Paris is Always a Good Idea -- Release Day!

On Sale Today!

RHYS: Who doesn't agree that Paris is always a good idea? Now more than ever! But today we Reds are jumping up and down with excitement because this much anticipated day has finally come.  Our dear Jenn's beautiful, wonderful, sexy, funny break-out book is finally born.

What's more it's the perfect book to help us escape from the crazy world we're living in. Tell all your friends. Jenn couldn't have the sort of tour and publicity she would have expected for a new venture like this so let's all shout from the rooftops.

Here is enough to whet your appetite:

One of Popsugar’s Best New Books for Summer 2020

A thirty-year-old woman retraces her gap year through Ireland, France, and Italy to find love—and herself—in this hilarious and heartfelt novel.

It's been seven years since Chelsea Martin embarked on her yearlong postcollege European adventure. Since then, she's lost her mother to cancer and watched her sister marry twice, while Chelsea's thrown herself into work, becoming one of the most talented fundraisers for the American Cancer Coalition, and with the exception of one annoyingly competent coworker, Jason Knightley, her status as most successful moneymaker is unquestioned.

When her introverted mathematician father announces he's getting remarried, Chelsea is forced to acknowledge that her life stopped after her mother died and that the last time she can remember being happy, in love, or enjoying her life was on her year abroad. Inspired to retrace her steps—to find Colin in Ireland, Jean Claude in France, and Marcelino in Italy—Chelsea hopes that one of these three men who stole her heart so many years ago can help her find it again. 

From the start of her journey nothing goes as planned, but as Chelsea reconnects with her old self, she also finds love in the very last place she expected.

JENN McKINLAY: What a thrill to have Paris is Always a Good Idea released into the wild! Even after so many books (Paris is my 45th book!!!) the thrill of opening a box of author's copies never ever gets old! 

This book, oh, this book. My first foray into women's fiction and it was an endeavor. It was hard. It required some blood letting, sage burning, and howling at the moon. Okay, not really, but it sure felt like it. Given that my personality is one of conflict avoidance -- as in, Oh, things are awful, okay, let's just cracks jokes and move forward and pretend we're not having any feelings -- writing about a person grappling with grief and loss and big turning points in her life, while she was traveling in three different countries, mind you -- was really freaking difficult. Oh, and it's me, so it had to be funny or why bother. In fact, I'm quite positive this book gave me shingles! Oy!

There was so much about this book that came from my own life. Chelsea, the heroine, finds herself at a turning point where big decisions have to be made. Her journey to find her happiness brought me back to the time in my life where I was standing at a crossroads, trying to decide which way I should go. Should I quit my job and move across the country to follow my dream of being a writer or should I continue on in the unfulfilling but safe job I had landed post college? I suppose it’s obvious which path I chose. Like me, Chelsea quits her job, but her journey, to try and find her former happiness, becomes much more complicated than she anticipated.

Chelsea has been challenged by her sister, Annabelle, to rediscover her old self in the last place she can remember being happy. She believes that if she goes back and reconnects with her past loves, maybe, she can find her happiness and herself again. But is it possible to go back? Can we ever be the person we once were before such a life changing event like the loss of a loved one? There is only one way for Chelsea to find out. She has to go.

It is my fondest wish that Chelsea’s journey will resonate with you, Readers. I think we have all lived through times of loss and grief, endured uncertainty while standing at life’s crossroads, and have looked to our past to inform our future, while navigating this crazy journey called life. Being able to examine these truths through Chelsea, while writing about some of the places I love best in the world was a pure joy for me in the end (despite the shingles) and I hope it will be for you as well.

So, tell me, if you had to go to Europe (hardship, I know) to make a big life decision, which country would you visit and why? 



Also, if you're in the mood for a bargain (and who isn't?) my romantic comedy EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY is on sale for $2.99, with several other terrific titles, wherever ebooks are sold!

The Green Eyed Monster

Courtesy Essdras Suarez

Hank Phillippi Ryan:  Someone asked me once if I could write a mystery without a romance. I said: not if the characters are real people. Then they asked: could you write a romance without a mystery?

This one was tougher. "Well, I asked, if there's no mystery to solve, what would the characters DO?"

(Now you probably know too much about me.)

Anyway,  the real point is, authors are always contemplating the work of other authors. And Samantha Wilde has been looking at us! Well, at mystery authors. And she says:

Everything I Learned About Writing Came From Mystery Authors (Almost)

SAMANTHA WILDE: One day I sat staring at a mostly blank page, some distance through a novel, and thought, what would a mystery author do? I grew up the daughter of a novelist. My mother, Nancy Thayer, saturated my childhood home with novels. What’s a room without a bookshelf or a stack of books? What’s a room without floor to ceiling bookshelves? And among those thousands of stories, some of her most favorite, most absorbing, most addictive reads, heaps upon heaps of them: the mysteries.

I can’t be the first person to write that no one can plot like a good crime writer. You pick up the novel, read the first line, and for the next twenty-four hours your children run around screaming and begging for food. When you remerge, it’s like you just got off a plane from a trip abroad. You take a big gulp of air and remember your actual life.

I try to engage that genius of plotting I learn from suspense, although when you’re dealing with cranky mothers and envious friends and you can’t kill someone because it’s not that kind of book, you sometimes wish for another genre. In my most recent novel I wrote about envy. This led me into some research on envy, one of the seven deadly sins. I won’t say that envy makes the world go round (it doesn’t sound very good, does it?), but what’s a good story without it?

Shakespeare was the one who coined the phrase “green-eyed monster” in Othello: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;/ It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock/ The meat it feeds on.” Envy is so powerful, so universal, that I decided it must have plagued even the dinosaurs. One can only imagine the envy Tyrannosaurus Rex experiences looking at his long-armed companions.

I asked an artist friend of mine, Sara Prentice Manela, to draw a cartoon of the envious T-Rex to accompany some of my essays on envy; she drew him “losing his envy.” Self-love for dinosaurs!

It should be a surprise than that I, writing about envy, would have to wrestle my own green-eyed monsters, particularly when reading other novels or finding out about the successes of other authors. It has always struck me, subtly, and without malice, this small pinch of envy, when I read mystery, as I follow an incredibly orchestrated and executed plot that literally bewitches me out of my life and into the pages. I do want to plot like that, and, of course, it’s not impossible, even in my world of women’s fiction, writing as I do about the ordinary lives of women.

In the end, the cure for envy lies in one’s willingness to learn, to appreciate, admire and be a beginner. Of course, I don’t read books to learn how to write. I read books because I love to read. But any good book I read, particularly when I recognize a gift in the author I feel is weaker in me, offers a good education. Which is why, as my mother knows and certainly taught by example, a good writer always reads. And reads. And reads.

Tell me what you envy. Have you ever read a book that awakened your green-eyed monster?

HANK: And Sam is offering a copy of her book (in the US. only, okay?). How about--what--if anything--are you envous about?

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 Samantha Wilde is the author of I'll Take What She Has and This Little Mommy Stayed Home (both from Bantam Books).  Here's the trailer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2bJ-glbr0
 The at-home mother of three young children, she moonlights as a minister and a yoga teacher. She's the graduate of Smith College and Yale Divinity School and lives in Western Massachusetts.

Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSamanthaWilde

In I'll Take What She Has... Best friends since kindergarten, Nora, a reserved English teacher, and Annie, an out-spoken stay-at-home mother, wrestle with the green-eyed monster when the new history department hire at the suburban Boston prep school where they teacher, Cynthia Cypress, arrives on campus. A missing grandmother, depressed sex therapist, and a financial crises add to the comedy in a novel about imperfect friendships, mixed up families, messy motherhood, and the quest for the greenest grass.

Never Forget To Roar

The Lion Is In is a novel about three women on the lam and a lion who changes their lives. It’s about friendship, courage, love … and learning to salsa with the king of the jungle.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: “Three women walk into a bar”…kind of sounds like the beginning of a joke. But for the three women in THE LION IS IN, it’s the beginning of a journey. Delia Ephron’s new novel is—well, it’s novel. And original and fresh and hilarious and poignant and it stars—a lion. Named Marcel. As you will discover, Marcel is a force. And so, as you will also discover, is Delia. (If her last name sounds familiar, come on. You know why.)

HANK: Delia! You're amazing. With a whole list of novels and essays, movie screenplays like You've Got Mail (with so many lines that are iconic) and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a long-running play written with sister Nora, (Love, Loss and What I Wore), and now your brand new book THE LION IS IN that comes out this week. SO much to talk about! So, um, what was your sister Hallie like when she was a kid?

Delia Ephron: For some reason that question reminds me of Hat Day at Camp Tocaloma where Hallie, about 8 at the time, wore an upside-down straw bowl on her head.

HANK: Oh, she still wears that. We all wondered about it...but were afraid to ask. Anyway, I was thinking about You've Got Mail. (You're probably sighing, now, thinking, WHY is she asking about that? But here in book world, it's a true classic).

One reason I love it is that it reveals how some of us--and I include myself--find it so much easier and more successful to talk without really being in the same room with someone. Joe and Kathleen are articulate and clever and poignantly honest when they're anonymous. There's a question there, I promise. About writing, I guess. Are you more comfortable writing than talking? Are you enthusiastic when you sit down at the computer? Or anxious?

Delia Ephron: I love to write. It's total escape for me -- not that it isn't sometimes difficult or full of anxiety but basically I'm so happy writing. But I also love to talk. I love to talk about writing too -- to have really boring conversations with my writer friends about things like structure. But everyone in the world writes more. Email and texting and twitter are putting our voices out of business.

HANK: Oh, my husband would disagree...for my voice, at least. So. The Lion is In. Okay, I've gotta ask. Tell us about the first moment you thought: oh, of course. I could write a novel about three women who meet a lion. Yes, a lion. And how their lives are changed by the lion. Sure, yeah, that'll work. Why didn't I think of that sooner? (And I love the Thelma and Louise cover!)

DE: I dreamed it. I had a really powerful dream about three women in this huge strange roadhouse/bar built of materials hammered every which way. I knew two of the women were young, in their twenties, and their names were Lana and Tracee. And there was an older woman, around 50, that I named Rita when I woke up. Tracee was in a wedding dress. And there was a lion. A lion. In a large cage. The women were all on the lam.

The dream took place in North Carolina, a state I had never been to. When I woke up I really didn't know if what I dreamed had actually happened. It took me a few minutes to realize I was actually in NYC in my own bed. I knew it was my next book. I sat down that morning and started writing. The story contains all the themes of my life, so I'm not surprised in retrospect it came from a dream. But when I went down to N.C. after writing the first draft (not before), I found so many things that I had written were actually there.

And the lion ... I have a dog, so I believe that animals are remarkable and have the power to change our lives ... but a lion???? ... I sent the manuscript off to Katie Buess, at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and she said everything that I had imagined with Marcel (my lion) was right. She helped me, gave me some ideas and adjustments ... but basically I seemed to know it.

And re the cover: Thank you. I love it too.

HANK: Delia, that’s almost—incredible. A dream. Huh. And so interesting that it didn’t just evaporate when you woke up, as they often do. I want to talk about how your brain “understood” lion-ness, and what that was, but first-- You talked about the themes of your life..tell us about some of them…and how they translated into the book.

DE: Lana is struggling to stay sober ... and those were problems I grew up with, my parents had those problems ... and Rita is unhappily married, trapped in a joyless world -- her spirit is being crushed. I know that from my first marriage. I had to leave to save myself, and she does too. And Tracee, well I'm not a kleptomaniac, but I know what it's like to feel unloved.

When I began to write, I didn't know what the women wanted. I only knew what they didn't want: the lives they were leading. Their friendship -- a sisterhood -- is a major part of what helps them figure out where they are going and get there. The other part is Marcel.

HANK: So what was it about lions that you “got”? Why did you use a lion? How did you pick the name Marcel—or was that simply the lion’s name?

DE: Marcel -- I suppose it's like a baby where you look at it and you know its name. Oh this is ... Marcel. About lions, I understood their power, their silence, their essential social -ness, their love of scents (although I had to be told about their love of femur bones) and their whimsy.

HANK: Yikes. Scary. (But good to know about the femur thing.) What did your agent say when you—or your husband, or whoever you first told—explained what your book would be?

DE: I just sent it to my agent without an explanation. I'm not sure if I told her I was even writing it but she loved it. She pushed me ... I did two more drafts, but she always loved it. So did my husband. I strive/hope to write what I like to read: characters that you love to be with, and a story that keeps you turning the pages. The turning pages thing was always working. I hope the other does too.

HANK: In the end, all the women’s lives are changed by the lion. For some reason, it reminds me of Dumbo’s magic feather, where the feather has no power, except what Dumbo believes—and that’s the strongest power possible. It’s as if we all have lions, you know, we just have to be open to them. (Or, I could be wrong.)

DE: That's what I believe. Whether you have the help of a lion named Marcel -- friend, playmate, comforter, priest, rabbi, minister, higher power, shrink -- we all posses the imagination to change our lives.

HANK: Has this book changed your life, too?

DE: It's calmed me down. Marcel is a force.

HANK: So I have to ask. When you think--"Marcel"--if you do--what does that mean?

DE: First the whimsy, something I always try to be in touch with, and then the bravery. And the patience. And kindness. And the roar. Never forget to roar.

HANK: Never forget to roar. Fantastic. Thank you! The book is amazing…and I can’t wait to see what happens as a result.

So Reds, was there a moment for you? Or a force? Or a decision? A person, place, thing, event or animal--who changed the course of your life? (Mine might have been when the political candidate I worked for lost the election—and I lost my job. As a result, and because I didn’t know enough to be afraid, I walked into a radio station, and asked for a job as a reporter. And so it goes.)

And how about this—Delia’s giving an autographed copy of THE LION IS IN to one lucky commenter!

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About the Author

Delia Ephron is a bestselling author and screenwriter. Her movies include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, You’ve Got Mail, Hanging Up (based on her novel), and Michael. She has written novels for adults and teenagers, books of humor, including How to Eat Like a Child, and essays. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, More, and The Huffington Post. Recently, she collaborated with Nora Ephron on a play, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which ran for two years off-Broadway and has been performed in cities around the world, including Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney.

www.twitter.com/deliaephron
www.facebook.com/deliaephron
www.deliaephronwriter.com

The Awful Truth

A mesmerizing tale of a family coping with the revelation of a secret that will change their lives...Jackson's most absorbing book yet, a lush, rich read with three very different but equally compelling characters at its core."

***Booklist Starred review

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You know people who just--make you laugh so much your stomach hurts? There's goofy funny, but that's not Joshilyn. There's dopey-funny, but that's not Joshilyn. There's hilariously, brilliantly, uniquely and brilliantly funny--yes, that about says it.

I met Joss (Yes, Joss, not Josh, please..) at the South Carolina Writer's Workshop (here we are with a whole crop of writers there) where she cut a swath through the place with her funny stories and incredible insight--and left an entire roomful of people half-crying and half-howling with laughter at the poignant and dramatically told (I mean, with accents) of her first book sale.

Now she's a total hot shot. She really is. I wish I knew how her mind worked, but then again, maybe not. Her books are --well, there's no one who writes like Joss. And that makes every one of her readers happy. Today, I'm brazenly, or as Joss would say: "BOO-KITTY brain-fryingingly flat-out PUSHING like a HUSSY"--or something like that.

Her new book A GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY is getting the buzz of buzzes. And she's here to day to tell us--it almost didn't happen.

Plus--she's giving away an autographed copy to one lucky commenter!

Brain Tricks

by Joshilyn Jackson

For me, writing has two purposes. First, I write to entertain myself. I like to invent imaginary friends and get them into scrapes. I like to make myself cackle with black humor that I feel vaguely guilty about perpetrating. I never outline; I want the plot to unfold in ways that surprise me as I go. I write, in short, because it is the most fun you can have with your pants on, and it doesn’t hurt that working from home means the pants in question can be saggy knit twelve year old rags coated in dog hair.

But under all that, writing is also my way of exploring the questions that drive me as a human being: How far into the black can you go and still find a light that will take you home? Is redemption possible? What does grace look like in this broken world? Does Love win?

I relish the fun parts, but I am a coward at heart. I will play all kinds of brain tricks on myself to try to avoid the realest part of writing---the part where I go down into the black and salty reaches of my own mental illness to wrestle around with the stuff that matters most.

My new book, A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY tells the story of three generations of Slocumb women. Ginny is 45, her daughter Liza is 30, and Liza’s girl, Mosey, is 15. If you do the math, you can guess that Ginny and Liza want nothing more out of life than to get Mosey to 16 Unpregnant.

Mosey is so NOT that girl. She is a virgin who has never even been kissed, but she has had such vigorous two-pronged relentless helicopter mothering on the issue of sex that when she gets nervous or stressed out, she sneaks dollar store pregnancy tests into the woods and pees on them, just to see that test window come up white and blank and pure---a physical testament that she is not going to make the same mistakes.

When the story begins, Liza, an ex junkie wild child, has had a debilitating stroke. The only thing working for her is water therapy, but she doesn’t have health insurance. Ginny decides to put in a backyard pool and do it herself, but Liza’s sacred willow is in the way. The tree was Liza’s haven before the stroke. She has pressed all her pins from Narcotics Anonymous into the trunk.

When they dig out the tree, they find a silver chest buried down near the edge of the root system---a silver chest full of bones. Human bones.

When I began writing, Ginny and Mosey were the narrators. I alternated between Mosey and her best friend Roger’s rambunctious adventures as they try to solve the backyard murder mystery, and Ginny’s tale of finally blooming at 45, as her attempts to keep Mosey safe send her careening into the arms of the long lost love of her life. It was funny and sexy and fast paced…and utterly heartless.

One of my writing partners called me on it—how desperately I was hiding from the real work. She said, “You are so determined to keep Liza from talking that you gave her a stroke to shut her up. She is the chewy black nougat at the center, and you have to give her a voice or your story is all fluff and buzzes.” That was so tough to hear, and my first reaction was, “SHUT UP! NUH-UH. YOU ARE DEAD WRONG AND ALSO SHUT UP.”

I was mad---even hurt!--- but now I am so grateful to her!

I gutted the book, and made room for Liza to go on a wild ride through her own black past, seeking the truth and her lost language, and excuse me for being disgusting, but I love this book now. I am proud of it. I think it’s more than just a fun ride, and I want every person ever born on the planet to read it.

I think that if my friend hadn’t called me on my cowardice, I would have written an empty book that would have made me eventually quite ashamed.

I can’t imagine I am the only coward in the room….

Do you have a Lydia in your life who calls you out when you play brain tricks on yourself? Whats the hardest truth you ever had to hear? I have a hard time telling people hard things --- I am SOUTHERN and incapable of bluntness. Luckily my friends know me well enough to extract the point when I walk around and around the issue nudging and hinting. What’s the worst truth you ever had to tell a friend, and how did you handle it?

HANK: Ah, Joss, that's a tough one. I am a huge coward, and have some idea that things will fix themselves. Which hardly ever works. I DO think--would I want someone to tell me? And most often, I would. I'd tuck in a bra strap, or mention spinach in teeth, and even stick my toe into manuscript criticism. I guess the fear is when the toe turns into a whole foot. In my mouth.

The worst truth? Hmmm. Let me think...How about you, Reds? Or--what do you wish someone had told YOU?

And don't forget, A free copy of A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY to one lucky commenter!

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New York Times Bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson lives in Georgia with her husband, their two children, and way too many feckless animals. She is the author of five novels: gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Backseat Saints, and, in January of 2012, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages, won SIBA’s novel of the year, twice been a #1 Book Sense Pick, and been shortlisted for the Townsend prize. A former actor, Jackson reads the audio versions of her novels; her work in this field has been nominated for the Audie Award, was selected by AudioFile Magazine for their best of the year list, and garnered a Listen Up Award from Publisher’s Weekly.

She is hard at work on a new novel titled SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY, expected in 2014.