Bootleg Broadway by @DianaLRubino #rockingsummerromance

Author Diana Rubino is here to tell us about her latest release, Bootleg Broadway, a Rocking Summer Romance.

bootleg broadway coverBooze, music, sex, murder, Prohibition… New York…what a time to be alive!

In this sequel to FROM HERE TO 14TH STREET, Vita and Tom McGlory and their three children are struggling to make ends meet.

It’s 1932. Prohibition rages, the Depression ravages, and Billy McGlory comes of age whether he wants to or not. Musical and adventurous, Billy dreams of having his own ritzy supper club and big band. On the eve of his marriage to the pregnant Prudence, the shifty “businessman” Rosario Ingovito offers him all that and more. Fame, fortune, his own Broadway musical…it’s all his for the taking, despite Pru’s opposition to Rosie’s ventures.

Meanwhile, Pru’s artistic career gains momentum and their child is born. Can anything go wrong for Billy? Only when he gets in way over his head does he stop to wonder how his business partner really makes his millions, but by then it’s far too late…

The birth of BOOTLEG BROADWAY:

With FROM HERE TO 14TH STREET set in 1894, I needed to set this a generation later, which happened to be the 1930s—with Prohibition and the Great Depression as the backdrop. This is the first book I ever wrote where I created the characters first, with nothing to do yet. The plot developed the way it did because of who they are. My goal was to get Billy into one mess after another. This era couldn’t have been more suited to Billy’s adventures, a few of which he barely escaped with his life.

Nicknames from real life:

As in FROM HERE TO 14th STREET, a lot of characters have nicknames like Piggy Balls and Dirty Neck Bruiso. I sat around the table with my surviving aunts and uncles who were then in their 80s and 90s, and they rattled off these nicknames from ‘the old days’ in Jersey City like they made them up yesterday. That was a standard Italian neighborhood custom, everybody had a nickname. Some were more descriptive than others. But you didn’t just ‘get’ a nickname. You had to earn it.

My fave passage from BOOTLEG BROADWAY:

Pru had kept closemouthed all day about what she was giving him, although he badgered and hounded her, but she wouldn’t give in.

As Ma began divvying up the rum cake, the doorbell rang, and Da came back with a long box. “This thing’s heavy. What’s in here, Pru? Billy’s tombstone?”

Billy cut the ribbon with the cake knife and slid the lid off. Wads of tissue paper filled the box. As he removed the last layer of covering and revealed what was inside, they all gasped—a sculpture of a naked man, in all his masculine glory—and fully aroused. He had one hand on his hip and one foot upon a pedestal on which was inscribed in bold letters, “BILLY.”

“Oh, crap.” His face turned red hot.

You can purchase BOOTLEG BROADWAY from:

The Wild Rose Press, Kindle, Amazon Paperback, Barnes & Noble Nook,

Grief Like an Ocean: Weathering the Storm

I first saw this quote, comparing grief to an ocean, at N. N. Light‘s blog back in June.

GriefOcean-800x598I love this quote. I can’t think of a more apt analogy for grief than an ocean.

Grief begins with a shock akin to an earthquake of epic proportions, followed by a tsunami of emotions: disbelief, denial or anger or guilt, and above all an overwhelming sadness that engulfs your whole being. It takes a while for the tsunami to recede, leaving you feeling adrift in a turbulent ocean.

Lady and sea wavesAfter a while, the turbulence decreases and there are periods of smooth sailing, but like the ocean, grief is seemingly endless and unpredictable. There will be squalls during which we experience what the professionals call a STUG: a short, temporary upsurge of grief. And sometimes there are storms of emotion. These usually occur at some pivotal moment: a holiday, a birthday, an anniversary, when thoughts of the lost loved one are impossible to deny or keep at bay.

View of storm seascapeAnd then the ocean smooths out again and we go  back to living moment to moment, waiting for… we know not what. Does grief ever end? Not really, though the storms and squalls diminish over time until the loved one becomes a cherished memory rather than an open wound of the heart.

Today is the first wedding anniversary without my dear husband, so this topic is much on my mind. I have a distraction planned for today: a movie and dinner with a friend. So I expect I will weather this storm, too.

Smooth Sailing

Sailboat near Monterey, one of our favorite vacation spots

I wish all of you smooth sailing.

Linda

A note about the photos: The first one was taken by me from the balcony of the Royal Princess as we were leaving Scotland in the North Sea. Photos two and three are licensed from bigstockphoto.com. The last photo was taken in Pacific Grove, CA. in 2006 on my last trip to the Monterey Peninsula with my husband.