@Asphalt_Warrior @JKSLitPublicity #Book #Review "Doctor Lovebeads" by Gary Reilly

Doctor Lovebeads review
Author: Gary Reilly
5 out of 5 stars

See also my book feature here.

Book Info: Genre: Literary Fiction/humorous
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Anyone

My Thoughts: I'm running out of adjectives to describe how awesome these books are. In this one, Murph runs across a hippie commune in the mountains past Boulder and, as usual, breaks his vow to not become involved in his passengers' personal lives, leading him into a labyrinthine plan involving passing himself off as a hippie. It's pretty funny. As always, Murph is full of advice on many things. I don't want this review to be all quotes like a couple of my earlier ones, but I will give you this.

Murph on Fashion:

“The big house... reminded me of the types of structures you can still see in places like Center City: gingerbread houses, two-story affairs built back in the nineteenth century when people didn't have televisions and were forced to build interesting things out of wood. I have a theory that the outrageous fashions you see in pre-twentieth century culture came about as a result of the lack of television. I'm talking wild hats on women with lots of feathers, pelts, sequined dresses with long trains, as well as top hats on the men, with long-tailed coats. I figure that life in those days was so dull that people themselves became televisions. I'm still working on the theory. I include European royalty in this construct, but let's move on.”

I can't think of anyone who wouldn't like this book, honestly. It's funny and thought-provoking. Check it out.

Series Information: The Asphalt Warrior series, a proposed eleven-book series each featuring Murph, but which can be read as stand-alones.
Book 1 The Asphalt Warrior. review linked here
Book 2: Ticket to Hollywood. review linked here
Book 3: The Heart of Darkness Club. review linked here
Book 4: Home for the Holidays, review linked here
Book 5: Doctor Lovebeads

Disclosure: I received a copy from JKS Communications/NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: In Doctor Lovebeads, the fifth in novelist Gary Reilly's Asphalt Warrior series, Murph must go undercover to accomplish his mission. He lets his hair go untamed, dresses in muslin and sandals and arrives on the scene in a beat-up VW van called the Cosmic Wonderbus and Mobile Mercantile.

Murph tries to pass himself off as an old love child in his confrontation with Brother Chakra. As the good Brother might say, It's a mind-blowing trip.

@WheatonKathleen & @JKSLitPublicity #Review "Aliens & Other Stories" by Kathleen Wheaton

Aliens & Other Stories review
Author: Kathleen Wheaton
4 out of 5 stars

Book Info: Genre: Short story anthology/fiction
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: people who enjoy short fiction, interesting stories
Trigger Warnings: infidelity

My Thoughts: This is not the sort of book I would ordinarily read, and I'm not really certain why I agreed to review it, but I'm glad I did. It's not obvious how every single story links up, but several of them are quite easy to track due to shared characters.

Each story was well-written and fascinating, an insight into how it feels to not belong, literally. Not angsty, just honest. Each character is defined quickly yet thoroughly; it is obvious this writer is a master at creating characters efficiently. Short stories can be very challenging sometimes, but these are all wonderfully well done.

If you enjoy short stories that are interesting and well written, be sure to check out this book.

Disclosure: I received this book from JKS Communications in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: The characters in Kathleen Wheaton's linked stories are exiles-from their native countries, their families, their objects of desire. Political refugees from Argentina's "dirty war," survivors of a Cuban shipwreck and of Franco's Spain all navigate life as foreigners, whether in Madrid, Buenos Aires or suburban Washington, D.C. With wry, nuanced compassion, Wheaton follows these resilient people as they reconcile the absurdities of contemporary life with a legacy of dislocation, loss and longing.

@LizWorthXO & @JKSLitPublicity #Giveaway & #QA with Liz Worth, author of "PostApoc"

Yesterday I posted my review of Liz Worth's PostApoc and today I'm posting a Q&A with the author so you can learn a bit more about her.  At the bottom of the page, to thank you for your time, is a giveaway for this book in e-book format.  Here we go:

Q&A with “PostApoc” author Liz Worth

When did you start writing “PostApoc?”

I was actually writing another book at the time. I was coming off of “Treat Me Like Dirt’s” release, which was a really busy time for me. I was burnt out by the end and wanted to start working on something totally different, so I decided it was time to tap into my creative side and try writing fiction, which I’d always wanted to do but had never fully put my focus into.

            I started working on a horror novel, and I moved apartments. I’d been living in a really weird, dark apartment in a busy downtown area for a few years by then and it was time for a change. I moved to a part of Toronto I’d never lived in before, or spent much time in, and when I got to my new neighbourhood, I thought the change of scenery would help keep me inspired and focused on my horror novel. Instead, I started hearing a young woman in my head. You know how fiction authors say that their characters talk to them? Well, that was happening to me, except I didn’t know it yet. I started writing down little lines as they popped up, and the more I listened, the more the neighbourhood around me started to inspire me.

It sounds like the move was a turning point in your life?

Moving apartments was very symbolic for me. I’d been living with depression for many years by then, and in a lot of ways my old apartment said a lot about my mental state. I couldn’t sleep there, never felt comfortable, never liked it, but still I stayed for three years. It was in that apartment one day when I woke up and said I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. I’d been resistant to therapy for so long but I decided it was time, and once I started therapy I started making other changes: to move, to focus on my creative side, to be the kind of writer I’d always wanted to be.

So even though “PostApoc” is a fictional book with fictional characters and fictional situations, it’s much more personal than that to you?

            There was a time, in my mid-20s, when I was feeling particularly low and I would worry about the end of the world. I would walk down the street and feel convinced that everything would be over any day now. The apocalyptic scenarios in “PostApoc” are reflections of what I thought was right around the corner. I didn’t base the music scenes in “PostApoc” off of anything I have ever experienced, but the idea of a cult-like subculture reflects certain pieces of alternative and mainstream culture that I took literally when I was younger. Growing up in the ‘90s when heroin and suicide seemed like daily conversations, you could almost believe that such things could exist. Things felt very wild back then. Young people were very careless. A lot of the kids I knew then did way more drugs and lived much more dangerously than any adult I know now, and I don’t think that had to do with age. I think that had a lot to do with the time we were living in.

Why do you think it’s important to talk about personal struggles, like depression, suicide, anxiety and substance abuse?

Suicide and self-destruction have always been themes in my poetry and short fiction, as well as in some of the articles and blogs I’ve written about my own personal experiences with mental health. Ang, the narrator in “PostApoc,” deals with a lot of these same things, and I think “PostApoc” was a result of me processing a lot of my own thoughts on those subjects. When I first finished “PostApoc,” I thought it might be the last time I explored suicide in my writing, because it felt like I’d gone so deep with it.

For most, talking about these types of issues is incredibly difficult. How did you overcome that?

I didn’t have a strong support system at home growing up. I’m an only child, and there is a huge generation gap between me and my parents, who were both born in 1936. To them, talking about any kind of struggle within the family was shameful. They grew up in an era when everything needed to look perfect from the outside, no matter how badly it was crumbling inside. And mental health was definitely not something anyone talked about.

         I started struggling with depression and self-harm at 13, and being a teenager is tough enough on its own. But I very much wanted to be open, to talk to someone about what I was going through. I think that’s natural for most people – we look for somewhere to turn, but sometimes, when we get shut down, either by our parents or by the society we live in, we either mirror the reaction we see and decide to bury our feelings, or we keep trying other options until we find somewhere we can be heard. I didn’t have the kind of relationship with my parents where I could just say anything, so I tried friends at school, but it was hard to find other kids who could relate to what I was going through.

I had a lot to say about my experiences, and a lot of frustration to work out as a result of them, so after I’d been writing professionally for about five years I decided I was going to use the platform I had as a writer to say the things I didn’t get a chance to talk about when I was younger. I was a bit nervous the first time I went out there with it, but I had the belief that the more we talk about these things, the easier it will be for those personal conversations to happen among family and friends.

What was your intention of writing “PostApoc?”

I don’t know that it was always so clear from the start. It probably changed a lot along the way. First, I just wanted to do something creative for myself. And then I felt like I had to, because all of the words for it kept showing up in my head and they had to go somewhere. The more I worked on it the more I liked the idea of doing a poetic, apocalyptic punk rock novel.

What’s Ang’s message for readers?

I can’t say that Ang is a positive character. She isn’t really a hero. She is very confused, and very lost, and for her being lost is as much a result of her physical state as it is about the destruction around her. But she is loyal, and she is brave. She sticks things out, and in the process of that she surprises herself because she realizes she has more resiliency than she expected. She has gone from being someone who only wanted to die to being a survivor in a world that has turned horrific.

(For an example of some of Liz Worth's favorite music, check out this link.)

Can you tell us a little about the influence of music on “PostApoc” and your other work?

 I have always been interested in the crossover of mediums that was found in the first wave of punk, when it wasn’t just about music, but also fashion, fanzines, photography, art, performance, and poetry. So I have long carried that as a source of inspiration for everything I do, whether it’s just spending an afternoon at home re-styling an old t-shirt or thinking up an idea for a weird novel. I love the crossover that artists like Jim Morrison and Patti Smith have made, where they did both music and poetry, and I love that we still see that with younger artists like James Franco and Amber Tamblyn. They aren’t musicians, but they are showing up creatively in different ways.

       I find that music is very fragmented now, but so is a lot of creative culture. I go to a lot of literary events and the people I see at a reading are not the same people I’m seeing when I go see a band. And that’s not to say that we don’t all cross over in our tastes, but our participation in these things seems to have become very specific, at least where I live. So I like to combine influences from different mediums in my writing, like music, and not just take influence from literary tradition.

Do you listen to music while you write?

I do like background noise – when I was growing up I always did my homework in front of the TV – but I do choose my background noise more carefully these days. When I was writing “PostApoc” I mostly listened to “Treasure” by Cocteau Twins. I can’t listen to music that has lyrics in it when I’m trying to write, because I end up focusing on the words I’m hearing. I’m very much a lyrics person, even if a band just adds them in as a meaningless afterthought. But Cocteau Twins have such an ethereal quality, and even though the vocals are very prominent they are often non-lyrical, so they aren’t distracting. Usually, though, I write in silence at home in the morning, or write somewhere outside in the nice weather, where my thoughts can play off the street sounds.  

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@LizWorthXO & @JKSLitPublicity #Review "PostApoc" by Liz Worth

PostApoc review
Author: Liz Worth
4 out of 5 stars

Book Info: Genre: Dystopian (?)
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: People who like to have their minds played with
Trigger Warnings: Suicide, suicidal ideation, rape

My Thoughts: Is this all real? That is the question I kept asking myself as I read this book. Is this actually happening, or is this some sort of irreality playing out in the narrator's brain. A hallucination? These questions are never answered, it is left up to the reader to decide if this is real or the imaginings of a very damaged mind. So many of the things that happen have the feeling of a drug-induced psychotic break that I never did decide this for myself.

The fact that this book invaded my dreams should give you a good idea of how strongly these thoughts affected me as I was reading it. But it was also a very hard book to read, with some difficult things running through it. Not only the suicide pact that Ang was part of, but also surviving in the leftovers of the world after everything goes crazy. The starvation, the fear, the danger, the eating of cats and dogs. I just really had a difficult time. In a good way, I hasten to add. This book made me think, made me wonder, and left tendrils of itself in my brain. If you're interested in this book, check it out. Just be aware it will seriously mess with your mind.

Disclosure: I received an e-galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: Sole survivor of a suicide pact, Ang has fallen into an underground music scene obsessed with the idea of the end of the world. But when the end finally does come, Ang and her friends don't find the liberation they expected. Instead, those still alive are starving, strung out and struggling to survive in a world that no longer makes sense. As Ang navigates the world's final days, her emotional and physical instability mix with growing uncertainty and she begins to distrust her perception in a place where nothing can ever be trusted for what it seems to be. Bleak and haunting, "PostApoc" blends poetry and punk rock, surrealism and stark imagery to tell the story of a girl wavering at the edge of her sanity.

@JKSLitPublicity and @JTABooks "DeMarco's Cafe" Excerpt

If you follow this link, you'll see my post from earlier today about DeMarco's Cafe by Julie Tetel Andresen. Please check it out if you haven't already. What I have now is an excerpt from this book that came in while I was out over the weekend, so settle down, take a short break, and enjoy!

Chapter One

From force of habit Dayna began her shift by fussing with the plastic bins of lemon wedges, lime wedges, olives, and maraschino cherries. She squared off the small, warped cutting board and made sure the paring knife was placed precisely and diagonally across it. With a deft twist of her fist she fanned the stack of cocktail napkins so that they could be easily plucked one at a time. She idly stirred the glass bristling with the miniature red plastic cocktail straws and deemed it full enough to not need refilling. Ditto the shot glass with the toothpicks.

She looked up when a group of four men breezed in. They were tall and rangy and seemed to know the place, because without hesitating they made their way down the narrow passage between the bar stools and the single row of tables lining the exterior wall. They ducked through the narrow door to the back room. She heard the scrape of chairs and the rumble of their voices as they settled themselves.

She slid her order pad and a pen into her belt. She arranged glasses of water and napkin-wrapped cutlery on a tray, which she poised on the raised palm of one hand. She plucked menus from the stack next to the citrus bins, lifted the hinged section of the staging bar, and closed it again behind her, all in one fluid movement. As she crossed the few steps to the back room, she predicted, just to test her memory of how sound moved through the space, that the men had chosen Table Three.

She passed through the door under the antique sign that read ladies and gents sitting roomand – bingo – she saw the men on the left-hand side of the room at the table next to the window crowded against the back wall. Table Three. Her feat was hardly extraordinary. There were only nine tables in the tiny room, and she had had a partial view of several of them from her vantage point behind the bar She caught the eye of Sarah who was working the back room, to let her know she was setting up the newcomers’ table. She crossed the space and greeted the men as she set the water and cutlery before them She handed each a menu.

She was about to leave them to their deliberations when one of the men asked, “You new here?”

She shook her head and said pleasantly, “No, not new.” She turned to leave again but hadn’t gone a half step before he challenged,

“You sure?”

She turned back and looked down at the man who had draped his arm over the back of his chair so that he could look up at her She glanced around the table. Their faces were a little blurry. If she had had the money, she would have reordered her contact lenses. She was sorry that she had left her glasses behind the bar. Nevertheless, she was close enough to the man speaking to her to determine that he was youngish – probably not much older than her twenty-six. Call him early thirties, tops.

She smiled faintly. “Yeah, I’m sure,” she said, her manner still pleasant.

“Then we’re ready to order,” he said, without so much as a glance at the menu.

She took out her pad and clicked her pen.

“We’re having the usual,” he said.

So this was the game. Did it have to be in the first five minutes back on the job? She raised her brows and circled her glance once again around the table. Damn, she would have liked to be wearing her glasses. “Everyone, then?” she asked. “The usual?”

Three heads nodded.

“And to drink, I’m guessing it’s –”

“The usual.”

“Right,” she said, with another faint smile. She put the pad and pen back in her belt and collected their menus. “I’ll get that order right in.” She left them and went straight to the kitchen, maneuvering around the bustle and the stainless steel workstations.

She found a trusty busboy. “Hector, my darling,” she said, putting a friendly arm around his shoulders. “Could you sweep around Table Two and then tell me if you know what the men at Table Three usually order? If you know their food orders, return to the kitchen and tell Maria. Then come to the bar and let me know what to serve them to drink. Hold on to your cleaning props, and don’t look at them again when you pass through the back room.”

Hector nodded. While he retrieved a broom and dustpan from a corner, Dayna returned to the front room and the bar where several customers had bellied up. They obliged her by actually telling her what they wanted to eat and drink. She got their drinks going and handed their food orders to Tina, her best friend in the world, who was working the front room tables.

A few minutes later, Hector returned with the good news, bad news. The good news was that Maria knew the foursome’s food orders and Hector knew their drink orders. The bad news was that they were the band that had played five nights at the café the week before. They were back now for their second week.

“They’re the what?” she asked, hoping she had misheard.

Hector shrugged, as if he had no desire to belabor the point.

She sighed and made a mental note to find out what this needless expense was costing. She had returned to town with an inkling of financial problems troubling the café. Although her meeting with the accountant wasn’t for another week, she decided it would be prudent to prepare for it. With another sigh, she foresaw her day shift followed by a long night shift deep in the accounts.

In an undertone she said, “Please tell me their meals haven’t been comped this whole time.”

Hector shrugged again, this time as if in genuine ignorance.

“Well, if they have been, they aren’t anymore,” she said with the first real smile she had cracked since stepping into her old role. “Thanks, Hector.”

“No problem,” he said and got back to work.

She drew the beer and went to Table Three. She made sure to set the glasses in front of them with a light touch. Before she left, she assured them that their food would be right out. She returned to preside over the bar and picked up some tables to give Tina a hand until she judged the moment – to the exact minute – when Maria would have the plates ready. Maria had had the presence of mind to check on the seating arrangement of Table Three. Thus, as Dayna was stacking the dishes on the hot pads lining her left arm, Maria was able to tell her who was to get the fish and chips, the burger, the salmon sandwich, and the veggie burger. Dayna served the order without a hitch and, with no hint of triumph, invited them to enjoy their meal. She returned to the front room without a backward glance. When the time was right, she sent Sarah to present them with their bill and to settle up.

Not too many minutes after that, the men emerged from the back room and filed past her. The one in front – who did all of the talking, apparently – waved cheerfully and said, “See you tonight, sweetheart!” She was not sure (because she would be damned if she would put her glasses on now), but she thought he winked at her. The next two also waved and smiled at her. The fourth one paused.

There was just enough room between the two customers seated at the bar in front of her for the fourth man to lean forward and put his forearms on the wooden lip of the old polished plank. “Rick isn’t a complete jerk,” he said. “At least, not all of the time.”

She lifted a skeptical brow, but she wasn’t going to reject the apology outright. “Good to know,” she said. He was close enough in her visual field for her to see that he was not bad-looking. “And you’re –” she paused infinitesimally “– the veggie burger?”

He shook his head. “Salmon sandwich.” He pointed to his band mates. “Rick is the fish and chips. Josh is the plain burger. Nick is the veggie burger.” He smiled and pushed himself away from the bar.

Okay, he had a nice voice and an attractive smile, but that didn’t mean she would ask him his name. Nor was she going to make a point of finding out what it was.

“See you tonight,” he said.

She shook her head. “My shift will be over by then.”

“Another time, then,” he said and moved on in order to catch up with the threesome waiting for him at the front door.

She didn’t bother telling him that although she might not see them later this evening, she was sure to hear them. Just this morning she had moved back into her old bedroom in the apartment on the floor above the café.

****

@JKSLitPublicity and @JTABooks Julie Tetel Andresen feature: The Timeslip Series and "The Wedding Night"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                         

 CONTACT:

Marissa Curnutte

347.574.3136

marissa@jkscommunications.com

ROMANCE WRITER, LINGUIST KNOWS THE POWER OF WORDS

Summer promotion features Americana series by author Julie Tetel Andresen

ORLANDO, Fla. – When Julie Tetel Andresen writes, her words excite the emotions of romance readers, her storylines pique the interest of history buffs and her acute attention to detail satisfies the hunger of academics.

Andresen has penned more than 20 books during her career, covering everything from historical romance and contemporary fiction to paranormal tales and linguistic theories. Putting her expansive knowledge of language to work, she writes with an impressive blend of wit, sincerity and intelligence. She uses the varied lessons learned from each genre to help strengthen the other.

Andresen’s time-slip trilogy – “The Blue Hour,” “The Crimson Hour” and “The Emerald Hour” – takes readers on a trip around the world. The series of time traveling excursions spans more than 100 years, exploring the economic consequences of globalization through cancer research, pharmaceuticals and the rubber trade.

In addition to being an accomplished author, Andresen is a professional linguist. Her newest academic release, “Linguistics and Evolution,” reworks theoretical linguistics around a developmental systems approach for these post-Chomskyan times.

Andresen’s official website is hosting a special summer promotion for her beloved Americana romance series, which includes “Dawn’s Early Light,” “Unexpected Company,” “Carolina Sonnet” and “Heart’s Wilderness,” each on sale for 99 cents through September. Her site also offers for free download two stories: The Wedding Night (when several things happen at once), an erotic/gothic short story, and Saigon Spring (coming in September), a BDSM-inspired novella set in Vietnam.


 

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You can pick up a copy of The Wedding Night free just by clicking this link. This is a short story. The

Synopsis:

"Was his new bride mad? That was the question on the mind of Roland Devereux, the new Earl of Rochester, as he turned the handle on the door to her ladyships' bedchamber.

The only question on his new countess's mind was whether she could save them both from the evil lurking in her house."

For more Julie Tetel Andresen goodness, check out her Timeslip Series at this link.

Book 1 - The Blue Hour

Cancer researcher Alexandra Kaminski is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough when she crosses paths with pharmaceutical representative, Val Dorsainville, and the two are plunged into the mystery, passion, and tragedy of their past lives in Paris of the 1800s. Can they solve the mystery and avert tragedy this time around?

Book 2 - The Crimson Hour

Eloise Popescu has one last entry to make in her screw-up-alog, and it's a doozy: she has just walked into the cross-fire of warring Chinese mafia families and into the path of Hanes Reynolds whose career has just been ruined by those same families. As Eloise and Hanes reluctantly unite forces to escape the clans, they must learn to trust one another … or repeat the fatal mistakes they made the last time they were together in 19th-century Hong Kong.

Book 3 - The Emerald Hour

Londoner Theodor West can't quite believe how, much less explain why, the beautiful and free-spirited American botanist, Jordan Charles, is bedeviling him and his high-tech career. But it's clear that if he wants his career back and that if she wants to avert the destruction of the world's rubber forests, they must repair what happened the last time they were together – one hundred years ago in London and Rio.

And finally, some info on Julie Tetel Andresen herself, and a Q&A.

Biography of Julie Tetel Andresen

Julie Tetel Andresen’s seemingly disparate writing activities – fiction, non-fiction and essays in foreign languages – all arise from a unified sense of her writing self.

As a professional linguist, she loves language, while as a romance writer she loves the language of love; and when learning a foreign language, she loves nothing more than exploring the limits of her ability to express herself in that language on paper.

In her academic writing, she has long been devoted to exploring the history of linguistics, and this disciplinary exploration parallels her devotion to writing historical novels. In her most recent academic work “Linguistics and Evolution” (Cambridge 2014), she shows the ways that the history of linguistic theory and practice informs the current state of the discipline, and this sense of the past pressing on the present informs her time-slip series.

Her writing activities have always been entwined temporally. She wrote her first historical “My Lord Roland” while writing her PhD dissertation “Linguistic Crossroads of the Eighteenth Century,” and all her early academic articles were written mostly in French. Twenty novels and dozens of journal articles later, she wrote her Regency novella “French Lessons” while waiting for the 2012 autumn meeting of the Cambridge Press Syndicate to decide to issue her a contract for “Linguistics and Evolution.” At the same time, she happened to be in Ho Chi Minh City learning Vietnamese and happily writing her Vietnamese essays.

She firmly believes that one type of writing strengthens the others. Her historical novels have honed her craft of plotting and sub-plotting, while her time-slip series has given her the Kraft (in the German sense of the word 'power') to handle the long historical arc and multiple characters involved in “Linguistics and Evolution.” Her professional study of language, in turn, makes her sensitive to the vocabulary and rhythms of speech in other places and time periods; while writing in a foreign language – be it French, German, Romanian, or Vietnamese – is to her like the pianist warming up with scales and arpeggios or the yogini trying out a new asana. Can she get her leg behind her head in Romanian? No? Well, then how about triangle pose? Can she get into full lotus in Vietnamese? Again, no? Let’s see about half-lotus.

Andresen grew up in Glenview, Ill. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Duke University and a doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has taught at Duke University for the past 20 years where she specializes in linguistics.

Q&A with Author, Linguist Julie Tetel Andresen

When did you develop a passion for linguistics?

Ever since I was about five years old. I remember lying in bed at night in the room I shared with my older sister, making up new words that I would teach her. When I discovered there were other languages in the world, with the words already made up, I couldn’t get enough. I didn’t know, however, that there was such a thing as a discipline of linguistics until I was working on my Masters in French. After that I was hooked.

How do you bridge your career as a romance writer with your life as a professional linguist and academic?

The two activities wrap around another almost every day in my life, and this has been the case for the last twenty years or more. Today I’m at a resort on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. My friends are on the beach. I can’t tan, since I have redhead skin and was told by a dermatologist years ago to stay out of the sun. I’m happy enough, however, because I’m on the balcony of my room overlooking the sea, and working on the some of the early chapters of the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell book, Languages of the World, skyping with my co-author, Phillip Carter. When I take a break from this, I’ll probably download a werewolf story or a panther shape-shifting story. I got into these subgenres in the past few months. At the moment, I can’t get enough of them.

How do your two writing careers strengthen each other?

All good writing is story telling, and this applies to academic writing, as well. I love reading about language, and the question is always, “What story is this linguist telling me?” I am currently reading The Last Speakers by David K. Harrison, and it’s a wonderful world tour of the stories of speakers of endangered languages. My favorite linguist may well be Stephen Levinson. Although it might not seem like his Space in Language and Cognition would make for a gripping story, I read the book (several times, actually), enthralled by the world Levinson was opening to me. Following a good (academic) argument is like reading a well-plotted novel.

I think it was Fred Astaire who said: “If I don’t dance for one day, I feel it. If I don’t dance two days in a row, the audience will feel it. If I don’t dance three days in a row, I should find another job.” Having two writing careers keeps me in writing shape. It’s cross training. Yoga and Pilates.

You have lived and traveled all over the world – to France, Germany, Vietnam, Romania, Greece, and Brazil just to name a few places. How did this influence your writing?

           

I’ve always loved historical romances, but I began my time-slip series when I realized I wanted to write about the places I’m visiting in the here and now. I love it when a place is a kind of character in a novel, ever-present and shaping events. I also happen to love botanical gardens and the tropics, so I find myself gravitating toward southern latitudes and the equator, where everything is lush. When I write a story and find I need to check out the details of a place I’m using as a setting, I can easily persuade myself I need to revisit the location in order to make sure I have the details right. While writing The Emerald Hour, I made sure to revisit the spectacular Jardim Botânico in Rio. In fact, it would have been irresponsible of me not to revisit the location.

How do you see language changing?

For one thing, it’s always changing! I wrote a short essay that’s on my website for the Duke Magazine about where English will be in 25 years, where I offer a few ideas. Linguistics isn’t a precisely predictive science where I can say that X grammatical change is certain to happen. However, since William Labov’s groundbreaking work in sociolinguistics, linguists are able to track language change in progress. Just sticking to phonetic matters, Labov is currently tracking the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Cities Shift in North American English. As for lexical and grammatical matters, there is no doubt that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter compel their users to create new and abbreviated forms that will no doubt get woven into the spoken language. People are already speaking abbreves, and LOL has morphed into the word lawl. One of the more interesting phenomena created by social media is that previously unwritten forms of a language (Arabic dialects, for instance) are now becoming written forms of communication. Before these new media, in the case of Arabic, only Modern Standard Arabic functioned (and still functions) as the written standard, while the local dialects were written in very limited circumstances, if at all. Now there is an explosion of writing in the local dialects, as people communicate directly among themselves.

How many languages do you speak? Which one do you prefer and why?

I’m not a polygot. I’ve studied an array of languages – French, German, Arabic, Japanese, Vietnamese, Romanian – sometimes just to get a sense of how the particular language is put together, but I know true polygots, and I’m not one of them. I make zero claim, for instance, to knowing anything but the most superficial facts about Arabic or Japanese. At the moment I am immersed in Romanian. If I’m not in the language at the moment, I can’t say anything about it. The language I prefer is the one I am in in the moment. I do know that I love Vietnamese enough to want to spend an entire year there, in a language school. The six months I spent there last year was not enough.

Do you find it easier to write or speak in a foreign language?

For me, writing is always the easiest thing to do! When I was in Vietnam, I kept coming to class with essays. The teachers wondered at first why I was doing this, because they hadn’t assigned them. One of the first questions one of my teachers asked was, “How long did it take you to write this?” I would usually work on one for a couple of hours a day for maybe a day or two, so I could sleep on things, and then go back and see what I wanted to say. I would tell my teacher I spent maybe five, six, or seven hours an essay. She would shake her head and say it would take her over a week to write something like this in English. And her English was way better than my Vietnamese. I think most people think speaking is easier than writing. For me, it’s the opposite.

It didn’t really even occur to me that I have routinely written in a language I am studying until a little over six months ago. It simply seemed like a natural thing to do as a writer, like a pianist warming up by playing arpeggios. As I was putting my website together, I thought, Well, if I’m putting together all my writing, I may as well include all my writing. I’ve always written my foreign language essays for restricted audiences, either a small group of academics interested in a particular question or for an audience of one, namely my language teacher. They’re intimate pieces. I finally put them on my website, because I thought maybe other people would enjoy them as well.

 Your collection of books explores so many points in history. Is there one era that has a special place in your heart?

This is a choosing-among-children question, only slightly less difficult to answer than, “What’s the favorite book you’ve written?” All historical periods are fascinating. Especially the present one, since I’m living in it.

How was your approach to writing your time-slip series different than your historical and Regency pieces?

Not much different. I felt my time-slip series explores and expands my sense of the boundaries of the romance. I got my start with Regencies, which to me are like classic Hollywood romanticomedies, and who doesn’t like a Frank Capra screwball comedy? Everything I’ve written from that point on has been an extension of the form of the romanticomedy, even if the tone is dark.

We can only assume you never stop writing. What can readers expect from you next?

I yielded to trend and just wrote a BDSM-inspired novella. Yikes! But I loved it. Not for everyone, of course, but nothing is. After the linguistics book, it’s back to another time-slip. (I think.)

I plan a trip to Mongolia in 2014 and want to find a good 6-week program for learning the language – the basics, obviously, nothing for fluency. What will come out of that is anyone’s guess. I, for one, don’t have the faintest idea.

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