Please join me in welcoming author Brandi Megan Granett to A Literary Vacation! Not only do I have a great interview to share, but she's given us an excerpt to whet our appetites for her new novel, Triple Love Score.
Please enjoy!
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Triple Love Score asks the question what happens when you stop playing games. Poetry professor Miranda Shane finds fame posting poetry made on Scrabble boards and faces some tough choices between the men in her life and the career she loves.
I absolutely love the idea of this by-the-rules poet changing this up and using a Scrabble board to write with. How did you ever come up with this idea?
This is a great question. A few years prior, I had completed National Write a Novel in a Month, and the experience left me with a novel and a desire to NEVER write again. Luckily, my desire returned, but I needed to find a new way to go about writing. So to write Triple Love Score, I challenged myself to write 500 words a day. Around the same time, I found myself playing a lot of Words with Friends and electronic Scrabble. When I thought about ways to share yourself with the world but still remain hidden, these electronic games and social media came to mind. From there, Miranda found a place to both share herself and protect herself online.
Miranda’s experiences as the Blocked Poet and seducing a student are purely her own. I related with the choices she faces between trusting someone from her past or making her way on her own terms. When I started Triple Love Score, I found myself falling in love after a long and tough marriage ended. Like Miranda, I needed to figure out what I wanted for my life and whom I wanted in it.
Checking out your blog, the first thing I saw was “Author, Archer, Mentor.” That is quite the combination! Can you tell us a little bit about each of those passions of yours, and how they all fit into your life?
I am blessed to have three strong passions. First, I am a writer. I have been writing stories since childhood, and I pursued creative writing through my undergraduate and graduate degrees. (I even have a PhD in Creative Writing!) This led to my profession as a writing professor. I teach all levels of fiction, composition, and business writing as an online adjunct professor. I love helping people reach their dreams, and strong writing skills are a pre-requisite for just about every profession these days. Archery came to me through my daughter. About nine years ago, she wanted to either be in a Renaissance faire or the Olympics. The local archery shop owner convinced me to take lessons, and I was hooked. I traveled the Olympic recurve circuit for a number of years and represented the USA in the 2010 World Field Archery Championships. Recently, an injury gave me the opportunity to switch to compound archery, so I am enjoying learning a whole new ballgame in my archery career.
I try to write first thing in the morning, before my students’ voices get into my head. Then I put on my teaching cap. My work needs to be done before I can play. When work is finally done, I get to spend time on the range. My husband, Avram, and I moved a few years ago to a more rural part of New Jersey so that we could have all the space we need to shoot archery (he shoots too!). Then we will have dinner, then maybe shoot again, or go for a very long walk to catch up together after our busy days. Scattered throughout this day is keeping up with social media to connect with authors and readers and other archers!
A lot of authors have become huge on social media, not only promoting their work, but also interacting with their readers and offering up giveaways, book recommendations, etc. Are you a big proponent of using social media in this way? How do you prefer to interact with your fans?
I love how social media has expanded opportunities for writers and readers to get together. I belong to Tall Poppy Writers. I have pledged to support 40 other women’s fiction authors through thick and thin. We tweet and like and share each other’s accomplishments and offer moral support on the sidelines. I also interview authors for my blog on the Huffington Post. I like to introduce readers to authors they might not have considered in the past. But I don’t discount face-to-face either. I am building a community event called River Reads. So far, I have 25 local authors signed up to read, sign, and promote their books at the historic Prallsville Mill in Stockon, NJ, on October 23 from 10am to 4pm.
Are you working on any other books that we can look forward to reading in the future?
I am working on a novel called Straight Shooter. This book combines my love of archery with my desire to own a campground. Through the novel, I get to explore the what if of following that dream!
To close out, I’ve noticed that a lot of authors are also big readers. When you have time for leisure reading, what sorts of books do you gravitate towards? Have you read anything good lately?
I love women’s fiction and literary fiction (not that I think these categories are exclusive). I’m lucky to be in a position where authors send me their books for interviews, so I get to read many amazing things. I tease my husband that I finally figured out how to get paid in books. I loved reading I Like You Just Fine When You Aren’t Around by Tall Poppy Founder, Ann Garvin.
Thank you for having me on your blog, Colleen.
Thank you, Brandi, for stopping by my blog and agreeing to answer my questions!
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Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Pub. Date: September 1, 2016
Pages: 304
What happens when you stop playing games?
Miranda Shane lives a quiet life among books and letters as a professor in a small upstate town. When the playing-by-the-rules poet throws out convention and begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper to write, she sets off a chain of events that rattles her carefully planned world.
Her awakening propels her to take risks and seize chances she previously let slip by, including a game-changing offer from the man she let slip away. But when the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love or poetry.
Advanced Praise for Triple Love Score
"An entertaining romance novel with an engrossing plot, a conflicted heroine, and a couple of surprising, poignant takeaways." - Kirkus Reviews
“Combustible romance and fame slather a sexy gloss over more complex issues of familial love and true accomplishment for Granett’'s cast of endearing characters. An entertaining and perceptive story of our times.” - Kathryn Craft, award-winning author of The Far End Of Happy and The Art Of Falling
“Brandi Megan Granett’s beautifully written debut novel, full of twists, turns and truths about the ups and downs of life, had me spellbound from the very first page. Triple Love Score proves that, in matters of the heart—as in Scrabble—when you get it right, it’s nothing short of poetry.” - Kristy Woodson Harvey, author of Dear Carolina and Lies and Other Acts of Love
“A charming mash-up of viral poetry, relatable characters, and slow-simmering romance. Granett explores how doing the unexpected might lead to what you had always wanted.” - Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake and Luck, Love & Lemon Pie
“Triple Love Score is a wonderful love story and a novel with such intriguing twists and turns that it kept me turning those pages until the very end! A fun, unique read.” - Anne Girard, author of Platinum Doll
"Women seeking a solid story of a poetry professor's awakening will find Triple Love Score a delightful romp through options Miranda never realized she had." - Midwest Review of Books
“Like tiles on a Scrabble board, Granett's characters unfold and connect and diverge again. Readers will be spellbound as they follow Poetry Professor Miranda Shane's unlikely adventures - ones that take her across the country and as far away as Istanbul and France - as her long-held dreams concerning love and career are both challenged and re-defined.” - Amy Impellizzeri, author of Lemongrass Hope
“A romantic pleasure with delightfully unique characters and a plot that takes you on an unexpected journey. Granett has a clear writing style that brings each scene to life and makes for a tremendously engaging read. As a fan of love and poetry, I highly recommend it!” - Anita Hughes, author of Santorini Sunsets
“A love story that is on one hand sweet, but on the other full of surprises and intrigue, set against the background of competitive…Scrabble? It sounds entirely unlikely but this is exactly what Granett has spelled out in a slim novel that deserves kudos (using that ‘k’) and could easily become a guilty pleasure.” - Jacquelyn Mitchard, author The Deep End of the Ocean
Buy the Book
About Brandi Megan Granett
Brandi Megan Granett is an author, online English professor, and private writing mentor. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University, Wales, an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, a Masters in Adult Education with an emphasis on Distance Education from Penn
Granett is the author of My Intended (William Morrow, 2000). Her short fiction has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Pleiades and other literary magazines, and is collected in the volume Cars and Other Things That Get Around.
When she is not writing or teaching or mothering, she is honing her archery skills. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter.
Excerpt
Prologue
Even at twelve years old, Miranda knew better than to dissuade her mother from orchestrating her own funeral.
"So," Louise began, "you will wear the brown dress. Not the black. You are too young for black. Anita will iron it for you and make sure you have fresh hose. Daddy, luckily, already wears the right suit. The town car will come for you. Yes, you will sit in the back. Don't even ask to ride up front. The car will take you to the church. The big one, downtown, the one my mother loved. I didn't like it there except for the music. I loved the organ and the choir. So that's what it will be. All music. No sense in your father standing up there to speak. I couldn't do that to him." Her mother’s voice quavered. She could pretend to be okay with dying for only so long.
Miranda, perched on the bow window seat of her parents’ bedroom, remained silent. There was no sense in talking. Her mother valued knowledge, concrete plans, and making sure everyone knew exactly what to expect.
Louise leaned back against the floral print chaise lounge and gasped for breath before continuing. She picked up the gold chain she wore around her neck. Her engagement ring, a single emerald cut diamond, hung from the chain, and caught the light. Cancer robbed her mother of the simplest of things like wearing this ring; all of her joints swelled from the treatment while everything else shrunk. The ring at once could not fit and could not hold. Louise let the ring dangle in front of her for a moment before tucking it back into her blouse. Miranda stroked the Hermes scarf on her mother’s head.
"Randa," she said, "it makes me feel better to know you are prepared. Tell me which dress you will wear."
Miranda knew what the doctors said and didn't argue. Her mother smelled like death, sickly sweet like overripe fruit. Her thick hair, a chestnut brown and wavy, like Miranda’s own, abandoned her shortly after the first treatments. Her arms could barely manage to lift a full glass of water. And Miranda's mother was always right. If Louise said knowing about the funeral would make it better, it would.
The funeral turned out as planned. The brown dress, which Anita ironed. The car where she sat next to her father. The big church downtown. But her mother hadn't mentioned the flowers. The smell of them: waxy, sweet, green. Yet the scent of their wilting decay hung in the air, too. Miranda clung to her father’s side as he moved up the crowded aisles. Her parents, both lawyers and popular ones at that, served on committees, argued cases, and taught at the law school. Throngs of people came to say goodbye. Each bent low and tried to look Miranda in the eye, but she couldn't match their gaze. Their eyes ringed red from tears didn’t mirror her own grief. They hadn't known what was coming; they hadn't sat in that sunny room and discussed death and funerals with her mother. Miranda spent her own tears long before the funeral.
Finally, they made their way through the crowd to the front where Linden, Bunny, and Scott sat. Bunny, her mother's best friend, knew the drill. Bunny hired the organist and booked the church. Linden arranged the car service. Even though they weren't related, they were family. Miranda slid over next to Scott as she always did. He was her brother and best friend rolled into one. He would play video games with her and sometimes let her win or picked her for his manhunt team. They watched movies together and re-enacted scenes for their parents’ applause. They took turns reading to each other on long car rides to the shore where they would swim and play Frisbee while their parents perfected the margarita with many failed but consumed batches. But today wasn’t like that. Miranda suspected no day would ever be like that again.
Of course, they sat in the front pew. Miranda knew that. Her mother stressed that point. “I know you don’t like being front and center, my girl,” she said, petting Miranda’s hair, then sun-streaked from the summer spent by the pool watching her mother try and fail each day to swim like she used to. “People expect you up there. Funerals are for everyone, not just the family. Try to remember that.”
But in the front row, they were closer to the flowers. And their smell. It began to stick to the back of her throat and reach down deep into her lungs. Her chest constricted. The Reverend signaled for everyone to stand. The weight of this day and all the days of her mother’s illness pressed down upon her. Miranda went to move, but her legs gave out from under her just as the thunderous noise from the organ began. She saw her father’s gaze transfixed on the cross over the altar and was grateful he didn’t see her falter. She tried again to stand. This time a hand around her waist lifted her. Scott looked down at her, his own eyes brimmed with tears. He lifted her up and then took her hand, pulling her arm close to his. He kept his arm tensed and flexed. She leaned into him, gripping his fingers so tightly that the knuckles on both their hands turned white. Embarrassed, she moved to let go.
“No,” he whispered, squeezing her fingers tightly back. He didn’t let go. He kept her upright for the entire service of music and through all the goodbyes in the foyer of the church. He held her hand until the driver opened the door to the town car and ushered her inside.
“Thank you,” was all she said to him.
He only nodded in reply.
Awesome interview. I'm looking forward to reading this one. Scrabble is my favorite game!
ReplyDeleteThanks Holly!!!
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