#Excerpt from A LIFE LESS ORDINARY by Victoria Bernadine @VicBernadine #AmReading #ChickLit

The coffee shop wasn’t very busy.  Only a couple of tables were occupied, with several more people standing in line. Manny sat rather nervously at her table sipping her third vanilla latte and wondering if she was as crazy as Rebecca and Daisy claimed. This would be her fourth interview today of a potential travelling companion and she hoped this guy would be more of a possibility than the other three she’d already met. Oh, they all seemed nice enough, but Olive had been jittery and they’d quickly realized their personalities would never mesh well enough to travel together for six months. Isaac had had a predatory, speculative gleam in his eyes as he looked her over–and she hadn’t needed Harvey to tell her to stay as far away from him as possible.

Darius was very sweet and charming, just eighteen, but he couldn’t pay his own way, and Manny wasn’t about to support him for six months. He’d shrugged and accepted her decision with an adorable smile and she offered to call Daisy’s boss, Max, to see if he had any work that Darius could do. Darius had thanked her and even paid for their lattes, and they’d chatted for a good forty-five minutes before he’d finally gone on his way. Yes, he would have been a good choice–and she might change her mind if she didn’t find anyone before she left in two weeks.

You can always go by yourself.

I know. But it would be more fun with someone else.

You’ll have me.

Manny glanced at Harvey sitting in the chair across from her. He was dressed casually in jeans and a button down shirt open at the throat to show the strong lines of his neck and chest.

You’re not real.

Harvey winked at her. Just checking.

She shook her head and Harvey blinked out of existence as the door opened and a darkly handsome man walked in. He paused in the doorway and removed his sunglasses as he glanced around the small room. Securely hidden in her corner, Manny considered him.

Tall; over six feet. Dark. Handsome, with large, dark eyes and full pouty lips. His black, tousled hair and dark stubble on his face gave him a sexy, scruffy appearance. He was slim, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs encased in jeans.

I’ll bet he has a great ass.

I’ll bet you’re right.

He’s like a younger version of me.

Manny blinked at the man standing in the doorway and realized Harvey was right. Oh, they didn’t exactly look alike, but they had similar colouring, and a similar underlying confidence and arrogance in their stance. Probably something natural when you’re that naturally gorgeous, Manny thought ruefully, or, in Harvey’s case, thatunnaturally perfect.

I’d almost be jealous…if I was real.

But you’re not–and he’s quite something. I wonder who he’s here to me…eeet.

Her internal dialogue trailed off as the stranger’s gaze met hers. He gave a half smile and headed towards her.

For the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good girl. She turned her back on her youthful fancies and focused on her career. But now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit her job, sold her house and cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving town on a six month road trip.

After placing a personal ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most-read – and most controversial – blogger for the e-magazine, What Women Want. Zeke’s true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the same time. Leaving it all behind for six months is just an added bonus.

Now, armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.

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Genre – ChickLit, Contemporary Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Blog victoriabernadine.wordpress.com

Madi Brown Says Sophie Kinsella is the Sarah Jessica Parker of #ChickLit @Madithe1brown #AmReading

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sophie Kinsella

SK (Sophie Kinsella) is easily the SJP (Sarah Jessica Parker) of Chick Lit. She's written over a dozen novels, with each of her works centering around strong female characters that modern day women love to read about. If she's extremely fashionable, enthusiastic about her career, and if she still holds a place card for family and friends then we're all in aren't we? Many of us have read her books in one sitting, but what do we really know about Sophie Kinsella the woman? Well---as I soon found out, this author is just as interesting as the multidimensional characters that she creates. Here are 10 facts about Sophie Kinsella that you probably didn't know:

1) Sophie Kinsella once considered writing a thriller. Yes, it's true. And if her agent hadn't told her that what she'd come up with wasn't dark or gritty enough, then we may have been able to judge for ourselves.

2) Sophie Kinsella admits that she can relate to all of the characters that she's concocted in her best-selling Chick Lit books. Once, while she was nursing her baby, she opened up the door for her mailman---and her shirt was unbuttoned! It was a Becky Bloomwood moment that she'll always remember.

3) When asked what profession she saw herself in if she wasn't an author, Sophie Kinsella revealed that she'd be belting out songs as a singer of course ( after all, she did study music at New College Oxford).

4) It takes Sophie Kinsella nine months to pen a novel. She breaks it up into two stages. The first phase involves coffee, and sitting down, planning and taking notes. The second phase involves total isolation where it's just Sophie writing like a mad woman to speaker blowout-blaring loud music.

5) One of Sophie Kinsella's books (Sleeping Arrangements) was adapted into a musical. It premiered in London on April 17, 2013.

6) Someone has been really busy in between books. Sophie Kinsella has five kids; four boys and a girl. Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? How-in-almost-Brady-Bunch name does she find the time to write?

7) Guess who's hooked on eating nuts and having packets of them wherever she goes? Sophie Kinsella.

8) Life imitated art on an instance when Sophie went out Christmas shopping. She loaded her baby stroller up with so many bags that there wasn't any room for the baby.

9) Sophie Kinsella has a customized pen for all of her author book signings. She keeps it stored in gold bubble wrap.

10) Who knew? Sophie Kinsella anonymously sent a novel that she'd penned to her own publishing house under a different pen name.She remained tight lipped about doing so until her book, Can You Keep a Secret was published.

"If you LOVE New York, if you’re a name-dropping, fashion fiend careerist; fed up with serial dating, plagued with a thirst for sex, then you’ll totally stalk me for what I've penned.” - Author, Madi Brown

Description

29-year-old Emily Greene looks the part, but she’s still working on becoming a modern-day woman. Not that she’s one to back down from a challenge, but living as an eternal work-in-progress wasn't exactly the goal that she had in mind. It’s a harsh but true realization---the idea that that time isn't on her side, and the notion that wanting to have it all, doesn't mean getting it. The verdict is in; with zero prospects for a relationship and a stalled blogging career, Emily has every reason to believe that she’s been living a life too humdrum for her own good.

Making the change won’t be easy. She’ll have to do whatever it takes; start dating like a man, become more selective about which RSVP's she accepts, and work even harder at getting her dream job.The payoff’s huge; a modern twist on a storybook ending, but gains don’t often come without risks. In the here and now Emily just may be forced to choose...It’s got to be one or the other----the profession that she’s always wanted, or the love that she’s never had.

˃˃˃ Praise for Madi Brown & 

her debut novel, The Truth About Emily

"The added depth of character promises complexity but wraps everything in the saucy cloak of Emily's evolving personality and newfound beliefs about life, love, and the real nature of happiness. And this is where The Truth About Emily outshines many competitors, making it a recommended read for those seeking more than a standard romance novel." - D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer, Midwest Book Reviews

"This book has just about anything a girl would love to read about. If there's anything Emily Greene has is ISH and lots of it, oh the ending... This book is a total keeper, just anything about fashion to relationships to friends and family." - Y. Sanchez, Goodreads

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Genre – Contemporary Women's Fiction

Rating – PG18

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Connect with Madi Brown on Facebook & Twitter

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Eva Fejos' #WriteTip for Building Your Career as a Writer @fejoseva #amreading #amwriting

How to build up your career as a writer even if your publisher/agent doesn’t put too much emphasis on this?

The basic starting point should be that your book is good. You believe this to be true and that is why it has been published. Now ‘the only thing’ you have to do is to find your readers who will spread the news of the wonderful book you have written by word of mouth. How can you achieve this?

1. Use social media and be yourself. Write down your opinion on things, post excerpts from your work, show people what you’re like. The power of one’s personality is becoming increasingly important, so make sure your showing your true self and not some ‘invented character,’ because sooner or later, deception will be exposed.

2. Meet your future readers. Meet them at book clubs, schools, libraries, and take part in the organization of these meetings. Don’t try to sell books, don’t read from your book, but instead, talk to the people who came, show yourself, talk about your novel, but don’t try and pitch it, because that is ‘literally’ not your job. Your task is to show yourself, to ‘sell yourself.’ Get people interested in you and your work. Appear at all meetings possible.

3. Be on good terms with bloggers and journalists. Don’t get offended if they are critical of your work. Don’t be concerned with this at all. Don’t react to negative criticism, don’t defend yourself, don’t retaliate, because it will only make things worse. Accept the fact that not everyone has the same taste, and so your book can’t please everyone either. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you must know that if you argue with bloggers, critics, or commenters, your will NEVER come out on top. It’s much most elegant if you just go on with your work, and if someone asks for an interview or a guest post, be accommodating.

4. Create your own web page if you haven’t already. Post excerpts from your works and host lots of games where people have the chance to win a copy of your book. Free books can spread knowledge about you, so be generous.

5. Only very few people are able to achieve a breakthrough from one moment to the next. Usually outsiders forget that even these authors have many, many years of work behind their seemingly fast, or ‘instant’ success. So don’t be impatient. Write, write, write, and build slowly, but surely. If your works are good, sooner or later you will be discovered, but make sure you do all you can to get yourself noticed, and follow the advice I mentioned above.

Bangkok: a sizzling, all-embracing, exotic city where the past and the present intertwine. It’s a place where anything can happen… and anything really does happen. The paths of seven people cross in this metropolis. Seven seekers, for whom this city might be a final destination. Or perhaps it is only the start of a new journey? A successful businessman; a celebrated supermodel; a man who is forever the outsider; a young mother who suddenly loses everything; a talented surgeon, who could not give the woman he loved all that she desired; a brothel’s madam; and a charming young woman adopted at birth. Why these seven? Why did they come to Bangkok now, at the same time? Do chance encounters truly exist?

Bangkok Transit is a Central European best-seller. The author, Eva Fejos, a Hungarian writer and journalist, is a regular contributor to women’s magazines and is often herself a featured personality. Bangkok Transit was her first best-seller, which sold more than 100,000 copies and is still selling. Following the initial publication of this novel in 2008, she went on to write twelve other best-sellers, thus becoming a publishing phenomena in Hungary According to accounts given by her readers, the author’s books are “therapeutic journeys,” full of flesh and blood characters who never give up on their dreams. Many readers have been inspired to change the course of their own lives after reading her books. “Take your life into your own hands,” is one of the important messages the author wishes to convey.

Try it for yourself, and let Eva Fejos whisk you off on one of her whirlwind journeys... that might lead deep into your own heart.

About Eva Fejos, the author of Bangkok Transit

- Eva Fejos is a Hungarian writer and journalist.

She:

- has had 13 best-selling novels published in Hungary so far.

- Bangkok Transit is her first best-seller, published in 2008.

- has won several awards as a journalist, and thanks to one of her articles, the legislation pertaining to human egg donation was modified, allowing couples in need to acquire donor eggs more easily.  

- spends her winters in Bangkok.

- likes novels that have several storylines running parallel.

- visited all the places she’s written about. 

- spent a few days at an elephant orphanage in Thailand; and has investigated the process of how Thai children are put up for adoption while visiting several orphanages. 

- founded her own publishing company in Hungary last year, where she not only publishes her own books, but foreign books too, hand-picked by her. 

- Her books published in Hungary thus far are:

Till Death Do Us Part (Holtodiglan) | Bangkok Transit | Hotel Bali | Chicks (Csajok) | Strawberries for Breakfast (Eper reggelire) | The Mexican (A mexikói) | Cuba Libre | Dalma | Hello, London | Christmas in New York (Karácsony New Yorkban) | Caribbean Summer (Karibi nyár) | Bangkok, I Love You (Szeretlek, Bangkok) | Starting Now – the new edition of Till Death Do Us Part (Most kezdődik) | Vacation in Naples – the English version will be published in summer, 2014 (Nápolyi vakáció)

To be published in spring of 2014: I Waited One Hundred Nights (Száz éjjel vártam)

Bangkok Transit (English version): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HDIT4UY

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Genre - Women's Fiction, Contemporary

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author

Connect with Eva Fejos on Facebook & Twitter