Thursday, October 30, 2014

Blog Tour: Eight Days a Week by Amber L. Johnson - Interview and Promo Post (@whereisjakeryan)


A "manny" should always mind his own business. And he definitely shouldn’t fall in love with his boss.  


Release Date: November 6 , 2014
Genre: Romance / Contemporary
ISBN e-book: 978-1-61213-329-4
Available from: Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and TWCS PH
 
~~SUMMARY~~
Eight-Days-a-Week-3D-Bookstack-2 Gwen Stone has secrets she’s not ready to reveal. After a recent promotion at work, she needs a caretaker for her children. She’s frenzied and in a lurch and pretty much ready to hire the first person who comes along. So she does. Andrew Lyons needs to get out of his sister’s apartment, and a Craigslist posting may be the answer to his prayers. But what he thought was an ad for a room rental turns into a job offer he can’t refuse. Accepting the nanny position could change his life, if only he had a clue how to be a grownup. A working mother, a shirtless “manny” who looks good in a towel, two children who need more than a babysitter, and hours of kids’ TV can only spell disaster for everyone involved. Because a manny should always mind his own business. And he definitely shouldn’t fall in love with his boss.    


AuthPhot
~~ABOUT THE AUTHOR~~

Amber is a full-time mom and a full-time wife who is employed full time and writes when she can. She believes in Happily Ever Afters that occur every day—despite the obstacles real life serves up on a regular basis. Or perhaps they’re sweeter simply because of them. She always has two rubber bands on her wrist, a song in her head, and too much creamer in her coffee cup that reads ‘Cocoa,’ because she’s a rebel. If she’s not at her desk, with her boys, or behind the computer, she’s supporting live music with her arms raised above her head and her eyes closed, waiting for the drop.  

   
~~CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR~~

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Praise for Eight Days a Week
"Laugh-out-loud story about a guy who goes to look at a room to rent and discovers it comes with a job - that of live-in nanny to two damaged kids. So Andrew Lyons accidentally becomes the "manny". Written in his POV, this book chronicles his hilarious escapades as he looks after and grows to love Bree and Brady, and his employer, Gwen. His pranks and spot-on observations about kids' TV shows had me giggling, but there were a few serious moments worthy of a sniffle as well. The star of the show may be Don, though - you'll just have to read this book to find out about him! Highly recommended." 
 - Andrea Goodreads Review

INTERVIEW

Have you always written? What got you started?

My mom says I started writing books when I was 6 or 7. There’s a stapled ‘book’ of post-it notes that I wrote about my toys coming to life and trying to kill me in my sleep. I’m pretty sure my dad let me watch some horror movies my mom didn’t know about.

I had started a few books when I was younger but they fell by the wayside. Then I did the emotional high school poetry for a while. A few years went by and I was barely reading anything, much less writing. Then I saw the twilight movie, read the entire series in 5 days and BOOM. Inspiration like a freight train. I believe that there are some books that make you never want to write again. And there are others that make you think you’d like to keep going. That was it for me.

I'm sure your books have inspired other authors. What authors inspired you?

Well that’s just really flattering to think that, to be honest.

I love Poe and Shakespeare. I grew up on RL Stine and Sweet Valley High. People may not consider John Hughes a writer in the conventional sense, but if anyone influenced my life with their words and characters it would be him. There are also some incredibly awesome writers I’ve gotten to know on a personal level through this crazy process and that’s an amazing thing.

What does your writing process look like?


It usually starts with a scene. Sometimes it’s a sentence. Then I think, how did they get to this point? So I’ll take that sentence, that scene, and I’ll write it out. Then I’ll plug in what I think the beginning should be. Usually I already know the end so I’ll take out a notebook and do a quick outline of each chapter. It makes it easier to remember what the original idea was and then just flesh out the details.

Then there’s a whole lot of music playing in my earbuds, asking for quiet (and never getting it), trying to sleep (and not getting it). I take a lot of showers because dialogue hits me in there. And then I go to bed thinking of a certain scene and a lot of times I dream about it which makes it easier to get up and write the entire thing down if I can.

Once upon a time you wrote fanfic. What made you take the leap from fan-fiction to original fiction?

I was kinda forced to. (laughs) Before Eight Days and the following books came out, I wanted to prove that I could write other things. It was terrifying and completely out of my comfort zone to take the risk. My husband has wanted me to publish for ages, but I didn’t have it in me at the time.

Do you read/respond to your reviews? Any advice on how to deal with the bad ones?

I read every single one of my reviews. I even read the threads sometimes. I like to see the discussions people have about things I, as the writer, may not have even taken into consideration when building the story. I go through and ‘like’ the majority of the reviews, but not all of them. I make myself read the bad ones because they used to make me so sad and feel so much panic. But as my editor Kathie says, “This book was not for them. Look at the ones it was for.” It’s true. For every bad review I have there’s a higher number of good ones. The majority of the bad ones are preference and opinion but there are certain ones that use verbiage that I find disturbing and offensive. Those ones? I have a small group where I type out a review response and leave it there to vent instead of putting it as a review response. It helps to get it off my chest.

My advice would be to never give them fuel for their fire.

What or who was your inspiration for Eight Days a Week?

Eight Days was inspired by my life at the time. My son had colic as a baby and we spent many a late night on the couch. Disney Jr and Nick Jr were on pretty much all the time as background noise and it got to the point where my husband and I felt like we were going crazy with all these shows. Then one day we realized our son was in bed and we were folding clothes to iCarly. Essentially, Eight Days a Week was born from our hatred of children’s programming.

A while ago you ran a giveaway on Facebook and one of the requirements was that people tell you a funny parenting fail. What's your most epic parenting fail?

Oh, man. I was just relaying this to my friend the other day. There are terrible things that happen when you’re a parent and you have no idea what you’re doing. My kid rolled off the bed once onto his face because I didn’t put him in the EXACT middle of the mattress. One time I walked out of my room and came back to my comforter being cut apart by a 3 year old with a pair of scissors.
But the absolute biggest parenting fail I had was the handheld vacuum. Like I said up there, my son had colic. He cried for upwards of 20 hours a day. I didn’t sleep, pretty much ever. One day my friend came over and lovingly offered to help clean my house. While I was holding my son, she started vacuuming.
He went to sleep.
I wanted to cry. She found the cure!
We got a handheld vac and put it in his room to run at night. It was the loudest, most intense white noise EVER. And then one night I smelled something weird and apparently the belt had started to wear out or something and I think at that point I realized the vac was probably a fire hazard.
We made a recording of it and played it on an iPod after that.
Mom of the Year!

There are two pretty awesome kids in Eight Days a week. What were you like as a kid?

I was weird. I was a good kid, well behaved, loved Barbies and went through a phase of never wearing pants. But I also kicked guys in the nuts and mattress surfed. I was loud but studious. I pretty much didn’t make any sense at all.

Which of your characters (from any of your books) is most like you?

Most like me. That’s tough because I take a piece of myself and put it into the female characters that I write. Mal from Beatless was a lot like me in High School, which is probably why she annoys readers so much, LOL Lilly in Puddle Jumping has a lot of me in her. But I have to say if there is one character that I feel is most like me in speech, passion, etc it would be Emily from Maybe.

Lastly...
What can we expect to see from you next?
 My plate is so full right now! After Eight Days I have Maybe coming out in February and then For Authentication Purposes comes out in March. I’m currently outlining new books and am looking over old manuscripts at the request of my friends to see if they would be worth editing and putting out at a later time. You’re gonna be sick of me!

1 comment:

  1. Thank you SO much for letting me do an interview with you and for being part of my blog tour!

    xoxox

    Amber

    ReplyDelete