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Guest post by Ros Baxter + Giveaway
We are happy to welcome to Book Lovers Inc. Ros Baxter, author of Fish Out of Water, a mermaid story unlike any other you know! So join us as Ros tells us about her fascination with mermaids and how HER kind of mermaid is nothing like Ariel 😉 Ros, take it away! 😀
The best thing about children…
…is that they haven’t yet been told there is stuff they can’t do.
At least mine haven’t.
So when I asked my daughter (4) the other day what she wanted to be when she grew up, she told me with that trademark don’t-you-remember look on her face: “A pirate, of course.” Ah, of course. Silly me.
Pirate
And when I asked my son (7), he shot me an almost identical look (genes are scary) and said: ”Rock star, remember?”
Image courtesy of MR LIGHTMAN/freedigitalphotos.net
For me, it was always a mermaid.
What was not to love about being a mermaid, right? A tail, the wide open ocean, all that singing, magic…
A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse
The problem was, as I got older, a few problems presented themselves. There was no university course in Siren101. The career counsellor just didn’t take me seriously. And then, of course, there was that whole girly shtick.
I really just wasn’t a soft and floaty mergirl kind of babe.
But here’s the thing. Being an author is (almost) as good as being a kid. In that you get to be whatever you like. And so, even though I was a married, suburban mother-of-four, I did still get to be a mermaid…eventually.
And best of all, I got to be my kind of mermaid.
This kind:
Mermaids don’t wear nicotine patches. They don’t drink Southern Comfort from a hip flask, inhale twinkies or watch Dr Phil. Mermaids don’t pack heat. And mermaids definitely don’t get their hearts broken by tattooed guys who look like pirates. In fact, mermaids have always been kinda down on pirates… but that’s another story. The cardinal rule is this: mermaids don’t live in bone-dry frontier towns. Ever.
But here’s the thing. Me, I don’t leave home without my patches, hip flask and Glock. My last moment of true moderation was back in kindergarten, when I stopped myself from using my awesome strength to rip Jamie Kennedy’s pecker off when he waved it at Julie Casey in the bathroom and made her cry. And don’t even start me on my penchant for pirates.
But I am, in fact, a mermaid. So go figure.
Well, technically, Mom’s folks call themselves Aegirans, and they don’t sprout tails, but they’re the closest thing to mermaids under the sea. And, as much as it used to hurt, I’m what they call a dirt-dweller, seeing as Mom was a runaway, Dad’s Sicilian and we live on The Land.
But not for long. You see, I’ve only got three weeks to live. Give or take.
And boy, did I have some fun being a kick-ass half-mermaid-half-human hybrid living on The Land, working as a cop, unravelling a mystery and muddling through a wild love triangle at the same time.
Now that is MY kind of mermaid.
I hope you get to meet her, and have as much fun as I did walking in her shoes (erh…fins?) a little while.
Fish Out of Water by Ros Baxter
“It’s Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum meets Splash in a sexy, smart-talking debut about a mermaid in a desert, a city under water, and the secret that no-one is supposed to uncover.”
Dirtwater’s straight-talking Deputy Sheriff has a lot on her plate: a nicotine addiction that’s a serious liability for a mermaid, a solider-of-fortune ex who’s hooked on her Mom’s brownies, a gorgeous, naked stranger in her shower, and a mysterious dead blonde with a fish tattoo on Main Street.
Oh, and one other thing.
She’s scheduled to die on her thirtieth birthday – in three weeks – unless she can ‘change the course of destiny and save the world entire’. Throw in a Mom who’s the local Mayor and a Dad who’s been locked in the county jail for twelve years, and that’s all the trouble she needs without her mermaid roots coming back to haunt her.
Rania’s heading home to Aegira for a family wedding but she’s starting to have a sinking feeling that’s got nothing to do with hydroporting seven miles under the sea and everything to do with some weird connections that seem to be emerging between her, the dead blonde, her Mom’s shady past and a ten thousand year old prophesy. Now if she can just steal a corpse, get a crazy Aegirian priest off her case, work out who the hell’s trying to kill her and stop sleeping with the fishes, she might be able to unravel the prophesy, the mystery of the missing choirgirls and the secrets hidden in her Mom’s past. And maybe even save her own ass while she’s at it.
Ros Baxter has been writing since she was eight and penned a whimsical series of short stories about a race of tiny people who lived on a rainbow. While they were a hit in the playground, a few things intervened – including a career in social policy and four noisy children.
Ros started writing again in earnest three years ago. In that time, Ros has secured a two-book deal with Harper Collins Australia, published Sister Pact (a romantic comedy co-written with her sister Ali) and Fish Out of Water (Escape Publishing on 1 April), been a contributing author to the e-anthology URL Love, and finaled in the STALI competition.
Ros writes fresh, funny, genre-busting fiction. She digs feisty heroines, good friends, quirky families, heroes to make you sigh and tingle, and a dash of fantasy from time to time.
Ros also runs a successful business consulting to government and the private sector. She teaches professional writing skills and has authored a writing guide, Clarity.
Ros lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband Blair, four small but very opinionated children, a neurotic dog and nine billion germs.
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~*~*Giveaway*~*~
Ros has generously offered an ebook copy of Fish Out of Water to a lucky commenter!
All you have to do is leave a comment and tell us:
What did you want to be when you grew up?
(You can read our full giveaway policy here)
Please be sure to include a valid email address in the comment form (need not be in the actual body of the comment).
This giveaway is open to all!
Giveaway ends on Saturday, 18 May 2013, and we will announce the winner on Sunday.
Good luck!
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I wanted to be a vet 🙂 Thanks for the fun post and congrats to Ros on the new release!
I really wanted to be a chef that owned my own restaurant . My second love was accounting. So now I’m an accountant that likes to cook!
i really wanted to be a teacher. but i ended up working with animals 🙂
I always wanted to work in a library. Ironically, that’s what I’m doing.
Too many to list them all, but mainly a writer or a chef. So I ended up working in customer service. ?? 🙂
I wanted to be a teacher or a reporter.
I actually could never decide. No one thing stood out. I ended up nursing.
I wanted to own a bookshop so that I can read whichever book I wanted though later I realized selling read books are bad.
I think a doctor
To be honest, I wanted to be a librarian, go figure. 😀 I did the next best thing and worked for a magazine and book distributor for many years, where I got to work around reading material, met authors occasionally and had access to lots of books. So my dream almost came true.
It would depend on the day,anything from a fireman to a doctor to a ballerina.
Strangely I wanted to be a coroner