Thursday, December 11, 2014

Happy Holidays To All My Readers!

You are my Christmas gift, this year and always. Without my readers I would not have continued to add chapters to my story as a writer, nor would the characters that I call friends live on my pages. Speaking of gifts, if you have another reader on your gift list this year, consider a book. If you order on this website before December 20th, I will be happy to gift-wrap your selection before shipping it out to its recipient.

Here's a little more about me and my story, as presented by Shelley Roupas at our local Fox 8 News affiliate. Thank you, Shelley, for helping me toot my horn!

http://myfox8.com/2014/12/10/local-womans-successful-second-act/
This is still my favorite shot of Remi...you may know her as Fella.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Breaking Out Book Launch Event Invitation

The public is cordially invited to attend a book launch celebration event for Breaking Out, the sixth novel by Mary Flinn. The event will be held on Thursday, November 6, 2014 from 6:00-9:00 pm at Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro, NC 27401. A book talk will begin at 6:30, followed by a book signing, and questions and answers. Light refreshments will be provided and beverages will be available for sale at the bar. Bring friends and enjoy an evening out in downtown Greensboro!

Friday, July 18, 2014

Teaser for upcoming book, Breaking Out, to be released in Fall 2014

Synopsis for Breaking Out

Dr. Susannah Brody, Magnolia Village’s only dermatologist, has treated every third person in the quaint little community. Still dealing with the loss of her second husband, with whom she converses on a daily basis, she dreads the upcoming separation she will face when her only child, eighteen-year-old Myers, will follow his dreams by attending a prestigious music school in Nashville, Tennessee in the fall.

Her loneliness is not helped by her sister dating her ex-husband and Myers’s father, Kent. After their marriage ended because Kent cheated on her, Susannah was lucky to find the love of her life in Stan Brody, only to lose him to a heart attack. Terrified at the prospect of dating and averse to being “fixed up” with undesirable men her age, introverted Susannah reminds her friends that she is not broken and does not need fixing.

Susannah’s attention quickly shifts away from herself when her best friend’s daughter, Casey French, goes missing. Casey is also Myers’s best friend, so Susannah wonders what he knows about the disappearance. Myers is a master at covering up his feelings after his parents’ traumatic divorce and his beloved stepfather’s death, so what is he not telling Susannah?

When Susannah’s neighbor, Detective Andrew Chase, becomes involved in the case, Susannah finds herself awkwardly thrown together with him. Chase is mired in the loss of his own spouse—Susannah’s former patient. While Susannah and Chase find some comfort in sharing their mutual grief with each other, will they be able to put their feelings aside in time to find Casey French? And could this potential tragedy be just what Susannah needs to break out of the ties that bind her?


Check back in September to see when and where the book launch will happen! 

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Read North Carolina Novels review is in!

By Eileen McGrath, April 11, 2014

Mary Flinn. The Nest. New York: Aviva Publishing, 2013.

nestA nest, yes, but whose nest?
With retirement on the horizon, her daughters out of the house, and her husband traveling for business, Cherie Johnson was looking forward to enjoying the freedom and peace of being an empty-nester.  But all that changes in a single week when her older daughter, Hope, moves home after her boyfriend announces that he is moving to Italy without her.  Hope has studied to be an art teacher, but in the down economy, she can’t get a teaching job.  She gets by–barely–by working in a high-end dress shop and bartending.  Cherie has adjusted to Hope’s situation, but she is unprepared when her husband, Dave, becomes another casualty of the economy.  After twelve years as a sales representative, a corporate restructuring leaves Dave without a job.  Dave could go to his mother, who heads a furniture manufacturing company, but neither he nor Cherie want to do that.  Instead, Dave sends out resumes, checks employment websites, and handles the household chores–including training the little Papillon puppy that Hope brought home with her.  Dave juggles this all pretty well for the first month or two, until his fruitless job search takes its toll on his spirits.
At least Cherie and Dave’s daughter Wesley is doing well.  She is about to finish her nursing degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, and she has just become engaged to a nice fellow who has a good job with Apple.  But with the cost of a wedding now on the horizon, Cherie realizes that she must put off retirement.  At least she has coworkers who lift her spirits and gently offer advice–and so does Hope.  In chapters that alternate between Cherie and Hope’s perspective, readers learn how each woman thinks and grows, and how the family rights itself.  As in Mary Flinn’s other books, The Nest includes a network of family and friends populated by well drawn characters.  Readers will be both exasperated and charmed by Dave’s mother, Toots, and it’s a testament to Flinn’s generosity that even Hope’s self-absorbed boyfriend Liam is not wholly dislikable.
Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Romance Reviews Turns Three!

The Romance Reviews is having their third anniversary celebration! Visit their website: http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php and enter a book giveaway to win your copy of The Nest. March 22 will be the date to view the Q and A on The Nest so you can enter to win!
Over 450 authors are participating and over 450 prizes will be given away during the month of March! Check it out!

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Nest Book Trailer

The Nest Book Trailer

Reviews are in for The Nest!


The Nest: A Novel
Mary Flinn
Aviva Publishers (2013)
ISBN: 9781938686856
Janet Reeves for Reader View (12/13)

Mary Flinn is a fantastic writer! I could not put “The Nest” down. I felt sad that it was over. I had to have a moment to let go once I finished the book. Flinn’s novel felt like I had been to the movies where the music pulls you in and takes you on a ride! The characters Cherie, Dave and their two grown daughters, Hope and Westley are not cast as the typical “perfect” family, yet they are loving and supportive just as you would want for your own life. I told my daughter that Flinn knows this family and she told their life story!
Cherie is a dedicated mother, wife, and a school teacher who happens to have been married to Dave for many years and they have that true love which binds a family. As Cherie gets the news about Dave’s job being eliminated, she sees her opportunity for her retirement ripped away, all on Valentine’s Day.
Hope’s love affair with Liam was the average boy meets girl until Hope’s broken heart takes her back to the nest with her parents as her artist lover Liam is leaving her behind to pursue his art in Italy! Dave, Hope, and the new puppy, Little Miss, which Cherie is less than happy to see, will all be at home together desperately reclaiming their place in the world.
Wesley comes home to be with Hope and support her sister while being reluctant to share how Ren, her fiancĂ©, proposed to her. The voyages of the family’s future were unraveling and uncertainty is pervading literally overnight: Hope, with a seriously broken heart, Dave unemployed, Wesley trying to happily get married, and to top off all that, Cherie has a mother in-law that will go on a crazy tyrant the moment she finds out the family’s news.
Cherie is strongly supported by her school family which helps to bring order in the end. Two stories told that make you laugh and maybe even cry, but for sure will capture your attention and maybe your heart. What’s next, Mary Flinn? 

August 29, 2013

The Nest
Mary Flinn
Aviva Publishing (2013)
ISBN: 978-1-938686-85-6

New Novel Explores One Family’s Recession and Return with Humor and Grit
I am not usually a reader of romance novels, but Mary Flinn won me over with her debut novel The One, and after I fell in love with her characters, I followed them through four volumes. Now Flinn has published a new novel with completely new characters, and without the comforting romance feeling of her earlier books. Not that there isn’t some romance in this book, but The Nest is a bit grittier of a read, making me wonder whether everything would work out in the end for the characters, and it’s set in a more realistic and harder world than Flinn’s previous books. But that said, just when things seem to be bleak, Flinn reminds us of the positive and makes the reader laugh at unexpected moments, producing a cathartic effect overall in these pages.
Cherie Johnson is a high school English teacher about to retire when she finds out that her husband Dave has lost his job. At the same time, her oldest daughter, Hope, decides to move back home since she can’t find a teaching job and has just broken up with her boyfriend, Liam. Add to these difficulties that Dave and Cherie’s younger daughter, Wesley, is about to get married—where will the money come from?
Inspired by the economic downturn of recent years, the nationwide trend of adult children moving back home, and concerns about unemployment, The Nest does not offer easy solutions to these situations. The alternating point of view chapters—in Cherie and Hope’s voices—also allows for the characters’ personality conflicts to be presented. In fact, Cherie often feels put off by her husband, daughter, and even her mother-in-law. As for Hope, she suspects that Liam’s decision to go to Italy to paint also means he’s having an affair with the young woman who is supposedly going to help him promote his art, but Hope can’t get over her feelings about Liam, and if the opportunity for continuing the relationship should arise, she realizes she just might take it. In the meantime, she’s stuck working two jobs—in retail and as a bartender—to make ends meet, pay off her credit card debt, and hopefully, move out of her parents’ house.
And that mother-in-law. Toots, as Dave’s mom is nicknamed, is a bit of a rich bitch who has made it clear how disappointed she is by her son, especially when he tries to solve his unemployment situation by starting up a business selling fish at an open market. Neither Cherie nor Dave is about to ask Toots for a handout, but they also realize that she’s getting older so it’s time to bury the hatchet.
Through all these situations, Cherie manages to hold the family together, even when hot flashes and getting locked out of the house seem like they will get the better of her. I have to admit that reading this novel, I wasn’t sure how it was going to end. Was everything going to work out for these characters? Would they be able to make the tough decisions that would help them move on with their lives? Would they be able simply to get past their own personalities and fears to let good things come back into their lives? Don’t worry. It’s not all grim and tough. There are some wonderful heartfelt moments in the novel where the characters really come to see their lives in new ways as they ponder the directions their futures might take.
If you’ve read Flinn’s previous novels, get ready for something a little different. If you haven’t read the previous novels, The Nest is a good place to start. I think this novel is one of those turning points an author has, a sign that Flinn is growing as a novelist, expanding her characters and her fictional worlds so they come closer to the border of reality. I will be curious to see what comes next from her pen.
For more information about The Nest and all of Mary Flinn’s novels, visit www.TheOne.com.

— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and award-winning author of The Best Place