Fleet Week, RED premiere, and The Wild Rose Press

I hope you have enjoyed Fleet Week as we learned about:

- Pearl Harbor and its glorious battleships, the USS Arizona and the USS Missouri
- Hawaii Five-O and Battleship (the movie)
- the Seals, SeaBees, aviators and astronauts
- re-enlistments under the water and atop a camel
- guest authors Jennifer Estep, Tera Lynn Childs, Linda Cardillo and C.L. Wilson
- Navy veterans Geri Krotow and Diana Cosby
- Navy spouses Geri Krotow, Anne Elizabeth, Melissa Mayhue, and Kieran Kramer

And I'll use Kieran Kramer as the transition to our next celebration.  As I wrote in my last blog, Kieran briefly served with CIA.   Today, a movie about retired CIA agents opens - RED starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovick, and Helen Mirren. 

From the movie's website, http://www.red-themovie.com/site.html#/about

Frank Moses, a former black-ops CIA agent, is now living a quiet life. That is, until the day a hi-tech assassin shows up intent on killing him. With his secret identity compromised and his love interest in danger, Frank must reassemble his old team to figure out who is out to get them

And RED has a connection to The Wild Rose Press (TWRP) in the interview below.  TWRP has previously donated books to the SOS Military Mixer during the RT Booklovers' Convention.  More recently, Rhonda Penders, Editor in Chief, donated over 100 books for SOS Aloha to giveaway to its readers.   The books were shipped to my SOS partner, Mary Gramlich, the Reading Reviewer.  Mary graciously offered to act as my shipping agent so winners receive the books in a timely manner (versus the slow boat across the Pacific Ocean).

So let's meet Rhonda and The Wild Rose Press:

Kim:  How did The Wild Rose Press come into existence?

Rhonda:  In the winter of 2006, my friend and writing buddy RJ Morris began to talk about staring our own epublishing company. We kicked the idea around, studied the market, discussed how we would run it and decided to just do it. TWRP was opened on May 1, 2006 and has been growing ever since.

Kim:  Who has influenced and/or inspired you as an editor?

Rhonda:  I’m not sure if I was influenced or inspired by anyone in particular – I think it was more my love and passion for reading and writing that made this such an integral part of my life. Being an avid reader since I was young it’s spilled over into my adult life.

Kim:  What do you want authors and readers to remember about TWRP?

Rhonda:  I’ve said from day one that I want everyone to have a positive experience when they visit TWRP. Whether you are an author who gets a contract or an author who gets rejected – I want the experience of submitting to us and connecting with us to be positive. I always want the customer to be completely satisfied both with the process of purchasing our products and of course with the story itself.

Kim:  How did this movie connection come about?

Rhonda:  It was pretty simple actually – I received an email last winter around Christmas time. The email explained that a movie set needed romance novels to fill the shelves of the heroine’s apartment. To be honest, I ignored the email the first couple of times as I really didn’t think it was “real”. Finally, on the third email I contacted the person directly and asked for more information and we had a phone conversation. I shipped 150 books to Buffalo, NY to be transported to Toronto for early January filming. We were told we would get the books back when filming wrapped in the spring. However, she has since contacted me and indicated that the film crew and cast has been sharing the books and enjoying them. I told them to go ahead and keep the books.

Kim:  Which books did you select?

Rhonda:  The movie company wanted romantic adventure – the closest we had was Crimson Rose which is our romantic suspense line. So basically every Crimson Rose in print went to the movie set – in addition I pulled copies from our personal stock of any book that had an eye catching cover – I was thinking what would “pop” on the screen – you know bright colors. So after I pulled all the Crimson Rose – the rest are a wide variety of titles that we had in stock.

Kim:  Although the movie sounds intriguing, I am curious just to see where TWRP books pop up on the silver screen!

Mahalo, Rhonda, for donating books for our SOS readers!  I invited the authors of the donated books to vist us at SOS Aloha:

- Saturday, October 16:  Autumn Jordon,
http://www.autumnjordon.com/

- Sunday, October 17:  Jenni Holbrook, 
http://www.jenniholbrook.com/

- Monday, October 18:  Ava Bleu,
http://www.booksbyava.com/

- Tuesday, October 19:  Rachel Brimble,
http://www.rachelbrimble.com/

- Wednesday, October 20:  Joyce Henderson,
http://www.joycehendersonauthor.com/

- Thursday, October 21: DOUBLE HEADER with
---- Sarah Bradley,
http://www.sarahjbradley.com/
---- Tina Gallagher,
 http://www.tina-gallagher.com/

- Friday, October 22:  DOUBLE HEADER with
---- Phyllis Campbell,
http://www.phyllismariecampbell.com/
---- Theresa Stillwagon,
http://www.theresastillwagon.webs.com/'

- Saturday, October 23:  C. H. Admirand,
 http://www.chadmirand.com/

- Tuesday, October 26:  Maggie Toussaint,
http://www.maggietoussaint.com/

- Wednesday, October 27:  Susan Shay,
http://www.susanshay.net/

- Friday, October 29:  Sky Purrington,
 http://www.skypurington.com/

- Saturday, October 30:  P.L. Parker,
http://www.plparker.com/

- Monday, November 1:  K.M. Daughters,
 http://www.kmdaughters.com/

- Wednesday, November 3: Susan Lyon,
http://www.susanlyons.ca/

- Thursday, November 4:  Joyce Moore,
http://www.joycemoorebooks.com/

- Saturday, November 6:  Marguerite Arotin,
 http://www.ohioromance.net/

- Friday, November 12:  Bronwyn Storm,
http://www.bronwynstorm.com/

Plus more will be scheduled in the coming week.  Oh, this will be fun!

Mahalo,

Kim in Hawaii