Interview with Zoe M. McCarthy & spotlight of The Putting Green Whisperer...

We are so happy to have Zoe M. McCarthy with us today talking about her novel, The Putting Green Whisperer. Zoe is a gifted and prolific author of wonderful, sweet romances! To learn more about Zoe and The Putting Green Whisperer, read on!

Please tell us five random things we might not know about you.

* At ages seven through ten, I lived in Haiti during the rise of Papa Doc.

* At ages sixteen through seventeen, I lived on the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Base and was evacuated for three months during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

* At age twenty, I lived five months in Bangkok, Thailand during the Vietnam War.

* I graduated from the University of South Florida with a BA in Mathematics.

                                  *Before my writing career, I was an actuary and married an actuary.

Why did you choose to write this book?

John and I joined my sister and my brother-in-law at a PGA seniors golf tournament at Rock Barn Country Club and Spa in Conover, NC. My sister and I sat on the fifteenth green and watched the over-age-fifty golfers putt and move on to the next tee. In one group, a male and a female caddy stood side by side on the edge of the green with their backs to us. The two young caddies talked quietly while their players prepared to putt. He was tall, and she was petite with her blond ponytail protruding from her pink ball cap. My heart experienced a sappy moment, and romantic what-ifs cluttered my mind. I turned to my sister, pointed at the caddies, and said, “My next book will be about those two caddies.”

What one thing about writing do you wish non-writers would understand? 

Writing now includes a lot of hard work publishers used to do. Marketing and platform building are part of the writer’s job. Monetary benefit for most authors is small. Authors bear criticism from acquisition professionals, critique partners, editors, readers, and reviewers.

What is the toughest test you've faced as a writer?

Preparing many events and announcements for a book’s release date, then an online bookstore fails to add the book in time. This has happened to me twice.

What do you hope readers take away from your novel?

Without God in our suffering, we often become self-centered, abandon our spiritual gifts, and hinder our relationships with others. In The Putting-Green Whisperer, a young woman who has suffered losses has abandoned her dreams and gifts. She rediscovers a better version of herself through the friendship of a godly young man and his Lord. But we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Romans 5:3-4

What accomplishment(s) are you most proud of, writing-related or not?

To perform our forecasts, the actuarial department needed information from the hospital negotiators. The hospital negotiators didn’t trust us to keep information confidential. Actuaries are known to have the best scrubbed data so they can make good projections. I decided my team would humble ourselves and provided to the negotiators data on each hospital in information rich summaries. Soon after they got a taste of what we could do for them, they trusted us. They shared with us the non-data information we actuaries needed, came to us for help in analyzing situations, and asked me to return as a consultant when I retired. I graciously turned them down.

What do you do for fun when not writing?

Husband John and I like to canoe the New River. We look forward to spring to explore the twenty-six-mile lake at our lake cabin. Day drives through the mountains and valleys in the Blue Ridge Mountains is another favorite pastime. I enjoy knitting and crocheting shawls for a prayer shawl ministry. Entertaining my six grandchildren is fun.

What are you working on now? 

Two of my books recently released. So, I’m working on promoting, the Kindle version of Good Breaks in the collection, Love, Sweet Love, its print version as a stand-alone book, and my nonfiction, Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days. Writing-wise I’m working on edits for the second book in the Twisty Creek Series, The Identical Woman in a Black Dress, which follows The Invisible Woman in a Red Dress.

Back cover blurb

Suddenly unemployed, Allie Masterson returns home to Cary, North Carolina where she caddies for her father on the PGA Seniors Tour. There, she encounters a man who possesses an alluring gift of reading the contours of the green. Fascinated with his uncanny ability, Allie is excited to meet the Green Whisperer—until she discovers that the easygoing caddy is actually Shoo Leonard, the boy who teased her relentlessly when they were kids. Despite Allie’s reservations, when Shoo is faced with having to overcome a hand injury, she agrees to use her sport science degree to become his trainer...and then she falls for him.

 Shoo Leonard is grateful to Allie for her singular determination to get him ready for the PGA tour, but he isn’t ready for anything more. Still raw from a broken engagement and focused on his career, he’s content to be her fist-bumping buddy…but then he falls for her.

What seems like a happily-ever-after on the horizon takes a turn when Allie decides she’s become a distraction to Shoo’s career. Is it time for her to step away or can The Putting Green Whisperer find the right words to make her stay?

Please give us the first page of the book.

Allie turned the volume down on the radio and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. How would she unglue her behind from the seat and go inside?
After several moments, she sat up, bounced her knee against the locked steering wheel, and tapped down the sun visor, blocking the glare from October’s late afternoon sun. The rearview mirror reflected all her earthly stuff mounded in the back of the SUV. Would her old bedroom be available to dump her things, or was it now a storage or sewing room? Maybe Dad and Karen would direct her to the basement bedroom, which had once been used for guest overflow.

The front door was still painted Carolina blue to honor UNC. The dogwood in the middle of the yard had filled out from the spindly tree Mom planted a few months before she died. Except for the bushier tree, everything else looked the same as it had before she’d left North Carolina to live with Aunt Mae in Atlanta.

Now, seven years and a new stepmother later, she was back in Cary. Maybe that was a good thing. Since Aunt Mae had moved to California, nothing was left for her in Atlanta.
Allie drummed her thumbs against the steering wheel. Maybe she should’ve driven to California. Aunt Mae would’ve welcomed her. Allie had saved enough money from her spring and summer jobs to make the trip from Atlanta to the now defunct Florida position. Would her savings have taken her to California?

Sure. If she’d starved herself and had run on fumes the last hundred miles.
Allie grabbed her tan canvas bag from the passenger seat and got out of the car.
Mom, I need you. Ask your God to help Dad and I reconnect. Please.

Bio

Zoe M. McCarthy is a full-time speaker, author, and blogger on writing. She writes contemporary

Christian romances involving tenderness and humor. Believing opposites distract, Zoe creates heroes and heroines who learn to embrace their differences. On suggestions from an agent and a publishing house editor, Zoe developed a detailed resource, Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days, for writers who have manuscripts that need tailoring for publication and writers who want to write the stories on their hearts but need help to put them to paper. Zoe and her husband live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She teaches a community Bible study and leads writing workshops.

Where else can readers find you online?   

https://zoemmccarthy.com

https://www.amazon.com/Zoe-M.-McCarthy/e/B00ODC1ZNW/