Subscribe via RSS Feed

Category: Authors

Guest Post & Giveaway: Denise Hamilton, author of Damage Control

[ 89 ] October 18, 2011

Please welcome Denise Hamilton, author of the new novel, Damage Control!

by Denise Hamilton

How about a little Hollywood Confidential?

That was the name of a 1940s movie star gossip magazine back when men wore hats and women wore cocktail frocks that emphasized décolletage rather than exposing it.

I’m no star, I’m a Los Angeles mystery writer whose books are dark, noiry, romantic and glamorous – think Michael Connelly, James Ellroy and an edgier Sue Grafton.

But I’ve also got a little secret.

Late at night as my family slumbers, I enter an obsessive online world. Bathed in the monitor’s green glow, I pop open glass vials, lift them to my nose or press against my wrists.

My drug is perfume, you see. I’m quite smitten by it.

I’m also the perfume columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Maybe it came of having a White Russian mother who lived on the French Riviera and wore Chanel Cristalle, Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and Madame Rochas. I’d spend hours in the bathroom as a child, sampling these gorgeous fragrances.

I’ve worn perfume since then, but it wasn’t until I bought a bottle of Donna Karan Chaos perfume at the Goodwill that I tumbled down the rabbit hole into true obsession.

Coming home, I learned it was discontinued and fetched $300 on Ebay.

Instead of selling I’d spritz it each morning, wondering why people went crazy for this spicy, rich exotic perfume. The third day, I fell in love.

I started buying small perfume samples online and reading the wonderful perfume blogs, where I learned about Haitan vetiver, Madagascar vanilla and Mysore sandalwood. Did you know that 80-year-old parfums stored away from heat and light can be as heady and intoxicating as fine aged wine?

Today, I remain in awe of how perfumers “compose” fragrance. Great perfumes thrill, inspire and seduce. They offer a personal way to experience great art.

Perfume also wafts through the pages of mystery writers Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and Ian Fleming. Smell is the least used of our five senses, but mystery writers have long woven olfactory clues, obsessions and scent triggers into their plots.

That’s why I made Maggie Silver, the heroine in my new book Damage Control, a budding perfumista.

Damage Control deals with a political sex scandal, surf noir and the intense friendship of two teenaged girls. When something awful happens at a beach party one night, their friendship is ruined. Fifteen years later they meet again after a Senator’s beautiful young aide is found murdered. As the two one-time friends confront their past, Maggie’s olfactory skills will prove crucial as perfume offers a clue.

I wish you fragrant reading.

Giveaway
I have 1 copy of Damage Control to give away!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and tell me something you enjoyed about this guest post.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on October 30, 2011.

Giveaway copy was provided free of any obligation by Scribner. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Interview & Giveaway: Anne Enright, author of The Forgotten Waltz

[ 77 ] October 17, 2011

Luxury Reading reviewer, Alisha Churbe, had the opportunity to chat with Anne Enright, author of The Forgotten Waltz (our review). Read on for Alisha’s thoughts on the chat.

After winning a Man Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering, Anne Enright has released a new novel, The Forgotten Waltz, and I had the opportunity to talk with her about the novel, her writing, success and failure.

Alisha: Congratulations again for the Man Booker Prize. Was it difficult to move to a new novel after the success of The Gathering?

Anne: Thank you. To be honest, it made me a bit grumpy, because it kept me from the desk. I felt like it was like another full time job on top of my other two jobs: as a writer and mom. But, I was very conscientious while on tour. I don’t regret it and wouldn’t have done it any other way. I knew I had this book (The Forgotten Waltz) and I could write this book and I was very grown up about it, but I felt sick because it added attention because it was “the book after the book”.

Alisha: Your novels focus on “the momentous drama of everyday life; the volatile connections between people; the wry, accurate take on families…” (from The Forgotten Waltz book summary), what types of things influence you?

Anne: It was Feb 2009, a day of snow, it was quiet, peaceful. It was the perfect setting with its sense of uncertainty and the economy failing. The boom had gone ka-boom, I just knew that this is the day in which to set the book. I steal stuff everywhere, other people’s lives, my life, other people’s books; I use anything I need for the story. Gina’s sister, Fiona’s house is in a setting just down the road from me, big, expensive houses built during the boom. I go there to have coffee sometimes.

With this book and all of my books actually, I want the reader to argue back to the books and the characters. I like the reader to have responses, like with Gina, her decisions and flaws. In real life, you don’t always listen to sound advice, sometimes you go against it knowing it is wrong, or later finding out it is wrong.

Alisha: Do you determine your chapter titles before you begin writing a chapter, or are these added at the end?

Anne: Some before and some after. The catchy, cheesy ones are added much later. “Love is like a Cigarette” and “There will be Peace in the Valley” were there from the word go. It’s what kept me writing. The “Leonard Cohen” one was there before. I think music is great because it is delighted with the foolishness is love. Pop music knows love is foolish. Music is a celebration of that foolishness.

Alisha: I’ve read that school wasn’t very rewarding for you, what inspired you to continue writing?

Anne: I have to set this a bit straight. I went for a Creative Writing MA and got a year of failure, but it was extremely useful to get ready for the truth of writing. Although it wasn’t the result I expected, no book at the end of the year, but a good understanding, of I suppose, what you are not to do. I knew I wanted to write, though it seems I wasn’t really able. You learn from the fact that you fail all the time. It was useful, you always go through terrible dark days where it’s all falling apart and I am used to it now, it will all pan out if you keep going. At a point, the darkness lasted up to a year with The Gathering, but I kept writing.

Alisha: Do you write every day, even on dark days?

Anne: Yes, every day for 10 years, but I haven’t been writing since summer – since the book. We went on our family trip, where I usually write, but I didn’t work this time. I feel young again.

Alisha: Thank you very much.

Giveaway
I have 1 copy of The Forgotten Waltz for a lucky reader!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and tell me something you enjoyed about this interview.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on October 31, 2011.

Giveaway copy is provided free of any obligation by W. W. Norton & Company. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Interview: Heather Lynn Rigaud, author of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star

[ 6 ] September 14, 2011

Please welcome Heather Lynn Rigaud, author of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star who took the time to answer our interview questions!

Interview

First of all, we love the blog, austennights.blogspot.com – it’s a great resource for anybody looking for more beyond the story.

What drew you to Jane Austen’s works as projects for rewrite? Are you working on others at the moment?

Heather: I get that question a lot and for me, it’s always the Characters. Austen’s characters are so vivid and real, and I know I’m not the only one who spends time thinking about them and imagining them in different situations.

My next project is updating my first novel, Longborn and Pemberley Go to War for publication, and after that I’d like to play with Northanger Abbey a bit.

When you first developed the idea of FDRS, what led you to the music industry and a concert tour as your modern setting?

Heather: I wish I could say, “Well, Darcy is dead sexy and Rock Stars are dead sexy, so Rock Star Darcy is Ultra Dead Sexy.” But I can’t. The truth is I was inspired by a song that haunted me as being so Darcy-like. I’m a big believer in art being inspired by art and the importance of working in a creative environment. So I took that song, imagined what a modern day, successful musician Darcy would be like and went from there.

“Darcy” says in your 8/18 blog post that “…[Austen’s] language is amazing. She precisely expresses what is happening, without ever telling too much or spoon-feeding the reader.” Did you aim for the same balance in your writing style? (It worked, btw.)

Heather: Thank you! I did aim to emulate Austen in that regard, and let me tell you, it’s way harder than it looks. It meant I needed to carefully balance telling the story with telling too much. It’s an exercise in trusting the reader-and trusting yourself to be able to communicate what you mean.

In the original, Charlotte’s story pretty much ends after she throws in her lot with Collins; however, you use the incident as more of a turning point than a terminal one. Is that because of her place on the tour, or did you feel a more personal connection to Charlotte that inspired you to redeem her?

Heather: I’m not sure I redeem Charlotte any, and after what I put her through, I’m not 100% certain that she wouldn’t want to go back to her cozy home with her poultry. I’m sure I don’t relate to her personally, but I do find her fascinating. I’m an optimist (Jane-like) and she’s so extremely pragmatic. But I did really enjoy drawing out her story and playing with what she would do. And I think there are parts of Charlotte that everyone can relate too. We’ve all had moments when we’ve felt we’re the ‘plain one’ and don’t stand out. And we’ve all had moments when we’ve felt like we’re supporting characters in a big drama. That’s Charlotte’s realm and she’s pretty comfortable there, so when Richard, who’s a big deal, starts to see her as a person, it becomes her struggle in the story, and again, I think that’s something we can all relate too.

Anne de Bourgh is kind of a tough cookie, a far cry from her predecessor in some respects. Is that out of necessity, given the limited cast, or a deliberate effort to give her more page time?

Heather: Actually, I don’t think Anne does much at all, but she’s certainly more active than she is in Austen. Here’s my take on Anne- have you ever considered what it’d be like to be her? To have her mother? I’m thinking she must have some major rage issues she’s suppressing in Austen’s work. But nowadays, she’d have more freedom to express her rage, which is why she’s pretty cranky. She is also an excellent foil for Darcy- she gets hotter as she gets mad and he gets cooler. She’s trying to rush things along and he’s deliberately slowing down, slowly sipping his tea, just to piss her off. I love that. I could write stuff like that all day long.

Some of the intimate scenes are pretty explicit and gritty – obviously a departure from the original! How does that tie in to your overall vision for the story – is it a critical element or simply a nod to the updated setting?

Heather: Early on someone asked me if I could cut out the sex in FDRS and I thought about it (very) briefly, but I really couldn’t. It’s about Rock Stars and that basically means they’re not living a ‘rated PG’ lifestyle. If anything, I worry I made them too tame. Plus I use the sex scenes as a way of ‘showing not telling’ what the characters are feeling and how they’re relating to each other. When I wrote Richard and Charlotte’s first scene together, I described it to my friends as ‘casual sex’. They all looked at it and said, “no, it’s not” but my characters didn’t realize that yet.

So, I’m going to have to go with ‘critical element’ for $200 Alex.

When you set FDRS and P&P next to each other, do you see the original characters and their namesakes as separate individuals, or do you interpret them as two parts of the same timeless whole?

Heather: Some of the characters are very much two parts of a whole: Darcy and Elizabeth, Charles and Jane, Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins. But I also feel that Richard Fitzwilliam and to a lesser extent Caroline Bingley are original. Charlotte is in between: She’s got Austen’s pragmatic personality but I take her on a very different trip.

Thank you for having me here and I’m looking forward to hearing from your readers.

Don’t forget to check out our review of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star!

View Post

Guest Post & Giveaway: Mark Mustian, author of The Gendarme

[ 95 ] September 6, 2011

Please welcome Mark Mustian, author of The Gendarme - now available in paperback! (check out our review here)

by Mark Mustian

All my life, people have asked me if I’m Armenian. I’ve always responded that I am, but that it’s way back there, and I’ve never known much about it. One day someone asking this same question asked me if I had read Peter Balakian’s book Black Dog of Fate. I hadn’t, and did. Peter’s book tells of his grandmother’s story of surviving the forced march of Armenians from Turkey at the beginning of World War I. Mesmerized by the story, I located other books, many by survivors or children of those that survived this deadly trek. I hit upon the idea of writing a book about the topic, but decided to approach it from the point of view of the Turks, of someone on the other side. Several (several) years later, The Gendarme was born.

Most people, I’ve discovered, know very little about the Armenians. People will ask: now where is Armenia? They might have heard somewhere the term “starving Armenians”. The truth is that Armenia was an ancient, Christian kingdom occupying large parts of what are now eastern Turkey, Iran and areas around the Black Sea. The small country of Armenia is carved from the remnants of the Soviet Union. Fewer people still know the events of 1915, when the Turks–at war with, among other people, the (Christian) Russians–feared the large Armenian minority in Turkey might be in collusion with their enemy, and as such massacred many of the men and sent the women, children and old people on a forced march through the desert to Syria.

As I read the stories of survivors of this trek, I kept wondering: what were the Turks—those doing the expelling—thinking when this happened? In a way it’s not dissimilar to the treatment of other “enclave” populations in wartime: witness the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or those of German heritage sent from Britain to Canada during the war. The difference is that today the Turks deny these events happened, offering as explanation for the elimination of over one million Armenians that “it was a time of war” and “many people suffered deprivation and loss”. To refer to these events as genocide remains a crime in Turkey to this day.

My novel is the story of a 92-year old man who earlier in life served as a gendarme, escorting the Armenians on their trek through the desert. Injured during the war and having lost much of his memory, only late in life does he begin to recall scenes from this odyssey, and to remember in particular a young woman among those deported. At its core, the book is a love story, but one weighted with history. Much research, historical and otherwise, was involved in writing it, as I had never been to Turkey or Syria, and so I read survivor accounts, histories of the era, and diaries of participants, including those on the Turkish side. I would write a little, research more, write a few more pages, research more still. It took me, start to finish, almost seven years to completely finish it.

After I’d signed the publishing contract but before the book was published, I got the chance to travel to Turkey and Syria, to see for myself the paths these caravans had traveled. It was rewarding, as well as illuminating, and I was pleased that, for the most part, I had described things from research much the way that they appeared to be. Still, there’s nothing like seeing for yourself rock and wasteland, desert and citadel, and I was grateful for the opportunity to make a few tweaks to the manuscript, to solidify with fact and detail some of the things I’d come up with out of the air.

The most frequent comment I receive from readers who’ve read the novel is: “I had no idea this thing happened”. That’s why I wrote the book. I want people to know, and to try and understand, and to think. To perhaps form a bond. To consider love, and loss, and what makes people do things. And reduce the possibility that something like this happens again.

Visit Mark Mustian’s website to learn more.

Giveaway
I have 1 copy of The Gendarme to give away!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and tell me something you enjoyed about this guest post.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on September 23, 2011.

Giveaway copy was provided free of any obligation by Berkley Trade. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Guest Post: Daniel Polansky, author of Low Town

[ 6 ] August 19, 2011

Please welcome Daniel Polansky, author of the new Low Town noir fantasy trilogy! (published as The Straight Razor Cure in UK & Commonwealth)

On the writing of Low Town, by Daniel Polansky

It starts with: can you write 1,000 words today? Also tomorrow, and the day after. They don’t have to be gold, but you’ve got to get them down. Do it long enough and it becomes habit—you get irritable when you don’t hit your quota.

A few months pass and there’s a .doc file weighing down your hard drive. It begins to dawn on you that all these words ought to be adding up to something. Fool that you are, you didn’t bother with an outline when you started, but you’ve got a direction in mind, and you massage what you have into something resembling a narrative and plug onward.

More months go by. One day you ain’t got no more to write. It’s kind of a big day, or at least you think it is at the time. I finished my last line, quit my job, broke up with my girlfriend and moved out of my apartment. You might decide to make less drastic alterations to your life.

You’ve got a draft—congratulations, you’re a tiny, tiny fraction of the way there. Revising is more difficult than writing, way more difficult, and utterly uninspiring—but it’s absolutely necessary, because as it turns out, a lot of those words you wrote aren’t any good, and there are probably far too many of them. Some days you wake up and feel all right about this thing that has become your life. Other days it makes you literally sick to look at the drivel. You begin to conceive of a certain appreciation for a theoretical negative reviewer—no one could possibly be more cognizant of your failures as a writer than you are. The whole thing takes longer than you’d planned, but you keep going anyway. I hid in a cabin for about two months while I made my first set of revisions. By the time it was over I was (charitably) half-insane, so maybe you ought to take a different tact.

At this point you’ve logged maybe 1200 hours into your book and no one has seen it—it’s gestated entirely in darkness. You send it out to a few close friends. Some of them read it, some of them don’t—it’s a kindness to slog through your half-mangled prose, and reading on a computer sucks, so you can’t really hold it against anyone if they don’t manage to finish. Hopefully the ones who do tell you it’s not completely terrible.

Now it’s time to get an agent. Getting an agent is a long and intensely tedious process. You track down people who might want to read your book, and you send them a letter begging them to do so. No one actually wants to read your book, but you don’t know that yet. Rather than wait around for my rejection letters to multiply, I took my tiny little pot of money and went traveling, but that’s just me.

Mostly, it stops there. At some point there’s no one left, and you move on to the next book or give up entirely.

But let’s assume it doesn’t, and out of that stack of refusals, you find someone willing to give you a shot. Kudos, you’ve got an agent. Hopefully it’s a good one—you won’t really know because you’ve never had an agent and thus have nothing to compare them to. My agent ended up being great, but that was luck—it wasn’t like I had lots of options.

Your new agent has some suggestions, and despite all the work you’ve done on your book, it needs a lot more. So you get back to your revisions. This second round of revisions is like the first, but somehow slightly more miserable.

Eventually you and your agent decide it’s time to start talking to publishers. Getting a publisher is a lot like getting an agent, except that now you have an agent, and he or she does all the grunt work, which is nice. At this point I was well out of money, and had resorted to selling bodily fluids to stay afloat. Not really.

Again, for most folk, this is a breaking point—let’s continue on without a hiccup. Low and behold, a group of business folk somewhere go a little too heavy on their liquid lunch and decide, what the hell, they’re going to buy your book. Boo-yah! A scant sixteen months after starting, you’re going to see some money! Not right away, of course—you’ve got a few more months of sleeping on cardboard, but still, good job!

Your new editor wants changes, and with your pockets full for the first time in who knows how long, you aren’t in any sort of mood to argue. Mostly the ideas are good, if you’ve got a good editor, which I do. Sometimes the ideas are bad, and you refuse to consider them, and your editor backs off. Your editor also does the first really thorough line edit of your book, during which you discover that you know relatively little about grammar and you can’t spell for shit. (A short list of words I can’t spell correctly: necessary, waved vs. waived, taught vs. taut.)

Something else happens at about this stage—your ownership of the work, at one point absolute, begins to diminish. Strangers design the cover art, people you’ve never met copy edit it and start working on the press. It’s become an enterprise of which you’re a part—maybe the main part, but still, it ain’t quite your baby no more.

It goes on this way for a long, long time—much longer than you thought. More line edits, more small alterations. A lot of that is you, and your refusal to stop tweaking. A few days before the first pass pages were due I suddenly decided my book was heavy by about 15,000 words, went through with a red pen and tore it apart. Friends and family ask when you’ll be done with it and you stare at your shoes and shake your head in despair.

Then, one day, it’s over. Actually over. You can’t change it even if you wanted to. In theory, you should experience a moment of extraordinary release. In practice, you’re already pretty deep into the sequel, so there’s not a lot of time for dancing.

Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. Lord knows there are worse ways to make a living.

Please visit Daniel Polansky’s website to learn more and don’t forgot to enter the Low Town giveaway! Mention something you enjoyed about this guest post and get an extra entry.

View Post

Chatting with David Nicholls, author of One Day

[ 140 ] August 8, 2011

One Day, the movie, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, will be in theaters on August 19th!

Our very own reviewers, Jill Arent and Jennifer Jensen, had the opportunity to chat with the author, David Nicholls. Read on for Jill’s thoughts on the chat.

On Spending “One Day” (Part of One, Anyway) with David Nicholls, by Jill Arent

Some days this whole writer/book blogger gig is simply too fun – and yesterday was one of those days. Thanks to the fabulous connections (and reputation) of LuxuryReading.com, I was fortunate enough to spend an hour on the telephone with David Nicholls, author of last year’s rather-big-commercial-deal love story One Day. The book has been developed into a film – opening August 19 – screen-written by David, and the call gave ten lucky book bloggers the opportunity to discuss reading, writing, movies, and the story with the author.

Please be warned – there is a SPOILER near the end. I will give due warning, promise.

For those of you who haven’t yet read the book, let me give you the briefest of summaries: Emma and Dexter meet on July 15, the eve of their graduation from university. The book follows these two polar opposites throughout the course of their lives, checking in with them each July 15 as the years pass between 1988 and 2007.

We were each allowed to ask David two questions. My second question contains the spoiler, so if you don’t want to view that, skip the next paragraph.

My first question had to do with the translation of a 400-page story, heavy on introspection and sneak-peeks intocharacters’ heads, into a two-hour film. Ever been to a movie where you’ve read the book but someone you’re with has not, and you walk out of the theater claiming it was the best movie EVER and they walk out going “huh?” because they didn’t have the back-story or context that you got from the book? If so then you get my question – Iwas asking how an author makes sure that enough of the behind-the-scenes motivation translates onto the screen. In a very brief nutshell, he said the key with this film was that both he and the production team wanted to be faithful to the book. As a result, there weren’t too many major battles about what to include or how to handle it because the book drove the screenplay.

My second question addressed David’s novel-writing process. He told us from the outset that he wrote One Day knowing how it would end – the entire novel was written to support the death of Emma. I asked him whether this was his typical writing style and whether he ever struggled with the story as a result of knowing how things were “supposed” to end. David said that he has often heard novelists talk about characters taking over the story, but that this had never happened for him. He always knows how things will end, and his characters behave accordingly. David believed this was due to his origins in television writing, where writers are instructed from day one to not even begin writing a script until they know exactly how the story will proceed, scene by scene. David said he occasionally wished he could be more spontaneous or improvisatory with his writing, but that he was too structured and precise to take that approach.

All in all, I found David to be well-spoken and engaging, and more than willing to share a lot of insights into his writing process and into that of screenplay writing/adaptation. He is, by his own admission, more Emma than Dex – and that was perfectly all right with me, because I quite liked Emma. She tells a great story – just like David.

More Fun Things to Check Out:

Our Review | Reader’s Guide | GoodReads “One Day Summer Reads” Sweepstakes | Official Movie Website | The Novel Featurette | David Nicholls’ Website

Giveaway
1 lucky winner will receive a copy of One Day (the movie-tie in edition), a cosmetic case, a necklace and a Moleskin journal!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and tell me something you enjoyed about this post.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US and Canada residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on August 19, 2011.

Giveaway prizes are provided free of any obligation by Focus Features. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Guest Post & Giveaway: Maddie Dawson, author of The Stuff That Never Happened

[ 158 ] August 3, 2011

Please welcome Maddie Dawson, author of The Stuff That Never Happened - now available in paperback! (check out our review here)

by Maddie Dawson

Thank you so much for inviting me to your wonderful blog (I love it!) to talk about the inspiration for my novel, The Stuff That Never Happened.

The real truth is that nobody really knows where novels come from. I happen to believe that they come from characters who float around and then magically materialize out of thin air because they’re looking for someone with a word processor who’s willing to do their typing for them.

I may, however, be alone in that assessment.

What I do know is that The Stuff That Never Happened came about when a character named Annabelle McKay moved into my head one summer afternoon. She told me she was nearly 50 and had been married for 28 years to Grant, an English professor, with whom she was happy. Well, mostly happy. The trouble was, back when she and Grant were first married, Annabelle had fallen in love with someone else, and for a brief time she had left her marriage. But then she and Grant had reconciled, moved to a small town in New Hampshire and happily raised a family together, and had agreed never to speak again of her betrayal. (Her affair becomes “the stuff that never happened.”)

But now, so many years later, with their kids out of the house and a grandchild on the way, Annabelle is facing the fact that Grant, who has grown inattentive and aloof, may have never truly forgiven her. And when she has a chance to go back to the man she loved all those years ago, she is forced to reevaluate and to think about what she really wants out of life. Really, what do we owe our families after the kids have grown and gone, and what do we owe ourselves?

I think I was inspired to tell Annabelle’s story because as I looked around me, I saw marriages just exploding all over the place—even supposedly long-term, happy, affectionate marriages with plenty of history and plenty of love. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, Al and Tipper Gore.) As I talked to my friends, I realized that nearly everybody had “the one who got away,” a person they thought about from the past. It made me think: are we just designed to drive ourselves crazy with “what-if” questions? What would happen if we truly had a chance to run back to the past? 

And more important: Can bad things from the past simply be pushed aside and not talked about?

The book, which takes place both in the 1970s when Annabelle and Grant first fall in love and then in 2005, when they fall out, is not only about love and marriage, but mother-daughter relationships, empty nests, women’s friendships, secrets, and most of all, forgiveness—of ourselves and those around us.

I love talking to book groups, by phone or by Skype. Visit me at www.maddiedawson.com.

Giveaway
I have 3 copies of The Stuff That Never Happened to give away!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and tell me something you enjoyed about this guest post.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on August 19, 2011.

Giveaway copies are provided free of any obligation by Crown Publishing Group. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Author on Author Interview (and Giveaway): Kim Wright and Sarah Pekkanen

[ 31 ] July 19, 2011

Please welcome Kim Wright, author of Love in Mid Air, and Sarah Pekkanen, author of Skipping a Beat for an author on author interview!

Kim: In terms of background, Sarah and I “met” on line when her publicist recommended my book, and although we’ve exchanged tons of emails, we’re never sat down face to face. Getting connected to other writers has been one of the unexpected pleasures of publishing a book!

Interview

KIM: So many people believe they have a book in them. What does it take to go from “Someday I’ll write a novel” to actually writing one?

SARAH: Writing is like training for a marathon. You have to get out there every single day – if it’s raining or it’s cold. Runners don’t let little things like shin splints or the wind stop them and I think writers need to be just as tough. On days when the words are coming slowly and every sentence feels like torture, it’s important to fight through and stay focused on your goal. You can always go back and fix the words later, but it’s important to capture them on paper first.

KIM: So true, but just the thought of a marathon probably scares a lot of would-be writers off.

SARAH: I always feel a bit badly when writers are dismissive of others who want to write books. Just a few years ago, I was a person who talked about wanting to write a book and one day, I made the leap. I believe others who want to write a book are just as capable of it and no one should discourage them.

Do you agree that writers should just keep plodding through the rough spots? Or do you find taking a break and clearing your mind helps?

KIM: I think you have to plod through the first draft and then walk away. Sort of like your running analogy. You don’t stop in the middle of a run, but after a hard effort you give yourself a couple of days off for recovery. I usually take a month long break after a draft and work on other things. I find that when I come back I can read the book more clearly and cleanly, almost as if someone else has written it. I’m in a better position to see where the problems are and how to fix them.

You amaze me because you have young kids and still keep up a terrific writing pace. After your first book The Opposite of Me (check out our review) came out, was it harder to get going on the second?

SARAH: My agent sold The Opposite of Me when I was six months pregnant, so I began writing Skipping a Beat with a newborn on my chest. My time was more fractured. With The Opposite I had longer stretches when my older boys were in school to write, but with Skipping I had to get good at writing in little spurts. Some of the best advice I got was from my editor who told me to begin my second book before the first one was published. She said that bad reviews would paralyze me and good ones would make me want to rewrite the same book. I’m glad I listened to her!

Do you ever get writer’s block? Do you even believe it exists?

KIM: There are two very different ways in which people get blocked. One is when they say they want to write and can’t get started. They keep waiting for the perfect time – when their kids are grown, their house is clean, everybody’s happy and they have all sorts of free time. Needless to say, that day never comes. They might also be confused about their motivation. A lot of people think the fact they love to read means that they should try to write.

But then there are people who have written whole books and suddenly run up against the wall. I always suspect that’s because the writing has taken them into some dark corner of their minds. They’ve run up against issues that are personal and hard to write about and it’s easier to say “I’m blocked” than it is to say “This idea scares me.”

SARAH: But that’s where the best writing comes from.

KIM: Absolutely.

Giveaway
Kim and Sarah will follow your comments and select 1 reader to receive copies of both Love in Mid Air and Skipping a Beat!

Don’t forget to check out our reviews of Love in Mid Air and Skipping a Beat!

Related Posts with Thumbnails
View Post
Page 5 of 13« First...34567...10...Last »