Friday, February 26, 2016

It's All About the Author with Charity West and her #newrelease The Boyfriend Deal @evernightteen



















It’s All About the Author…

1)  Please tell us 5 interesting facts about yourself that readers might not know about you …
1.   I’m addicted to white chocolate mochas from Starbucks and I’d drink one every day if my husband didn’t grumble about the cost.
2.   My favorite movie is Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. I watched it with my mother when I was little and I’ve been hooked ever since.
3.   I’m rough on electronics and I’ve been through four Kindles. My latest is only two months old so we’ll see how long it lasts.
4.   My favorite candy is an almond Hershey bar. I would happily eat one a day, if I thought my pants wouldn’t protest my waist expanding.
5.   I was nearly homeless two years ago. Our home was going through foreclosure and with two days left until we had to be out of our current home, we still hadn’t found a new place to live. I’ve never been so scared in my life.

2)  What do you like to do in your spare time?
Read! If I’m not writing, I’m usually reading. That’s not to say I never watch TV because I do, but I’m very selective about what I watch. If I’m taking a writing break, I’ve been known to read 3-4 books in one day.

3)  Is there one book that you love to read over and over again?  If so, what is it and what is it that keeps you coming back to it?
Well, it’s not so much one book but a series. New Species by Laurann Dohner is probably my favorite book series. The men are alpha and sexy and don’t hesitate to go after what they want. The women are smart and curvy. The stories are so hot the pages steam, but it’s the storylines that draw me  in.

4)  How did you get started writing and have you always wanted to be an author?
After reading my first romance novel, I knew that I wanted to create my own happily-ever-afters. It started with writing assignments in school and by high school I had a floppy disk (yes, I’m dating myself) full of partial stories. The Boyfriend Deal is my first published story, but I’m hoping there will be many more.

5)  If you for some reason couldn’t be an author, what would your other choice be?
Probably a psychiatrist. When I was in high school, my first job was working as a part-time office manager for a counseling center. I really enjoyed the work and the atmosphere, so I could easily see myself becoming a psychiatrist or counselor.

6)  Did you like school?  Were you a good student?
I absolutely hated school, but I made A’s and B’s, except for AP Calculus. That class completely destroyed my GPA. It was my mother’s idea that I take it, and since she’s an engineer, she was determined I was going to excel at math like her. Little did she realize it was going to be my worst subject.

7)    When you write, is there a specific way you have to write, ie:  certain room, noise or quiet, computer or paper etc…
I usually write in my living room with a movie on for background noise. Or if my kids are playing on the Xbox, then I’ll put on headphones and listen to my Amazon Music Player. I do most of my writing at night, except for weekends, because of all the distractions during the day. On weekends, there are distractions whether it’s day or night so I just try to tune everyone out and focus.

8)   If you could write a collaboration with another author, do you have one in mind and what would you write?
I’ve never really thought about a collaboration. I’m horrible about deadlines and following a schedule, and I can’t plot to save my life, so I’m not sure something like that would work for me. I’m a by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of writer and need the flexibility that writing solo gives me. Now I could see me working on a series with another author where we each wrote our own books but helped create the world together.

9)    How do you come up with your story ideas? 
Sometimes they come to me in a dream, and sometimes I’m driving my kids to school when I’m slammed with a new idea. There might be a song on the radio and one word or sentence stands out and a new story starts to blossom in my mind.

10)                   Do titles stump you or do they come easy?  When do you pick a title, before the story is written or when it’s done?
I usually pick a title when I have a decent start on the story and know where it’s going. The Boyfriend Deal came to me in the first chapter, but sometimes it takes a little longer.

11)                   Do you keep a notebook near you for when new ideas pop into your head?
I probably should, but I don’t. I’m on my laptop pretty much all day either working on a book, marketing, or talking with other authors, so it’s easy enough to pull up a Word doc and jot down a few notes. It’s when I’m out running errands that I end up repeating things in my mind all the way home so I don’t forget.

12)                   If you write a series, do you re-read your previous books before you begin the new one?
The Boyfriend Deal is my first published book, but I think I would probably re-read the series or at least any notes I may have on it before starting the next book.

13)                   How does your family feel about your writing?
My kids love telling people I’m an author, and my husband tries to give me time to write. Several members of my family will happily purchase any books I write, while others are more reserved. I have an aunt who is happy for me, but refuses to read anything I write because my stories usually have a few bad words thrown in.


Thanks for sharing “you as an author” with us !  We hope you’ll come back and visit again soon!


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THE BOYFRIEND DEAL

by Charity West
Contemporary YA
Evernight Teen Publishing, 97 pages


When Hadley’s ex-boyfriend becomes something of a stalker, she decides it’s time to take drastic measures – and kisses the first boy who walks past her locker. But she isn’t prepared for the kiss, not at all, or what happens afterward.
Tyler Robbins, the captain of the football team, is every girl’s dream guy. He has something of a reputation though for using girls and tossing them aside, not that it stops them from flocking his way. All of that changes the moment Hadley’s lips touch his.


When Tyler proposes that Hadley pretends to date him as a way to save them both – him from his mother and her from her ex-boyfriend – Hadley is reluctant to give it a try. In the end, she agrees, but she’s nowhere near prepared for the journey she’s about to embark on.


Buy Links:    Amazon    ARe    Evernight Teen


Excerpt: 
Seeing Hunter head my way, a determined, slightly psycho look in his eyes, made me panic. I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed the first boy I saw and kissed him like my life depended on it, but as my body pressed against my unsuspecting target and my lips crashed against his, three things became very apparent to me. One, the boy knew how to kiss; his lips were divine and the hands going around my waist weren’t so bad either. Two, I was slightly in over my head, as he pressed me back against my locker. And three … well, I was still reeling from one and two. Three would have to wait for later.
“If you wanted me to kiss you, Red, all you had to do was say so.”
My eyes popped open and I stared in open-mouthed shock at the boy who had just made me melt with his kiss. Tyler Robbins. The one boy I should avoid like the plague. The only boy who had the power to completely devastate me, rip out my heart and stomp on it, and do so without any true effort on his part. I’d had a major crush on him since pre-kindergarten. Perhaps crush was too tame a word. When you’ve obsessed over a boy since the age of four, it escalated things beyond crush level.
He winked at me and moved along down the hall, as if the earth hadn’t just moved, as if lightning hadn’t just struck, as if … well, you get the point. He was everything I’d ever wanted, and the one thing I’d never have. Tyler flitted from one girl to another. He didn’t have a flavor of the month; he had a flavor of the day. Or maybe it was a flavor of the hour. Except for Alicia Thompson. She was his on again off again girlfriend for the last two years, and she was a total witch. The last time they’d broken up, she’d egged the car of his next conquest.
It took me a moment to realize Hunter was standing beside me, looking both livid and hurt all at the same time, but really, the entire thing was his fault. If he hadn’t cheated on me, then turned stalker, my lips never would have touched Tyler’s. Then again, maybe I should be thanking him. Now I could cross off a major item on my wish list. I’d been dreaming of kissing Tyler Robbins since the first time I saw him, on my very first day of school. Of course, that was before he started crushing on the snotty girl in our class, then I just wanted to pelt him in the face with a mud pie at recess.
“Why are you doing this, Hadley? Tyler Robbins? Don’t you know he’s going to use you and toss you aside like yesterday’s garbage?”
“Yeah, because there’s no one around here who hasn’t already done that, right? In case you missed it, Hunter, we broke up. You have no say in who I do or do not kiss. If I want to make out with him in the janitor’s closet, that’s my business and not yours. And stop stalking me! I’m not taking you back. Not now, not ever.”
I snatched the books out of my locker, slammed it shut, and took off down the hall. I could feel his gaze boring into my back, and I wasn’t not going to lie, it seriously creeped me out. But what could I possibly do about Hunter? My own family thought I should give him another chance; every girl in school was praying I wouldn’t, and no matter what I said to the boy, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
What I needed was a boyfriend. Someone who wouldn’t be intimidated by Hunter, who would stand up to him and tell him to back off and leave me the heck alone. What I needed was a jock, but no self-respecting jock was going to be seen with a band geek like me. And I wasn’t even in the marching band, the semi-cool band geeks because they kept the audience revved up during football games. I played the flute, but I wasn’t coordinated enough to walk and play at the same time. Not without landing on my face at any rate.
I sat through first period in kind of a daze, not really hearing anything the teacher said. I managed to write down my assignment and shuffled toward the door when the bell rang. It seemed I wasn’t the only one in a daze and ready to leave Mr. Bertram’s math class because everyone bottlenecked at the doorway. As I was squeezing my way through, someone grabbed my arm and I found myself plastered against Tyler for the second time that morning.
Startled, I looked up at him, wondering why his hands were on my waist, and more importantly, why was he looking at me like that? You know, in that you’re the only girl in the world kind of way. Not even Hunter had ever looked at me like that. He didn’t say anything, not at first. He just stood there smiling down at me. I took a moment to admire his perfectly gelled hair and—sniff—his heavenly scent. I had no idea what type of cologne he wore, but if I could wrap myself in that scent—preferably by way of his arms being around me—then I would die happy.


Author bio:
Charity West is a young adult romance author who has always had her head in the clouds. She had her first crush when she was four, and it lasted for six years. Then she quickly fell head over heels for another boy, until she had to move away and leave him behind. Jumping from one boy to another, she finally found a keeper when she was twenty, and she’s been married to him ever since.
By the time Charity was twelve, she was sneaking her mother’s Harlequin romances and reading them in secret when she was supposed to be asleep. Teased throughout middle school and high school for the bodice ripper covers on the books she openly read in class, she knew that one day she wanted to write her own happily-ever-afters.

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1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much for sharing the news on The Boyfriend Deal!

    ReplyDelete