{Book Blitz+Interview+Giveaway+Playlist+Excerpt} More Than Exes: Elizabeth Briggs

Series: Chasing the Dream 0.5
Genre: Contemporary, New Adult
Publication date: October 28th 2014
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Synopsis: Keyboardist Kyle Cross may look like a bad boy with his tattoos and piercings, but he’s really the good guy who’s always stuck fixing his band’s problems and never gets the girl. His band is competing in a college Battle of the Bands, but when their bassist doesn’t show, Kyle must track her down with the help of the person he least expects: his ex-girlfriend Alexis Monroe.

Kyle hasn’t seen Alexis since she dumped him in high school, and she’s dropped her preppy image for fiery red hair and a bold new attitude to match. With only hours before his band goes on stage, Kyle has to be a little bad if he wants to win both the Battle and the girl he’s never gotten over. But when their old problems resurface, the good guy might just get his heart broken all over again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Website | Facebook | Twitter
Elizabeth Briggs is a full-time geek who writes books for teens and adults. She plays the guitar, mentors at-risk teens, and volunteers with a dog rescue group. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a pack of small, fluffy dogs.

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Interview with Elizabeth Briggs

Where did you get the idea for More Than Exes?

In More Than Music, which is about Kyle’s friend, Maddie, and his brother, Jared, there’s a part where Maddie thinks about how it must be difficult to be Jared’s brother sometimes. That made me wonder about how Kyle sees his brother, and I quickly jotted down what would become the first chapter of More Than Exes. Right then I knew I had to tell Kyle’s story, too. I also had many fans of More Than Music tell me they loved Kyle and wanted a book about him, so that sealed the deal!

Do you need to read More Than Music to read More Than Exes?

No, definitely not. More Than Exes is a novella set about a month before More Than Music and can be read as a standalone. There’s nothing in it that would be confusing if you haven’t read More Than Music – but if you have, it will also shed light on a few things in that book. You can read them in any order, even though More Than Exes is a prequel.

What is your favorite thing about More Than Exes?

There are so many things I love about this book – the fact that it takes place over a few hours, the sarcastic humor in it, and the love story of two high school sweethearts getting back together… but my absolute favorite part is the close sibling relationship between Kyle and Jared. I loved showing Jared from Kyle’s point of view – Kyle views his brother very differently from how Maddie does in More Than Music, but still loves him and would do anything for him.

What was the hardest part about writing More Than Exes?

More Than Exes is the first book I’ve ever written from a guy’s point of view, and that was a lot of fun but also challenging at times. I had to make sure that Kyle would be sympathetic to romance readers but also feel like a realistic 21 year old male. I don’t think there are many romances told from only a male perspective, but I hope people will give this one a chance!

If you weren’t a writer, what would you do?

A rock star, of course! I play the guitar, though I don’t have time to practice as much as I’d like. I’ve always wanted to be in a famous rock band, but now I just write about them instead.

What’s next in the Chasing the Dream series?

I’m currently working on More Than Comics, a novella about the drummer of the band, Hector, set at Comic-Con about a week after More Than Music ends. After that, I’ll be writing books about Maddie’s best friends, Julie and Carla, who both go on their own reality TV shows!

EXCERPT

Alexis stood alone in front of the bar, watching the band on stage. Her leather jacket had been left in her car, and in her tight jeans and tiny, V-necked top, she radiated a cool, sexy confidence I found irresistible. She’d had that same confidence when we were younger, too, but now it had an edge, like she wasn’t afraid to be herself. It made me want her even more.

I moved behind her, fitting myself against her back, and whispered her name in her ear. I didn’t need to say anything else. She turned her head and met my eyes with a look of desire that matched my own. Her hand reached up to circle my neck, drawing my head down to hers, and I gave in to her siren call.

Our lips touched for the first time in three years. It was everything I remembered and more. Like waking from a long coma. A bright sunrise over a dark sky. The first hint of spring after a long winter. I was truly living again, in the way I normally only felt when I was on stage.

The kiss started slow, an awakening, an exploration, a forgiveness of our past mistakes. I teased at her mouth with my own, opening her wider, wanting more, wanting everything. Her lips were amazingly soft and sweet, like candy I’d tasted long ago and had finally rediscovered. I wrapped my arms around her hips, holding her flush against me. She groaned and dug her fingers into the back of my hair, pulling me even closer.

She turned in my arms to face me. “I guess this means you’re giving me a second chance.”

“I guess it does.” I lowered my lips to hers again.

Our bodies fit together perfectly, like when we’d hugged except this time we didn’t hold back. I slid my hands down to cup her butt, pressing her against the front of my jeans. Our kiss deepened, mouths hungry for each other, bodies desperate to be together again. We couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t get enough of each other. She clung to me like I was her savior, and I kissed her harder, flicking my tongue across hers, nibbling at her lower lip. Her fingers gripped the top of my jeans and tugged on them, like she wanted them gone. If she kept this up, I would rip her clothes off and take her right there on the bar counter.

This was all moving so fast, but I didn’t care. This was exactly the kind of thing my brother did, and after being apart from Alexis for so long, I didn’t want to go slow.

“Let’s go to my car,” she said, breathless. “The backseat…”

“My thoughts exactly.”

We broke apart, and the rest of the club came into focus again. The crowd pressing around us in the dark. The clink of bottles behind the bar. The music blasting from the speakers. The lights illuminating the band on stage. I checked the time. About an hour before our set. No one would miss me if I slipped out for a few minutes.

I took Alexis’s hand, the action so familiar I could almost believe we’d never broken up. She gave me a knowing smile and let me lead her through the club, weaving between other couples and head-banging fans. I couldn’t get us out of there fast enough. My brain had shut off and my body had taken over, with only lust and primal urges controlling me now.

This might only last one night. I didn’t care. I’d take one night with Alexis. As long as I reminded myself it was just sex and nothing more, I’d be fine. If Jared could do it, so could I.

{Giveaway+Interview} Lies We Tell Ourselves: Robin Talley

Rating: 92%
Series: None
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, LGBTQ+, Young Adult, Fiction,
Publisher: HarlequinTeen
Publication Date: September 30, 2014
Page Count: 368
Format: Physical ARC
Source: HarlequinTeen via My Heart Hearts Books

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Goodreads Synopsis: In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.”

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

Disclaimer: I received this book from HarlequinTeen via My Heart Hearts Books in exchange for an honest review.

*My guest post on My Heart Hearts Books hasn't been published yet, but when it is, the image above will have a link leading to the review*

GIVEAWAY

(10/22-11/5)

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Interview With Robin Talley

1. The LGBTQ genre has had quite a breakout in 2014 in terms of how many books have been released dealing with these issues and how they are becoming more widely accepted. Each author has their own story of why they write LGBTQ fiction, maybe a family member, close, friend, or even themselves has fallen in the LGBTQ spectrum. Why did you start writing in this genre and when did you become interested in it?

In every book or short story I’ve written so far, my protagonists have always been LGBTQ. Partly that stems from my own life experience, since I’m gay, but it also stems from what I see as a need for greater representation for LGBTQ characters in fiction, especially young adult fiction. Malinda Lo’s statistics show that despite recent gains, this representation is still far below where it should be in YA. 

Also, for the most part, my brain tends to generate stories that focus on LGBTQ characters. So it all works out nicely!

2. Because some people aren’t always accepting of LGBTQ people and many books in this genre have been banned, was there ever a time when you were scared to put Lies We Tell Ourselves out in the world because of this added factor of stress? Instead of just being afraid if people would like/not like your book, was there ever a fear that you would be ostracized because of it or that your book would even be banned in some conservative communities?

This actually hasn’t been something I’ve worried about. Which is good, because there are plenty of other things for a debut author to stress over! :)

3. What inspired you to write this story and come up with such an outrageous premise for this time period? An African American and white person talking to each other civilly, let alone falling in love, let alone the situation being between a GIRL and ANOTHER girl. Did you ever think of your readers would find this unrealistic, or did it just add to the story?

From the moment I first started thinking about the story for Lies We Tell Ourselves, I knew I wanted to explore the question of not just how someone would deal with living through a horrible period in history, but also how it would feel to be living with that and to be dealing with something a slice of the population has always dealt with for all of history, too: having a sexual orientation that doesn’t match the majority’s. 

For millennia, people have been forming across traditional societal lines ― race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, background, etc. Sometimes those connections are friendships, sometimes they’re romantic, sometimes they’re something else entirely. 

So I don’t think it’s outrageous for two people like Sarah and Linda to form a connection in 1959, despite the boundaries that separate them. Nor do I think it’s unrealistic that they’re both interested in girls. I think there’s a tendency to view the idea of “LGBTQ issues” as a new thing, because only in the past couple of decades have openly queer people have been discussed much in mainstream media. But there have been queer people for as long as there have been, well, people. There were just as many queer people in 1959 as there are in 2014. There just weren’t as many openly queer people.

4. While writing Lies We Tell Ourselves, was there ever a time that you felt a scene was hard to write because of the amount of torment you had to put your characters through, because of research that needed to be done surrounding the circumstances, or to get into an individual character’s head?

All of the above! Lies We Tell Ourselves was by far the most difficult story I’ve ever written for all of those reasons and more. The most challenging part of the writing process was getting into Linda’s head. Linda has held a set of beliefs for her entire life that is abhorrent and that also completely defies logic, so it took a huge amount of intellectual twisting and reaching to try to understand where she was coming from well enough to write from her point of view. 

5. I know that I greatly appreciated the fact that Lies We Tell Ourselves was written in two points of view and then the added third at the end. What was your reasoning for this? Why not write the story from just one point of view? And what made you decide to divide the points of views into parts versus every other chapter?

I tried writing Lies We Tell Ourselves in many different ways. I wrote a draft just from Sarah’s point of view, and I wrote the beginning of a draft in alternating chapters. Neither of those worked at all. With just Sarah’s point of view, there wasn’t enough forward momentum to drive the story and provoke Sarah to change. Alternating chapters caused the opposite problem ― it broke up the momentum of the first day of school that makes up most of the first part of the novel, where the story really belongs to Sarah alone. So I tried splitting the difference with an alternating act structure instead. 

6. Lies We Tell Ourselves seems like the type of story that you would need to know from beginning to end, and because NaNoWriMo fever is in the air, I am dying to know this. Are you a pantser or a plotter?  

I’m a plotter, but I didn’t actually know the story of Lies We Tell Ourselves from beginning to end when I first started writing it. That’s usually how it goes for me when I’m working on a new project. I always make an outline before I start writing, but usually the outline either doesn’t have an ending at all or I realize halfway through the draft that the ending I’d originally envisioned won’t work at all. So although I depend on my outlining process to get me from point A to point B, I usually have to rework my original conception to figure out how I’m eventually getting to point Z.