with Cindy McDonald
We are delighted to welcome back romantic suspense author Cindy McDonald to Omnimystery News. Cindy first visited with us last week to talk about her new "First Force" series, the first novel of which is Into the Crossfire (Acorn Book Services; October 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats).
Today she writes about "Reaching for the Stars".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Cindy McDonald
When you were growing up did you have parents that encouraged you to "reach for the stars"? Perhaps your mom told you: "You can be anything that you want to be." This was not necessarily the case for me. Oh, don't get me wrong I had great parents — they were just extremely realistic. Their advice consisted of: "Do well in school, get a job, get married, have children, and the rest will work itself out." And if you break-down that advice, it was really quite solid — but it was never enough for yours truly.
When I was a young girl I dreamed of becoming a famous movie star. Okay, now there's a dream that definitely falls in the "unrealistic" category, but a girl can dream, right? I am a firm believer that the Lord provides us exactly what we need. The good Lord provided me with a generous portion of talent in dance and I studied hard at many schools including, The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, and with The Pittsburgh Dance Alloy at Carnegie Mellon to name a few. I wasn't able to go to New York or Hollywood to chase my dreams — my parents wouldn't hear of it, so I got a job and got married. I also kept dancing, and in 1985 my husband encouraged me to open a dance school. Well, it wasn't the original dream, but hey as I said the good Lord gives us what we need, and here was an opportunity to have a career in dance — hopefully a successful career.
My dance school was most successful. I began choreographing musicals on a local level and I choreographed an opera for the Pittsburgh Savoyards as well. I made my own schedule: four months off for summer, five days for Thanksgiving, and three weeks at Christmas. Not bad. My school was well known in the tri-state area and we faired quite well in competitions.
When 2005 rolled around I turned my focus to writing. Don't ask me why, but I started writing telescripts. The Unbridled series started out as a television drama and the Hollywood readers loved the show. I'd love to tell you that I was a huge success, but it just didn't happen — we couldn't sell the show to the producers. That's right, the original dream for The Unbridled series was for the television screen, and I've had reviewers mention that it would make a great TV show — yep, that's what I thought, too. Anyway, when Warner Brothers turned the show down, one of the script readers suggested that I turn my scripts into a book series, and so I did. I had to adjust the dream.
Am I disappointed? Discouraged? No way! Sometimes the dream that we are blessed with is not exactly the dream that we had in mind, but we have to be flexible enough to make the dream work — reach for a different star.
So here I am: a movie star that became a dancer, er … a dance teacher, and a television writer that became an author — an author of two book series: Unbridled and First Force — again, not bad. Yep, the dreams have changed over time and that's okay — I'm making it work, or maybe I'm working with it, but ya know what? I'm having a great time!
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Cindy McDonald was born and raised in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. For 26 years she was a professional choreographer and taught ballet, jazz, and tap. During that time she choreographed many musicals and an opera for the Pittsburgh Savoyards. Most recently she has retired to write her novels. She resides with her husband on their Thoroughbred farm known as Fly By Night Stables near Pittsburgh.
To learn more about her book series and to read excerpts from her upcoming books, please visit her website at CindyMcWriter.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Into the Crossfire
Cindy McDonald
A First Force Novel of Romantic Suspense
Jack Haliday has a score to settle …
It has been four years since ex-Navy SEAL Jack Haliday, had an explosive run-in with a biker gang, wounding their leader, Gunner. During those years, Jack had acquired everything he ever wanted: a beautiful wife, daughter, and a lovely home in the suburbs — everything was just about as perfect as it could get, until Gunner returned to twist Jack's world inside-out with a vengeance that he could never have prepared for.
Now Jack has a score to settle and he's got some friends to help him do it.
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