enjoy being in it. It isn’t Ellie’s tendency to dissect a man’s feelings or beat the proverbial horse to death. Still, she hasn’t had many enduring relationships in her young life, so she has to learn it does no good to make a relationship harder than it has to be.

4.       Men have different ways of expressing love. Not all men speak the same love languages. Many are either hard-wired or conditioned to express themselves using another love language besides words, the language women very often use. Some men say "I love you" by doing things for their women. Some do so by giving them things. Ellie has an extraordinary chance to learn all the wonderful and peculiar ways of not just one but three men in this novel.

5.       Ninety-three percent of men would marry the same woman all over again. That statistic says a great deal about the value and importance of the institution of marriage today. No wonder my protagonist Ellie Overton hasn’t given up on the idea of getting hitched to the right guy.

Gale Martin is an award-winning writer of contemporary fiction who plied her childhood penchant for telling tall tales into a legitimate literary pursuit once she hit midlife. She began writing her first novel at age eleven, finishing it three and a half decades later.

Her first novel, DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, is a humorous homage to Don Giovanni, Mozart's famous tragicomic opera about the last two days of Don Juan's life. It was named a Finalist in the 2012 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Fiction. Her second novel GRACE UNEXPECTED is wryly witty women's fiction featuring Grace Savage, a 30-something protagonist with a heart of gold, wrapped in lead.

Gale would commit a misdemeanor to score some Babybel cheese and goes weak-kneed for hummingbirds. She is a wife and mother of one and a communications director by profession.

She blogs about opera--the art form, not the platform and is an opera reviewer for Bachtrack, an online site featuring classical performance worldwide. She can name any aria in three notes. Okay, five notes, perfectly sung, with full orchestration.

She has a master of arts in creative writing from Wilkes University. She lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which serves as a rich source of inspiration for her writing.

Book Information

In Gale Martin's newest novel, Ellie Overton is a 28-year-old rest home receptionist with a pussycat nose who also happens to be gaga for the pop singer Tom Jones. Regrettably single, she is desperate to have a white-hot love relationship, like those she's read about in romance novels. Following an astrological hunch, she attends a Tom Jones Festival and meets an available young impersonator with more looks and personality than talent. Though he's knocked out of the contest, he's still in the running to become Ellie's blue-eyed soul mate--until he's accused of killing off the competition. It's not unusual that the handsome police detective working the case is spending more time pursuing Ellie than collaring suspects. So, she enlists some wily and witty rest home residents to help find the real murderer. Will Ellie crack the case? Must she forfeit her best chance for lasting love to solve the crime?