Brita Addams - Guest Post and Giveaway

Tarnished Gold Virtual Book Tour

To celebrate the release of my old Hollywood era novel, Tarnished Gold, I have embarked on a virtual book tour.

Giveaway:

  (  Ebook giveaways at each stop. Random commenter's choice from my backlist (Tarnished Gold excluded)

 Signed 8x10 glossies of Jack Abadie

Grand Prize is a Kindle, along with the winner's choice of five (5) of my backlist titles, sent to them by email.

Rules: 

Easy. Leave a comment at one or all the stops. At each stop, a random commenter will be selected to win their choice of backlist book (Tarnished Gold excluded.) This selection will be made daily throughout the tour, except where blog owners wish to extend the eligibility. Be sure to leave an email address in your comment. 

All names of commenters and their email addresses will be put into the drawing for the Kindle, even if they have won the daily drawing. The more comments you make the more chances you have to win.

Other prizes include five (5) 8x10 glossies of Jack Abadie, signed. The winners will be selected on April 10, from all the commenters at all the stops, and notified by email.

The Grand Prize winner will be selected on April 10th and notified by email. Once I have heard from the winner and obtained a shipping address, I will order the Kindle and have it shipped directly to the winner. They will also be eligible to select five (5) of my backlist titles and I will email them to the winner.

Contest valid in the United States.

Full schedule for the Tarnished Gold Virtual Book Tour

Guest Post:

How much of me goes into my books?

I'm often asked if some of my books have any hidden biographical elements to them. The question got me thinking about how much of me I actually do put into the characters and the stories.

While I can say that I have never visited a sex club, I can also say that I've read a lot about them. In that research, the Sapphire Club was born. The series is set during the Regency era, just outside London, on an estate where the well-heeled can go and let their hair down.

Other than adopting some names from my family tree – Lucien, the owner of the club, was named for my husband's great grandfather, and Damrill came from my father's family tree. Prentice Hyde, the subject of Lord Decedent's Obsession, possesses many characteristics of a young man who was in my father's Boy Scout troop – affable, always smiling. Prentice does bear a striking resemblance to Tyrone Power, as Lucien is very much Clark Gable to me.

Do my personal thoughts of morality enter into the creation of situations? I'm not sure. I'm a live and let live person, and usually scoff at strictures that make no sense in our time.

Relative to my writing, I recently had to admit to myself that I write with the hero in mind, rather than the heroine. Therefore, when I write a woman, it doesn't occur to me to write her as myself. I'm not nearly as brave or feisty as any of my heroines are, nor do I aspire to be.

I grew up in a time when premarital sex wasn't as openly discussed as it today. In high school, what I knew about sex fit into a thimble, with room for a finger. It wasn't discussed, at least in my world.

Even in historical romances, the couple eventually get around to having sex, and most likely, without the benefit of marriage. I've read some reviews where readers ridicule such a premise, but my internal answer is, this generation didn't invent sex, no more than mine did. Debauchery existed long before any of us.

I have to suppose that if I examine each character I've created, there must be some of me in them, but I would say that it is more the me I'd be if I didn't have the experience and years behind me. In other words, braver.

When I was eighteen and just out of school, I ran away from an oppressive home and moved to Boston. I look back at that time now, and wonder where I got the guts to plunge myself into the big city, when I had lived in a small farm town in Upstate New York all my life. I found a job at an insurance company and I strutted the streets of Bean Town like I owned the place, until I was accosted one Friday morning. Nothing happened but a tussle and my insistence that I could carry my suitcase by myself (after work, I was going to visit friends for the weekend.) I shudder when I think about it, because another girl in the boarding house was raped the next day, in the very same spot that I had managed to shuck away and dash for the subway. From that day on, my boyfriend met me in the morning and in the evening and walked me back to the house.

That experience, and that of my friend, shaped the way I raised my girls, and my son. They are all vigilant people today, my son the first one to defend someone in need.

My heroes are composites of those close to me, possessed of qualities I most admire—steadfastness, kindness, ambition, caring for others. They are smart, and always handsome, as beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Often, they are ambivalent to their parents, most often their father, because that is me. I had a terrible relationship with my father and while I might make my hero a good father (like my husband,) the main character's relationship with his father is usually flawed.

I am very close to my siblings, as are my characters. My sister, though we are six years apart in age and physically, hundreds of miles away from each other, remains one of my closest friends. My stories often reflect sibling closeness.

Tarnished Gold reflects my deep interest in early Hollywood. My father was enthralled by movies and as though genetic, I am too. I love the glamour, the affected speech, a product of elocution coaches when silents died in favor of talkies, the "always on" manner that the stars had at that time. No going out in raggedy clothes and hair mussed. They were stars through and through.

This interest extended to ravenous reading. I've read biographies of every movie star that held my interest. For years, I've steeped myself in culture of old Hollywood, a place that was quite different these days.

As a boy and a young man, Jack Abadie, my character in Tarnished Gold, spends hours in the darkened balcony of the Prytania Theater in New Orleans, watching Wallace Reid on the screen. He dreams of one day becoming a star. With his head in the clouds, he goes to Los Angeles, much as I went to Boston, not knowing where he'd live or work, but knowing he had to be there.

That part of Jack is from my early experience of setting out into the world, unsure as to what I'd find at the other end, but knowing that I couldn't stay planted in my small hometown. Jack's manner is very much like people I know, having lived in Louisiana for many years. Cajuns use cher (dear in French) all the time, as does Jack with Wyatt. While his speech and accent were scrubbed for the movies, Jack never lost his Cajun roots. He hires a woman from Louisiana to cook for him and amid the pretention of Hollywood, he favors the foods he grew up on—gumbo, etouffee, and over-sweet iced tea, the Southern cure-all drink. I know people who have the stuff running through their veins.

I dreamt of stardom in those early days, but strictly from the standpoint of the glamour I so adored in the old films I watched regularly. Sassy broads and macho men—yes, that made for heady watching on those early mornings when I'd curl up on the sofa and turn on what were old movies even then. I suppose, in some way, I lived out that dream through Jack.

My belief that love is love is deeply embedded in the text of Tarnished Gold. Dreamer than I am, I hope one day, we can have marriage without labels and love without fear.

Here's the blurb for Tarnished Gold:

In 1915, starstruck Jack Abadie strikes out for the gilded streets of the most sinful town in the country—Hollywood. With him, he takes a secret that his country hometown would never understand. 

After years of hard work and a chance invitation to a gay gentlemen's club, Jack is discovered. Soon, his talent, matinee idol good looks, and affable personality propel him to the height of stardom. But fame breeds distrust. 

Meeting Wyatt Maitland turns Jack’s life upside down. He wants to be worthy of his good fortune, but old demons haunt him. Only through Wyatt's strength can Jack face that which keeps him from being the man he wants to be. Love without trust is empty. 

As the 1920s roar, scandals rock the movie industry. Public tolerance of Hollywood's decadence has reached its limit. Under pressure to clean up its act, Jack’s studio issues an ultimatum. Either forsake the man he loves and remain a box office darling, or follow his heart and let his shining star fade to tarnished gold.

Read an excerpt and purchase the Tarnished Gold ebook or print, signed by the author (if one of the first twenty sold.)

I also have For Men Like Us, which takes place during the Regency in England. You can find it at Dreamspinner Press. Just click the title to be magically transported.

Blurb for For Men Like Us:

After Preston Meacham’s lover dies trying to lend him aid at Salamanca, hopelessness becomes his only way of life. Despite his best efforts at starting again, he has no pride left, which leads him to sell himself for a pittance at a molly house. The mindless sex affords him his only respite from the horrors he witnessed.

The Napoleonic War left Benedict Wilmot haunted by the acts he was forced to commit and the torture he endured at the hands of a superior, a man who used the threat of a gruesome death to force Ben to do his bidding. Even sleep gives Ben no reprieve, for he can’t escape the destruction he caused.

When their paths cross, Ben feels an overwhelming need to protect Preston from his dangerous profession. As he explains, “The streets are dangerous for men like us.” 

About Brita Addams:

Born in Upstate New York, Brita Addams has made her home in the sultry south for many years. Brita's home is a happy place, where she lives with her real-life hero, her husband, and a fat cat named Stormee.

She writes, for the most part, erotic historical romance, both het and m/m, which is an ideal fit, given her love of British and American history. Setting the tone for each historical is important. Research plays an indispensible part in the writing of any historical work, romance or otherwise. A great deal of reading and study goes into each work, to give the story the authenticity it deserves.

As a reader, Brita prefers historical works, romances and otherwise. She believes herself born in the wrong century, though she says she would find it difficult to live without air conditioning.

Brita and her husband love to travel, particularly cruises and long road trips. They completed a Civil War battlefield tour a couple of years ago, and have visited many places involved in the American Revolutionary War.

In May, 2013, they are going to England for two weeks, to visit the places Brita writes about in her books, including the estate that inspired the setting for her Sapphire Club series. Not the activities, just the floor plan. J

A bit of trivia – Brita pronounces her name, Bree-ta, like the woman's name, and oddly, not like the famous water filter.

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