I'd like to welcome Brandi Megan Granett to the blog today to celebrate the exciting release of Triple Love Score from Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing!
Welcome to Books à la Mode, Brandi! Let's get this interview started.
Will you please share a brief introduction with us?
I am filled with a passionate desire to share one key idea with the world. This idea is that thoughts are things. The very stuff we fill our minds with spills out and fills our worlds. By learning what we are thinking and where those thoughts come from, we can change our experiences within the world.
One way to make this happen is to study and revise the stories we tell ourselves. Just as we can examine a story or film and suss out the meaning behind it, we can do the same for our internal stories. Once we have experience something, it lives on in us, influencing us, and how we perceive the world as a form of a story. We can stop being just characters in those stories and become their authors.
To do this, we apply the same tools I have used in the teaching of creative writing for the last sixteen years. My Ph.D. in Creative Writing is from Aberystwyth University in Wales. I hold an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.Ed in Adult and Distance Education from Penn State.
It's amazing to get to feature you today! Readers, here's a bit about the book, which hits shelves today:
Triple Love Score is about a poetry professor who stumbles into fame as an anonymous online Scrabble poet.
So, what happens when you stop playing games?
When playing-by-the-rules poet Miranda Shane throws out convention and begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper, she sets off a chain of events that rattles her carefully planned world. Her awakening propels her to take risks and seize those chances she previously let slip by, including a game-changing offer from the man who got away. When the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love and poetry.
Describe Triple Love Score in six words (or less!).
What happens when you stop playing games? Shoot—that is seven! How about Choices, Romance, Sex, Responsibility, Fame.
How did you arrive at writing romance?
The short answer to why romance is because I fell in love with my best friend of 19 years after a rough marriage and divorce. After going through such a tumultuous shift in my life, I needed my writing to be fun again. What’s more fun than writing about people falling in love and getting internet famous?
What was your inspiration for the book?
I would send chapters to my then boyfriend, now husband, each day. What kept me writing each day was eliciting emotions from him from the NSFW chapters to the ones that made him tear up in the middle of a meeting.
As a huge fan of first lines, I'd love to hear the first line of Triple Love Score. Can you give us a brief commentary on it?
Even at twelve years old, Miranda knew better than to dissuade her mother from orchestrating her own funeral.
This line sets the tone for an emotional event that influenced the tenor of Miranda’s life. She learned, sadly, at an early age not to trust the world. Triple Love Score explores what it takes to break through this early and tragic education.
Tell us about your road to publication.
The best thing I picked up along the way on the journey to publication is the group Tall Poppy Writers. I met the founder, Ann Garvin, at a pitch conference. While I didn’t land an agent through that conference, I landed a great group of women fiction writers that keep me motivated to write each day. Tall Poppy Writers work together to support each other throughout the publication and promotion process. It is the best surprise in this whole journey.
Are the characters from your book based off anyone you know in real life? How much else of your actual life gets written into your fiction?
Miranda’s experiences as the Blocked Poet and seducing a student are purely her own. I related with the choices she faces between trusting someone from her past or making her way on her own terms. When I started
Triple Love Score, I found myself falling in love after a long and tough marriage ended. Like Miranda, I needed to figure out what I wanted for my life and whom I wanted in it.
Which character from Triple Love Score was most difficult to write?
Scott was the most difficult character for me to write. I needed him to be more willing but unavailable at times. I found this to be a delicate balance to strike as I wanted Miranda to have a true partner, but art does imitate life, and rarely does a true romance go off without a hitch or two.
Name the top five novels that have made the biggest impact on your life or on your writing.
Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
And anything by Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood.
What’s the greatest thing you ever learned?
Thoughts are things. My archery coach taught me this. It shows how each moment how we react to things shapes what they become for us. Just as an author can revise a story, a person can take steps to revise their life.
How do you react to a negative or harsh review to your books?
I teach a lot of creative writing, so I am often the one to provide the pep talk about not being afraid of people’s reactions to your work. I remind students (any myself) that there can be thousands of books in a store or library and never in a million years would I read and enjoy all of them. Not every book is for every person.
Blog babes, click "Read more" to find out Brandi's random favorites, how she deals with negative reviews, and what makes Triple Love Score stand out as a book from all the rest. We're also hosting a giveaway for a finished copy of Triple Love Score, so you don't want to miss that either!
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