Shore Resident Releases “Think Spring” Novel & Travel Blog
Can Steelers and Ravens fans co-exist in one book? How did Marylanders live through the tense weeks of October 2002?
In a new “think spring,” women’s fiction novel, a former Pittsburgh author turned Montgomery County, Maryland then Eastern Shore resident has penned a new novel capitalizing on many knowledge bases. Loriann Oberlin, who has successfully been published with nine non-
fiction books to her name, tackles fiction using the pen name Lauren Monroe.
“I hadn’t created anything of length for eight years,” she reports, with Overcoming Passive- Aggression being her last book while adding another career. “Across the big bridge, one’s mind relaxes a little and so I set a goal.” In 2013, the author resurrected a novel begun in the ’90s. “Back then, I wrote like a journalist,” she says. “Now with more experience, an ear for dialogue, and a greater sense of relationships, I kept some things, changed others, and have hopefully created realistic characters living in a particularly tense time in Maryland history and navigating life’s difficulties in general…and sometimes the Chesapeake!”
Oberlin contributed to national magazines including USAir, The Saturday Evening Post, Elegant Bride as well as the Pittsburgh Business Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before moving in 2001 to Maryland and obtaining a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. Lauren Monroe represents a symbolic pen name—Monroeville (outside of Pittsburgh) where she lived and grew as a writer; Lauren because she always liked that name.
Letting Go: The Maryland Shores combines nautical and medical themes, plus life in and around the Beltway, coupled with a bit of romance and remembrances from the author’s origins in Western Pennsylvania. She will continue the series with at least two more titles.
“I will definitely return to non-fiction writing, but I’m enjoying this right-brain effort, providing an all-around escape or vacation read,” she says, also assuring, “Yes, I did create Ravens fans, too!” Banking on years of magazine travel writing—and now as a member of the Eastern Shore Writers Association and the local Power Squadron—her blog adds to the tourism effort on the novel’s Facebook page, to educate and entice others to Maryland’s shores. To read more, visit https://www.facebook.com/lauren.monroe.novels
Letting Go: The Maryland Shores by Lauren Monroe Pub Date: 2/2014
$4.99 EBook on iBook, Nook, Kindle/ISBN: 978-0-9912822-0-3 $16.99 Paperback/316 pages/ISBN: 978-0-9912822-1-0