Our Guest Star author this week is Joanne Rendell, author of the new novel, Crossing Washington Square, which I had the pleasure to read an advanced copy of earlier this year. And so I can say with authority that it's a fabulous read!
A story of two strong-willed and passionate women who are compelled to unite their senses and sensibilities, from the author of The Professors' Wives' Club.
Professor Diana Monroe is a highly respected scholar of Sylvia Plath. Serious and aloof, she steadfastly keeps her mind on track. Professor Rachel Grey is young and impulsive, with a penchant for teaching relevant contemporary women's stories like Bridget Jones' Diary and The Devil Wears Prada, and for wearing her heart on her sleeve.
The two conflicting personalities meet head-to-heart when Carson McEvoy, a handsome and brilliant professor visiting from Harvard, sets his eyes on both women and creates even more tension between them. Now Diana and Rachel are slated to accompany an undergraduate trip to London, where an almost life-threatening experience with a student celebrity will force them to change their minds and heal their hearts...together.
And here's my interview with the author!
1. Any fan/fan mail stories you care to share?
My first novel was The Professors' Wives' Club. A couple of months after its release, a woman contacted me and said she'd read and enjoyed the book. She told me she was a professor's wife and after a few emails, she revealed that she was the wife of a very distinguished professor of cultural studies whose work I'd read, who I'd seen giving keynotes talks at conferences, and whose work greatly influenced the writing of Crossing Washington Square. Not really a "rock star" moment, but still exciting to know the wives of influential professors (professors I really dig!) read my book.
2. Where do you write?
I write at my desk at the front of our apartment. We live on a very busy street in Manhattan so my writing is "lulled" by taxis honking, firetrucks hooting, and jackhammers pounding. With all this practice, I could probably keep writing through a asteroid shower!
3. What was your inspiration behind your latest novel?
The idea for Crossing Washington Square evolved over a few years. As someone who has lived the academic life (I have a PhD in literature and now I'm married to a professor at NYU), I've always loved books about the university - novels like Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, Richard Russo's The Straight Man, Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and Francine Prose's Blue Angel. But what I noticed about such campus fiction was the lack of female professors in leading roles. Even the female authors like Francine Prose and Zadie Smith's novels focus on male professors. Furthermore, most of these male professors are disillusioned drunks who quite often sleep with their students! I wanted to write a novel with women professors taking the lead and I wanted these women to be strong and smart and interesting – instead of drunk, despondent, and preoccupied with questionable sexual liaisons!
4. What line or section of your novel are you most proud of?
Rachel Grey and Diana Monroe are both literature professors in the old boys club of Manhattan University. While this should create a kinship between them, they are very much at odds. Rachel is young, emotional, and impulsive. She wrote a book about women's book groups which got her a slot on Oprah and she uses "chick lit" in her classes. Diana is aloof, icy, and controlled. She's also a scholar of Sylvia Plath who thinks "beach" fiction is an easy ride for students. My favorite scene is where these two women face-off in a department meeting. Neither of the professors is a shrinking violet and thus sparks really fly! The scene was such fun to write.
5. If you were in charge of casting the movie adaptation of your book, who gets the call?
Crossing Washington Square loosely echoes Austen's Sense and Sensibilty - with one professor being led by her sense, the other by her sensibility. I love the Ang Lee adaptation of Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet playing the two very different Dashwood sisters. I'd love Emma and Kate to play my professors too!
Praise for Crossing Washington Square:
"Joanne Rendell has done it again! Crossing Washington Square is a book that will stay with you long after you turn that final page. Curl up on a park bench somewhere, watch the leaves fall, and spend some much beloved time with Rachel and Diana." -Jessica Brody, bestselling author of The Fidelity Files and Love Under Cover
"For every reader who has ever wondered why nineteenth century novels about women are called ‘the canon’, but contemporary novels about women are called 'chick-lit' comes a charming, witty and cerebral novel about Rachel Grey, an Austen-worth heroine fighting for love and respect in the academic shark tank." -Nicola Kraus, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Nanny Diaries
Joanne Rendell was born and raised in the UK. After completing her PhD in English Literature, she moved to the States to be with her husband, a professor at NYU. She now lives in faculty housing in New York City with her family. Visit Joanne's website at: JoanneRendell.com
Our Guest Star author this week is Carleen Brice author of the new novel, Children of the Waters.
Here's what the book is about:
Still reeling from divorce and feeling estranged from her teenage son, Trish Taylor is in the midst of salvaging the remnants of her life when she uncovers a shocking secret: her sister is alive. For years Trish believed that her mother and infant sister had died in a car accident. But the truth is that her mother fatally overdosed and that Trish's grandparents put the baby girl up for adoption because her father was black.
After years of drawing on the strength of her black ancestors, Billie Cousins is shocked to discover that she was adopted. Just as surprising, after finally overcoming a series of health struggles, she is pregnant--a dream come true for Billie but a nightmare for her sweetie, Nick, and for her mother, both determined to protect Billie from anything that may disrupt her well-being. And here's my interview with the author!
1) How do you come up with the names for your characters?
I often use family names or names of friends to start and then see if the name changes as I go along.
2) When you got that first phone call announcing your had sold a novel, how did you react? How did you celebrate? If you've sold more than one novel, do you have a celebration ritual for subsequent sales?
I yelled and cried and beat on the steering wheel (my agent called just as I was leaving for work). I bought myself a pair of diamond earrings and got hubby a guitar, and there’s been lots and lots of champagne. This is my 2nd novel and it was part of a 2-book deal, so I celebrated the deals for both at once, but I also partied when each book was released.
3) If your book were to be made into a movie, who could you see playing the lead role?
Halle Berry could play Billie. Jennifer Aniston as Trish. Or Alicia Keys as Billie and Reese Witherspoon as Trish.
4) Since becoming a writer, what's the most glamorous thing you've ever done?
Attended awards ceremonies and actually received 2 awards! Almost like the Oscars! (not really, but you know what I mean)
5) If you could be a superhero, what would you superpower be?
Invisibility. (She said after months of doing self-promotion.)
Paise for Children of the Waters:
"I was exhausted and singing the blues the hour I began Carleen Brice's new novel, CHILDREN OF THE WATERS. Five hours later, I'd finished this fresh, free-rein novel about mothers' secrets and children's sorrows and was shouting 'Hurray!'" --Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean
Carleen Brice was recently named 2008 "Breakout Author of the Year" by The African American Literary Awards Show for her debut novel Orange Mint and Honey, which was also a selection of the Essence Book Club. She is also the author of Walk Tall:Affirmations for People of Color, and Lead Me Home: An African American's Guide Through the Grief Journey and edited the anthology Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and two cats. Visit her online at: www.CarleenBrice.com
I had the privilege to read an early copy of this novel and to blurb on it. Here's what I had to say:
"Riotously hilarious, unabashedly honest and positively impossible to put down. Samantha Wilde's debut is a must read for all moms and non-moms alike." -Jessica Brody, author of The Fidelity Files
Here's what the book is about:
The Mother of all Motherhood novels.
In this riotously funny, ruefully honest, and irresistibly warmhearted debut, Samantha Wilde writes about one new mother who discovers the wonders and terrors of motherhood--one hilarious crisis at a time. For new moms, potential moms-to-be, and anyone who just wants to (wisely) live the experience vicariously... New mom Joy McGuire hasn't changed her sweatpants since her baby was born. Of course she's crazy about her newborn son; it's her distracted, work-obsessed husband and his impossible mother she can't stand. Joy turns to her own mom for support, but she's too busy planning her fourth wedding to a suspicious self-help guru. Sure, Joy's a woman on the brink, but it's nothing a little sleep, sanity, and chocolate can't fix.
Until her old college boyfriend shows up at their ten-year reunion. The one she was still in love with when she married her husband. It must be the lack of sleep, because Joy is starting to think she might have ended up with the wrong man. Not to mention she's obsessed with her sexy yoga instructor, who might just be interested in her. Joy used to be single, skinny, and able to speak in complete sentences, but who is she now? As she's trying to figure that out, her husband goes missing….
Frank, bawdy, and full of keenly self-aware observations, this novel tells the story of one new mother, three men, one marriage, and the baby love that keeps us up at night.
And here's my interview with the author!
1) What was your inspiration behind this novel?
Life with babies. The incredible transformation into motherhood. A growing fascination with mothering, what it means to mother, what becomes of a woman who becomes a mother. And what becomes of a marriage when a baby is born. I wrote the story I wanted to read, essentially.
2) Since becoming a writer, what's the most glamorous thing you've ever done?
I bought new bras! Of course that's not so glamorous but I went to the expensive bra store and had a proper fitting and paid a LOT for them and wore them for my book signings. That IS glamour when you live in the country.
3) Which scene (or scenes) in your novel did you love writing? Why?
I loved writing the fights between Joy and her husband. It was more fun than fighting and used up all my crankiness. Actually, I enjoyed writing most of it. Joy is so sassy and funny, I looked forward to what she might say or do.
4) What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten about writing?
My mother, Nancy Thayer, has been quoted as writing, "It's never too late, in fiction or life, to revise." We laugh, because this is true and also not true. (When it's on the shelves, it's too late.) Still, it helps when I'm writing to know there is a time later to perfect things. She also always said to me, "put it in your work." I do. I put it all in my work. It's a great place for things, the good, the bad and the ugly. And it makes of a mess, a meaning.
5) If you had to to offer a bumper sticker explanations for your novel, what would it be?
Welcome Judi Fennell, this week's guest star author! She's just released a brand new novel, IN OVER HER HEAD and she's taken the time to answer some of my questions about her work.
Here's an overview of the book:
When Erica Peck, one terrified-of-the-ocean marina owner, finds herself at the bottom of the sea conversing with a Mer man named Reel, she thinks she's died and gone to her own version of Hell. When the Oceanic Council demands she and Reel retrieve a lost cache of diamonds from the resident sea monster in return for their lives, she knows she's died and gone to Hell.
When they escape the monster and end up on a deserted island, she amends her opinion - she's died and gone to Heaven.
But when Reel sacrifices himself to allow her to return to her world, she realizes that, Heaven or Hell, with Reel, she's In Over Her Head.
"Nora Roberts? Danielle Steel? Much acclaimed romance writers should step aside. There is a new romance writer in town and she is certainly causing a great splash with her debut novel, In Over Her Head." -ABibliophile.com
"I truly found a pearl in my oyster when I read this delightful tale. I was surprised how good of a book In Over Her Head is. It is extremely well-written, the storyline flows and I was hooked from the first page." -LongAndShortReviews.blogspot.com
And check out this awesome contest where you could win a romantic beach getaway!
To celebrate the release of each of her books, Judi Fennell and the Atlantis Inn (www.AtlantisInn.com) and the Hibiscus House (www.HibiscusHouse.com) bed and breakfasts are raffling off three romantic beach getaway weekends. All information is on Judi's website, www.JudiFennell.com
1.How do you come up with the names for your characters?
All of the names in my stories mean something, whether they are a play on words, a twist on other characters, named for people I know, for a certain characteristic, etc., rarely do I just pull a name out of the air and assign it to a character.
2. When you got that first phone call announcing your had sold a novel, how did you react? How did you celebrate? If youve sold more than one novel, do you have a celebration ritual for subsequent sales?
I got an email first from my editor that she couldn't believe it hadn't sold yet and could I call her. So I had an idea going into the call. She let me know she was taking it into the editorial meeting the next day, so, again, not a total surprise. Then I got the email from the meeting that she wanted it AND the next two stories, and, yes, I cried. I think I squealed first, then I cried. Then I stood in my family room, flapping my hands and being speechless while the kids and Hubs laughed and cheered, then I calmed down and called my agent. Then after I made a few more calls, the emotions got to me an I picked up the book I'd been reading and parked my butt on the sofa and just read and read and read. Champagne and flowers followed over the next few days. It was a great time.
3. If your book were to be made into a movie, who could you see playing the lead role?
I could see either Matthew McConaughey or Zac Efron for Reel, and Sandra Bullock, Kate Hudson or Anne Hathaway for Erica. I don't know any stunt remoras, so I'll leave that up to the casting director. And if we could get Susan Sarandon for Ceto, the sea monster, that'd be great.
4. What was your inspiration behind your latest novel?
I was writing a series of twists to fairy tales: Beauty and The Best,Cinda Bella, and Fairest of Them All, and I wanted to twist The Little Mermaid. The best way to do it was to make him the Mer.
5. Desert Island time. You can bring one person and one "thing" what would you bring?
I'm bringing Hubs - he and I can use some uninterrupted time after the whirlwind since selling, so we need a vacation. As for what we'd bring, suntan lotion. If it's deserted, who needs clothes, but we'd need the lotion. And, hell, lotion? 'Nuff said.
Subscribe to this Blog 
Follow this Blog
Follow Jessica on Twitter 
Add Jessica on Facebook 
Add Jessica on MySpace