Carolyn Ridder Aspenson honors her parents...plus a book giveaway

We're pleased to introduce you to Carolyn Ridder Aspenson today. Thanks to Booktrope, we have TWO e-book sets of her Angela Panther cozy mysteries for some lucky readers anywhere in the world!

Booktrope Editions and AmazonEncore author (and editor) Carolyn Ridder Aspenson is the bestselling author of the cozy mystery Angela Panther Series: Unfinished Business, Unbreakable Bonds, and Uncharted Territory. She also wrote The Inn At Laurel Creek, a contemporary romance novella; Santa's Gift: A Cumming Christmas Novella; and 8 To Lose The Weight, a life style eating program. Carolyn is a freelance writer and editor living in Atlanta, GA. For more information, visit her at her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

On Writing

Motivation comes in all shapes and sizes and in a variety of ways. Grief is like motivation. The two don’t manifest the same in everyone and we all experience them in our own unique ways. It’s rare too, for motivation and grief to be mutually exclusive, but it does happen.

For me the two joined forces in an unusual way, my grief gently nudging my motivation…nudging me to do something that mattered.

A few years ago I experienced what I call a double whammy of devastation. My mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and passed in four months, and ten months after her passing, I lost my father to COPD.

A definite double whammy of devastation.

The months following my father’s death were a constant roller coaster of emotions. Some days were okay and others were brutal, the loss stabbing my heart until I couldn’t breathe. I stuffed my face with food to mask the grief, but all that did was pack on the pounds, the grief still present, still the biggest part of me.

Nine months and forty additional pounds after my father died, I looked in the mirror and motivation stared back at me for the first time since my mother died.

I wanted to be happy, and I knew my parents would want that, too. Above that, I wanted to do something to honor my parents, to make them proud, to give them life again.

I set out to lose the weight, working hard at exercising and eating right, but that wasn’t enough. Yes, that made me feel better and the pounds melted off, but I needed something more, something to make me feel as if I’d done something for my mom and dad, something to show them to the world. And that’s how my first book, Unfinished Business An Angela Panther Novel, came to be.

The book is a fictionalized account of the months after my mother died. Much of it is true, but the most important part of the story, the part where the main character’s mother comes back as a ghost, is not. The ghost though, is very much my mother, and very much like my mother would have done, she helps her daughter through some very important life changes leading up to another tragic loss.

I hadn’t intended to keep the story going, but my characters, maybe with a little ghostly push from my parents, had more to say, so I’ve continued the story with two more novels, Unbreakable Bonds An Angela Panther Mystery and Uncharted Territory An Angela Panther Mystery. I’m also writing a novella that’s currently running every month in InD’tale Magazine called Unbinding Love An Angela Panther Mystery Novella and have another Angela book in the works.

My writing has been a grief counselor of sorts, helping me work through my loss, and giving me a chance to showcase my parents to the world. It’s healed my heart in ways I couldn’t have imagined, and I suspect my mom and dad are cheering me on from above, and knowing them, bragging about me, too.

Thanks to Carolyn for sharing her parents with us and to Booktrope for sharing Angela Panther with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here.

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Worldwide. Giveaway ends October 13th at midnight EST.