Win Me/Bid on Me!

The Special Interests Review Tour Giveaway ends on Thursday night. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

A Rafflecopter giveaway

Also, Brave in Heart is included in the Crimson Romance historical bundle in the Brenda Novak auction, which raises money for diabetes research. If you haven’t read it, you can get it, four other titles, and a $10 gift card for more Crimson books. I love this little book and was thrilled to be included.

Also also, I’m giving away a copy of Special Interests in the first week of The Romance Review’s Sizzling Summer Giveaway in the month of June. Check their site for details!

Odds and Ends

I’m working on book three in The Easy Part series and it’s…well, going slowly. So don’t expect much blogging in the next month. However, in case you missed it:

I talked about politics as a metaphor for romance on the Carina Press blog.

I described the emotional place where I write at Contemporary Romance Cafe.

Don’t forget to get the Special Interests giveaway!

A Fine Romance Friday: Reds

Wait wait, you say, it’s Thursday, not Friday! Why are you posting a fine romance column today? Well because it’s May Day. So the selection is Reds (1981), a messy, imperfect film based on the real life romance between the socialist writers John Reed and Louise Bryant.

Directed by Warren Beatty, Reds opens in 1912 when the bored socialite Bryant (Diane Keaton) hears Reed (Warren Beatty) speak about the economy and workers’ rights. Almost immediately they embark on an affair and she soon leaves her husband to move with Reed to New York City. He’s working as a journalist and agitator; she’s trying to establish herself as a writer. They’re part of a Bohemian set that includes the playwright Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson) and the anarchist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton).

They fight, treat one another terribly, make up, have affairs, and eventually go to Russia to participate in the revolution they hope will fulfill their dreams. Tragically, and perhaps inevitably, it fails them. (And without spoiling it precisely, let me say that Reds isn’t a genre romance because there’s not a happy ending.) The film is intercut with interviews of people who knew Bryant and Reed describing the atmosphere of revolutionary America in the 1910s.

It is a very long (3+ hours), occasionally ponderous, and not always pleasant journey. But what I continue to find compelling about the film is the marvelous dialogue and the naturalist style that reminds me a bit of Robert Altman. We’re often floating in the back of smoky rooms watching a political debate that comments metaphorically on a personal one. I truly love Bryant’s attempts to maintain independence and status within her romantic relationships and the thoroughly modern difficulties she experiences in that pursuit.

Emma Goldman’s electrifying autobiography, Living My Life, challenged everything I though I knew about late nineteenth-century American womanhood and activist communities. I’m clearly someone who’s interested in labor politics (see Millie’s job in Special Interests), and I think Reds does a good job of trying to capture the hopes that socialists had in the period along with the sometimes terrible bargains they made in trying to achieve them.

In a qualified way, then, I recommend Reds to you.

Special Interests Review Tour Giveaway

Thank you to the lovely ladies at Goddess Fish Promotions, Special Interests is going on a review tour. And as part of the tour, I’m giving away a Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card (winner’s choice!) plus two digital copy of Special Interests.

Enter early and often!

A Rafflecopter giveaway

Continue reading “Special Interests Review Tour Giveaway” →

Tease, Tease, Tease

pp hug

I have a release date for Private Politics: September 15, 2014! I’m finishing copy edits right now and thought you deserved a teaser, small though it might be, from a favorite early scene.

There aren’t enough epic hugs in romance, right? What are some of your favorites?

Sizzling Summer Reads

Now that the initial craziness of Special Interests release is fading, there’s still some giveaway and promo to go. Including the big Sizzling Summer Reads party at The Romance Reviews!

Sizzling Summer Reads

 

Watch this space for more information.

Summer Loving

There were a lot of things in my head when I started writing Special Interests: a scene involving a boy giving a girl references so she’ll go out with him; Bob Woodward’s book about the 2008/2009 economic crisis, The Price of Politics; and the movie (500) Days of Summer.

I did not, for the record, hate the latter as much as many people did. (And I am going to spoil it in what follows. You’ve been warned.)

For starters, my own relationship to hipsterism is complicated. For a long time, I thought it was a word that Allen Ginsberg uses early in “Howl” and nothing more. Then one day in about 2006 I realized that it was a thing–a real, contemporary thing–and many of my friends demonstrated symptoms. Not in a bad way. Not in a pretentious way. But in an “Have you heard the new Wilco album?” “are you coming to my urban canning party?” “you did NOT just use a paper towel” way.

Continue reading “Summer Loving” →

Special Interests Release Day!

A year ago this happened…

Carina Pitch Screenshot

 

…and now the book is available at at Amazon, B&N, Carina, iBooks, Kobo, All Romance, and Google Play. Also Goodreads.

I wrote Special Interests because I had to, specifically because I had to get a scene out of my head. In almost an act of exorcism, I wrote it down and put it away.

It didn’t work.

But why are they acting like that? I asked myself. So I figured out the characters’ previous interactions, and their backstories, and then what happened next. I’m being intentionally vague because that first scene is essentially chapter 10 (the dialogue changed very little). From that odd little scene, the book grew.

I was at the Goddess Fish release party yesterday with some teasers. I’ll update this post throughout the week should any more coverage appear. But in the meantime, I’m excited and nervous and apprehensive and thrilled it’s finally out.

Mostly, though, I’m grateful to the people who supported me when I was writing the book, who took it seriously and helped me make it better, and who have told me they want to read it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Special Interests isn’t autobiographical, but it is deeply personal. If you do pick it up–no pressure!–I hope you’ll like it.

ETA: So I’d been linking to reviews, etc. here and–surprise!–it created trackblogs on those blogs. Oops. Technological stupidity strikes again! I deleted those links because I didn’t want to mess with reader-only spaces or to seem like I was censoring them in any way. I love reviews–any and all reviews–and definitely don’t want to meddle. I’ve contacted the blogs and asked them to delete the trackbacks. But in the meantime, just pretend I was never there. ; )

A Fine Romance Friday: Dave

Leading up to the release of my contemporary political romance novel, Special Interests (which will be out on Monday!), I want to use fine romance Friday to feature some of my favorite on-screen political romances. Today’s selection is Dave.

Ivan Reitman’s 1993 romantic comedy is cinematic wish fulfillment–for who amongst us has not watched the political process and said, “I could do better than that”? And in tonight’s fine romance, Dave Kovic gets his shot.

The premise: non-profit director and all around good guy Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline) bears a striking resemblance to the sitting president, Bill Mitchell (also Kevin Kline). So much so that when Mitchell wants to conduct a sordid affair, the Secret Service enlists Kovic to help cover it up by making a public appearance in place of the president. But when Mitchell suffers a stroke during said affair, his staff (Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn) decide to use Dave as a puppet in order to enact their own agenda.

This set up bears more than surpassing resemblance to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and, as in that film, Dave just won’t stick to the script: he keeps having warm, funny interactions with people, he gets an accountant friend to help him “fix” the federal budget, and he falls for the first lady (Sigourney Weaver).

I find it more than a little sad that most of the older film and television representations of American politics are hopeful (Mr. Smith, The American President, Dave, The West Wing): while some people act in bad faith in all of these cases, the overarching message is that good things can happen in government. Newer representations (Scandal, House of Cards, Veep) seem much more skeptical. (And some older versions are as well, see Advise and Consent or All the King’s Men.) It’s a small sample size, so I don’t want to draw too many conclusions, but I don’t think we’re nearly as hopeful today about politics as we were when Dave was produced.

Skepticism and idealism come and go. I’ve written before about trying to balance a realistic take on the system with one that doesn’t make us feel disempowered. But the well-earned contempt that Americans have for their government makes me sad.

But I digress!

Dave is a funny, clever film and a hopeful, sweet romance–and you can’t really wish for more than that.

The Problem with Politics

I hate electoral politics and think politicians and staffers are all creeps. Should I read Special Interests?

I’ve written before about politics in romance novels, about how I think all romance novels are political but some politics announce themselves while others hide in plain sight. So if you read romance, I would say you’re already reading political books.

But…the politics in Special Interests aren’t hidden, not even a little. The hero, Parker, is a senior aide to an important senator; the heroine, Millie, works for a construction union. The book revolves around a budget negotiation. It is very much about the American political process–good, bad, and indifferent.

Further, it’s partisan. Millie and Parker are both liberal Democrats, though being members of the same party doesn’t help them. They argue about politics and their different orientations toward the political process, and what these differences mean about their personalities, are at the heart of the conflict in the book.

Despite all that, I don’t think it’s a partisan book. There are characters in the book who are “bad” (broadly speaking) who agree with our hero and heroine politically. There are characters in the book who are “good” (again broadly speaking) who are conservative. I don’t want to spoil the end of the budget subplot, but it isn’t achieved at anyone’s expense. It isn’t about demonizing or lionizing either party.

The next book in the series isn’t partisan at all and is in general less overtly political. The third book is going to feature a cross-party romance. Things worked out the way they did in Special Interests because it felt like the truest representation of the characters and the place, not because I have any sort of agenda. Most importantly, I don’t think that one’s enjoyment of the book is contingent on agreeing with the characters.

So should you read the book if you think Washington is a cesspool of corruption? Only you can answer that. If anything to do with laws and politics raises your blood pressure, probably not. (Though in light of all the discussion about online reviewing and author backlash, let me say that if you don’t like the book–either because of politics or anything else–I totally support your right to review it honestly however and wherever you want. Reviews are for readers not writers. While bad reviews are unpleasant, I’ll live and I won’t harass you about it. Promise.)

But if you want a (I hope!) witty, sexy, honest portrait of young DC staffers trying to make the federal budget and love work, I think Special Interests is for you.