Make Welcome ~ Tracy Brogan

Welcome to my corner of the blogging world.

Thank you. It’s nice to be here! It’s my release day today, you know!!

Yes I do know! Congrats! 

Let's get a little of the formalities out of the way. Give my readers a cliff note version of you.

I write fun and breezy contemporary stories about ordinary people finding extraordinary love, and also stirring historical romance full of political intrigue, damsels causing distress, and the occasional man in a kilt. I have two books coming out this year. The first is CRAZY LITTLE THING (Today is my release day. Did I mention that already?) and my historical, HIGHLAND SURRENDER, releases on December 4^th, 2012. I’ve had written all my life but only got serious about publication when my youngest daughter started first grade. I decided then it was either finish writing something and find an agent, or stop saying, “I’m going to write a book someday.”

·         How has Amazon Montlake been to work with?

Fantastic. They’ve been supportive and encouraging and patient. And fun. I clicked with my acquiring editor instantly. When we get on the phone it’s like talking to an old friend from college. Only a friend who holds all my publishing dreams in the palm of her hand…  ; )

 

·         What do you think about self publishing?

I support anyone’s decision to take that route and anything that keeps the industry fresh and vibrant and “on it’s toes” is a good thing. It’s not an avenue I would have chosen for myself because I’m not that disciplined. I’d get derailed by minutiae and I’d never get a book finished and into the public’s hands. Plus I know that in the past I thought my writing was as strong as it could be but I’m continually learning new techniques and now I realize, had I self-published, I might not have learned the same lessons and my writing would suffer for it.

·         What do you love about being a writer?

I love zipping around in various time periods and going on journey’s with my imaginary friends. I love brainstorming. But because I write both contemporary and historical, I have to be careful not to use words like “pusillanimous” when writing a modern love story. Or words like “clusterf**k” when writing a historical. I’m sure they had them in the past, but they probably called them something else.

·         What do you hate about being a writer?

Facing the blank page or re-reading that horrendous first draft and thinking, “I’m never going to be able to fix this.” And I don’t really love the promotions aspect of it. Being here today is great fun, of course, but I didn’t realize how much of getting published revolved around stuff that has so little to do with actually writing!

·         If there was one thing about the industry you could change, what would it be?

I would remove the stigma of romance novels. I still have friends who call them “bodice rippers” or who say, “Is your book smutty?” My books, like most romances today, are about relationships. No sex scene, no matter how brilliantly crafted it is, will stir a reader unless they can relate to the connection between the characters. Romance and sex are not interchangeable words. We don’t write sex novels. We write romance novels.

·         Nearly all romance novels have shhh, sex, in them. How do you answer the never ending question, Why do you write THAT kind of book? Or even better… How do you do your RESEARCH?

Oh, I think I just answered that one! I haven’t gotten the research question yet. But I’m sure I will. My first book (released today, in case you didn’t know!) is written in first person so the love scenes (notice how I called it a love scene rather than a sex scene???) are euphemistically worded but the reader learns more about it after the fact. My historical is much steamier. And my next contemporary, HOLD ON MY HEART, is steamier, too.

·         What do you like better, Twitter or Facebook? Why?

Facebook, 100%. I don’t understand Twitter at all. I’m on it but it’s like shopping at TJ Maxx. There is just too much junk to sort through to find the good nuggets of something worthwhile. Allegedly there are programs to sort through your messages…. Someone needs to explain this to me.

·         And the most important question ever... Do you roll your toilet paper over the roll or under the roll?

I might be the only person around who doesn’t care. What does drive me crazy, though,  is how everyone in my house just sets the new roll ON TOP of the old cardboard roll. I mean seriously! They’re just sitting there anyway. Can’t they take that extra three seconds and put the new roll on the roller? These are the frustrations that make me want to live alone.

Tell us about your latest release and were we can find it.

Well, since you asked, today is my release day!! Therefore, CRAZY LITTLE THING can be ordered post haste from amazon.com and B&N.com. My historical release, HIGHLAND SURRENDER is available for pre-order and will be released December 4^th. Just in time for Christmas shopping! 

Here is a taste of Tracy's release...that's today, you know! 

A blurb for CRAZY LITTLE THING:

Sadie Turner is not a control freak, just… orderly . When a cheating spouse topples Sadie’s impeccably tidy world, she packs up her kids for a summer vacation at her aunt’s lake house, hoping to relax, reboot, and pick up the pieces away from men. All men.

But eccentric Aunt Dody has other plans; she’s determined to see Sadie have a little fun—with Desmond, the sexy new neighbor. Tall, tanned, muscular—and even great with her kids, Desmond is Sadie’s worst nightmare. He must have a flaw—he’s a man, after all—so Sadie vows to keep her distance.

But as summer blazes on, their attraction ignites, and the life Sadie is trying so hard to simplify only gets more complicated… but maybe a little chaos is just what she needs to get her future, and her dreams of love, back in order.

An excerpt:

CHAPTER 1

My husband had a talent for putting the dick in unpredictable, so I wasn’t entirely surprised to catch him at an office party with his hand up the skirt of a giggly, jiggly redhead. Or that he had mistletoe dangling from his belt buckle. Even though it wasn’t Christmas. Suddenly eight years of wondering if I was paranoid or intuitive were finally answered. Richard was cheating on me, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

I probably should have left him sooner, but I was dumb in love, plus my mother thought divorce was tacky even though she’d been through one herself. Maybe she worried I couldn’t do any better. Turns out, I couldn’t have done much worse.

Exactly one year, six days, and fourteen hours later, Richard and I signed on the dotted line and our marriage dissolved, like margarita salt on the tongue, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of something that started out sweet but ended sour.

The details of our sordid divorce prompted a feeding frenzy for the local Glenville press. Richard was the city’s favorite son, after all, and everyone wanted the juiciest morsel for their evening headline. His job as anchorman of Channel Seven news earned him a quasi-celebrity status and a sycophantic following. I, on the other hand, was painted in a single stroke as a gold-digging Real Housewife just after his cash. No one but me seemed to remember the incident with the redhead, and somehow I became the pariah, a one-dimensional villain trapped inside the reality show of my own life. So when my aunt Dody called to invite the kids and me to spend the summer with her in tiny Bell Harbor, Michigan, it was an offer too good to refuse.

“You need a good psychic cleansing, Sadie,” Dody told me over the phone. “It’s time to purge all of Richard’s nasty karma right out of your system.”

I had zero faith in her tarot-reading, angel-guided, crystal-waving nonsense, but I was desperate for a vacation. And a chance to hide. Her pink clapboard house, perched high on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan, was the perfect spot to rest, reboot, and figure out what the hell to do with the next fifty years of my life. Sure, I’d probably be dead long before that, but I hate leaving things to chance.

I guided my SUV along the narrow, elm-lined avenues of Bell Harbor. Lowering the window, I breathed in deeply. The scent of hot sand tinged with tanning oil and lilacs reminded me of carefree summers, back before I cared about damaging UV rays and toxins in the lake. The buzz of cicadas nearly drowned out the sound of waves splashing on the nearby shore.

What a drastic change from the shimmering heat and road warrior mentality of Glenville’s asphalt raceway. Bell Harbor seemed frozen in a moment that never existed anyplace else, untouched by the tawdriness of life outside its borders. Like enchanted Brigadoon, except around here people didn’t randomly burst into song and dance. Or maybe they did and I just never noticed. 

You can find Tracy here:

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

Twitter.com/tracybrogan

Facebook: facebook.com/authorTracyBrogan

Website: tracybrogan.com