Author Guest Post With Connie Wilson

Connie Wilson has kindly agreed to guest post here about her work, and share her inspiration for becoming a writer in honor of her newest release, The Color of Evil.

 About The Author:

Connie (Corcoran) Wilson (MS + 30) graduated from the University of Iowa and Western Illinois University, with additional study at Northern Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. She taught writing at six Iowa/Illinois colleges and has written for five newspapers and seven blogs, including Associated Content (now owned by Yahoo) which named her its 2008 Content Producer of the Year . She is an active, voting member of HWA (Horror Writers Association).

Her stories and interviews with writers like David Morrell, Joe Hill, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederik Pohl and Anne Perry have appeared online and in numerous journals. Her work has won prizes from “Whim’s Place Flash Fiction,” “Writer’s Digest” (Screenplay) and she will have 12 books out by the end of the year. Connie reviewed film and books for the Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) for 12 years and wrote humor columns and conducted interviews for the (Moline, Illinois) Daily Dispatch and now blogs for 7 blogs, including television reviews and political reporting for Yahoo.

Connie lives in East Moline, Illinois with husband Craig and cat Lucy, and in Chicago, Illinois, where her son, Scott and daughter-in-law Jessica and their two-year-old twins Elise and Ava reside. Her daughter, Stacey, recently graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, as a Music Business graduate.

Find Connie Wilson on the Web:
Website | Goodreads

 Guest Post:

I began writing at age 10 for my hometown newspaper, the Independence (IA) Bulletin Journal & Conservative. I had won a Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque poetry contest at my elementary school (St. John's Elementary) for 6th graders. The editor of the local paper (Reeves Hall) approached my dad, the town banker, and asked if I'd be interesting in doing some human interest stories for the local paper. I  remember being sent out to interview a farmer whose farm was supposed to be the exact center of Buchanan County and interviewing my high school English teacher's (Mrs. Turgasen's) son about the telescope he had built.

I was Editor of my high school newspaper (the I-Hyh)  and worked on the high school yearbook. It's  interesting that the Editor of the Yearbook was Janet Harridan, who would go on to write romance novels for Harlequin under her married name, Janet Daily, and become the World's 5th Best-Selling living author. (This Calder Sky)

I applied for and was awarded a Ferner/Hearst Journalism Scholarship to attend the University of Iowa, but switched to English in my junior year to follow my mother's steps into teaching. (I do have a minor in Journalism, however).

In 1985, I was approached to write a book for a New Jersey teacher training firm, Performance Learning Systems, Inc. They insisted that I must quit my tenured teaching job at the junior high school level (in Silvis, IL) to become an educational writer. I wrote their book Training the Teacher As A Champion, which was published in 1989.

After that, I was busy with 2 children born 19 years apart (Scott and Stacey) and 2 businesses I founded in 1986 and 1995 and functioned as CEO of, but I always knew I would, one day, return full-circle to writing full-time. I taught at 6 local colleges as adjunct faculty. In 2003, when I sold my 2 businesses, I began writing in earnest and now have nearly 20 offerings on Amazon.

I have moved around among genres (writing "one of everything") to find out what I enjoy writing and have, to date, written 2 books of humorous essays; the serious book on teaching mentioned above; one nonfiction book (It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now) consisting of the movie reviews I wrote between 1970 and 1979 for the Quad City Times (Davenport, IA), with 76 photos, major cast and interactive trivia; one "Writer's Digest" award-winning screenplay based on Novel #1; one full color illustrated children's book, The Christmas Cats in Silly Hats; one science fiction book (Out of Time, Lachesis Publishing); 3 volumes of Ghostly Tales of Route 66 on assignment for Quixote Press; one collection of noir genre short stories (Hellfire & Damnation); and this second novel (first in a trilogy) The Color of Evil, which just won a Gold Medal in the E-Lit book competition and a Silver Feather award from the Illinois Women's Press Association. I will have Hellfire & Damnation II out by fall from The Merry Blacksmith press.

 The Color of Evil:

Title: The Color Of Evil

Author: Connie Wilson

Publisher: Quad City Press
Category: Thriller/Suspense/Horror/YA
Date: March 9, 2012
Available in Print and Kindle: 252 pages

Tad McGreevy has a power that he has never revealed, not even to his life-long best friend, Stevie Scranton. When Tad looks at others, he sees colors. These auras tell Tad whether a person is good or evil. At night, Tad dreams about the evil-doers, reliving their crimes in horrifyingly vivid detail.

But Tad doesn’t know if the evil acts he witnesses in his nightmares are happening now, are already over, or are going to occur in the future. He has no control over the horrifying visions. He has been told (by his parents) never to speak of his power. All Tad knows is that he wants to protect those he loves. And he wants the bad dreams to stop.

At Tad’s eighth birthday party (April 1, 1995) in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the clown his parents hire to entertain Tad’s third-grade classmates is one of the bad people. Pogo, the Killer Clown (aka Michael Clay) is a serial killer. So begins 53 nights of terror as Tad relives Pogo’s crime, awakens screaming, and recites the terrifying details to his disbelieving family. The situation becomes so dire that Tad is hospitalized in a private institution under the care of a psychiatrist–who also does not believe the small boy’s stories.

And then the police arrest Pogo, the Killer Clown.

Flash forward to the beginning of Tad’s junior year in high school, 8 years later. Tad is 16 and recovered from the spring of his third-grade year. When Michael Clay was caught and imprisoned, the crime spree ended and so did Tad’s bad dreams.

Until now, in the year of our Lord 2003, when evil once again stalks the land.

This is a terrifying, intense story of the dark people and places that lurk just beneath the surface of seemingly normal small-town America. As one reviewer says, “Wilson nails the darkness beneath the surface of small-town Midwestern life with an intense story based on fact.”

Tad must wage a silent war against those who would harm the ones he loves. A battle to the death.

Find The Color of Evil Online:  

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

 GIVEAWAY (CLOSED): 

Thanks to the author, I have 1copy of this novel to giveaway here on my blog!

***Open To Everyone!***

Giveaway policies:

• To Enter: Please leave a comment indicating why you want to read this novel and leave your e-mail address.

• This giveaway ends on June 30, 2012
• This giveaway is open to those 13 years of age or older. 
• All giveaway winners will be announced on the blog.
• I can disqualify any entry as I see fit. 
• I will use Random.org to select the winners.
• Once the winners have been notified, they will have 24 hours to confirm their interest otherwise new winners will be selected.

WINNER: Tore

Happy reading until next time!