Interview with Donan Berg

Published 2015-08-21.
How do you approach cover design?
First consideration is to have it jibe with the story. Second, highlight an interesting aspect.
What do you read for pleasure?
Books selected by a contemporary and a mystery book club top the list. After those is a collection of whatever others suggest.
What is your e-reading device of choice?
Have no preference.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
Born in Ireland, raised in small Midwestern United States community. Travelled to metropolitan cities for employer. The contracts and similarities of all environments plus travel have shown how much people are similar in desires and goals.
When did you first start writing?
Can't remember. However, recall my second grade teacher and her cursive lessons.
What's the story behind your latest book?
One Paper Heart came about after several winning entries in the New Orleans Dixie Kane Memorial Writing Contest. One Paper Heart was never an entry. It started out years ago as an exercise in character writing. A New York publisher liked the first three chapters and requested a full manuscript. That did not turn out well. The characters kept pulling me back. I'm glad they did.
What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
The writing itself and the interaction with readers. Members of two book clubs are both insightful and compassionate.
What are you working on next?
A mystery. Sheriff Jonas McHugh of Baby Bones investigates a new murder. Chapter one is excerpted in One Paper Heart.
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yes. A Body To Bones.
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Latest books by This Author

All's Forgiven
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 102,380. Language: English. Published: September 9, 2023 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Amateur sleuth, Fiction » Women's fiction » General
Unmarried, 32-year-old Jenny Olsen is injured when her niece is killed in a hit-and-run. Spats with her sister, unyielding mother, and miserly uncle spiral. Her mother is kidnapped for ransom. New romantic relationships stagnate. Weird events and eerie meetings with strangers don't quell her anxiety. Her life is beginning to spiral . . .
Lucia's Fantasy World
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 70,980. Language: English. Published: May 17, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Historical
Lucia draws upon her talents in a quest to a distant land that existed centuries ago to save her friend, Johnny. She faces a witch and mythical creatures to find a magical box, the contents of which, required to save her friend, she can't transport back to her everyday world. Or, can she?
Find the Girl
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 50,230. Language: English. Published: July 5, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Paranormal, Fiction » Fantasy » Contemporary
Seventh-grader Eta Dorcas captures a weasel in an Iowa cave. The weasel speaks. Eta's fingertips glow blue and she dares not tell Dad, Grandma, sister Daria, nor brother Nathan. Ian, a seventeen-year-old sailor in the 1800s, is cursed to live as a 21st Century weasel unless he collects the silver, gold, and pearl spelled out by an anagram, 'Find the Girl.' The adventure adds time travel intrigue.
A Body To Bones
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 85,270. Language: English. Published: September 22, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Amateur sleuth, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Psychological thriller
Village gossip, missing diverted church money, unexplained lights and footprints, tension, and unfulfilled dreams are a prelude to real life-threatening peril when Sarah Hamilton finds out the skeleton's killer still resides in her town, ready to kill again. And, she is the killer's target. "A winning plot . . . " Kirkus Discoveries.
Aria's Bayou Child
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 73,410. Language: English. Published: August 11, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Psychological thriller
Aria Gleason learns no motherless child flourishes and no mother's journey embraces sanity until she breaks the chains of false imprisonment and hugs a beating heart to her breast. Inspired by true events. Aria is a young mother whose travails and triumph is richly drawn in a world of derring-do that unfolds a dastardly scheme. Be mesmerized by Author Donan Berg, a Gold Award writing winner.
Into the Dark
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 104,690. Language: English. Published: July 22, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Police Procedural, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Crime thriller
Sheriff Jonas McHugh discovers thousands in cash in a remote northwest Iowa cabin. Suspicious enough, but more so when a campaign manager for an Iowa Caucus presidential candidate is found murdered outside a nearby cave. In the stillness of the dark, one threat percolates. Time is limited before a promised bomb explodes.
Alexa's Gold
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 93,770. Language: American English. Published: April 11, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Romance » Suspense, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
Mystery, Romance, Thrills. Fall in love with Alexa's inheritance journey to find Grandpa's gold, guided by Grandma's apple cake recipe clue. Filled with suspense, humor, romance, and family drama. Fast-moving plot, wonderful characters, setting, and dialogue. Multiple weeks as most popular novel at AuthorsDen.com.
One Paper Heart
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 87,360. Language: American English. Published: August 29, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Romance » New adult, Fiction » Women's fiction » General
Alicia Danielson's innocent idea to paste a paper heart on her manuscript backfires in this Gold/ Award1st Place romance. Acquistions Editor Randall Van Gilleran spies the paper heart and threatens to trash the story not knowing its Alicia's, written under pen name Lady Victoria Dash. Alicia deceit spirals her fantasy world into a reality romance complete with mystery, heartbreak and redemption.
The Bones Dance Foxtrot
Price: $3.49 USD. Words: 95,860. Language: American English. Published: December 10, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Cozy, Fiction » Romance » Contemporary
Entertaining Mystery, Heartwarming Romance by Gold Medal, First Place Romance author Donan Berg. "... clues eventually fit together in clear and significant ways … dramatic tension builds around which woman Jake will pursue..." National reviewer. Police find a dead body in Jake's parked eighteen-wheeler. He later finds a second corpse. Would it matter if he is first jailed or later killed?
Amanda
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 7,180. Language: English. Published: February 5, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Women's fiction » General, Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Psychological thriller
Amanda let fester her husband's thirty-plus year refusal to quit smoking and his verbal slights and wandering eyes. Then, one day, she snapped, her plot to kill husband Herbert born. It's execution so devious and skillful, Amanda would escape jail. The freedom she earned wasn't exactly as she had hoped.
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