Monday, April 12, 2010

Love in Mid Air

posted by Nancy

Freelance writer-turned-novelist Kim Wright joins us today with her debut women's fiction novel, Love in Mid Air. This hardcover launch, the story of a woman confronting her life choices at forty and deciding to change them, earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly and 4.5 stars from RT.

Welcome, Kim! We love call stories. Tell us about your writing background and how you sold Love in Mid Air!

My background is journalism and I wrote nonfiction for 25 years as a profession. I loved magazine work and still do … yet I always felt like I had a novel in me somewhere.

I started writing the book about ten years ago but the timing was wrong for me. It was too close to my own divorce, so I put it aside. After about three years I picked it back up and there had been a transformation. I had perspective. I cut about half of out it out, rearranged everything, sliced the time frame from three years to nine months. It really became, for the first time, not just a bunch of ramblings, but a novel.

So I worked on it two more years (all of this is part time since I was making my living as a travel and food writer) and then started looking for an agent. For me that was the hardest part. Countless rejections. I had it in my head that I wasn’t going to ask any of my writer friends to recommend me to their agents, which was silly. Just me trying to be independent and exhibiting my family’s particular brand of foolish southern pride. Because when I finally broke down and asked a friend for help, she introduced me to her agent and he read the manuscript and took me on immediately.

That’s made all the difference. I signed with David in November and by the next month he had three bids on the book. Then I had to wait two more years for my publisher to bring it out. This is not a business for the impatient, that’s for sure!


Briefly, what’s the book about?

On the surface it’s about an unhappily married woman who has an affair. Below the surface I think it’s about the self-examination we all go through in midlife when we stop and ask some version of the question “Is this all there is?” There is also the issue of how my heroine Elyse’s discontent affects her friends. That was one thing that bugged me about the divorce novels I was reading after I had my own divorce – they made it seem as if the couple splitting up lived in a vacuum and nobody was affected by what was happening but their own little family. In my experience a divorce can shake up a whole circle of friends…it has a real ripple effect. So I wanted to not just show Elyse but show the women around her who are giving her advice, becoming increasingly uneasy about her choices, and now being forced to reluctantly look at their own marriages through a new lens.

How does a chance encounter on an airplane launch Elyse’s self-examination?

Elyse is reasonably stable at the beginning of the book. Not thrilled with the fact her husband is non-communicative and a little cold, but she has her daughter, a strong circle of friends, her part-time career as a potter, an economically privileged and in many ways enviable life. But she switches seats in an airplane to do a fellow passenger a favor and suddenly fate takes over. She sits down beside a man named Gerry who is also ripe for temptation and they begin to flirt.

The affair is just the catalyst for a series of changes that I think Elyse is long overdue to make anyway. Love in Mid Air is not about swapping one man for another. It’s about reaching forty and wondering whether or not it’s worth the risk to try and reinvent yourself, to reach out for something more – and whether or not that discontent is inside of you and can’t be solved by any sort of external change at all.

It’s exciting that you’re launching in hard cover. How does that feel?

It’s funny, but my initial impulse was to not launch in hard cover. As I mentioned earlier, three houses expressed interest in the book and, after I’d spoken by phone to all of them, I felt a great affinity for an editor at one of those houses. I thought she really “got” the book and would be a great person to launch it, it but her house only printed in soft cover.

My agent suggested – suggested very strongly for him, because he’s a mild mannered guy – that I go with one of the two houses that wanted to print it in hard cover. He said that a hard cover launch would help with both foreign rights sales and reviews and he has been absolutely 100% correct. The book has been widely reviewed, including some national forums like People and USA Today, and the cruel reality of this business is that they tend to review only hard cover debuts. Seven countries have bought foreign rights, and I doubt that would have happened either.

It’s a strange business. I buy 95% of the books I buy as trade paperbacks, i.e., soft covers, and I suspect most people do too. Book clubs lean very strongly toward soft cover, so there’s this whole market you don’t tap when you launch in hard cover. It’s like delaying your true sales for a year after your debut. But, on the other hand, certain reviews and foreign rights sales are indeed easier if you debut in hard cover. And there is the additional advantage a two-tiered launch gives a book two chances to find an audience. Love in Mid Air came out in March, 2010 and a lot is happening now. When the soft cover comes out in March 2011 there will be another little publicity shove.

What role do women friends play in this book?

A huge role. Elyse is in a book club in the book and this circle of women who are brought together through the facts that they live in the same neighborhood, go to the same church, have kids the same age, etc., is a large part of her life. In some ways, the key relationship in the book isn’t the one Elyse has with her husband or her lover – it’s the relationship with her longtime best friend Kelly, who sees her careening toward danger and tries to talk her out of it. I’m currently working on the sequel to Love in Mid Air, and it will move the women ten years down the road, to where they’re almost 50. And this time the story will be told from Kelly’s point of view.

Here's an excerpt about Elyse and her friends:

It's one o'clock before I look up. I'll be a little late for the daily walk, but one of us is often late and the others all know that things can happen, that no one's schedule is entirely within her own control, We have agreed that whoever arrives first will just start and let the others join in or drop out on their own pace. It's one of the advantages of walking in a circle.

Yeah, Kelly and Nancy and Belinda are all there when I arrive. I park the car and wave at them, but they don't see me, and I stand there on the hill above the elementary school track and watch them. Kelly is leading slightly as she often does, glancing back at the others as she talks. She could walk much faster if she wanted. In fact, she could run. But what would be the point of that?

Because it really isn't about walking, it's about talking. Our here, in the suburbs, we live and die by our friends. There may have been a time when it would've surprised me to realize that nearly every woman I know is someone I met through my church, that the highlight of my day is meeting them at one o'clock to walk for an hour before we pick up our kids. But I'm over that by now. I can't afford to think about it. I need these women too much. I begin picking my way down the damp overgrown grass. Over the years we've shared secrets and toys, passing down car seats and strollers and cribs as the kids grew older, taking turns keeping them so that we can occasionally get a free afternoon. Once, in a dreadful pinch, I ever nursed Belinda's sobbing daughter when I couldn't find a bottle, although it makes me feel strange to say that, as if even our bodies are interchangeable.

We have a running joke that some Sunday we should all go home from church with the wrong husbands. We debate how long it would take them to notice, but the truth is I'm not sure we would notice either. We're too busy, the details of our lives wrap around us like cotton, and we meet almost every afternoon at the track, trying to walk off the weight from the baby, trying to walk off the weight from the baby who's now in second grade, trying to get down to 130 or 140 or something decent. We're always moving, more like nomads than housewives, circling the drop-off for preschool, pulling around to load the groceries, hitting the drive-thru and passing back chicken nuggets one at a time at stoplights, running the middle one to soccer and the oldest one to the orthodontist, putting in sheets and taking out towels, spinning in the cyclic world of women.


For more about Kim and the book, visit her website.

Kim's giving away a copy of Love in Mid Air, so tell us about your women friends or your own longterm projects. Do you have particular women friends (or men friends if you're a guy) who share your interests or who've been there during rough times? Have you ever worked at a project for a long time before feeling you'd succeeded?

68 comments:

Helen said...

Is he coming to my place

Have Fun
Helen

Helen said...

Whoo Hoo I am sure he knows when Jayden and Hayley are coming for dinner and must be here with them LOL

Loved the post Ladies and this books sounds really good. Congrats on the release Kim.

I have a circle of friends at work and we call ourselves The Steel Magnolias (LOL) we often have coffee together at work and often make time for lunch or coffee outsiede of work when our shifts allow us to. I think we have grown so close because we have all worked there for so long and understand each other we have been thru thick and thin together at work and in our home life the hardest thing we have had to get thru is the loss of one of us not long before Christmas Gloria was the ring leader of our group a fantastic lady who always managed to keep our spirits up and boost our morale at work even after she had retired but of course always dropped by for coffee and our lunches and everytime we get together I know she is with us always. I guess there are always times that I think a change would be good for me it is retirement so as I have more time to read and of course more time to spend with my ever growing family.

Have Fun
Helen

Christine Wells said...

Hi Kim, welcome to the lair! Nancy, great interview. Thanks for inviting Kim to chat with us.

Kim, congratulations on your hardcover release and all your success! How wonderful that you had a publisher willing to give you a big promotional push. Your book sounds like a fascinating study of an era that's fast approaching for me (yikes!) and I love the excerpt. Best of luck with it!

The topic of girlfriends is pretty relevant for me at the moment because my BFF is moving to another city this week for a year. I'm going to miss her terribly but thank goodness for email! And of course, I always know the Banditas have my back! I don't know what I'd do without them.

Congrats on snaffling the rooster, Helen!

prashant said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gillian Layne said...

Congratulations on the great reviews, Kim. I never gave much thought to the hardcover vs. softcover issues. Sounds like you've got a great agent!

Kim in Baltimore said...

Congrats, Kim, on your hardback release!

Twenty years ago, I graduated from college with a group of 5 friends who entered the military. Our miltiary service (and marriage to military) have taken us all around the world at different times. Yet we connect as we pass through each other’s cities, states, and even countries. As time permits in our busy lives, we call each other when something sparks a memory or laugh … and it’s as though no time has lapsed at all.

Frequent military moves make it difficult to commit to long term projects. However, I do volunteer at the base thrift shop at every assignment. The thrift shops are operated by spouses’ clubs to raise money for community projects, help families transition in/out of an assignment, and assist struggling families with low cost items. At my current base, I carved out a special niche to create a “book nook”. Our customers use their lunch break to browse through my well organized books. I often chat with the customers about different genres and recommended authors. As a result, I have earned the name, “Book Lady.”

Kim said...

Thanks for hosting me, Romance Bandits, and special thanks to Nancy for the interview!

Gillian, you're right I do have a great agent and until I started this whole publication process I didn't fully understand how much that matters. Because you're expected to understand all sorts of things you know nothing about - hard vs. soft cover, foreign rights, print runs, distribution. Sometimes decisions have to be made very fast and you're flying completely blind. So, even though I'm a pretty decisive person in daily life, I was always turning to David saying "What should I do?"

Susan Sey said...

Kim, your excerpt is wonderful. It completely describes my life as a stay at home mom right now--not the interchangeable husbands bit of course, but the part about this circle of women being the foundation of my world. We live in a world that's completely inhabited by moms like us and we ARE completely mobile at all time. It's minivan central around here, & when I have lunch with my ladies once a week, it's the highlight.

I generally steer clear of hardbacks but I'm looking forward to this book just because your excerpt so clearly demonstrated that you get this life I'm living.

Kirsten said...

Hi Kim! Hey, your two years sounds like fast forward to me. It will have been almost three years for me when my debut comes out at the end of August. I'm also releasing in hardcover, and I wondered the same thing you did about losing those paperback sales. But I like all your reasons why it's good, too! Made me feel better. LOL!

I don't know any mom who gets by without friends -- especially other moms. You'd just go crazy if you didn't have time. I envy women who've got moms and sisters nearby to help them raise their kids. I just run up my phone bill to mine!

Christie Kelley said...

Hi Kim, welcome to the lair and a big congrats on your hard cover release.

I really like how you talk about a divorce effecting more than just the couple and their family. It sounds like a very interesting book!

Good luck with your release!

Joan said...

Welcome to the Lair Kim.

Women friends. Man, that is something I would find very hard to live without.

They "get" me. They are there in the good times and the bad times.

They are their with chocolate.

Good luck with the debut.

Kim said...

I loved writing the scenes among the female friends, but I was a little worried about how my real life friends would react to the book. Because I not only set the story in Charlotte, my home town, but the characters were sort of loose amalgamations of real women I knew. Very loose, and very changed, but I was still nervous that a friend would see herself in one of my portrayals and get mad.


I was especially worried about the reaction of one woman who'd been a friend from high school. I'd used something that had really happened to her and while in the novel the incident is presented in a totally different way than how it happened in real life, I knew that she'd know where I got the idea. And it was a very sensitive issue.

So I gave her the manuscript to read in advance and said if she had a problem with anything I'd change it. She came back and said that all that bothered her was 'the character has granite countertops in her kitchen and I have granite countertops so everybody is going to think that's me.' I was stunned. That's what bothered her, the granite countertops? So I offered to change them to marble and she was completely happy.

The bottom line is you never can predict how anyone is going to react to anything.

Nancy said...

Helen, congrats on the rooster! I'm glad the kids will be there to keep him out of trouble.

The Steel Magnolias sound wonderful. I'm sorry Gloria is gone, though. Friendships like that are very special.

Helen, if you retire, are you going to have an even bigger TBR pile, or will you whittle it down?

Nancy said...

Hi, Christine--I'm so sorry your friend is moving. My longtime friends scattered after college, so I've never had that experience. I did have friends in the town where I first lived after school, and one by one, they moved away, which was tough.

So I eventually moved, too. Not just because of that--I changed jobs. But missing them was a factor.

Nancy said...

Hi, Gillian--There're so many more things to think about than we assume, aren't there? I didn't know all that about the hard/soft differences either.

Nancy said...

Kim, I admire the resilience of military families. It would be very hard for me to move that often. It might be good for me, though, in keeping down the accumulation of books and papers.

Your book nook sounds like a lovely thing for the community.

Nancy said...

Susan, I don't see how you moms who have multiple children and are constantly going manage everything. We have only one child, the boy, and at one point told him he had to drop something because we were tired of running around so much.

Nancy said...

Kirsten, I envy people with a support network, too. When the boy was born, my folks really weren't able to take care of a toddler, and finding sitters was hard.

We're all looking forward to your book's debut. Delacroix Academy, right?

Nancy said...

Hi. Christie--Divorce really does ripple through, and sometimes it's hard to be the friends. I imagine a lot of us have.

Nancy said...

Hi, Joanie--I used to say men come and go, but women friends are forever. By and large, they are. The availability of men friends often depends on their wives or girlfriends feel about their having women friends, but that's not an issue with other women.

The Bandits have been a wonderful support group, and I'm so pleased to have gotten to know so many women in college class via those annual beach weekends.

Sometimes they're not just there with chocolate. They ARE the chocolate.

Nancy said...

Kim, I'm laughing about the granite countertops. If she doesn't want them, can I have them? Ours are laminate. *g*

I sometimes worry that if a particular incident comes from a particular person, I may not disguise it enough. Writing historical time periods helps with that.

Hellie Sinclair said...

My current long term project is finishing the current manuscript, which I don't want to confess how long I've been finishing it.

Congratulations on your debut--and congratulations on launching in hardback. I, too, buy 95% of my books in trade back, but to sell in hardback sounds so...awesome, so Arrived.

jo robertson said...

Hi, Kim, welcome to the Lair and congratulations on the release of your debut book. Thanks for sharing the benefits of launching in hard cover.

Congrats on capturing the rooster, Helen, another busy day entertaining the kiddies for him, right?

jo robertson said...

I know I wouldn't survive without my woman friends, who, at the moment, are largely my three daughters and one DIL. We all live close together and arrange a full-out HHFD (Happy, Happy Fun Day) around each other's birthdays, so we have lots of chances to interact with each other.

Kim said...

Kirsten,

Hang in there! I thought I would surely lose my mind during the two years I waited but the truth is, waiting had some advantages. First of all, I don't think I missed much by sitting out the 08 and 09 economic markets. Secondly, I was able to write a rough draft of the sequel so I'm hopeful I'll be able to sell it during the nanosecond my publishers are paying attention to me. But most importantly, I got some distance on the book. I don't think of it as "my book" anymore, I think of it as "my first book" and that's a huge difference!

jo robertson said...

LOL on the Steel Magnolias, Helen. Work friends are the best, aren't they, because you see them daily and exchange all those little details of happiness and complaints on a regular basis.

When I was teaching school, we always gathered in someone's classroom for lunch (only 30 minutes, but still . . . ) for a brief connection with a real-life adult instead of kids all day.

Kim said...

Thanks for the kind words, Ms Hellion. I'm happy to be in hard cover but smiled when I read your line about being "arrived." I don't feel there yet? Does any writer ever feel really safe and established?

Nancy said...

Jo, the thing I missed when I stopped working fulltime was interaction with co-workers. We used to discuss the latest mail order clothes catalogues or trips to the mall over coffee breaks, and I don't have that anymore. Email helps fill the gap, but it's not the same.

Nancy said...

Ms.Hellion, good luck with that book. It takes as long as it takes. My first one took a very long time, in part because I got to the middle, realized I didn't know what to do, and turned to super-hero fan fiction instead. That ms. lay fallow for several years. FWIW, I think you get faster every time.

Nancy said...

Kim, that's an interesting point about "my book" versus "my first book." Sounds very accomplished. :-)

p226 said...

Yeah, there's a guy in Georgia I call "my brother" in conversation. Four years at a military school with the guy. Lots of bad times. Lots of good times. And many many times that probably were both and should have landed us in jail. We both have the same thing happen to us on a regular basis. We'll run into old friends from when we were kids. "Dude, you're still alive?" It's always said with astonishment. It's kind of weird to have people say that to you. But it's happened to both of us multiple times.

He and I are a couple of rough guys that have seen some rough days. Kindred spirits, if you will. He'd step in front of a bullet for me. And vice-versa.

Unknown said...

Congrats Helen on the rooster today! Have fun with him!

Congrats Kim on your new hardback release! I enjoy hardbacks because they will last for years! Your book sounds fabulous and I would love to read it!

My sister is my best friend right not we discuss books, sewing and a little of everything! I also have a friend that I have had since I was about five that I keep in touch with, but we don't get together that often any more!

pjpuppymom said...

Congratulations, Kim! How wonderful to be able to see and hold in your hands the realization of your hard work and dreams. I love that the story is set in Charlotte. I'd probably read it based on that alone. *g* I'm there at least once a month and, if my house ever sells, will be there full-time.

I have close friends from various stages of my life but most of them live in other states. There is a circle of women though who I count as special blessings in my life. We met in 2001, at a message board for women over 40 and over time formed strong, and lasting, bonds of friendship. In 2002, we decided to meet in person and had so much fun that we have continued the tradition of a "girls only" long weekend (in a different city) every year. We've supported each other through marriages, divorces, cancer, death, moves, problems with children, career changes, loss of jobs, menopause and much, much more. I know without a doubt that if I ever needed them, they would be on a plane the next day.

Nancy said...

p226 wrote: And many many times that probably were both and should have landed us in jail. . . . He and I are a couple of rough guys that have seen some rough days. Kindred spirits, if you will. He'd step in front of a bullet for me. And vice-versa.

That sounds like a wonderful friendship, a very rare one.

I think lots of us do things when we're younger that later leave us astounded not to have had worse consequences, though I haven't done anything, so far as I can recall, that might've been fatal.

One of my favorite greeting cards says "A friend will help you move. A real friend will help you move a body."

Nancy said...

Hi, Virginia--Most of my friends from when I was five live far away. Facebook has been very handy for keeping up with them.

Nancy said...

Hi, PJ--I love your girls weekend. The one I have at the beach, with my classmates, every year has become something I treasure. Nothing gets in the way of that weekend. My guys know I will absolutely not be here then.

Kim said...

My best friends live in New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia. We travel to get together and keep in contact daily via phones, email and facebook and no degree of geographic distance would ever rock our bond. But that's a relatively new development, the result of my kids being grown and me having lots more free time to travel.

When my kids were little most of my friends were women who were in the same basic situation, i.e., moms with kids about the same age and we lived in the same neighborhood and even - just like in my book - met to walk together every day. I loved those women and was incredibly dependent on them for keeping me sane but they were still, to some degree, friendships based on proximity and circumstance. Maybe that's why in Love in Mid Air, when I have Elyse contemplating leaving her marriage she realizes that this move may means losing the majority of her friends as well. It raises the question: If you're friends due to circumstances, when those circumstances change are you still friends?

Nancy said...

Kim, I think changes in circumstance do affect friendship. When those changes occur, I guess you see how much else really binds you together. The social networking sites can be a huge help, as you note.

We've become such a mobile society that keeping friendships can be hard.

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...

Hi Kim! Welcome to the Lair! We are so happy to have you with us today.

This sounds like such a fabulous book. Nancy, thanks for such a great interview.

Kirsten said: I don't know any mom who gets by without friends -- especially other moms. You'd just go crazy if you didn't have time. I envy women who've got moms and sisters nearby to help them raise their kids. I just run up my phone bill to mine!

Yep, I get this Kirsten. This would be why I had to go to a "all calls covered" phone plan. Grins. All the fam is in the South, so gotta run up the phone bill! Hahaha!

Kim, I couldn't survive without "my Ladies" either, as most others have expressed. As a MOOS (a term I just learned form Christie Ridgeway) which is Mother of Only Sons, I have to not only have the Adult time, but and Estrogen fix too!

Kim said...

Hi Jeanne,

I've never heard the term MOOS. I love it!

Nancy said...

Jeanne, I've never heard MOOS either. It's great! Of course, I have only one son and a husband, my guys. I hadn't consciously thought about the estrogen fix, either, but I think that's one thing I enjoy about women. We look at the world through similar filters.

Of course, I also like the directness of guys. Maybe that's a hangover from having worked among men for so many years.

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...

Kim and Nancy, I hadn't heard that term either. Christie Ridgeway used it on Facebook yesterday and I LOL. Grins.

It's funny, Nancy, I've always like working with men better because of that directness. Fewer games, it always seemed to me. Then again, getting an estrogen fix seems to be periodically necessary for me to stay sane in a houseful of men and boys. Grins.

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Renee said...

Congratulations on your release, Kim.

Nancy said...

Jeanne wrote: It's funny, Nancy, I've always like working with men better because of that directness. Fewer games, it always seemed to me.

Yes. Some women (certainly NOT all) seem not to know how to fight. Guys (most, though not all of them either) will argue, get right in your face and pound the table, but they don't mind if you give that right back (in fact, seem to respect it), and they don't usually hold grudges. They don't decide you must be a horrible person if you disagreed with them so vehemently, whereas _some_ women insist on making things personal that have nothing to do, initially with personality.

On the flip side, guys tend not to pick up on nuance as readily.

Nancy said...

Hi, Renee. Thanks for stopping by. :-)

Loucinda McGary aka Aunty Cindy said...

Welcome to the Lair, Kim, and SUPER CONGRATS on your first release!

BIG THANX to Nancy for inviting you to join us. I really appreciate you sharing your pros and cons of releasing in hard cover, Kim.

Helen, CONGRATS on the GR! Should have known he could not stay away when you have Jayden and Hayley visiting. ;-)

I too could not survive without my women friends! I have several very close friends I've know for 20--30 years and I consider myself so blessed to have these ladies in my life.

AC

Loucinda McGary aka Aunty Cindy said...

Hey Jeanne,
I LURVE that MOOS too! I'm like Nancy and only have one son, but I'm really jealous of Smoov and Jo-Mama who have lovely relationships with their daughters. I DO think I have a close relationship with my son, but it is just not the same dynamic as mother/daughter, I think.

AC

Nancy said...

Hi, AC--Those distinctions between hard cover and paperback were interesting to me, too. Always nice to learn something useful.

Beth Andrews said...

Welcome to the lair, Kim! Congrats on your release - Love in Mid Air sounds fantastic and I loved the excerpt *g*

I don't know what I'd do without my women friends - especially my fellow Banditas :-)

Thanks so much for being with us today, Kim! And thanks to Nancy for hosting our guest *g*

Kim said...

I'm always curious about this with fellow writers, but...

How many of you have agents? How did you get them? Are you overall satisfied with your agent's help and how essential do you think they are?

Nancy said...

Beth, nice to see you out of the cave. :-)

Nancy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nancy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Helen said...

Nancy

At the moment I tell all of my family and friends that I am planning for my retirement and building my TBR just in case I can't afford to buy books then LOL. But I would hope to whittle them down a bit by then but there are so many fantastic books being released and I can't help myself I must have them LOL.

Have Fun
Helen

Nancy said...

Helen, I love that line about the TBR. I don't have any such excuse. Seems like, every time I make a dent, I discover a new author whose backlist I MUST read or a new subgenre, or something.

It's hopeless. But there are worse habits.

How's the GR doing?

Anna Campbell said...

Hey, Helen, one chook coming your way. I hope you've got Tim Tams on hand!

Kim and Nancy, I really enjoyed the review and you brought up some really interesting points, Kim. Congratulations on your success! That's a pretty starry start to a career, a starred review in PW and 4.5 stars in RT!

Nancy said...

What's the craziest thing anyone ever did with a friend? I can't lay claim to much in the crazy department, alas, and am trying to think whether I can lay claim to ANYthing.

Nancy said...

Anna, you had to go and mention Tim Tams. Now I'm wanting some!

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...

Kim, I have an agent, but didn't for my first sale to Kensington. I do now and am really glad I do, because, like Nancy, I work in multiple genres. "Managing" that sort of thing is challenging whilst trying to write more of it. Grins.

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...

Craziest thing done with a friend...well, that's probably still actionable, so I won't reveal it. SNORK!!!

I did have a drunken ride around an island in a golf cart with a BFF. We were laughing so hard we nearly wrecked the thing half a dozen times. Good thing there weren't cars there too. We'd have been pancakes. Great bottle of wine though. Snork.

Nancy said...

Jeanne, a golf cart? *G* Really?

Of course I wouldn't want you to share anything that's still actionable.

Jeanne (AKA The Duchesse) said...

Snork. Yep. A golf cart. Bald Head. No cars, thank heavens.

As to the actionable part...yeah. Best left unsaid.

Kim said...

Well, ladies, thanks so much for having me on the site. It's been a lot of fun!

Bodice Ripper Novels said...

Thanks for having a giveaway. No, I don't really have friends who share my interests, lol.

bodicerippernovels at gmail dot com

Nancy said...

BRN, thanks for stopping by.

traveler said...

Kim,
Congratulations on this wonderful release. Your post was inspiring. I think that friends enrich your life, are important and contribute to the well being and longevity of all of us. There is a small group of friends with similar interests who get together monthly to catch up and try to plan a trip each year to a new location.

Unknown said...

I'm so sorry I'm a day late to the party for Kim's release.

What a fantastic interview. Thank you Nancy for bringing Kim to the lair.

This book hits me right where it hurts, so to speak, as far as the ag thing and a lot of the issues which surround the decade of your 40s. A lot of changes internally and externally for most of us. I'm not sure I have come to the place of acceptance of all of them yet. Don't know when/if that acceptance will happen.

I will say though, that the older I get, the more my women friends mean to me. I didn't need them so much when I was younger--or at least I didn't KNOW I needed them. Now, without them I'd be lost.