RI Authors Showcase - Meet Maria Guglielmo

Nov 18

Written By

Welcome to the Rhode Island Authors Showcase! Each day in November, this blog will feature a different Rhode Island author. Read the post and leave a comment and you are eligible to win this day’s giveaway!

Leave a comment every day this month for over 30 chances to win either our Grand Prize (a $250 Amazon gift card), our Bonus Prize (a $100 Amazon gift card), or a Cheer-Up Prize (amount to be determined), just in time for holiday shopping!

A winner will be randomly selected one week after the publication of the blog post, and the Grand Prize and Bonus Prize winners will be randomly selected on December 7, 2021. For the daily giveaways, the author will contact you directly to coordinate delivery. Print books for delivery within the US only, please.

M.A. Guglielmo is a neurosurgeon, mother of two awesome daughters, and a life-long fan of speculative fiction. Her Italian grandmother may or may not have been able to cast the evil eye on difficult neighbors, and she loves telling a good story, especially if magical curses and witty villains are involved.

Her interest in Middle Eastern politics and culture inspires her to incorporate mythology and folklore from the region into her writing projects. After having the wits scared out of her by ghost tales told to her over a campfire in the Moroccan Sahara, she’s come up with a plan to travel to all the potential settings for her novels. Since those include the mountain-ringed home of the Jinn and a modernized version of the Greek Underworld, some items on her bucket list might be harder to achieve than others.

She enjoys interacting with other authors in classes such as Odyssey’s on-line writing workshop and in her local writer’s group, as well as attending conventions like Boston’s Muse and the Marketplace and Rhode Island’s own Ocean State Summer Writing Conference.

She’s co-authored several papers in clinical journals and a chapter in a medical textbook. Her current fiction projects are described here (https://www.maguglielmo.com/books/) and she posts about the research for her writing here (https://www.maguglielmo.com/blog/).

Maria was born and raised in Rhode Island, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in biology. She completed her M.D. degree at Brown University Medical School, and went on to complete the Brown University Neurosurgical Residency program. After several years enjoying the company of sunny friends and overcast skies in Portland, Oregon, she moved back to Rhode Island, where she’s a neurosurgeon in academic practice. She lives there with her two daughters, assorted pets, and is always dreaming of the stories that can come out of her next travel destination.

Follow her website here: https://www.maguglielmo.com/

And connect with Maria on social media by following these links:

Email list sign up https://bit.ly/MAGSignUp

Bookbub https://bit.ly/bkbubmaguglielmo

Amazon author page: https://bit.ly/Amznmaguglielmo

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/GRmaguglielmo

Instagram: https://bit.ly/Instmaguglielmo

Twitter: https://bit.ly/twittermaguglielmo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maguglielmoauthor

In Book 1, Summoned, the reader is introduced to Zahara, party girl of the paranormal, who floats up out of a lamp in Daniel Goldstein's apartment, ready to trick an evil sorcerer into giving up his soul. But Daniel, whose Moroccan grandmother has reached out from beyond the grave to command him to raise a jinn, wants to do good - by stopping a vengeful fallen angel.

In Book 2, Soul to Steal, Zahara is back in the human world enjoying cool fashion, hot cars, and hotter men - anything to avoid obsessing over Harut, the fallen angel who saved her life and stole her heart in Morocco. Besides, her usually disapproving mother has given her an important quest: find and protect a half-human cousin who's gained strange new magical powers.

Book 3, Price to Pay, finds Zahara tired of saving the world from imminent doom, and her enemy to almost-lover Harut’s “no hanky-panky before marriage” rule is driving her crazy. To take the fight to his evil brother Marut, Zahara returns to the land of the jinn to cobble together an alliance between the peoples of the Mountains of Qaf to defeat the fallen angel. Everything that can’t go wrong does anyway, and after dealing with a malfunctioning magic carpet and killer unicorns, Zahara has to steal back an enchanted feather from a feared necromancer and face down the father she’s never known. As more of the jinn join Marut in his plan to destroy humanity, Zahara needs Harut’s help more than ever—to save the world and her heart. But when the final confrontation comes, defeating one brother may mean Zahara loses the other forever.

Intrigued?! I am! One lucky winner can choose which of the three books they want, and all you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment on this post. If you want, you can answer this question: What is your favorite genre to read?