Meet MP (aka Mikael, M. Mick)

I just got word that my pub. date is moved back to March, 2015. Man they’re slow. I also just got an email from one of my favorite writers saying she is giving up writing fiction because she can’t make a living at it. Ain’t right. Guess it’s a tough business.

So, I hope you like being teased. I’ll introduce you to a new character each week for a while starting with MP, who will be like me because the only way to make my biological father, Mac McGenty, whom I never met, real was to create a character. Kate and Sara are based on how I’d guess my two (half) sisters (Mc Genty’s) might be. Peewee is based on a huge kid I met in 4th grade. Barney was the best man in my wedding who died way too young. Heidi on an island girl in the Bahamas. Lottie and Spense I yet hope to meet somewhere.

Here's an excerpt from Back to the Island

"For work, he had initially considered the most available part-time job: waiter or bartender at any of the numerous eating or drinking holes scattered around the islands. But this worried him. He had never been very comfortable around a bar crowd ... unless he was drinking. Actually, he rarely got into the flirty contusion of bar discourse unless he was drunk. And, when he hit the fifties, he lost his appetite for hangovers; up was not worth the price of down. Nor was he ready for a relationship, at least not yet, and probably not the kind of relationship spawned in gin. He had considered a non-drinking establishment, but there weren't many and, of course, drunks tipped better. At this time in his life, he felt it best to avoid the temptation of spirits, and when you lose your family, that temptation could be consuming. He discovered, anyway, when he contacted some of the interesting restaurants and watering holes, that if a Bahamian citizen wanted the job, he or she would be considered first. This was cool and why, he had noticed, that the bartenders and wait staff were mostly Bahamian—white, black, or in between—and all citizens of the Bahamas. So this was fine, he figured, as his Irish blood summoned decadence when alcohol was streaming through his veins."