Interview with Author DJ Niko~"The Riddle of Solomon"

SUMMARY :


Cambridge archaeologist Sarah Weston and anthropologist Daniel Madigan team up for another expedition and adventure in this second book in the Sarah Weston Chronicles. While working on the Qaryat al-Fau archaeological site in Saudi Arabia, the pair uncovers a mysterious ancient scroll composed as a riddle. As they attempt to date and decipher the scroll, a flurry of ills befalls their expedition and the scroll is stolen. A trail of clues leads to India, Jerusalem, and the Judean wilderness, where the two discover the scroll was written by the enigmatic King Solomon as a map to an ancient manuscript. Meanwhile a privileged young Briton, Trent Sacks, has invested years and a fortune looking for his manuscript. Believing he is the last descendant of the House of David in the line of Solomon, Sacks will do whatever it takes to amass the ancient relics which will prove he is the Jewish Messiah. Leaving a string of murders in his wake, Sacks vows to crush Sarah and Daniel for challenging his quest. Journeying through the worlds of the occult, corporate greed, geopolitical conflict, Judaic mysticism, and biblical archaeology, Sarah and Daniel race to uncover the powerful ancient message that could have an explosive impact on modern Israel.


PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :
Publication Date:  July 1, 2013
Medallion Press
Paperback; 472p
Author:  DJ Niko

For more information, please visit D.J. Niko's website. You can also follow on Twitter and Goodreads.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

D.J. Niko is the nom de plume of Daphne Nikolopoulos, an award-winning author and journalist. Her first novel, titled The Tenth Saint, was released in March 2012 to rave reviews by both readers and the trade. In March 2013, it was awarded the Gold Medal for popular fiction in the prestigious, juried Florida Book Awards. An archaeological thriller embroidered with historical motifs, The Tenth Saint takes readers on an adventure across the globe: Ethiopia, the Syro-Arabian Desert and Abyssinian Empire circa fourth century, London, Paris, Brussels, and Texas. The Tenth Saint is the first book in The Sarah Weston Chronicles series. The second, titled The Riddle of Solomon, releases July 1, 2013.

Daphne is now at work on a historical novel set in tenth century B.C.E. Israel. The epic story details the collapse of the United Monarchy and the glory and fall of the empire built by King Solomon. It will be released in early 2015.

As a former travel journalist, Daphne has traveled across the globe on assignment, or for personal discovery. She has been to some places most of us don’t realize are on the map, and she has brought them to life through her writing for various magazines, newspapers and websites on an international scale. Her travel background and rich experiences now bring authentic detail, color, and realism to her fiction.

She also is the editor in chief of Palm Beach Illustrated magazine, a 62-year-old luxury-lifestyle glossy. She also is the editorial director of Palm Beach Media Group, and in that capacity oversees 11 magazines and 3 websites.

She is the mother of twin toddlers and, in her spare time, volunteers for causes she believes in—literacy, education, child advocacy, and t

he advancement of traditional and tribal arts from around the world. Born in Athens, Greece, she now lives with her family in West Palm Beach, Florida.


INTERVIEW !!!

Please join us today for an interview with D.J. Niko.  She's quite an accomplished woman!
Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to be with A Bookish Libraria today, Daphne.  Let's get right to it...

1)     Tell us something about yourself, please.  How do most people describe you?

 

I am probably best known for my love of adventure and exploration. I have traveled widely, and to many places way off the beaten path, for work and for pleasure. Not everyone knows this, but in my late 20s I spent two years backpacking around the world, with all my belongings literally strapped on my back. It was an illuminating experience, a true education. People tend to describe me as adventurous and free-spirited. And incredibly busy. Every day I juggle a family (husband and 4-year-old twins!), my work as a magazine editor, fiction writing, book promotion, and community work. My days start at 4 a.m. (crazy, I know) and continue at a pretty solid pace through 10 p.m. or so.

2)      Briefly, from where did the idea for your novel germinate?

 

A few years ago, my husband was talking about the legends surrounding King Solomon and the grimoires allegedly inspired by his apocryphal writings. I was fascinated, so I started to research the man and the myth. Interestingly, Solomon’s existence has never been proven yet there are so many writings attributed to him, even beyond what is in the Bible (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Songs). I started to piece things together and came up with a vague storyline. Then I read up on Jewish messianic prophecy, which states the messiah will be a descendant of the house of David via the Solomonic bloodline, and it all came together.

3)      Who first told you you could write well, and how did it affect you?

 

It was my first-through-third-grade teacher in Athens. When we moved to the States, she sent me a postcard saying, “You have a gift; do not forsake it.” I still have that postcard.

4)      Which contemporary authors do you most admire?

 

Junot Diaz, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Barbara Kingsolver, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Khaled Hosseini. I gravitate to writers with a superb command of language and original storytelling technique.

5)      Which are your favorite classical authors?

 

 James Joyce, first and foremost. Also Emile Zola, Soren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus.

6)      Jump into any book~which character would you be?

 

Without a doubt, Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey. What adventures that guy had!

7)      If you could have 5 historical people to dinner, who would they be?  What would you have to eat?

 

 I would invite people from antiquity, because I believe the wisdom of the ancients is still relevant today: the great Egyptian contrarian Akhenaten and his wife, Nefertiti, who was intriguing in her own right; Jezebel, the biblical bad girl; the mega-powerful and wise King Solomon; and the Greek historian Herodotus, so he could take notes. Could you imagine the energy in that room? I think it would be hilarious to serve a vegan meal, just to see their reaction. And lots of wine.

8)      Read any good books in the past 6 months?

 

Most of my reading in the past six months has been for research, but in the pleasure category, I really enjoyed A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers, and The Dinner, by Herman Koch.

9)      Favorite two tv shows:

 

 I don’t watch TV, other than a few PBS Kids programs with my kids. It sounds weird to answer this question with “Word Girl” and “Wild Kratts,” but there it is.

10)   Favorite movie of all time:

 

 Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro. It is so dark and, in some instances, extremely hard to watch, but it is a powerful statement about the triumph of the human spirit. For the same reasons, I also loved Life Is Beautiful, by Roberto Benigni.

11)   Are you working on a new book?

 

 I am currently working on the historical complement to The Riddle of Solomon. It is set in the tenth century BCE, in Israel and Egypt. It explores the collapse of Israel’s united monarchy and the moral and spiritual decline of King Solomon. Some of the mysteries in The Riddle are actually elucidated in this book, which releases in 2015 as an interactive TREEBook.

12)   Anything else I forgot to ask you?

 If readers want to connect with me, which I would welcome, I am on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, and www.djnikobooks.com. Thank you so much for having me! I love your blog, and visiting is always a pleasure. J

Thank you for visiting, Daphne.  You're a fascinating person.  I'd love to discuss more about your favorite authors...Zola and Kierkegaard in particular!  What interesting dinner guests, too.  I agree that Jezebel would be a hoot!


This tour was brought to my readers in cooperation with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours:

 

 Please click on the following to see more about this book and read reviews, guest posts and other interviews:   

Link to Tour Schedule: http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/theriddleofsolomontour/
Twitter Hashtag: #RiddleOfSolomonTour


Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"Poppet" by Mo Hayder~Jack Caffery Series #6

 

SUMMARY :

Mo Hayder has for years been a master of chilling, seamlessly-plotted thrillers that keep the reader glued to the page long after lights out, and fresh off of winning the Edgar Award for Best Novel for Gone, Hayder is at the top of her game. Her latest novel, Poppet, is Hayder at her most terrifying: a gripping novel about the search for a dangerous mental patient on the loose.

Everything goes according to procedure when a patient, Isaac, is released into the community from a high security mental health ward. But when the staff realize that he was connected to a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm amongst the ward’s patients, and furthermore that he was released in error, they call on Detective Jack Caffery to investigate, and to track Isaac down before he can kill again. Will the terrifying little effigies Isaac made explain the incidents around the ward, or provide the clue Caffery needs to predict what he's got planned?

Mo Hayder is renowned for conjuring nightmares that sink under the skin, and in Poppet she has delivered a taut, unbearably suspenseful novel that will not let readers go.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :
Published by:  Grove/Atlantic
Pages:  400
Genre:  Fiction/Thriller/Horror
Series:  Jack Caffery #6
Author:  Mo Hayder
Purchase:  Barnes & Noble


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Mo Hayder left school at fifteen. She worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She has an MA in film from The American University in Washington DC and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University UK.

 

Her debut, BIRDMAN, published in January 2000, was an international bestseller. Her second novel, THE TREATMENT, also a Sunday Times bestseller, won the 2002 WH Smith Thumping Good Read award. Her third novel Sunday Times bestseller TOKYO, which was published in May 2004 in the UK, won the Elle magazine crime fiction prize, the SNCF Prix Polar, and was nominated for three CWA dagger awards. Tokyo was published as THE DEVIL OF NANKING in the US March 2005. PIG ISLAND her fourth best seller was published in April 2006 and was nominated for both a Barry Award for best british crime novel and a CWA dagger. Her fifth book, RITUAL, the first of THE WALKING MAN series, has been nominated for The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award and one of the 14 short-listed titles for the coveted title of Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2009. The third of THE WALKING MAN series is GONE for which she won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and the 2011 Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library award for Outstanding Body of Work.

 

Mo lives in Bath, England, with her daughter Lotte-Genevieve.

 

 

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

 

Let me begin by saying that Mo Hayder has a twisted and sadistic mind!!  LOL  She scares the living hell out of me!  I had a hard time reading past the first couple of chapters of this book because I didn't really want to know who "The Maude" was and if she was going to snap off somebody's head or not. I was too terrified. Word to the wise...this is one of those ghostly thrillers that will give you nightmares the whole time you read it and afterwards, too.  I died, but I loved it.

 

Mo Hayder is absolutely known for her thrillers.  Her protagonist Jack Caffery is a widely lauded and beloved character who virtually grabs you by the throat in her books.  He's everything you hope for in a character who can travel the highs and lows of murder and mystery.  He gave me the creeps along with the various and assorted members of this cast of people in and out of the asylum.  Hayder knows how to draw a wicked scary person.  She a master at insanity, and it's completely icy to the heart.  I could hardly stand to read about the inmates of the asylum they were so alive.

 

Dark and frighteningly real, this is a novel that will give you a few hours of bone shaking fun (if this is your idea of fun!).  It was one of those "two finger" books for me.  I held two fingers across one of my eyes, and my heart thumped while I read...but I couldn't stand to put it down.

 

I'm a Hayder and Jack Caffery fan~big time!!

 

5 stars                     Deborah/TheBookishDame

 

 

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"Snatched" by Karin Slaughter~Chilling!

SUMMARY :

A gripping, action-packed short story available only as an eBook—from a master of character, crime, and urgent suspense.
 
Will Trent, a dedicated agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for fifteen years, knows that there’s definitely such a thing as a cop’s intuition. Which is why he should have listened to his own.

While in an airport restroom at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, Will overhears a girl’s pleading, plaintive voice: “Please, I wanna go home.” Something isn’t right here, thinks Will. He feels it in his gut. But he waits too long to act, and now the girl and the anxious, angry man she’s with have disappeared into the crowds at the busiest passenger airport in the world.

After a desperate search and with time running out, Will makes a call to his supervisor, Amanda Wagner. Will’s partner, Faith Mitchell, immediately sends out an abducted child alert. The entire airport will soon be grinding to a halt: Almost 100 million passengers a year. Five runways. Seven concourses. Six million square feet of space that sprawled across two counties, three cities, and five jurisdictions. All shut down on a dime because Will has a hunch that he is certain is true: a girl, maybe six or seven years old, has been snatched from God knows where. And he intends to bring her back—no matter what it takes.

Includes an exclusive excerpt from Karin Slaughter’s thrilling new novel of suspense, Criminal.

PRAISE FOR THE CRIME FICTION OF KARIN SLAUGHTER

“Karin Slaughter is one of the best crime novelists in America.”—The Washington Post

“Crime fiction at its finest.”—Michael Connelly

“An absolute master.”—Chicago Tribune

“Slaughter writes with a razor. . . . Better than Cornwell can ever hope to be.”—The Plain Dealer

“Slaughter will have you on the edge of your seat.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“One of the boldest thriller writers working today.”—Tess Gerritsen

“Move over, Catherine Coulter—Slaughter may be today’s top female suspense writer.”—Library Journal (starred review)



PARTICULARS OF THIS NOVELLA :

Published by:  Random House
Pages:  67
Genre:  Fiction/Suspense
Author:  Karin Slaughter
Website:  http://www.karinslaughter.com



ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of twelve thrillers, including Fallen, Broken, Undone, Fractured, Beyond Reach, Triptych, and Faithless. She is a native of Georgia.




THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I love the way Karin Slaughter writes.  I love that she pushes me from one page to the next.  I get so driven by the horrendous storyline in her books.  She's got a diabolical mind and it's fantastic to read what she can put down on paper.  This novella is no exception. So sharp and piercing!  She can get in the mind of her characters and speed up your heart rate while she takes you on a psychological ride with them. 

In this story, Slaughter's protagonist, an agent on a boring, sleazy mission, inadvertently comes upon a kidnapping in action.  As his instincts kick in and he identifies the child and abductor, we are completely absorbed in his pursuit. The agent becomes psychologically connected to the abducted child and we experience his angst from one moment to the next while he tries to find her in time...before she's molested or killed.  Slaughter engenders our sympathies toward him, and our disgust toward the perpetrator.  She's a master manipulator of our feelings. 

This little novella moves at lightening speed and I found myself searching my brain trying to figure out all the clues to get to the child in time, myself.  You'll love to read the book in one sitting!

5 stars                    Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"Waking Up In Heaven" by Crystal Leigh McVea~Disappointing

SUMMARY :

Someday soon, one of my precious three-year-old twins is going to ask me the question “Mommy, what happened to you when you died?”

Someday they will overhear me telling my story to someone and want to know more about it. They will look at me with their big, innocent eyes and try to make sense of what they’re hearing. It isn’t always easy explaining what happened even to adults, so how am I going to explain it to my kids?

There is so much I want to share with them, so much I want them to know. You see, my story is one of hope and forgiveness and salvation, and of the glorious healing power of God’s presence. It’s the story of what I saw and what I learned when, during a hospital stay, I left my body for nine minutes and went to heaven and stood before God. And it’s the story of how, when I came back to Earth, my life was profoundly and permanently changed— changed down to the very core of my being.

But it is also a story that, for the longest time, I didn’t want to tell.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Publisher: Howard Books

Publication date: 4/2/2013

Pages: 245

Price:  $17.50
Author:  Crystal McVea
Purchase:  Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Other


ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND CO-WRITERS:

Crystal Leigh McVea was born in southwest Oklahoma and still lives there today. She is a schoolteacher and has four lovely children. Crystal and her husband Virgil, a US Army veteran, are devout Christians and active in their local church.

Alex Tresniowski is a former human-interest writer at People and has written several books, most notably The Vendetta, which was purchased by Universal Studios and used as a basis for the movie Public Enemies. His most recent book, An Invisible Thread, has spent more than twenty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Laura Schroff is a former advertising executive who has helped launch three of the most successful start-ups in Time Inc. history—InStyle, Teen People, and People StyleWatch. Schroff has also worked as the New York Division Manager at People magazine and Associate Publisher at Brides. She lives in New York City.

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I wish I could say that this is a book I found uplifting and convincing in terms of a woman's leaving this life for a brief time to visit the "other side" and to see and experience the Divine.  I'm sorry to say, it was a book that felt amateurish, and flat-footed.  I was not only left unimpressed, but I was also discouraged and disgusted by some of the content.   It concerns and angers me when people seek to lead the public on with stories concocted around a hot item such as an "after life experience," and don't really have the goods.

Most of this book is a hanging out of dirty laundry about the author's background of incest and abuse, and her continuation of self-abuse.  It has every form of dysfunction one could place on a pitiful child and family, told in fine detail.  This seems to be the focus of the book, much more than the uplifting part about the author's journey to the other side and her visit with spiritual beings with messages to change her life.

I grew so turned off by the many chapters spent disclosing her aberrant life and her own bad/destructive behaviors.  So much so, the small bit she does disclose about her time in "heaven" is sullied in my opinion by the surrounding mass of personal (sewage) destruction.  

This isn't a book to give one hope and heart.  It's not a book I would share with a friend or family member.  It's a chronicle of a life of sin and degradation in full Technicolor...merely shaded by a few moments of a visitation with saving grace.  There is very little of the hope and redeeming quality of that glimpse into the Light.  Too much darkness overwhelms this small book.

I think the co-writers of this author's story should have advised her to take a different tact.  A more spiritually lightening story with her sad life included (the flip side of the one written) would have been much better. 

I fear the reality of her "visitation" just wasn't strong enough to really carry a book.


I wonder if I make myself clear here.  It's the difference between a person whining about how they got punched in the face, broke their arm, then cut their own finger off, and then found a way to get an education;

and a person who tells you their life was difficult but they found a God who loved them and showed them how to overcome it all through love.

It's how you say it and where you place the focus. 

Can't recommend this one...

Deborah/TheBookishDame

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Author Lisa April Smith tours "Exceeding Expectations" and Sequel with Interview!

SUMMARY :

It's 1961 and Palm Beach socialite, irresistible rascal and devoted father Jack Morgan encounters genuine danger while staging his suicide to shield his beloved daughters from scandal and disgrace. Next, meet his daughter Charlotte (Charlie), an over-indulged 23 year-old struggling to cope with the loss of her beloved father, her sister's resulting mental breakdown and the discovery that she's now penniless. Fortunately Raul, an admiring young attorney, offers assistance to the traumatized young woman, who can joke about her inadequacies. As terrified as she is about paying for her sister's costly treatment and her own daily survival, Charlie soon realizes that she must learn what drove her father to kill himself. With Raul's much needed ego-bolstering, she pursues a career that makes practical use of her lanky 5' 11" frame. Despite roadblocks and emotional upheavals, she embarks on an ocean-spanning journey that leads to a family she doesn't know, distressing truths about her father, crimes great and small, a diabolical villain and a fireworks of surprise...


Buy Exceeding Expectations the E-book at Amazon.com  or Barnes&Noble.com                                            


Buy Exceeding Expectations in Paperback at Amazon.com




FIND AN EXCERPT OF CHAPTER ONE ON THE AUTHOR'S WEBSITE HERE:

http://www.lisaaprilsmith.com





ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Lisa April Smith lives with her husband, He-who-wishes-to-remain-anonymous, in Eternal Playland, Florida, a delightful spot just off I-95. Ms. Smith describes Eternal Playland as: "a little piece of level heaven with occasional dampness, where the bugs are plentiful but respectful, and even the smallest strip mall contains at least one pizza place and a nail salon."

 Past work experience includes designing software and managing projects for IBM, selling plumbing and heating and antiques, teaching ballroom dancing and modeling. Lately, in addition to writing page-turners, this author enjoys corresponding with fans, spending time with her family, encouraging her fiercely independent orchids and rearranging antiques. (Having run out of space, Ms. Smith no longer permits herself to add to her collection.)




A BOOKISH LIBRARIA HAPPILY BRINGS YOU THIS INTERVIEW OF MS SMITH TODAY!!


So, Lisa, it's so good to have you back with us this summer for an interview about your fantastic "Exceeding Expectations" series.  I need to mention the second book of that series, "Paradise Misplaced," which just topped the whole mystery off.  I loved the story and wish you would keep it going!!  But, I know you're moving on to other exciting things.  Let's talk about you and your plans...

1. Tell us something about yourself, please.  How do most people describe you?

Lisa: Depending on how well they know me and in what context, they would describe me as a diligent (compulsive), disciplined (obsessive), eager to learn (academic geek), motivated (impatient), ordinary woman who adores her family (and can’t stop bragging about them).

 

2. Briefly, where did the idea for your novel germinate?

Lisa: My first three books began with fascinating characters I’ve read about in newspapers. I didn’t use their childhoods, physical appearances or personalities.  I’ve never met any of them. There’s was just something about their stories that sent my imagination into overdrive. I wasn’t going to do something that I’ve seen before. No naïve/good-hearted hookers, like the protagonists in Pretty Woman or Sweet Charity.      

Take Exceeding Expectations as an example. Back a few years, Floridatelevision and newspapers were reporting a story of a local Palm Beach socialite (Stephen Fagan) arrested for kidnapping his daughters eighteen years earlier, when they were 2 and 5 years old. The primary reason that it had taken eighteen years to find Fagan was that he had successfully reinvented himself. As William S. Martin, a handsome widower with two young daughters and no apparent means of support, Fagan had met and married a wealthy Palm Beach widow. After their divorce, another affluent woman agreed to wed and maintain his family’s plush lifestyle.

Neighbors, friends and the teachers at the girls’ tony  private school all described him as “likeable,” “charming” and “devoted father.” Throughout his arrest and subsequent proceedings, his loyal third wife steadfastly stood by him, as did both daughters. Perhaps what most surprised people who followed the case was that the girls’ mother, a research scientist teaching at the University of Virginia, through the media and her attorney, repeatedly begged her daughters to meet with her and they refused. To my knowledge, that continues to this day.

As I was following the case I found myself thinking that there was an even juicier story using a few core facts. A man with an invented name and history, twice married to wealthy widows, living in Palm Beach, playground of the mega-rich and famous, and involved in a crime. Two adoring daughters unaware of their true identities. Over time my imagination happily supplied the rest. A townhouse off Fifth Avenue. A sprawling estate in Virginia. Romantic Paris in the years prior to WWII. A riveting past for Jack Morgan: skilled lover, lack-luster artist and irresistible rascal. A full-blown range of challenges and hard-wrought triumphs for his traumatized daughter Charlotte (Charlie).     

 

Who first told you that you could write well, and how did it affect you?

Lisa:  One of my elementary school teachers. Probably in 5th or 6th grade. I showed her a play I had written and she insisted on my class performing it for the entire school. (A very small school.) How did that affect me? I don’t know. I think I already knew that I wrote well for a kid and not nearly as well as authors of the books I loved. I was more concerned that I was dreadful in geography. Other kids knew that Italywas in Europe and that Europewasn’t a country. I had no clue. 

 

Which contemporary authors do you most admire?

Lisa: Khaled Hosseini: favorite book, The Kite Runner

  Edward Rutherford: favorite book, Russka

  Sara Gruen: favorite book, Water for Elephants (I adore anything to do with the circus, side-shows and carnivals, but NOT Disneyland. Disneyland is too antiseptic to me).

 

Which are your favorite classical authors?

Lisa: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant – if you like pithy wry, read his short stories, and Louisa May Alcott. When I was kid I read and loved everything she wrote. I absolutely saw myself in Jo March. I was the independent tomboy who enjoyed staging plays and “scribbling.”   

 

Jump into any book which character would you be?

Lisa:  While I saw myself as Jo March, Little Women, she didn’t have the adventurous life that I dream about. I hope this doesn’t sound too egotistical, but I would like to be Charlie, at the end of Paradise Misplaced. She’s going to travel the world, hobnob with the rich, famous and infamous, be knee-deep in fabulous art, expose theft and fraud, win respect for her expertise, love passionately, be hurt many times and recover, all the while keeping a self-deprecating view of herself.

 

If you could have 5 historical people to dinner, who would they be?  What would you have to eat?

Lisa:  Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth I and Woody Allen. I could rely on Woody to ask far better questions than I could. He and Samuel Clemens would bond immediately. As for food, it would have to catered. I wouldn’t want to waste a single minute in the kitchen and I’d serve twenty courses, like a Chinese feast, so that the meal would go on for hours.    

 

Read any good books in the past 6 months?

Lisa: One comes to mind immediately - New York: The Novel, by Edward Rutherford

       

Favorite two tv shows:

Lisa:  How about three favorites? “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Fashion Star” and “Alaska: The Last Frontier.” How’s that for an eclectic range? Maybe not. The first two showcase incredibly talented creative people – dancers, choreographers and dress designers. But “Alaska: TLF” is decidedly outside the box. Life in Alaska is a contact sport. The program appeals to both my love of adventure and my admiration for the resourceful, determined, kind, intelligent people. 

 

Favorite movie of all time:

Lisa:  I adore good movies. Some plots and characters stay with me forever. I love almost every Woody Allen film that I’ve seen. “Sweet and Low Down” might be my favorite, or “Radio Days” or “Hanahh and Her Sisters.” Regrettably, I’ve missed a few. He’s done 61 to date. And I also have to include “The Man with Two Brains” a wacky hilarious movie. (After rereading this I know I should’ve chosen a serious movie (“To Kill a Mockingbird” “Gone with the Wind”) or a musical, I adore musicals (“Gigi”, “Chicago”) . . .  I’d better stop. You did ask for only one. 

    

Are you working on a new book?

Lisa:  Positively. Of course, it’s going to be my best to date. It’s an epic novel set in ancient Chinatentatively titled The Storytellers. 

 

Anything else you would like to add or share with us?

Lisa:  Thank you for asking, Deb. I’d like readers to know that Exceeding Expectationshas a sequel, Paradise Misplaced, which also received amazing reviews. 

 

 

Thanks for this witty and thoughtful interview, Lisa.  I have to go back and watch some of those old Woody Allen movies.  They are classics...  I can see that type of quick  humor in your books.

 

 

******************************************************************************

THE DAME'S REVIEW OF "EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS" :

 

Charlie, a girl in her early 20's, is just another over-indulged, wealthy daughter of Palm Beach who's major concerns are horses, parties and gossip. Then, her father commits suicide, her sister has a mental breakdown and her posh step-mother leaves them penniless. The beautiful life comes to a dead halt, and Charlie, who never even learned to wash dishes, has to get a job.

When Charlie sets out to discover why her beloved, pampering father would abandon them, knowingly leaving her sister and her without a means of support, she discovers more than she ever could image about him, herself and her abilities to "exceed expectations." She also discovers that PB society may not always get it right about love and class, when she meets and gets help from the brilliant young lawyer, Andy Garcia clone, Raul. Armed with Raul's encouragement, her own pride and tenacity, Charlie uses her only skill; modelling, to help finance herself and her sister while she travels from Palm Beach to NYC, across the US and to Paris in search of some answers.

I appreciate Lisa Smith as a seasoned author with astute writing skills after having read and reviewed her "Dangerous Lies" last year. She has a brilliance for conveying characters, and the intellectual capacity to place them in historical settings that sparkle with glamorous detail.

In fact, it's the authentic details of the time-periods that make it fun to read Lisa's book as it skips from Charlie's current days of the late 1950's and early '60's to the past Palm Beach and Manhattan, with hints of Sister Parish's posh interior designs, famous museums and artists, the fashions of different eras, vintage cars and high society parties. Her historical and fictitious characters work in sync as they are perfectly set in these time frames, and midst the transitory madness of WWs I and II Paris.

Lisa Smith's writing isn't over-blown with emotion and sappy romance; rather, it is sophisticated and subtle. It's witty, fun and sassy. There's love of family; and, there are affairs of the heart, pain and anxieties that accompany romantic relationships in difficult times, intrigue and madness. I loved this kettle of mystery and suspense that dominates her characters.

I'm a fan of Ms Smith's. I love a good story with interesting characters, a mystery and a romance that's not over-the-top but that rests securely in reality. I like foreign intrigue and the sophistication of art and society. Most of all, I so appreciate an intelligent author of worldly experience! If you do, too, you'll love "Exceeding Expectations." This book has a sequel which I'm dying to read!

5 soaring stars

Deborah/TheBookishDame

 

       

Please follow this link to find my full review of this book last year on A Bookish Libraria: 
http://abookishlibraria.blogspot.com/2012/09/paradise-misplaced-by-lisa-april-smith.html

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Interview with Lauren Willig! "The Ashford Affair"

SUMMARY :

From Lauren Willig, author of the New York Times bestselling Pink Carnation series, comes a richly detailed historical saga, spanning from WWI England to colonial Kenya to present-day New York, as one woman discovers the truth about her family’s hidden past and her own present.

As a lawyer in a large Manhattan firm, just shy of making partner, Clementine Evans has finally achieved almost everything she’s been working towards—but now she’s not sure it’s enough. Her long hours have led to a broken engagement and, suddenly single at thirty-four, she feels her life crumbling around her.

 

When the family gathers for her grandmother Addie’s ninety-ninth birthday, a relative lets slip hints about a long-buried family secret. Clemmie is stunned. Addie was the woman who seemed to have it all: a perfect marriage, three children, and a successful career in an era when most women didn’t have one. As Clemmie unravels the story, scandalous family secrets that are decades old begin to come back to life, leading her on a journey into the past that could change everything.

Growing up at Ashford Park in the heyday of Edwardian society, Addie has never quite belonged. When her parents passed away, she was taken in by her aristocratic aunt and uncle who raised her in the grand English house, side-by-side with her beautiful and outgoing cousin, Bea. Though they are as different as night and day, Addie and Bea remain closer than sisters through relationships, challenges, and a war that changes the face of Europe irrevocably. But what happens when something finally comes along that can’t be shared? When the love of sisterhood is tested by a bond that’s even stronger?

From the inner circles of British society to the skyscrapers of modern-day Manhattan, the never-told secrets of a woman and a family unfurl in this epic yet intimate story. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :
ISBN-13: 9781250014498

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication date: 4/9/2013

Pages: 368

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author:  Lauren Willig
Website:  Lauren Willig



ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

LAUREN WILLIG is also the author of the New York Times bestselling Pink Carnation series and a RITA Award-winner for Best Regency Historical for The Mischief of Mistletoe. She graduated from Yale University, and has a graduate degree in English history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.
Please click on her website link http://wwwlaurenwillig.com to find out more fascinating information about her fleet of books and her!


A BOOKISH LIBRARIA BRINGS YOU AN INTERVIEW !!!

We are delighted to bring you an interview today with Ms Willig!  She's an absolute favorite of mine in her genre.  Smart and snappy, she brings to life her characters in their every adventure.  I love reading her books and just devour them like chocolates.  Can't wait to share this interview with you....

1)  How would your friends describe you?

 

The word “effervescent” may have been used a time or two.  I tend to bounce a lot when I get excited.  There may also be some enthusiastic gesticulation.  Which can turn dangerous when I’m holding a drink in one hand, particularly if it’s one of those low-rimmed martini glasses.  There’s a reason I’ve learned to only drink clear booze at cocktail parties; it’s much easier on the dry cleaner afterwards.  This is also why I tend to go through my book tours in a haze of eau de coffee….

 

2)  Where did the idea for this novel germinate?

 

 This novel popped up out of the blue and walloped me over the head.  It was the fall of 2010, and I wasn’t meant to be thinking about flappers or disillusioned World War I veterans or Kenyan coffee farms; I was meant to be writing about Napoleonic spies and their dashing deeds.  But a friend of mine, knowing that I like to vacation in the 1920s, gave me a copy of Frances Osborne’s The Bolter, about the dramatic life of Idina Sackville, who racketed back and forth between London and Kenya in the period after World War I, acquiring and discarding husbands along the way.  I was incredibly intrigued not just by her dramatic life (which was pretty dramatic), but also by the author’s comment in the preface that she hadn’t realized that Idina was her own great-grandmother until a chance TV program forced the revelation.

 

At the time, my own grandmother—my last remaining grandparent—was very ill, and it struck me forcibly just how little we know about our families and how much we assume.  What if a modern woman were to discover that nothing about her grandmother and her family was as it seemed?  What would it do to her?

 

Once the idea hit, it wouldn’t let go.  (See “walloped me over the head”, above.)  I put the next book in my Pink Carnation series on hold, read up on Edwardian England, World War I, and 1920s Kenya, and plunged into the novel that would become The Ashford Affair.

 

3)  Who was the first person who encouraged you to write, or told you that you could write well?

 

 I was one of those annoying children who decided, at the ripe old age of six or so, that I was going to be a novelist when I grew up.  At six, grown-up is a relative term: I was determined to have a novel in print by the time I hit double digits (because by the time I was ten, I would obviously be over the hill) and was deeply crushed at the age of nine when Simon & Schuster sent back my first full length manuscript, all three hundred hand written pages, with a form rejection letter.

 

That being said, the first time I recall getting public recognition for my writing was when I was in third grade.  We’d been given the assignment of interviewing our headmistress and then writing a fictionalized account of her day.  Mine was chosen for the school newsletter—which was exciting enough in itself, but the real kicker was when a letter arrived, several weeks later, from a Columbia journalism professor, saying he had photocopied the story and handed it out to his class as an example of the clarity of prose and economy of writing he wished them to achieve.  I still have that letter tucked away somewhere.  It boggles my mind to this day that, back in 1985, my third grade essay was being used as a How To in a Columbia Journalism School class!

 

4)  Who are your favorite classical authors?

 

I was a Renaissance Studies major back in the day (no, seriously, it was a real major, I swear), so I tend to gravitate back to Shakespeare and Donne, particularly certain favorites.  Like everyone else, I adore Much Ado About Nothing, but I also have a strange fascination with Measure for Measure, problem play that it is. 

 

Leaving iambs behind, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Austen, whose sly wit and sharp insights into human nature are a constant inspiration to me.  I also have a weakness for the social satirists of the 1920s and 30s: Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, Angela Thirkell (who I view as a kinder, gentler version of the previous two).  And, of course, no bookshelf would be complete without the madcap antics of P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster.

 

5)  Read any good books lately?

 

I’ve been on a gothic kick recently—eking out my beloved collection of Barbara Michaels and Elsie Lee from the 80s, there have been some excellent new variants on the genre that have come out over the past few years.  I particularly love Simone St. James 1920s-set ghost stories, The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry into Love and Death, which manage to provide that hair prickling on the back of your neck feeling that the very best ghost stories do, and I’ve just stumbled onto Wendy Webb’s The Fate of Mercy Alban, which contains two of my favorite tropes: an old house and a family secret.

 

I’m constantly on the hunt for new books, so if you ever have any recommendations, please stop by my website or Facebook page and share them with me.  I run a weekly feature on my website, Weekly Reading Round-Up, where everyone discusses what they’ve been reading that week.  I’ve found several of my new favorites that way—including the three books mentioned above!

 

 

You, yourself are a character and so extraordinary, Lauren, as we might have expected from the wonderful humor in your books!  Thank you for stopping by to share with us.  I'm looking forward to reading "The Ashford Affair!"

 

 

 

MORE INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT LAUREN:

 

 

Although she may not have realized it at the time, Lauren Willig had her life pretty clearly mapped out when she was a mere nine-year-old. That's when she completed her first "novel" -- 300 handwritten pages of a Nancy Drew-inspired mystery titled The Night the Clock Struck Death featuring not one, but two teenage sleuths. (Twin detectives, if you please!) She sent it off to Simon & Schuster -- who promptly sent it back. "I was utterly crushed for at least a week," the young author admits.

 

Crushed, perhaps, but apparently the pull of becoming a writer was considerably stronger than the sting of rejection. Several years later, while she was in grad school, Willig began work on another novel -- although she wasn't sure which novel it would be. "There were three contenders: one, the Pink Carnation; another, a mystery novel set at Yale; and the third, a historical novel set around a group of Luddites in 1812. The Yalie mystery novel nearly won out... but the image of a masked spy on a rope tipped the balance the other way, and The Pink Carnation was born."

A witty melding of espionage thriller, swashbuckler, and the kind of classic "bodice-ripping" romance novels she first discovered at the tender age of six, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation was published in 2005. The premise is irresistible: A modern grad student researching her dissertation in London stumbles on the identity of a mysterious English spy from the Napoleonic Wars. With its clever book-within-a-book format, Willig's novel was an instant sensation. Almost immediately, she penned the sequel, The Masque of the Black Tulip. Willig was off and running with a hot and sexy – not to mention bestselling -- series.

Although the Pink Carnation books build on one another, each story focuses on a different pair of lovers and can be read as a stand-alone. Willig tries to weave in any information from previous installments that might be key to understanding the characters or plot. All her books have become Romantic Times Top Picks. In 2006 Lauren was nominated for a Quill Award.

Also Good To Know:

Even before she committed her stories to paper, Willig was amusing herself with her very own fiction in the privacy of her head. "I remember lying in bed, staring up at the underside of my canopy, composing complicated narratives complete with dialogue, generally based on whatever movie I had just seen," she told The Readers Place.com. "Star Wars spawned weeks' worth of bedtime dramas in which I starred as Princess Lea's best friend. Who would, of course, wind up with Luke Skywalker as co-ruler of the Universe -- you know what they say, if you're going to dream, dream big."

 

According to Willig's official biography, she is a Native New Yorker. However, she admits that this isn't entirely true being that she was actually born in Philadelphia -- a fact that her "real" Native New Yorker siblings aren't quick to let Lauren forget.  Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Willig: "Like my modern heroine, Eloise, I spent a year in England doing research for my dissertation (mine is about Royalist conspiracies during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s), and living in a little basement flat in Bayswater. Unlike Eloise, on my very first week in London, I ate a bad kebab, and got so sick that I wound up briefly back in the States, on the same medicine they give people who have anthrax poisoning. Not exactly an auspicious beginning...."  "I still don't have a driver's license. Having grown up in Manhattan, there was never any need of it -- other than as a means of getting into bars, and learning to drive seemed a bit extreme just to get a drink. Of course, that was before I moved to Cambridge for grad school and realized that in other parts of the world, you can't just walk into the middle of the street, stick your arm up into the air, and, lo!, immediate transportation appears. Since I really don't want to have to learn how to drive, I've decided the only remedy is just to live in Manhattan for the rest of my life."  "Many years ago, at my Yale college interview, the interviewer took one look at my resume, and announced, ‘You can't be a writer.' Getting a little panicky -- since no one takes kindly to having their life's dream flung in their face -- I blurted out, ‘Why not?' ‘Writers,' he said firmly, ‘are introverts. You,' he indicated the long list of clubs on my resume, Drama Club, Choral Club, Forensics, interschool plays and public speaking competitions, ‘are not.'"

"It is true; I've never been able to resist a stage. There are embarassing videos (which may have to be confiscated and burnt at some point) from various family weddings, where I, as a wee child, coopted the microphone to serenade the wedding guests with off-key renderings of "Memory" (from Cats). It's a wonder I lived past the age of ten without being murdered by a bride wielding a sharpened cake knife. Point me to a podium, and I can talk indefinitely (and usually do, as anyone who was with me in the Yale Political Union can verify). I simpered through Gilbert & Sullivan Society productions, taught drama to small tots through Yale Drama Hands-On Theatre Workshop, and was chairman of a debating society in college. And those were only the official performances. Recently, I appeared in a toga and bare feet (well, really a chiton, but why be picky?) in front of a hundred-odd people at the law school to argue a mock Athenian trial. And, yes, those pictures will also be confiscated and burnt -- as soon as I find out where my camera-happy friends hid them."

"I've always had trouble with the ‘writer as introvert' trope. I argued then, and still believe now, that the performative arts and creative writing have a great deal in common. After all, music, drama, public speaking, writing... all involve words! My interviewer wasn't too impressed by that argument, but there is a bit more to it than that. Singing and public speaking create an enhanced awareness for the rhythm of language. As for drama, how better to get inside one's characters' heads than to walk in their footsteps? Frequently, while writing, I'll tumble out of my chair (literally -- my chair isn't all that sturdy) and act out bits of a scene for a more concrete grasp of a character's movements. Most of all, acting, singing, and writing all involve the desire to get out there and share a story, a desire that can't be balked by the threat of rotton tomatoes, or even bad reviews."

 

 

Readers can find a copy of the book here:  Barnes & Noble  or Amazon

 

 

Don't forget to read more about her books and her on http://www.laurenwillig.com

 

 

Deborah/TheBookishDame

 

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