S4 Lovefest EP158: Allie McCormack, Award-Winning Author of Wishes in a Bottle

Hello Happy People!

Today Dianne is sharing her interview with the incredible Allie McCormack. Allie is the award-winning romance author of Wishes in a Bottle, part of her Wishes & Dreams series. Just one of many romance series she has written. 

Allie is a disabled Vietnam era veteran. She served in the 9th Division stationed in Washington for many years and had a temporary assignment with NATO in Europe working for a four-star general. After her service, Allie went to college and became an exchange student in Cairo, Egypt. Her world travels were not limited to Egypt and the women talk about all the amazing places Allie has lived and visited and how these experiences infused her writing with realism and vibrance. 

While Allie admits she has always been a writer and storyteller, it wasn't until later in life when she finally pushed herself to try writing her first romance. She discusses her process and how a first chapter contest led to her current writing career. 

Allie (and her two rescue cats) currently lives with her daughter and her family in Southern California, where she happily provides on-demand babysitter services for her adorable granddaughter. Go listen now to find out more about this incredible author. 

Allie's Website

Allie on Facebook

Allie on Instagram

Allie on Threads

Allie on Amazon

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to BookBanter with me, your host, Diane Burkhart. I hope you will join me every Wednesday as we explore all things to do with, well, books. Let's get on with our show today. Hello, my happy people. Today is February 19th, 2025, and we are on our third week of Love Fest. This is season four for BookBanter with Diane Burkhart, your book talk podcast, and we are bringing you some of our favorite romance authors that we found over the holiday season this year. We're so excited to share their work with you. Now, some of them are a little bit more outside of the box of the regular romance genre, but every one of these stories has a wonderful twist that involves love and friendship and so much more. Now, today we have somebody who is a little bit more of the contemporary romance genre. She writes paranormal romance and did a fantastic job with her Wishes and Dreams series. And you are going to love what she has to say. Now, she is not only a fantastic author, she is also a world traveler and a cat foster mom. And we get into all of that today. So just sit back and enjoy this fantastic interview that I had with the wonderful award-winning romance author, Allie McCormick. If you've listened to any of our shows before, you know the way that I like to start these interviews is to just have my guest tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Okay. Well, I am Alan McCormick, and what I do is write novels and I read and I play with my cats and let's see, and I write novels and then I read and then I play with my cats. And sometimes I play with my cats while I'm writing my novels and while I'm reading. That sounds a lot of fun. The only thing I don't do is read while I'm writing novels. That would be hard. That would be really tricky, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

One of the things that I really found fascinating about you is you are not only a military veteran, but even before you got in the military, you spent a lot of time as an exchange student and living in different parts of the world. Well, no, I was I was in the military first.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Oh, really? Yeah. I went in a year out after high school. And that was Vietnam era back then. And we had the women's army corps, which is now gone. Everybody became regular army. But when I went in, it was women's army corps. And I did a stint in NATO, a three-month stint in Brunson, Holland in the Netherlands. Wow. Which I didn't get to see much of because my direct boss was a four-star general. We had to get there before him, and we didn't get to leave until after he left, and they were busy. Wow. So it would like be eight, nine, ten o'clock at night before I got home most of the time. So I didn't get to actually see much of anything. So how long were you in the service? Three years. Standard three-year hitch back then. I don't know what standard now. So what was it that you actually did for the military? I was best move of my life. I was a clerk typist. Oh wow. Right out of basic training, they put me in a typing class, secretarial class. And that's just that's a skill that I've had throughout my life. That's that's done me good.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Oh yeah, that would come in handy for everything. Yeah. Especially being a writer now.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

And especially being a writer now. So though now these days, you know, with dictation text, I learned on an electric typewriter, which was one step up from manual, but those were still around too back then.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

I actually learned on an old manual typewriter. Because my grandmother had one and I used to play and you know write letters on it when I was a kid. And then in high school, when I took typing class, they had the electric typewriters. But I I miss the clack of that manual. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

And my mom and grandmother did also. That I think that's why I still like the clickety clack keyboards so I can hear me type.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yes. I always always loved that about the old manual ones. It's just that tick tick tick tick. I don't know why. I I miss that. I keep looking at those keyboards you can get now that have the sounds of the old typewriters. I I think it's a productivity trigger.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Okay. You hear that. Yeah. Because you hear yourself being productive, and that spurs you on to more productivity. I think that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

That totally makes sense to me. No, you get out of the service, but then you become an exchange student and you go to Cairo, Egypt. What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Oh my god, Cairo. Okay, so you want the long story? Oh, I'll take it. I was just kind of floating around after I got out of the army, work here and there, you know, as secretary typist. And my dad said, You've got the GI Bill now, go to college. And so, I mean, I went to college because I didn't have anything better to do. Yeah. Okay. And I took a career counseling course, the end of my first year, beginning of my second year of college. So I took this career class to go through, you know, what do you really want to do? I just wanted to see, I wanted to see Egypt and Saudi Arabia so bad because when I was little, my grandmother took me to the opening of Lawrence of Arabia on what was back then a big screen theater. And that just made such an impression on me. And I just wanted to, and so they had this thing. Then I realized, oh my God, look, University of California has, and I was living in California, it has an exchange program to Cairo, Egypt. Of course, I wasn't in University of California. I had a D minus average, and once you were in University of California, you had to have a B average just to apply to the program. So I made the honors role. And the next semester I made the honors roll, and then I transferred to UCSB, and I made the honor role, and I applied and I got chosen.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

It's amazing what a little bit of motivation can do. And Cairo, Cairo, oh my God, Cairo. I can hardly think about it because I just, oh, it just it grips your heart. And there is no place in the world like Cairo. And you ask people, tourists who've been there, it is crowded, it is noisy, it is dirty, it smells, and it's hot, and it's old, and it is all those things. And you love it because of those things. You just it's just amazing. And and Egyptians, our Egyptians are are so hospitable, they know very well how difficult Arabic language is for us Americans. And so making the the slightest effort to speak to them in Arabic gets a lot of appreciation. And they like that. I mean, I got invited home for dinners by shopkeepers that I met and say, Oh, you must come to my house and meet my husband and my my children and my grandmother, and they all want to, you know, and and it was just if you don't look down on them, if you don't treat them like you're above them. I mean, I I saw Taurus that just made me want to cringe. They are just the friendliest. They will open their hearts and they open their homes to you. And it was a lot, so much fun. I used to head out from the university campus after classes were out for the day, and I would leave everything home except my dictionary, my map of Cairo, and my purse. And I would just head out into the streets and I'd come to a street corner and I'd just kind of turn one direction and just kind of wander around and see where it takes took me and talk to people. And and yeah, Cairo.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

That's that's one of the places on my bucket list. I so want to get there. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

And then the Nile, the Nile goes right through the center of the city, and and there's an island in the middle of the Nile. It's called Zamalik and or Giza, half the it's Giza. Giza is the pyramids area, okay. So kind of that's where the bridge that goes to the pyramids is on that end of the island, which is long and narrow, okay. And the women's dormitories, which was basically an apartment building for the university, were on Zamalek. And we were about three blocks down from the Cairo Marriott, which had been purchased by the Marriott, and they built two towers on the palace that had built been built for the Empress Eugenie of France when she came to visit on an official state visit for the opening of the Suez Canal and the premiere of the opera Aida. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

That's just even hard to imagine.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Yeah. They put us in intensive Arabic class when we first arrived, came in a month before school started. We had a 10-day class, one semester in 10 days of spoken Arabic, Cairo Arabic.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

I've had to take intensive German classes whenever I moved here. Oh, right. So I can kind of imagine what that's like, but I think German might be easier than Arabic just because you're using the same alphabet.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Yeah, no, we're definitely not using the same alphabet. So, yes, Cairo, a lot of fun. Rode camels around the pyramids, loved writing camels. Love, love, love, love, love.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

How much do you think that time that you spent in Cairo and in Saudi Arabia affected you whenever you went to write Wishes in a Bottle?

SPEAKER_03 10:14

So much comes from my experiences over there, whether in Cairo and Riyadh. And not only those, my grandfather lived in a music conservatory in Croton on Hudson, north of New York City. And so that's where my series is based. In the Hudson Valley of, you know, not in Croton on Hudson, but from the landscape and so forth that I remembered from when I would visit him. But for the Arabic influences, yeah, I've got two contemporary romances that are some of my oldest that are actually Arab American multicultural romances. And I use a lot of my experiences. And the desert and the dunes and the ships in the desert. When you're driving to the Suez Canal, you'll be driving along and it's all desert, and all of a sudden you see a ship, and you're like, What? Whoa, whoa, wait. And oh, you see, you see the ships, they're just floating along in the desert, right? And then that is actually what it looks like. That's how you experience it. Is there there's a ship and sailing, you know, steaming along in the desert. So I pull on all of that. They tell us, you hear it say it over and over, write what you know. And I think that that is often misunderstood. It's not telling me to write being a student in Egypt or you know, a hospital contractor in Saudi Arabia and this and this. It's telling you draw on all the experiences from your life and use those to enrich and to give depth to your characters, to your settings and locales. When I'm describing the inside of the genie bottle, I obviously I've not been inside a genie bottle. But I have been inside some traditional Islamic Saudi Arabian homes. So that gives me a good glimpse of what it might look like inside of a genie bottle. Yeah. Or the white marble tower in the desert. I've seen so many of those, you know. I mean, it's just, yeah, you got this desert, and then there's this white tower just rising up, and it's just like, and your heart just, oh my God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Well, I know in the way that you write, I started reading Wishes in a Bottle, and you just have like this very nice, easy, descriptive style that you can fall into it. It's one of those things that it's a comfortable read that is just entertaining, that you're not sitting there going, okay, I need a dictionary. What's that word? Oh, I need a map. Where's this place? You know, everything is so well described that you understand everything and you can visualize it and just fall comfortably into the story and see it unfold around you without having to overthink everything. It's like, what does she mean by that? You know what I mean? Well, thank you. That is absolutely one of the most huge compliments I've ever gotten. So, well, that's one of the things that I always look for in books like this, is something that I can just fall into and not have to overthink things. I want it to just be entertaining.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

That's what I'm aiming for, in a way. I see things in shades. Okay. And I do see there's an overlap between a storyteller and a novelist. And I drift more towards storyteller. I'm not writing a novel, I'm telling a story, and then I published it as a novel. It's the best way. And I see it the way you're describing it, your experience as you read it. That's actually my experience as I write it. Oh, well, that makes sense. I'm seeing it like that, and I see and feel my characters. Oh God, character interviews.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Now you had all of these experiences. You were in the military, you were an exchange student, you worked for see in Saudi Arabia, you worked for a hospital. Yes. It's like so how did you go through all of these to become a writer?

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Well, I've been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I mean, I actually the earliest I actually remember is third grade, because we lived in that house. And I would write in pencil on a black and white composition notebook my mom would bring me in bed under the covers at night by flashlight because I wasn't smoking away. And it was Bambi fanfic back then, right? But I I mean, I always have been writing. It wasn't until uh 2000 that I actually wrote a book. Because I never even tried because I didn't think I could. Yeah. It was so not, it was not in my worldview of things that I was capable of doing. It just it wasn't. So I didn't bother trying because that that was other people wrote books. Not me. I could I could write stories and stuff, but other people were finishing books. I wasn't one of them. So remember, this is way back 25 years ago. And there was this movie, you might know it. It's called You've Got Mail. Yeah. And I watched You've Got Mail, and I was driven by the ambition of joining AOL so that my computer could say you've got mail when I had mail. So back then you could get free trials of AOL everywhere. They were in the mail, they were in the stations, they were in the supermarkets, all for free.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

I used to have so many of those CDs, I used them as coasters.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

So anyway, so I did that, but when I got onto AOL, I discovered that there was a writing community, a community of writers, and everywhere from published authors, multi-published authors, famous multi-published authors, to people like me who never finished a book and never thought they could, and everywhere in between. And there were all these, and they were supportive, and there was this big community, and there were workshops and classes you could take. So I started taking them, Romance Writers of America, and I joined. And one of the things that RWH have to do for fundraising is to sponsor contests. So I researched contests, and I wanted to know if I was good enough. So I wasn't looking for the ones that had big prizes and awards and money or whatever it was. I was looking for ones where the judges offered feedback critiques. So I joined a couple. And so I get this letter back in the mail and I write it right there in the middle of the sheet of paper in big red letters. It said, congratulations. And I won the contest. Oh wow. It was a first chapter contest, just the first chapter and a synopsis. No, I didn't have a synopsis. Yeah. So I had hammered out a synopsis over like three days just out of nothing, and polished up the first chapter and sent it in. So but the award for having won it was that the winning manuscript got to be read by a senior acquiring editor at Silhouette, which Silhouette is gone now, but it was the uh New York branch of Harlequin. Yeah. And mostly it focused on um American romances as opposed to UK or European based. And it had a phone number. And I'm like, a phone number? Yeah, we're not supposed to call. We're not supposed to call editors, but they give me your phone number. So I picked up the phone and I called and I said, This is Allie McCormick. She's like, Oh yes, you won the contest. I got your manuscript right here, truck stop, right? And I'm just sitting there, I'm like, I didn't know what to say. I'm like, a senior acquiring editor, she knew my name. Yeah, she knew the name of my right there. And I I just so she said, you know, how much you have. So, well, I haven't finished it yet. She's like, Well, send me the first three chapters. I'm like, okay. Well, I didn't have three chapters written. I was expecting feedback from judges, right? Yeah. So I really sat down and went to work and I polished off three chapters. I wrote three chapters and I sent it off. And then that was done. And I'm like, oh, so I sat back to wait for the rejection because I mean, this is not how it works. You just don't get the press dot out the gate, right? So here comes the letter, and she wanted the full manuscript.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Wow. You had to just be absolutely beside yourself with all of that.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

I was beside myself. I I was, I'm like, oh my, I didn't I didn't know where the story was going. All I had was the three chapters. So I just put the pedal to the metal. And I just sat down at my computer and started typing, and I finished my manuscript. Now they didn't wind up taking it, but they wanted it. And the problem we had was that the heroine was 17 the first time that they had a love scene. And she actually called me and we sat on the phone. Well, her her assistant did, very lovely young woman. And we would sit and we kind of brainstorm if there was any way, but it was crucial to the plot. Now, 19 years later, I figured out actually a way to do that. But back in the time, we couldn't figure out a way to do it. And so they did wind up passing on it, but they had wanted it.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

So, anyhow, so that's and the first time you write the end, it's who needs drugs? I mean, that is that is a high all in and of itself. Uh it just, oh my god. You know, I called my mom and I'm like weeping down the phone, and then all of a sudden I started laughing. Like I was just like hysterical laughing. I finished my book. Now, have you ever published that first one? Yes. Truck stop, it is there. It is now the the new edition. In 2019, I figured out how to rework the plot so that she was legally adult at the time. So we we got past that. But yes, uh, that is still my first published book.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

How many books do you actually have in print right now? 14. Is Wishes in the Bottle your last one?

SPEAKER_03 20:52

No. That is the first in series of um The Magic of Witches and Dreams paranormal romance series. The last book is the seventh book in that series, which was Foxy Lady that I put out on Christmas Eve Day this class.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

So are you traditionally published or are you self-published? I'm self-published. What is the hardest part about that for you? Oh god, marketing. Actually, I have a question for you later that was when I say marketing, what comes to mind? Oh God, pain, panic.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Yeah, money, lots and lots and lots of money. Yeah. Um, but you know, it's when you're indie, unless you've got a lot of money floating around and can just hire somebody to do it all for you. And how many indie authors have that? Frankly, few of us have. It's all trial and error. Yeah. And you wind up spending a lot of money in that trial and error, too. Oh yeah. But but essentially over time, and you know, 14 books in, you know, I stopped not wasting my money. On things that don't work. See what works, see what doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, boom, goes off the spreadsheet. And once you actually get a decent following, that helps a lot. That helps a lot. That does. Of course, it depends on your definition of decent following, because that itself is relative.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Well, you know, I think there's so many authors that I know that they are self-published, but they've been doing it for a long time. They've got like 20-some books out. And by about the time they started hitting about 15, they started getting people who would buy their books consistently. No matter what they put out, they would buy the next book. And that was something they could count on as coming in.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

I've been told multiple times by various marketing gurus. Seven is the sweet spot.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

For somebody like me, where I have published seven books, but I did those under a male pen name, and they were just what I consider my practice books. I I never really intended for those books to be big sellers and to build a huge audience. That was me trying to figure it all out.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

Right. So kind of like no harm, no foul. Yes, exactly. And you can use those as reader magnets.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah, and that's that's what they're going to be. Now that I'm getting ready to start doing stuff under my own name and actually publicizing things, now that's gonna be it's like, hey, you get to read this whole first series for free if you join this mailing list and things like that. There you go. Bonus content. But you've got those marketing tools now. Yeah, exactly. Why don't you go ahead and give us a synopsis of wishes in a bottle?

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Of wishes in a bottle. In Genoa, Italy, in the 14th century, the Black Plague arrived from the Crimea, which is the southern peninsula of the Ukraine in the Black Sea. And merchant vessels came and they brought the Black Plague, and people were just dropping over dead in the streets. Well, we all know about the Black Plague, right? Not pretty. So a young mage, he was an apprentice mage with an imperfect grasp on spells and incantations and so forth. Uh, he just he was desperate to help, to do something. So he cast a powerful spell to be able to help people. The spell goes spectacularly awry, leaving Julian enslaved to a gin bottle bound to grant three wishes to the master of the bottle until his spell can be broken. Alessandra Taylor is a young woman who's followed her calling to help others in the face of vociferous disapproval from her family. She's thrilled to meet the mysterious and elusive Julian DiConti, who owns an antique store in Manhattan. Plus, he has a collection of garments from third world countries that has been traveling around the country as a display, and it's providing funding for domestic abuse shelters in each of the cities where the collection is shown. And then suddenly he disappears, and she's up in her attic going through some old things and comes across this antique, very fragile-looking blowing-glass perfume bottle. And Julian is in it, and she has become the master of his bottle. And once she realizes what's happening, there is a way I could be free from the bottle. But I can't tell you how. Whether or not he was an alchemist is in doubt. But if you look up Nicholas Flamel, it's going to say he was a medieval alchemist. But the actual in my world and the actual djinn of folklore are not bound to their bottles. They actually become wishbearers of their own accord because they want to go out and make people's lives better. And so they choose to do it.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

That's interesting because every story that I've ever heard from other people about jinn was they were tricksters.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Well, they are. Well, I mean, anything you read about jinn, they are mischievous and they can be deceitful and cunning, but that doesn't necessarily mean evil. Yeah. Now, if you go according to the Quranic lore, because the pre-Islamic folklore is there, and they they were from pre-Islamic folklore, Arabian folklore, but also the the Quran addresses the jinn at length. But angels were made from light, and they are perfect beings, and their creation was for them to do God's will. No more, no less. The jinn were created from fire and also given free will. So the jinn, as with man, okay, they can be good or they can be bad. It then goes on at great length about the evil jinn. Well, he's mostly there telling you about the things that the bad jinn can do. Which is fair because you got a powerful magical being, and if one goes bad, you know, they can really stir things up, right? Think of Jafar, right? Yeah. But this is why the jinn have a council and they have elders and they protect the mundane world and even the jinn world from jinn who would be evil. Like their own police force. Yeah, their own police force.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Exactly. So now seems like a good time to do our five quick questions that never turn out to be quick, but it's just too interesting to stop doing it. Are you ready? Okay. Since you have lived in so many places around the world, what was your favorite place you have lived?

SPEAKER_03 29:21

I I really loved Saudi Arabia. And I always saw Cairo as my stepping stone. But Cairo, Cairo. Cairo has the the Nile and the horse carriages with the bells and the peanuts and the little kids settling the jasmine necklaces and the pyramids and the camels and yeah, Cairo.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Well, the way that you just say Cairo, I mean, you have a quality to your voice when you say Cairo compared to other things. I would go back in a hot minute if I could.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Yeah, I I just yeah, I miss it.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

So now I also know that you have lived in several places around the United States. So question two what is your favorite place in the United States where you have lived? Oh well, that was quick. Tucson.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Never any question. That is my second favorite place in the whole world is Tucson. I love Tucson. And yes, it gets high heat. And if people who don't know the difference don't understand you, you have to have been in both places. You have to have been in Florida, and you have to have been in Tucson.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

My sister lives in Florida. I understand that horrible humid heat.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Yeah, me too. But they it that's not what it's like in in Tucson. It's actually bracing. It is very hot, but it's like in a soft warm flower tortilla.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

You know, and I'm I'm fine with that. I can handle the heat. I hate the cold. I hate being cold. Because my body temperature has always run two degrees below normal. I've always been that way. Ever since I was a kid. My pediatrician used to tease me that my body was dyslexic because it was always 96.8 instead of 98.6. So I can handle high heat temperatures, but I cannot stand the cold. Question three. Okay. What is a country that you have not seen yet that is on your bucket list? Romania. Ooh, that would be interesting. The history would there would be fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Uh yeah, I want I want to see the Carpathian Mountains. Oh, yeah. Because I'm a huge Christine Feehan fan. Yeah. And her her dark series is, you know, the Carpathians. I would love to see that. But also, that's the home of Vlad the Inveiler. And I did a 16th-century vampire romance trilogy. And I had some of my vampires were from Romania. And one was from the Black Sea, one was from Mongolia, and one was from Russia. Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

I actually read somewhere that you can stay in Vlad's Castle. I would love to do that.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Yeah. I should think it would be expensive though. And booked way out in advance. I'm not sure I'd want to actually Dracula the book. The original. And I I didn't like it. Really? I found it interesting. I never finished it. I just couldn't get into it. It's possible that I just had different expectations.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Question four. Okay. I already know the answer to this, but are you a dog or a cat person? Oh yeah. And how many cats do you actually have right now?

SPEAKER_03 32:56

I have two, and my daughters and son-in-law have one.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

And we have a dog. Now, what's the most that you've ever had at one time?

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Eight.

unknown 33:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

So I was I was a foster mom. Uh-huh. I had two cats and I had three fosters. And I got a call from a breeder that I knew of Maine Coon Cats. And she said there was this really horrible breeder. And the ASPCA was closing them down. They had all these cats that had never been outside their cages. Oh God. Never been socialized. Socializing cats was is my big thing as when I was doing flostering. I'm really good at it, she said monestly. Anyway so I said, okay, yeah, I take one. They brought me three. So I had eight cats, and these these cats were terrified. Absolutely terrified. They were even too terrified to hiss. Oh wow. Or fight. They were just they disappeared into my closet and would never come out. And I I let them. I wasn't gonna fight outside my closet door. And I put their food and water outside my closet door in my bedroom. Yeah. And just let them be. And then several times a day I would just go in the closet and close the door out and pet whoever I could feel. And one day I was petting this cat, and I didn't know who it was. And because it was dark in there. But they had stopped being all trembly and stuff and seemed to like being petted. Okay, I've taken that as a win. Yeah. And all of a sudden, this cat he lunges at me. I was just thinking, I thought we got past this point. And he lands on my chest and and he wraps his paws around my neck and he shoves his head against my cheek. And I realize he's purring. I just he just realized he was safe with me, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Yeah, that had to be absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

Yeah, that was that was special. Aku, his name is Aku. That was so anyway, what were we cats? Yes. So that's why I had eight cats.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

I love main coons, but I cannot bring myself to buy any animals from breeders. I I I can't.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

No, I have I haven't done. But I did get into a a close friendship with a breeder, and she actually gave me one of her retired showcats. She wasn't cooperating at shows. She couldn't show her. She was taking swipes of the judges with her claws out. So she gave her to me because what else is she gonna do with it? Mainecoons are very popular, and you can frequently adopt Maine Coon mixes from the shelters.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Yeah, and I'm fine with a mix. I just I love the way they look, they're so cool. Yeah, I know, right? Okay, your last question in your five quick questions. Okay, yes, ma'am. Who is your favorite author that you would love to meet someday?

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Elise Noble. She writes uh romantic suspense. She's a UK-based author, and she has got the most amazing books out. I bought them for my daughter, I bought them for my mother, and they're they're very strong female leads. They're in fact, the the main character who starts off the series is a female assassin, but they're hired to take out the bad guys. So they have like government contracts and stuff. But they're not only fun to read, they don't go in for the gore and the 15-fight scenes and all that, and they're funny. They're funny too. I mean, I'm laughing and I have to read them in my bedroom with my door shutter or wake up the house if it's the middle of the night. And they're just they're a delight to read. That is a great endorsement for her. I would love to meet her because a lot of times I'm reading this thinking, oh my god, I wish I could write like her. Well, kind of no, I don't, because I write romance and I would totally like at the combat parts, but how does she know all this? How does she pull all this together? It's just amazing to me. That's very cool.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Okay, I'm fangirling, so but I think that's one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that so many authors are also in awe of other authors that they have like two or three authors that they would just absolutely kill to sit down and get a chance to just talk to them about okay, how do you do this? What is your process? You know, and oh yeah, all of the people who just read books have these thoughts about the authors that they love, but then so do the authors. The authors who read books, who is pretty much all of the authors. Yes. You know, we have the same thing. We fangirl so hard about everybody else. There was one author that I just interviewed last year that I had been working for like a year to get this woman on my podcast. She was the season finale. It was Tusca Lee. And I just absolutely love her work. She's got this fantastic style. And I was just trying so hard not to fangirl on her during the entire interview. Absolutely. I can see how that would be tricky. But I think that's one thing that everybody needs to know. Every author that you admire, they have authors that they admire the same way that you you admire them. That is so. Now let's be sure and tell everybody again what is your name and where they can find you and your books.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

I am Alan McCormack, and my books are all on Amazon in ebook and paperback and heartbound. Or you could find me at alanmacormack.com.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

And we're going to have links to your books and your website in the description of today's podcast and in all of our promotional information so that people can find you very easily. This has been absolutely fantastic. You were delightful.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

Well, thank you. I'm I was actually really thrilled that you chose to do an interview with me.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

I just love the whole idea of the Wishes and Dreams series that you have because it's it's so different than a lot of the other romance authors that I've been talking to. I love the whole aspect of the different kinds of magic and wishes and things that you have throughout the series. I think it'll be a great contribution to the whole mix of the romance that we've got going on for our love fest for the opening this season. Well, I hope so. Now, people just need to go to your website and check you out and then buy your books. There you go. Thank you so much for doing this with me today. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 39:53

I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

So there you have it, folks. My incredible interview with the amazing Allie McCormick. If you like paranormal romance, be sure to go to her website and check out all of the series that she has. She has contemporary, she has paranormal, she has so much that you can choose from. So be sure to go check her out. If you love romance authors, you may have just found your new favorite author. If you've listened to the first two podcasts this season, you know I have not been talking that much. Not my usual self anyway, and that's because the end of January, I got a fantastic case of flu. It was a horrible respiratory thing, and I could not talk for any amount of time without coughing my head off, so I wasn't doing a lot of that. I'm starting to feel a little bit better now and getting back into the swing of things, but one of the bad things about being a sole proprietor is that when you go down, so does your business. And I have not been keeping up with the advertising for the opening episodes of season four the way that I had planned. So I'm gonna be doing a little bit of backtracking and throwing out a lot more advertising coming up here in the next few weeks. But the great thing about these podcasts is once they go live, they stay live. So we can advertise them at any point and bring new listeners back to the episodes that are already streaming. So if you haven't checked out the first two episodes from this season, be sure to go back and do that because we've already had two fantastic authors that you will not want to miss. And I plan to keep up with it a little bit better from now on that I'm starting to feel human again. Now, I have been wrestling with the idea that even though I did kill off Bookbanter magazine, I am toying with the idea of having a year-in book buying guide like I do every year with all of the authors that I've spoken to for the whole season. So instead of doing a magazine every two months, I'm just gonna be doing one a year. And I would still like to do a full spread on the Frankfurter Bookmesa and go check out all kinds of authors there and the representatives that are at the book mesa for different publishing houses, everybody that I can possibly find to talk to about books. So let me know in comments or send me an email to contact at burkhartbooks.com and let me know what you think about that. Let me know if you would like to see a year-in book buying guide, just one magazine every year that covers every author that we talk to. Because I think this is something that would be very doable, and I want to get that extra coverage for people who aren't able to listen to a podcast. Since we don't have a video aspect and we can't put closed captioning on an audio-only soundtrack, that would be a way to keep reaching other audiences. So let me know what you think. And next week I will be bringing you my interview with Karen Essex. She has a great duology about Cleopatra. The first book in this pairing is called Cleopatra, Book One, The Early Years, and the book that we spend most of our time talking about is Pharaoh, Book Two of Cleopatra. If you love romance, why not read one about one of the greatest love stories of all time? Now, she does not just have these two books. She has written a wide variety of books, and I'm sure everyone can find something that they would enjoy reading from her catalog. Okay, all this talking is starting to set off more coughing, so I think it's time for me to stop. So be sure and check back with us next week when we are talking with Karen Essex, and for every other romance author we've got coming up through March for the rest of Love Fest. And after that, we've got so many more authors coming to you for this season. We're almost completely booked, and we're not even through the first month yet. It's amazing how fast a season can go whenever you're booking fantastic authors to bring to all of you. But now you know what time it is, folks. It's time for you all to go forth, find a good book to read, and be really happy!