Good Morning, Booklovers!
Please join me in welcoming women’s fiction writer, Millicent Eidson, bringing us her featured book, ANTHRACIS, a Microbial Mystery.
Nice to meet you, Millicent. What can I get you to drink?
ME: I forced myself to drink a few sips of coffee during college exams but the attraction didn’t take. So I’m a real iconoclast, drinking only water and cranberry juice.
Ally: I think my magic pot can fix you up with that cranberry juice. While I get our drinks, please introduce yourself to readers.
Please join me in welcoming women’s fiction writer, Millicent Eidson, bringing us her featured book, ANTHRACIS, a Microbial Mystery.
Nice to meet you, Millicent. What can I get you to drink?
ME: I forced myself to drink a few sips of coffee during college exams but the attraction didn’t take. So I’m a real iconoclast, drinking only water and cranberry juice.
Ally: I think my magic pot can fix you up with that cranberry juice. While I get our drinks, please introduce yourself to readers.
Bio:
In her retirement from full-time public health, Dr. Millicent Eidson created the MayaVerse, an alphabetical microbial mystery series. On her way to completing Anthracis, she drifted back to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and wrote the award-winning short play “Monuments.”
Something unique/unusual that isn't in your regular bio. My first memory is dancing on a concert stage in front of an applauding audience, concerned about falling forward into the footlights. I was age three, and already knew how to read. I feel blessed to have started my life with sharing creative work and with the world of books wide open.”
Author Contacts:
Website: https://drmayamaguire.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmayamaguire/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EidsonMillicent
Amazon author page: Amazon.com: Millicent Eidson: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21893794.Millicent_Eidson
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/contributors/millicent-eidson
Books2read: https://books2read.com/millicenteidson/
In her retirement from full-time public health, Dr. Millicent Eidson created the MayaVerse, an alphabetical microbial mystery series. On her way to completing Anthracis, she drifted back to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and wrote the award-winning short play “Monuments.”
Something unique/unusual that isn't in your regular bio. My first memory is dancing on a concert stage in front of an applauding audience, concerned about falling forward into the footlights. I was age three, and already knew how to read. I feel blessed to have started my life with sharing creative work and with the world of books wide open.”
Author Contacts:
Website: https://drmayamaguire.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmayamaguire/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EidsonMillicent
Amazon author page: Amazon.com: Millicent Eidson: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21893794.Millicent_Eidson
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/contributors/millicent-eidson
Books2read: https://books2read.com/millicenteidson/
INTERVIEW:
Ally: Who or what inspired your featured book?
ME: The primary protagonist for my mystery/women’s fiction series is Dr. Maya Maguire, who, like my daughter, is adopted from China by parents living in the southwestern U.S. I loved creating a young Asian heroine in my daughter’s honor, and sharing the story creation and editing process with her.
Ally: Are you self-published or traditionally published? How did you make the decision?
ME: I’m happily self-published. I never realized how much fun, and work, it is to learn all the required steps. I queried Anthracis for a year and my writing style was well-received. However, there were some changes agents wanted that I wasn’t willing to make.
Ally: Do you use critique groups or beta readers? Do you find them valuable?
ME: I can’t imagine feeling confident I’ve published my best work without lengthy review and feedback. For Anthracis, it was two years with the Burlington Writers Workshop. For Borrelia, I’ve added a critique group and manuscript swap through Sisters in Crime.
Ally: Why did you choose writing as a career? Is it your only career, or do you have a “day” job?
ME: Writing has always been a passion, from a satirical high school newspaper to my first romance hand-written during a blissful summer in the high mountains of Utah before starting veterinary school. But scientific writing filled 34 years with state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now that I’m retired, it’s the joy of my life to sink back into creative impulses. I still teach once a year at the University of Vermont about zoonoses, diseases from animals.
Ally: If you could choose to be any book or movie character, who would it be?
ME: I’d like to be Carrie Mathison from the TV thriller series Homeland. Despite crippling mental health issues, she persisted in her career focused on making the world a safer place. She’s the kick-ass hero that I and my protagonist Maya Maguire strive to be.
Ally: Which trivia questions did you pick?
ME:
Ally: Who or what inspired your featured book?
ME: The primary protagonist for my mystery/women’s fiction series is Dr. Maya Maguire, who, like my daughter, is adopted from China by parents living in the southwestern U.S. I loved creating a young Asian heroine in my daughter’s honor, and sharing the story creation and editing process with her.
Ally: Are you self-published or traditionally published? How did you make the decision?
ME: I’m happily self-published. I never realized how much fun, and work, it is to learn all the required steps. I queried Anthracis for a year and my writing style was well-received. However, there were some changes agents wanted that I wasn’t willing to make.
Ally: Do you use critique groups or beta readers? Do you find them valuable?
ME: I can’t imagine feeling confident I’ve published my best work without lengthy review and feedback. For Anthracis, it was two years with the Burlington Writers Workshop. For Borrelia, I’ve added a critique group and manuscript swap through Sisters in Crime.
Ally: Why did you choose writing as a career? Is it your only career, or do you have a “day” job?
ME: Writing has always been a passion, from a satirical high school newspaper to my first romance hand-written during a blissful summer in the high mountains of Utah before starting veterinary school. But scientific writing filled 34 years with state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now that I’m retired, it’s the joy of my life to sink back into creative impulses. I still teach once a year at the University of Vermont about zoonoses, diseases from animals.
Ally: If you could choose to be any book or movie character, who would it be?
ME: I’d like to be Carrie Mathison from the TV thriller series Homeland. Despite crippling mental health issues, she persisted in her career focused on making the world a safer place. She’s the kick-ass hero that I and my protagonist Maya Maguire strive to be.
Ally: Which trivia questions did you pick?
ME:
- Memorable book you’ve read: Tony Hillerman’s Dance Hall of the Dead, featuring a mystical Native American ceremony I was fortunate to see.
- An author (living or dead) you'd love to chat with: Shakespeare. I want to immerse myself in his creative process.
- Ebook or print? Print, as a reader and author. Anthracis has a diary formatted to show a boy’s thought processes, and that layout gets lost in an ebook.
- A movie you’ll always remember: “Sweet Home Alabama” with its themes of lost love regained, lightning art, appealing dogs, and quirky friends and family.
- Favorite comfort food: Dark chocolate—that’s where my caffeine comes from instead of coffee!
Anthracis, A Microbial Mystery
Genre: mystery/women’s fiction
Heat rating: sensual
Anthracis is the debut novel in an alphabetical series featuring Maya Maguire, medical detective, in her journey as an Asian American veterinarian solving microbial mysteries.
The spectacular southwestern desert is alive with Bacillus anthracis spores, and the summer is the hottest on record. As a new veterinary epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Maya Maguire confronts the largest, most complex anthrax outbreak in U.S. history.
Infections in persons of color and immigration activists resonate with Maya’s search, as a Chinese American adoptee, for a place in her American home. Younger than her fellow trainees and battling panic disorder from a horrific childhood accident, she struggles to solve an epidemic mystery in a physician-dominated public health world. From her home base in New Mexico, CDC sends her to join a federal team in Arizona, including provocative physician Dr. Manolo Miranda and tightlipped veterinarian Dr. Dave Schwartz.
The epidemic is linked to climate change—that’s the party line. But Homeland Security agents and the FBI are suspicious. Dave’s an anthrax expert and spores match his home Texas Triangle of Death.
An invisible enemy, team secrets, and romantic missteps may derail Maya’s confidence. If she can’t find the source, thousands could perish from anthrax-laced heroin and tainted milk. Anthracis takes us to the front lines with scientists betting their lives and relationships on the investigation outcome.
Buy Links:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09GS6PYLD
Genre: mystery/women’s fiction
Heat rating: sensual
Anthracis is the debut novel in an alphabetical series featuring Maya Maguire, medical detective, in her journey as an Asian American veterinarian solving microbial mysteries.
The spectacular southwestern desert is alive with Bacillus anthracis spores, and the summer is the hottest on record. As a new veterinary epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Maya Maguire confronts the largest, most complex anthrax outbreak in U.S. history.
Infections in persons of color and immigration activists resonate with Maya’s search, as a Chinese American adoptee, for a place in her American home. Younger than her fellow trainees and battling panic disorder from a horrific childhood accident, she struggles to solve an epidemic mystery in a physician-dominated public health world. From her home base in New Mexico, CDC sends her to join a federal team in Arizona, including provocative physician Dr. Manolo Miranda and tightlipped veterinarian Dr. Dave Schwartz.
The epidemic is linked to climate change—that’s the party line. But Homeland Security agents and the FBI are suspicious. Dave’s an anthrax expert and spores match his home Texas Triangle of Death.
An invisible enemy, team secrets, and romantic missteps may derail Maya’s confidence. If she can’t find the source, thousands could perish from anthrax-laced heroin and tainted milk. Anthracis takes us to the front lines with scientists betting their lives and relationships on the investigation outcome.
Buy Links:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09GS6PYLD
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