Today, fellow author Rita Plush is stopping by to talk about her latest book!
Hello! Thank you for having me here.
My pleasure, of course! So, let me ask a few questions since you're here...
All right.
Can you tell us a little about your latest book? When did it come out and where can we get it?
Feminine
Products is about 39 year old Rusty who is a great success as a business
woman, but can’t seem to get it together when it comes to men. She loves hard
but not smart. Till she meets Walter. But he’s got problems of his own, and the
story revolves around their love and their complicated pasts that keep them
apart. The book came out in October of 2016, and it’s available on Amazon and
Barnes & Noble.
Great!
So, what inspired you to write your book? How did you get into writing women's fiction?
Rusty and Walter are characters from my first novel, Lily
Steps Out. Rusty is Lily’s friend and Walter is the man Lily works for. They
are instantly drawn to each other when Lily introduces them, yet they don’t
keep that connection. I wanted to find out how two people so seemingly in love
and right for each other, could drift apart. So I gave them a book of their
own.
I didn’t start with the idea that I would write “women’s
fiction”. I just started writing and what came out was mothers and children,
husbands and wives, relationships, with all their many twists and turns, and
breaking apart and coming together. It’s what I think about, and talk about
with my friends, so I guess it’s natural that I would write about that.
Rusty and Walter are characters from my first novel, Lily
Steps Out. Rusty is Lily’s friend and Walter is the man Lily works for. They
are instantly drawn to each other when Lily introduces them, yet they don’t
keep that connection. I wanted to find out how two people so seemingly in love
and right for each other, could drift apart. So I gave them a book of their
own.
I didn’t start with the idea that I would write “women’s
fiction”. I just started writing and what came out was mothers and children,
husbands and wives, relationships, with all their many twists and turns, and
breaking apart and coming together. It’s what I think about, and talk about
with my friends, so I guess it’s natural that I would write about that.
Fascinating!
So, tell us...what, do you feel, sets your book apart from other books in the genre?
I can’t say what sets it apart from others in the genre, but I can say
that no one is all good or all bad in the book—including Rusty’s father who
abandoned her when she was a child. The reader has a chance to hear his story
and judge for themselves. Everyone operates in tandem with their personalities
and their pasts.
I can’t say what sets it apart from others in the genre, but I can say
that no one is all good or all bad in the book—including Rusty’s father who
abandoned her when she was a child. The reader has a chance to hear his story
and judge for themselves. Everyone operates in tandem with their personalities
and their pasts.
All right.
Give us a teaser or two of the book if you can.
She
finds it on the shelf with the vaginal cleansers and tampons, anti-itch creams
and panty liners, promising accuracy and easy use.
At
home, hands trembling, she breaks open the carton, grasps the thumb grip, and
leaning forward on the toilet holds the wand under her stream. She gazes at the
little windows and waits for the stripes to appear. She remains on the toilet
staring at the double band. “A baby,” she whispers to the silent tiled room.
“I’m going to have a baby.” She peers down
and leans over, getting her face as close as possible to her belly and gives
the air a little kiss.
Rusty
is thirty nine and she’s only been pregnant once before—at sixteen. Back then
the thought of going through with it filled her with fear and disgust, but now
she wants the life inside her—and the man who put it there. A sort of man hard to describe. Traumatized
by the deaths of his family and the accident at the root of it, only some
thirty-plus years after the fact, did he sit shiva for them. Closure,
some would call it—though not Walter; he’d never use a cliché like that.
Wouldn’t even think it. Walter has a way of expressing himself. Stiffly, some
might say, as if he’s out of practice, or just learning the language.—They are gone from me. I am of no use to
them. It is time I give them to their graves. And on the subject of
children? The one time they talked about it—Do
you like kids? she’d asked over desert at her place a month or so ago. There will be none, he said. That too
was Walter, succinct and to the point. And Rusty, unsure of where the
relationship was going—she’d only known him three months then—let the matter
slide. It slid all right… right into her fallopian tube.
After
days of worrying the how, when and where, she decides… in his loft. She’ll
bring champagne—Oh? And what are we celebrating? She’ll seem mysterious by not partaking
and he’ll want to know why. She’ll say
doctor’s orders. She’ll give hints. I
have a condition… I’m not supposed to drink… Make him guess.
But
before she gets the chance to buy bubbly or the opportunity to tease out the
details, into her boutique walks the prime mover, trim and fit as a marathon
runner, unannounced as usual. Hair gray, short and side-parted, eyes glistening
with energy, he climbs atop a counter-high stool fronting the showcase.
Caught
up short, she chatters away about a movie they’ve seen, the Chanel exhibit
she’d like to catch at the Met. Has he tracked down that new carburetor for his
vintage Ford? While about the baby, not a word.
He studies her
face. “What is it? There is something else on your mind today.” He cocks an eyebrow.
And so she comes
out with it. “I’m going to have a baby.”
Oh, I definitely want to know what happens next...;)
Let's try another question, okay?
I'm sure readers are curious about your next writing project. Can you
tell us what you've got cooking up now or is that a secret?
Think
walk-up apartment in post-war Brooklyn 1945. Six-year old Frances turns heads
and causes havoc, trying to make sense of the death of her mother while a
beloved childless neighbor yearns to adopt her, going head to head with the
child's aunt who has legal rights. Give the story Mayor LaGuardia reading the
Sunday morning "funnies," saw dust on the butcher shop floor, Buster
Brown inside her shoes, "elevator" trains, and you've got the makings
of Frances' world. Click here for an excerpt chapter.
Think
walk-up apartment in post-war Brooklyn 1945. Six-year old Frances turns heads
and causes havoc, trying to make sense of the death of her mother while a
beloved childless neighbor yearns to adopt her, going head to head with the
child's aunt who has legal rights. Give the story Mayor LaGuardia reading the
Sunday morning "funnies," saw dust on the butcher shop floor, Buster
Brown inside her shoes, "elevator" trains, and you've got the makings
of Frances' world. Click here for an excerpt chapter.
Love it! Frances has a lot to say! :)
Well, we certainly look forward to your next book!
Thanks so much for stopping by to tell us about Feminine Products, Rita!
Of course! Thank you for having me here.
You're welcome! It's always a pleasure!
Readers, you'll just have to pick up a copy of this interesting women's fiction tale! :)
Here is the blurb.
Everyone’s got personal baggage, but
Rusty Scanlon thinks she’s carrying more than her fair share. Owner of a trendy
boutique on the outskirts of New York City, Rusty has an eye for fashion and a
gift for messing up her love life. She doesn’t trust men. They’ve all abandoned
her – the first being her carpenter father, who ran out on her and her mother
when she was only six years old. When she meets Walter Margolis, a guy who
adores her, she thinks she has it all. Not so, she discovers when she tells him
she’s pregnant and he suggests a paternity test. Rusty doesn’t know what to
make of Walter’s reaction until he reveals the details of the
accident he thinks he caused as a
teenager, and the guilt that has tormented him all his adult life.
When a smooth-talking con man
puts two and two together, ‘by the way’ mentioning that he once knew Rusty’s
father, and also her mother – they apparently had a ‘thing’ some years back –
she realizes he’s after something. She decides it’s time to find out the truth,
and find her father. Until she does, she can’t fully commit to the life she
hopes to share with Walter. Rusty’s emotional roller coaster ride is full of
twists and turns that teach her and those around her about losing love and
finding it, and what it means to be a family.
Purchase
Links:
Amazon
Universal link: http://bookgoodies.com/a/B016TV23RG
CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/5810516
Sounds great!
About the Author:
Rita began her diverse career as
an interior designer, enjoying the position of coordinator of the Interior
Design/Decorating Certificate Program at Queensborough Community College for 20
years. She remains on the faculty teaching courses in design, decorative arts
and creative writing.
The publication of her novel, Lily Steps Out, (Penumbra Publishing
2012)—twelve years in the making—earned “Published & Proud,” a feature
article in Newsday’s Act II, followed
by “Rita Steps Out,” in The Times Ledger.
Her short stories have appeared in
many literary magazines including The
Alaska Quarterly Review, before they were included in the collection, Alterations (Penumbra 2013).
A sought after speaker, Rita has
presented at libraries and synagogues, Hofstra University, CW Post Hutton
House, on topics as varied as decorative arts, interior design, the talk,
“Writing & Publishing in the Modern Age, or So You’ve Written a Book, Now
What?” and “Coco Chanel,” The Woman ~ The Legend.” She is the book reviewer
for The Fire Island News.
Frequently appearing on blog talk
radio, Rita read from Alterations on
“The Author’s Corner” for Public Radio. She has guested on The Writer’s Dream,
LTV, and “The Amy Beth Arkway Show,” When interviewed on Morgen Bailey’s
“Author Spotlight,” Rita talked about the similarities between interior design
and writing. “It’s still creativity at work,” she said. Writing is another form
of design. “In rooms you put fabric and furnishings together aiming for the
perfect note of color, texture and scale. Everything arranged in a way that
instantly strikes the eye as a balanced whole. Writing a book is similar,
except that instead of objects, you put people and plot together to create that
perfect balance. A world made with words."
Author
Links:
Website: http://www.ritaplush.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rita.plush
Twitter: bit.ly/1OiXsCk
Amazon
Author Page: amzn.to/1QpoUzS
Publisher: http://penumbrapublishing.com/
Additional: http://www.jennymilchman.com/blog/2014/04/14/made-it-moment-rita-plush/
Rita's
Books:
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