Episode 012: M.L. Bullock - A Navy Life Of Phantasms And Island Dreams

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BOOKS MENTIONED:
- The Seven Sisters series
​- The Ghost Lights Of Forrest Field
​- Meg
​- The Mists Of Avalon
​- Moonlight Falls
​
Visit M.L. Bullock at mlbullock.com 

FULL TRANSCRIPT
​
C. G. Cooper:
Welcome to Books In 30 with me C. G. Cooper. Here at Books In 30, we discuss great books with some of today's top authors. Welcome to our listeners and a big Books In 30 welcome to today's guest, M.L. Bullock, also known as Monica. She is the author of the bestselling Seven Sisters series. M.L. Bullock has been storytelling since she was a child. Born in Antigua, British West Indies, she has had a lifelong love affair with beaches and island life. She currently lives on the Gulf Coast and regularly haunts her favorite hangout, Dauphin Island. A visit to historic Oakleigh House in Mobile, Alabama [http://www.historicoakleigh.com] inspired her successful supernatural suspense Seven Sisters series. She'll be releasing Halloween Screams: A Halloween Horror Short Story Collection on October 30th and The Ghost Lights of Forrest Field: Book Six in the Gulf Coast Paranormal series on November 15th. Welcome, Monica. How you doing today?
 
M.L. Bullock:
I'm great. I am great.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You're saying it's a little chilly right now down there, huh?
 
M.L. Bullock:
It is. It's not usually this chilly this early in the year. Well, I guess early in the fall season. We usually don't get cold until like December, January, but it's actually chilly so I'm kind of liking it.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Yeah, I know. It was 85 here last week but I think it was 32 this morning in Nashville so it's kind of a shock.
 
M.L. Bullock:
That's crazy.
 
C. G. Cooper:
But I like it. It's good for golf and it's good for the weather. Well, great. Well, welcome, welcome. Would you like to expand a little bit on your bio, tell the listeners a little bit about you and how you started writing?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Oh, yeah. I know that's a very short bio. I have been meaning to add some stuff to that but it's just so many things. Well, I started writing fiction novels in 2014. I actually did some ghost writing and I enjoyed it but I got tired of seeing the books that I wrote and co-wrote climbing up the Amazon ranks and I'm like, "I wrote that book." I said, "You know what? I can actually probably do this myself." I started writing the stories that I liked which were ghost stories. From there, I just fell in love with the genre. I fell in love with writing this series. I just love it. Now, I sit down five days a week in my chair and try to write some words and tell some more ghost stories.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Awesome. Well, I love ghost stories. It's funny. I just gave my daughter a book that I read when I was a kid and it was one of the very first books that an English teacher gave me that made me love reading. It's the traveler something. It was a story about a kid that meets ghosts from back in the day. It's so funny. I haven't read ghost stories in a while but I'm going to have to check out yours because that was one of the first things that I loved.
 
 
What I really want to hear about right now is Antigua. You were born there. Did you actually spend time there or was it quickly to the US after that?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Well, no. I was there for several years. My dad was a Navy SEAL. He used to do demolition diving. They practiced and did different things off of the coast there in Antigua. I was born there. We lived there for years and we always lived around beaches and islands. We lived in Bermuda. We lived along the Florida Coast for a while. Then Norfolk, Virginia. Any coast, we were there. I've always grown up around islands. I love Antigua. I still remember it. I want to go back there one day. I was glad to see that the latest hurricane didn’t blow it away so that was really great.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You know what? We're actually going on a trip after Christmas taking the kids on their first cruise. Somehow every island we're supposed to go to did not get hit. Thank goodness. One of our favorites, Turks and Caicos, got hit pretty hard. Hopefully they're doing better down there. Navy SEAL, my readers will love that because that's what I write. I grew up in a Navy family as well so I totally get it. Every two years, I was somewhere new. I'd assume it was probably even more for you. Isn't that right?
 
M.L. Bullock:
It was a lot. Yes. I got to see all these different places and I fell in love with different houses. My sister and I were convinced we were haunted in different places. It's just an adventure. I know a lot of kids don't like the Navy life but I loved it. I loved every minute of it.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Yeah, I was the same way. I think a lot of it, and you'll probably agree, has to do with your parents. My parents, especially my mother, always set it up as an adventure. If we were moving to California, let's say, which we lived there four or five times, "Okay. We're going to get to Disneyland." Or, we're going to Japan. We're going to get to go do this fun thing. Like you said, it was always an adventure and I have fond memories. It was tough going to new schools and making new friends, but after a while you kind of get used to it.
 
M.L. Bullock:
You really do. I was such an avid reader and I was in my own world most of the time anyway. I loved it. There was probably some down sides. School was definitely one. But it was an adventure, like you say. You can't help but feel adventurous.
 
C. G. Cooper:
I know. I know. I bet the same as me. I feel like those adventures gave me a lot to write about.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Right. Absolutely.
 
C. G. Cooper:
We need as much as we can get. Well, alright. Let's get down to it. The listeners want to know, and I want to know, a book that you're currently reading or one that you finished that just really excited you, blew you away.

M.L. Bullock:
Well, I read it before but I'm rereading it now. It's MEG by Steve Alten. Have you heard of that? Are you familiar?
 
C. G. Cooper:
I think so. I haven't read it but I've heard of it. Tell us a little bit about it.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Well, I'm a huge Jaws fan. I love it. I grew up in that time. I remember the hoopla of Jaws. I love Jaws. I have all the movies. I have posters. This was along those lines and it's about this guy named Jonas that, believe it or not, he's a Navy diver. Wow. I just put that two together. But, anyway, he's put in this precarious position. It starts off in this sub, little, mini sub and he's exploring and doing some things for the Navy. They break through this layer of heat and this ... I can't think of the name of the place. When they get below, there are creatures there that have lived and survived under this environment and one of those is the megalodon which is short for meg or the meg is short for megalodon.
 

It seems unbelievable. I've seen the shark movies, the fake shark movies on Discovery but this book is really convincing. I like it that the guy is just ... You feel the character. It's got a character story but it's also a monster story and I like that. I like good monster stories.
 
C. G. Cooper:
That's awesome. Is it kind of Michael Crichton-ish or is it more Jaws-ish?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Wow, that's a great question. I guess Steve Alten described it best. He calls it Jurassic Jaws.
 
C. G. Cooper:
There you go.
 
M.L. Bullock:
It's pretty good. It's epic Jaws. I like it. If you're a Jaws fan, I think Jaws 1, Jaws 2 were the best. I actually have Peter Benchley's, one of his books signed. I'm a huge fan of Benchley's too but I think Alten did an excellent job. He just did an excellent job and there's some follow-ups to this I didn't know about. I'm going to read those.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Very cool. Meg by Steve Alten. All right, listeners. Make sure you check that out, especially if you ... Let me ask. You say you loved Jaws growing up. Were you freaked out by it like me or were you intrigued? Were you just toughened up because your dad was a SEAL anyway?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Well, we grew up with the mantra if you see a shark in the water, get out. Even lemon sharks or nurse sharks, even if it was docile usually, a shark is a shark. It's always going to be a shark. Get out of the water if you see a shark. Most of the time, the places we were like in the Bahamas and Bermuda, you could see in the water. It wasn't until I moved to the Gulf Coast that you're swimming in brown, dark green water that you can't see in. I have a little more trepidation now because I can't see what I'm swimming in. I'm not really throwing the kids out into the water. Growing up, you think about it but you don’t ... It doesn’t keep you out of the water.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You haven't seen any megalodons down there though, right?
 
M.L. Bullock:
No, just some hammerheads and some blacktips but no megalodons. No.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Good. Hopefully you'll stay away from those. Alright. Well, let's move on to your favorite book of all time and this is always a loaded question, especially for writers because we read so much. Do you have one that just stands out for you that you've read a thousand times or just your favorite book?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yes. My favorite book, and I could say this without question, is The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. That is the most amazing book. I've read that book over and over again hoping the ending would change. I love that book. I just loved it.
 
I was a huge Arthurian legend fan in my early 20s. I read everything. Stephen Lawhead's, it was at the time The Pendragon trilogy. Now I think there's like five or six books in it. But I read all of his books. I read all the old Le Morte d'Arthur. I read everything I could get my hands on but that was the most fulfilling Arthurian legend story and I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved it. I would read that every year. I just love it.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Do you really? See, this is the thing I love about this show. The only thing you guys know about and that I know about are the questions that we're going to be asking, but I have no idea what book you're going to bring up and I have not read The Mists of Avalon. It's on my long list but Arthurian legend is just ... It's one of those things that I grew up with and still to this day ... I haven't seen the newest movie but all the others I've seen, I've read so much about. To me, it's that perfect myth. There's love. There's brotherhood. There's magic. Everything rolled into one. To me, it's like the perfect story.
 
M.L. Bullock:
It is the epic story. I mean it is an epic story. The way she tells the story ... I love Excalibur for the movie standard for this. I'm sorry. I'm glad they're retouching the legend. I'm glad that they're introducing a new generation to Arthurian legend but Excalibur is the standard, the movie. It's just amazing. The Mists of Avalon, she really brings depth to the angst between Guinevere and Morgan le Fay or Morgana. She really brings depth to why she's the way she is and the betrayal between the sister and the brother that Morgan and Arthur had and the love of Lancelot, not just for Guinevere, but he also loved Arthur. I'm betraying my brother but I can't help myself. Just the depth of this. It's almost as if they were under a spell in this book. Just got a lot of magic in the story.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You convinced me. Now I'm going to have to download that on Audible and listen to it.
 
M.L. Bullock:
You will not be disappointed. It is one of the most amazing stories. I love it.
 
C. G. Cooper:
That is so cool. See, again, one of the surprising things about this show is, all of a sudden, something from my youth comes up. I can see the cover of that book because I've looked at it so many times. Thank you for sharing that. That is fantastic.
 
M.L. Bullock:
You're welcome.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Alright. Well, let's talk a little bit about your own work. Would you like to read a snippet? Did you happen to bring some along?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yes. I have something right here. This is going to be from my Seven Sisters book. There are actually six books in the series and this is from the first book. Just a little backstory, it's about a historian that dreams about the past. Her name is Carrie Jo and she's renovating this house called Seven Sisters. It's a plantation in the South. As she's renovating it, there's some mysteries that come up. She finds clues to these mysteries through some dreams that she has and she discovers what happens to this heiress that's gone missing. There are ghosts in the story that are confronting her and trying to stop her from uncovering the truth. This is a dream, one of the dreams she had, and the dream is from the point of view of one of my villains. I absolutely love one of the villains in this story. It's crazy. I love the villains as much as the heroes.
 
C. G. Cooper:
I feel you.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Here's the snippet:
 
A smile crept across my face when I turned back to look at the pale faces watching me from behind the lace curtains of the girls’ dormitory. I didn't feel sorry for any of them. All of those girls hated me. They thought they were my betters because they were orphans and I was merely the accidental result of my wealthy mother's indiscretion. I couldn't understand why they felt that way. As I told Marie Betancourt, at least my parents were alive and wealthy. Hers were dead in the cold, cold ground, worm food now, I suppose. Her big dark eyes were swollen with tears. Her ugly, fat face contorting as she cried. Mrs. Bedford scolded me for my remarks. But, even that did not worry me. I had a tool much more effective than Mrs. Bedford's threats of letters to the attorney who distributed my allowance or a day without meal.
 
Mr. Bedford would defend me for a price. I would have to kiss his thin, dry lips and pretend that he didn't peek at my décolletage a little too long. Once he even squeezed my bosom ever so quickly with his rough hands but then pretended it had all been an accident. Mr. Bedford never had the courage to lift up my skirt or ask me if for a discreet favor as my previous chaperon had called it but I enjoyed making him stare. It had been great fun for a month or two until I saw how easily he could be manipulated.
 
Now, my rescuer had come at last, a man, Louie Beaumont, who claimed to be my mother's brother. I never met my mother Olivia, not that I could remember anyway and I assumed I never would. Louie Beaumont towered above most men, as tall as an otherworldly prince. He had beautiful blond hair that I wanted to plunge my hands into. It looked like the down of a baby duckling. He had fair skin, so light it almost glowed with pleasant features, even brows, thick lashes and a manly mouth. It was a shame he was so near of kin because I would have no objections in whispering in his hear. Although I'd very much doubted Uncle Louie would have indulged my fantasy. How I love to kiss and to kiss one so beautiful.
 
That's my villain.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Awesome.
 
M.L. Bullock:
She is warped. She is warped as she wreaks havoc on this family but she is an amazing ghost in my story.
 
C. G. Cooper:
How old is she in the story?
 
M.L. Bullock:
I think she is 17.
 
C. G. Cooper:
She's precocious enough, right?
 
M.L. Bullock:
She is precocious. My story is set in the 1800s, Seven Sisters. The ghosts that lived there, lived there between the years of 1830 and 1850. She comes from privileged family but she's a cast off. She's brought back into the family after sometime but the damage has been done. She is just this great villain. I probably could have picked a better snippet. It sounds like it's a terrible, dirty book but it's really not. It's just a picture of why this character is the way she is.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Yeah, I know. That gives a good picture of exactly how calculating she is. Every little detail of her relationship with those men definitely shows where you're coming from with the story. Which book is that so that listeners can get it?
 
M.L. Bullock:
That is Seven Sisters and it's actually free on Amazon. That first book is free and then there's the next one which is Moonlight Falls. All of the rest of the books are 2.99, but they're in Kindle Unlimited. If you have that, you can get that.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Fantastic. Yeah, I'm a Kindle Unlimited member because I go through a lot of books.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Me, too.
 
C. G. Cooper:
It's so easy. You get on there and okay what's next? Return that one. Turn another one in or get another one. I love it. Well, cool. Let's move onto the speed round. I might add a couple more questions in here because we've got a little extra time. I know you said you don't mind riffing a little bit so that I'll move on. Alright. Number one, what is your favorite thing about being an author?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Storytelling. Storytelling, that's my favorite part. Telling a story.
 
C. G. Cooper:
How did you start storytelling? When was the first time that you're like, "Okay. This is something that interest me. This is something that I could be good at."
 
M.L. Bullock:
Well, actually I started writing stories when I was probably in middle school. I hated the endings of The Scooby-Doo Show so I would go write those.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Did you really?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yeah. I would rewrite those because there was always a fake monster and I wanted there to be a real monster, a real ghost and so I would rewrite those.
 
C. G. Cooper:
That's awesome. It's funny thinking about that because I watched Scooby-Doo growing up, too. I guess one of the things ... It was always Mr. Mortimer or whoever the caretaker was. Having a real monster would have been pretty good but I guess it would have been scary on some levels for kids.
 
Was there something in your ... I'm not trying to go too deep in this. I'm just wondering. You write ghost stories and you enjoy monsters. Is there something that started all that? You love those stories. You say you love Jaws. You love that kind of tale. What started it all?
 
M.L. Bullock:
We moved to a place for a time. My dad, he got out of the water and actually did some recruiting for the Navy. We were stationed in Ohio and we lived in a small town called Mount Perry and they bought this amazing two-story house and the place was haunted. My sister and I shared a room. We had twin beds on opposite side of the room. Upstairs and every night when we're almost asleep, my mom would yell up and say, "Quit running across the floor." No one was running across the floor. We'd hear footsteps coming up the stairs. We had all kinds of things happen in that house. I started reading on this genre at that age in school because I wanted to know what was going on. I started believing in ghosts then and I've just loved that ever since.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Oh, I'm so glad I asked that. I'm so glad I did. See, that just adds a whole other level of intrigue and makes people want to read what you write because you've got some actual insight into it. Thank you for sharing that. Spooky two-story house. Well, cool, spooky, two-story house. Number two, what is the best advice you've ever received?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Don't limit yourself. That is the best advice you can give any writer when it comes to any subject in writing. Don't limit yourself on your word count. Don't limit yourself on how many books you can write. Don't limit yourself on how much time you can devote to writing. Just don't limit yourself. There's a whole big author community which is great on one hand but on the other hand everybody wants you to be in their wheelhouse. They want you to fit into their paradigm. Don't do that. Just write as many words as you want. Be yourself and just don't have limits.
 
C. G. Cooper:
I love that. I love that. Am I assuming correctly that maybe your parents had something to do with that attitude?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Oh, yeah. Of course so. Yeah, my dad was definitely like that. Yeah. Definitely.
 
C. G. Cooper:
I think it's a military family thing. My dad was in the Navy and my grandfather was a Marine and then I was in the Marine Corps and the “never quit, question everything, authority isn't always right, do what you want to do as long as it's the right thing.” It pervades that society, don't you think?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Absolutely. It's in you whether you know it or not. Being excellent. This idea that military people can't think independently. We do think independently, but we all work towards the same goal.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Yeah. We love being a part of a team, too, right?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Absolutely. Love it.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Very cool. Alright. Well, what's one piece of technology you could not live without?
 
M.L. Bullock:
As in like equipment or software?
 
C. G. Cooper:
What's something that you use maybe everyday? Like for me, it's probably my iPhone.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yeah. Probably me, too, because I have Dragon Anywhere and I love that. Probably my smartphone, my iPhone and I love my headphones and I can dictate and keep notes and whatnot. I love that.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Awesome. I'm a dictation guy, too. I actually use a program or a company called Rev, rev.com, that's fantastic.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Cool.
 
C. G. Cooper:
I think I've dictated ... Do you actually dictate novels or do you dictate notes?
 
M.L. Bullock:
I dictate scenes but the large part of my writing is keyboard.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Got it.
 
M.L. Bullock:
When I'm on a roll and I know the scene needs to be here, I'll just talk it into the phone or talk it into my Dragon software. I would check out Rev now. I have such an accent that software is not a great tool for me usually.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You know what? I think you just have enough accent, especially where you live and what you write. I think it's perfect for that. Alright. Well, last speed round question and this is another loaded one possibly or it could be really easy. Who do you look up to?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Oh, wow. That is a tough question. I look up to ... I really don't know. That's crazy, isn't it? I look up to people that are pushing the boundaries so I guess Chris Fox would come up. He's a boundaries pushing guy. I guess Chris Fox. Of course, like everybody else, Amanda [Hocking]. I would look up to her because she writes so much. She's so prolific and I admire that. I look up to even the guys that are starting out though, anyone that's willing to risk some of their self and put it in a book, I look up to them.
 
C. G. Cooper:
That's a really good point. It's not easy being in the public domain sometimes. We were talking about reviews a few minutes ago before we got on the call. Reviews can be brutal. People can say whatever they want about us. It takes a lot of courage I think to stand up and say I'm going to post my stuff online and say anybody can read it. How has that journey been for you from starting to developing as an author?
 
M.L. Bullock:
Well, like I told you offline or off air, I should have been smarter and come up with a pseudonym so I could hide from the public but I'm kind of glad in a way, I guess, that I haven't done that. I have an amazing Facebook group who will tell me ... They'll me things that I respect. They're not driven by one star people. They'll say, "I really love your series but what happened in this storyline?" They'll me ask questions. They're engaged. I don't mind hearing the criticism from my engaged readers. I don't take to heart criticism for people that are not engaged with me and just stopped by to leave me a bad review. That's just not me. I am not someone that likes to hear ...
 
When I first started writing, I got this really long rambling email from another writer who I will not name who wrote me to correct me. “You don't write series. That's a serial.” Well, that's probably true but I don't know you. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just writing stories. I'm not really good at it as far as the naming and stuff but you try to not listen to those things and listen to the voices that matter and that's my Facebook group, my author group. I love those people. I trust them. They don't always give me five stars. They're like, "Eh." But I respect them because I know that they've been with me on this journey and I can trust them.

C. G. Cooper:
That's awesome. It's that community that you can go to when you need help and that they'll give you that constructive criticism, like you said.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
 
C. G. Cooper:
You'd probably echo me on this that if you are a new writer that's listening to this, build that community with great people as soon as you can because, man, I now I couldn't do it without mine.
 
M.L. Bullock:
That's right. It's not always going to be people you know. It's going to be people you've never met but they took the time to find you on Facebook and they admire your work or they appreciate it or that something resonated. Value those people even if it's two or three. Value them.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Amen. That grows faster than you'll think, too.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Yes, amen.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Well, cool. Well, Monica, thank you again so much for joining us today. Before I sign off, I'd love for you to give a few last words to our listeners and let them know how they could find you.
 
M.L. Bullock:
Oh, great. They could find me on Facebook @authormlbullock or they can find my website which is mlbullock.com.

C. G. Cooper:
Great. Is there a particular book ... You mentioned Book One of the Seven Sisters is free, is that right?
 
M.L. Bullock:
That's right. I'm very excited about a book that's coming out in December. It's called Guinevere Forever and it's Queen Guinevere who is a vampire so it's awesome.
 
C. G. Cooper:
Oh. Awesome. All right. Well, great. Well, Monica, thanks again. To all your listeners out there, this has been Books in 30 with C. G. Cooper. Thank you for listening and don't forget to email me at cg (at) cg-cooper.com to say hello and let me know about an author you'd like to see as my guest. Thanks for tuning in. This is C. G. Cooper out.