As anyone who knows me can tell you, I have a weakness for card
sharks...which is why I can't resist the premise of J ana DeLeon's new
novel " Unlucky." Mallory, the heroine of "Unlucky", is using her
notorious bad luck to "cool" cards on her uncle's casino boat when she
teams up with a dealer/undercover agent to catch a band of money
launderers - and maybe see her luck turn.
Here's our interview with Jana:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
My husband and I got married in Vegas in 2000. Before we left, I
studied and studied blackjack combinations, determined to beat the
house. Unfortunately, I have absolutely, positively NO LUCK. In fact,
my luck is so bad that when I sit down at a table, not only don't I
win, everyone else starts losing too. So I came up with Mallory
Devereaux, the unluckiest woman in the world, who needs to make some
money fast and decides to do it by "cooling" cards at a poker
tournament of criminals.
2) Are you working on something right now?
I just accepted an offer last Friday for the first two romance/mystery
hybrid books in a related series. The first is entitled GHOST-IN-LAW
and features a woman being haunted by her dead ex-mother-in-law.
3) What is something about you that would surprise your readers?
I used to race motocross, and in fact am in to all kinds of extreme
sports. In addition to motocross bikes, I've owned competition
watercraft (Waverunners), shifter karts (like miniature Formula 1 cars)
and a crotch rocket. I was sponsored by a Yamaha store in Dallas and
other companies such as Oakley.
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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| It's hard enough to be a teenager, but imagine having to deal with coming of age while trying to hide a disfiguring birthmark on your right eye. That's the situation that Nina Goldman, the heroine of Renee Rosen's heartwarming debut novel " Every Crooked Pot", finds herself in - while she's also trying to deal with an eccentric father and being the youngest of three.
Here's our interview with Ms. Rosen:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
Even though Every Crooked Pot is somewhat autobiographical, I never
thought to write about growing up with a strawberry birthmark over my
eye until I enrolled in a week-long writing workshop with Michael
Cunningham. Michael gave us an exercise about childhood memories and
I jotted something down about how my father once used my eye to get
out of a speeding ticket. That incident is what inspired the opening
scene of the novel. That was the starting point and from there, the
characters took over and starting telling their own story.
2) Are you working on something right now?
I am at work on a new novel though it's still too young in my mind to
really share with anyone. Wish I could tell you, but right now it's
changing on me day to day!
3) What is something about you that your fans don't know?
I'm a horrible insomniac and can function pretty normally (though
that's a relative term) on about four hours of sleep a night. If I
get five or six, I consider it a great night's sleep.
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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It's true. The "China Dolls" have been MIA for awhile now and we apologize! We have been quite diligent and were hard at work on the second book. Basically, during that time, we cut off all ties with society and hibernated in Iceland and were stuck in an igloo with two computers. Okay...Okay...That's not quite true but it's been busy. Book Two, which is still titleless (ANY SUGGESTIONS OUT THERE?!), is finally in its editing phase now. We just had dinner with our fabulous editor Diana Szu at New York's Bar Stuzzichini for the first time last week (in months) to discuss book deux. We also got together to discuss "China Dolls", the paperback version, coming out in February 2008! It seems that the excitement will be played out all over again. There will be no book tour of course but it's always exciting to see a new product come out and in the bookstores! I was in LA for like the eighth time this year. I was there for a wedding and for another China Dolls book event. This time, the book festivities took place in Cal State-Los Angeles and I was solo on the job. Being that we have been on hiatus with the events, I was a little nervous I didn't know what to say and Blossom wasn't there to help.  I kept texting her: "Wish you were! I am going to forget everything!". Her words of encouragement back on my blackberry were: "What?! Don't forget your "schpeel"!. The book store is nothing compared to all the other college campuses I've been to. Across the bookstore lies a massive food court with a Carl's Jr, Rice Garden, and some other type of fast food joint. I must say that those choices were much better than what I had in college which was, well, no choice. It was cafeteria food all day, all the time, which meant mystery meat all day, all the time. The bookstore itself was very...yellow. I guess those are the school colors? Anyhow, I felt a little like Phoebe on "Friends" performing "Smelly Cat" as I sat on top of this little stage area and had a microphone and a stool to do my book reading. There were some great students that came to the event. Many thanks to Fred (I wish I knew your last name!) and Nicole Abboud who graciously invited us to the event.  After the event, I realized....I miss college...Ahhh, the 10 cent chicken wings....the memories... Okay, Blossom and I are out from hibernation. We will be emceeing the AARI banquet this coming week in New York and we will be sure to let everyone know how that goes. It's the first time she and I will be emceeing an event together! Take Care!
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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It's hard to imagine anything worse for a parent than the loss of a
child, but that's the nightmare heroine Ellen Banks finds herself
facing one perfect summer day. In Judy Larsen's new novel, " All The Numbers",
she explores both the depths and heights of the human soul - the thirst
for revenge and the ability to recover from unimaginable loss.
Here's our interview with Ms. Larsen:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
Well, I was sitting on a dock at a lake in Wisconsin with my best
friend, Her girls and my sons were playing in the water and a jet
skier went by. And I just started thinking, "What if?" What if the
kids had been out too far? What if the jet skier hadn't been paying
attention? What would that do to me as a mother, as a friend? The
story flowed from there. I think, in a way, I'd been writing it ever
since my kids were born. That's the biggest fear for most
parents--losing a child. So I explored it through my character.
2) What are you working on right now?
I’m deep into what I hope will be my next novel--through two different
narrative lines, one set in the present and the other set between
1958-1971 it explores how women are too often defined by others’
expectations and judgments, rather than by themselves and their
dreams. I'm calling it Unexpected Grace.
3) What is something about you that your readers don't know?
Hmm. Probably that I'm distantly related to the only person ever
convicted of cannibalism in the United States. That doesn't come up
very often.
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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So who hasn't dreamed about meeting some dreamboat in Paris?
But what happens after the romance and the late night cafe trysts and
the kisses atop the Eiffel Tower? That's the question that Laura Florand explores in her true story " Blame it on Paris", where a Georgia peach tries to learn to love escargots and her beloved Sebastien tries to adapt to the Deep South.
Here's our interview with Ms. Florand:
1) How did you get the idea for your book?
It generated itself. I was living this absolutely crazy, fun,
rich story, and I had always written (usually fiction), so one day I
saw a travel anthology was looking for travel stories on wine, and I
decided to write a travel essay about one little bit of what was going
on. Then the same publisher had another anthology, on Provence,
and I had a funny story about that. And then I realized that I
didn’t have just little bits of funny stories here and there, but that
everything that had happened from the moment I first spotted that
handsome Parisian waiter was a wonderfully funny and romantic true
story that could really reach people.
2) What are you working on right now?
I just finished LA VIE EN ROSES, a novel set around Grasse, the
centuries-old perfume capital of France. An American woman named
Jolie finds herself with a house and part of one of the last great
French rose fields on her hands. She falls in love with it, but
she also finds that her ownership of it is being disputed by the great
rose-producing Legrand clan. And the eldest son and heir in
that clan is quite cute, in his difficult way…
It’s a pure take-off on one of my favorite fairy tales, from her
family, whose fortunes reversed in the tech crash, to her father’s gift
to her of this house and rose field in order to get out of trouble, to
the sibling rivalry with her two sisters. I wanted to call it
PRETTY AND THE BEAST, which is still quite my most favoritest title of
all time, but everyone else just looked at me funny when I suggested
it. I have that trouble with titles.
3) What is something about you that would surprise your readers?
I lived in Tahiti for a while and studied Tahitian dance under one of
the grandes dames of dance, Louise Kimitete. Back in the
U.S., I formed and led an authentic Polynesian dance group (NOT one of
those fake-y Hollywood ones), and we performed in all kinds of places,
some high-end and some hilarious. The group still exists,
but I stopped leading it about six months ago, in pure
exhaustion. My daughter was six months old at the time, and I was
trying to handle that and the writing career, with my first book out
and another one in the works. And I still teach full-time at
Duke, so…it was a lot to juggle.
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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Michelle and I had the pleasure of meeting our next guest author Ellen Meister
in Atlanta last year at the annual RWA conference. Ellen is every bit
as funny and sassy as you would expect from the author of " Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA", a novel about three friends juggling life in suburbia, man trouble and the prospect of George Clooney in their town.
Check out our interview with Ms. Meister:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
The idea for the book came to me at a PTA meeting. I had only recently
decided to stop procrastinating and pursue my dream of writing a novel,
and as I smiled at all the other moms, it occurred to me that no one
had any idea I had this great dream. In fact, no one in the room knew I
had an inner life at all. Then it occurred to me that everyone there
could be feeling something pretty similar. As soon as I had that
thought, I knew I wanted to write about these types of women--to
explore the pain, passion, heartache and joy hidden beneath facade of
the perfect suburban housewife--and do it with humor and compassion.
From there I set out to construct a plot around an event that could
affect the community as a whole and the women as individuals.
Eventually, I got the idea to bring a Hollywood movie studio to their
town, and select their schoolyard as a possible location for the
filming of a George Clooney movie.
2) Are you working on something right now?
Yes, I'm working on my second novel, THE SMART ONE. It's the story of a
divorced former artist named Bev Bloomrosen who's about to turn her
failed career around and become a school teacher. But when she and her
two sisters discover a dead body under the house next door, they come
head on with the old childhood roles holding them back. It will be
published by Morrow/Avon in 2008.
3) What is something about you that would surprise your readers?
I've never cheated on my husband, don't own a single pair of Manolo
Blahnik's, and my mother is a teetotaler. In other words, if I wrote
about my own life, I'd bore readers to death!
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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So is there any spirited, independent woman out there who doesn't dream
about letting her inner Buffy loose and kicking some serious butt?
Kate Connor, the protagonist of Julie Kenner's new novel " Demons are Forever" doesn't just dream about being Buffy - she is Buffy...and a soccer mom. Here's our interview with Ms. Kenner:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
It's a series, so this book is the third in the original series, but the
inspiration for the series as a whole came from the fact that I was a new
mom and wanted to do something "mom" related. At the same time, I was
trying to come up with an idea for a paranormal series. I had the idea of a
group of demon hunters, but as I thought about the two ideas, they merged
into a demon-hunting soccer mom. I loved it ... and Kate Connor was born!
2) Are you working on something right now?
I just finished a cool project that I'll announce on my website very
soon, and I've returned my attention to finishing DEJA DEMON, the fourth
book in the series that will be out in the summer of 2008.
3) Is there something about you that your readers do not know?
The Kate stories are in fact autobiographical. I'm really a suburban mom
of two who fights demons for a secret arm of the Vatican in her spare time.
No, really!!!!
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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Howdy!
The 'China Dolls' took a visit down to the good ole' South this past
weekend to attend the RWA Writer's Conference and to speak at three other book
events. We spoke at the conference on a panel about multicultural
fiction with two other talented authors: Nadine Dajani (Fashionably
Late) and Cathy Yardley (Will Write For Shoes). We had a nice crowd of
people come to the event including another fellow multicultural chiclit
author Dona Sarkar-Mishra, whose book 'How to Salsa in a Sari' comes
out in January 2008. Congratulations Dona!! It was so nice to finally see you!
For those of you who have never been to or heard of an RWA Conference,
it's a place where romance and women's fiction writers all get together
to share ideas, network and talk about their work and show it off!
During our stay in Dallas, there seemed to be many other conferences
going on as well and I think the most exciting conference other than
the one that we were at was the Women's Peace Conference taking place
at the Adam's Mark Hotel. Every night, we would find dancing and
laughing at the Adam's Mark Conference room. In many ways, Blossom and
I wanted to participate but were just too tired from our own
festivities. We would just watch and be in awe!
The trip started off dramatic. We got off the plane at DFW airport at
11:30 AM and had to rush to get our rental car to try and make an event
with the Dallas Bar Association at 1 PM. Luckily with my speed demon
driving, we got to the Belo Mansion with a few minutes to spare and got
a chance to meet a bunch of lovely lawyers. It was refreshing to see a
bunch of attorneys sit down and enjoy lunch during lunch time unlike
the lawyers we see in New York!
In addition to the conference and last but not least, Blossom and I felt quite honored to
speak at a wonderful APEX/GDAACC event sponsored by State Farm
Insurance. Angela Lang, the president of Asian Professional Exchange
(Dallas), is one of the sweetest people that we've ever met. The event
was held at the AIJA Restaurant in downtown Dallas and it was one of
the nicest events that we've ever done. Over one hundred people filled
the room and we could feel the warmth and welcome from everyone.
Here are some of the pictures from the event taken by a fantastic APEX member and photographer Scott Boriboun.
All for us? How cool!
We're excited to meet new friends!
Angela Lang, the president of APEX, introduces us and says some kinds words.
China Dolls is 'Something to talk about'....
So glad people were listening!
The 'China Dolls' with Scott, the fabulous photographer responsible for these lovely event photos.
Thank you State Farm for sponsoring the event!!!
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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I'll be honest. The minute I heard the title of Tanya Stone's new novel - "A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl"
- I was hooked. Now that, my friends, is a great title. Or
at least the kind of title that can reel me in right away. Okay, maybe
I am a sucker for bad boys (I never take the practical road), but you
have to admit the premise is intriguing: three very different girls who
learn about female empowerment after dating the same player.
Here's our interview with Ms. Stone:
1) What was the inspiration for your book?
The title. Once the title hit me, I was off and running. I had a lot to
say about what that title could mean. What do we learn from those
experiences we have with people who aren't good for us? How can a bad
boy be good for a girl?
2) Are you working on something now?
Several things! I'm proofing the final pages for a picture book about
Elizabeth Cady Stanton called Elizabeth Leads the Way. I'm doing a
final read for a Young Adult biography of Ella Fitzgerald (both of
these will be out next spring), and I'm in the process of writing a
nonfiction book about the women who began astronaut training in 1961,
only to be kept from officially joining the program--and my next Young
Adult novel.
3) What is something about you that would surprise your readers?
Perhaps that I'm as passionate about nonfiction as I am about fiction.
I love going back and forth between the two. My brain works better that
way.
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| Posted by Michelle and Blossom at | | | |
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