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Albert Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Guest Post and Giveaway Stealing Fire by Susan Sloate

Description:

HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE YOUR SOULMATE?

In glittery 1980's Los Angeles, Beau Kellogg, a brilliant lyricist now reduced to writing advertising jingles, yearns for one last Broadway hit to compensate for his miserable marriage and disappointing life.

Amanda Harary, a young, idealistic singer out of synch with her contemporaries, dreams of appearing on Broadway, while she holds down a demanding day job at a small New York hotel.

When older man and younger woman meet in a late-night phone conversation over the hotel's switchboard, it is the beginning of something neither has ever found - an impossible situation that will bring them each unexpected success, untold joy, and piercing heartache... until they learn that some connections, however improbable, are meant to last forever.

STEALING FIRE is, at its heart, a story for romantics everywhere, who believe in the transformative power of love.

GUEST POST
HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE YOUR SOULMATE?
(MB's Topic)
Most of the time, I’m not sure you do, at least not at first. They cross your path at whatever stage they’re in and you’re in--and it’s not always very convenient. Sometimes it’s downright irritating, as in the case of my characters Amanda and Beau in STEALING FIRE, who meet when both are irritable, which makes their first meeting memorable--and loud. .

On the other hand, you can spot some great signs when you meet someone--it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s your soulmate, but it certainly means he’s worth keeping an eye on:

1) Within a very short time, you find yourselves in deep conversations that engage you so completely that sometimes you forget there’s anyone else in the room!

2) You have a lot of very small things in common: the same obscure movie, the same sports team, a favorite kind of snack that no one else likes (remember in THE PARENT TRAP, when the two girls realized they both liked peanut butter on Oreos? And from there it was just a step to realizing they were identical twins?)

3) You find yourself instinctively trusting him, because you seem to view the world the same way, and that makes it easy to feel close.

4) You laugh at the same jokes and have frames of reference no one else admits to--like sending in box tops for that Cap’n Crunch Treasure Box when you were six. 

Soulmates tend to ‘recognize’ each other more than ‘get to know’ each other--you have a sense within a short time that you’ve somehow met before and yes, it’s usually mutual (even if he doesn’t tell you because it’s just too weird to think about). And quite often (cue the scary music here), you may have, in another life. But the connection is so deep that it’s impossible to explain, and yet the sense of coming home that you get from being around this person is just undeniable.

When it gets painful is when he tries to deny it. (Women tend to recognize and embrace this concept a lot more often than men do. For some men, who are really commitment-phobic, or who are already in another relationship, it is not convenient at all to have met you. While they might be ridiculously drawn to you, they’re also fighting as hard as possible not to care about you. Needless to say, your side of this--when you know this is the one and it can be so beautiful!--is not always fun.

For those who don’t believe in the concept, it can be the shock of all shocks to experience it. Yeah, well, other people may act like total zombies in love, but not them! (If you’re a friend of such a cynic, it can be a lot of fun watching them grapple with it, knowing they’ll eventually become as sappy as the rest of us when it happens to us.)

And for those of us hopeless romantics, hey, this is what we dream of and are completely confident we’ll find some day… but we’re still always stunned when love walks in (or sneaks in, which is more likely). To me, I think it’s better that way. We get the surprise, the thrill...and the romance.
Who could ask for anything more?

About the author:

Susan Sloate is the author or co-author of more than 20 books, including Realizing You(with Ronald Doades), a recent self-help novel, and the 2003 #6 Amazon bestseller, Forward to Camelot (with Kevin Finn), which took honors in 3 literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production.

She has written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way!, which was honored in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Book Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest on The History Channel. Amelia Earhart: Challenging the Skies is a perennial young-adult Amazon bestseller. She has also been a sportswriter and screenwriter, managed two recent political campaigns, and founded an author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC.

Stealing Fire was a Quarter-Finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest and combines autobiographical experience with her lifelong love of the musical theater. She is proud to be distantly related to Broadway legend Fred Ebb, the lyricist for Cabaret,Chicago, All That Jazz and New York, New York.


Author's US Giveaway

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for hosting me today; I really love being here!

Chaotic Karma said...

"Grease" is my favorite musical

~Veronica Vasquez~

Anonymous said...

GREASE is a GREAT musical! I only saw the movie, but it was my favorite film of 1978 and still makes me smile. Wonderful choice, Veronica!

Andreea said...

Good luck!