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One Flight Up by Susan-Fales Hill

One Flight Up by Susan Fales-Hill circles around four married friends, each at a different stage in their life, each unhappy in their own ways. India Chumley, our main gal, is a biracial, high powered divorce lawyer, whose clients and her own mother’s marriage keeps her from saying “yes” to all the proposals her hunky French boyfriend keeps bestowing on her. That, and the fact that she is still in love with Keith, her ex-fiancée who cheated on her weeks before their wedding date. Abby Rosenfeld Adams discovers her husband Nathaniel is having an affair, quite possibly multiple affairs, and is devastated that her high school sweetheart would throw away their years of marriage for a younger protocol. Esme Sarmiento Talbot is a spicy Colombian that has become bored of her suburban ways and too sweet husband Tim. She finds excitement with the waiter, and the bartender, and the doorman, etc. Monique Dawkins-Dubois is a successful gynecologist who married her husband mostly for his checkbook, and now is finding comfort in the arms of another employee. All friends have dived into affairs, but when their adulterous actions come back to haunt them, they must ask themselves- was it all worth it in the end?
I had a fabulous time reading One Flight Up. All the characters were similar with their unhappiness about where their life was, but all had different approaches on how to make it better. While I don’t typically like reading about affairs and cheating (I’m still a young gun that believes marriage is forever) I couldn’t help but get sucked into their world. The writing was flawless, and once I hit the middle of the novel, I really couldn’t put it down. I had to see what would happen to each woman, how she would come out of her particular situation. There really wasn’t a character I disliked, though I didn’t approve their choices, but as a reader, I could easily understand how they were feeling and why they were making their mistakes. I realized towards the end that maybe this is a little too much like my beloved Sex and the City. I saw Carrie and her Big issues with India and ex-fiancée Keith, Abby has the art loving, WASPy-like Charlotte, and Esme as a married Samantha. But that didn’t necessarily detract from my liking the book, because I’m still giving it five stars. A great book that I think chick lit fans will enjoy as well.
[Rating: 5]

Guest Post by Susan Fales-Hill

The realization that one MUST write books can dawn slowly, over the course of a lifetime, or in a Joan-of-Arc-hears-a-voice sudden flash of inspiration. I had my first epiphany during a dismal meeting with T.V. network executives as I burned at the stake of their unrelenting criticism of a script I had written about a subject I knew cold: glamorous black divas. It was 1998 and I was a thirteen year sitcom veteran having worked as a writer on “The Cosby Show, “as Executive Producer/Headwriter of its spinoff, “A Different World,” two other less memorable shows, and served as Consulting Producer on Brooke Shields’ comedic vehicle, “Suddenly Susan.” (Thirteen years may not sound like much, but TV writers’ careers are measured in dog years, we are hideously overworked and grossly overpaid. For that decade plus, I had no life, and was mother to a large brood of handbags) This was the tail end of the last great Golden Age of Network television, a time before niche networks and the proliferation of reality shows featuring disgraced politicians and Republican baby mamas mamboing their way to image rehabilitation and big cash prizes. During a lull between show running jobs, I had agreed to write a pilot, with Whoopi Goldberg as producer, about a Broadway diva who had fallen on hard times. Having grown up around a group I like to call the Original Divas, Diahann Carrol, Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, my own mother, Broadway legend, Josephine Premice (who would awaken me every morning with a song, a homemade chocolate shake and wearing her false eyelashes,) I knew the breed. I more than knew them, had a Doctorate in Advanced Divology.
. Rather than comment on the story, the executives launched into an attack on the depiction of the “Diva. “ They reeled off a list of actresses they considered divas, all of them white, and though all talented, more “Mae West” raunchy/vulgar than naughty and refined like the performers I’d known all my life. Whoopi objected: “None of the women you’ve mentioned is a woman of color.” “Our Yoga instructor is Indian,” the executives countered brightly without a trace of irony. With all due respect to this no doubt lovely and obviously enterprising woman, I submit that opening a Yoga studio in a strip mall in Santa Monica in the 1990’s doesn’t quite compare to changing the image of African American women from sexless, subservient mammies to sophisticated, empowered glamazons in the era of Jim Crow. Call me crazy. Beyonce, Halle Berry, Viola Davis, Angela Basset and scores of others owe their careers to the strides made by this prior generation of path breakers. But the executives were clearly oblivious to these truths. As they steamrolled over Whoopi’s comment and the original concept of the piece, I felt as if I had landed in the third circle of Dante’s Hell and was being punished for all eternity for a crime I didn’t remember committing. Aside from the fact they had no frame of reference for the world, or the women we were depicting, they weren’t going to bother to do their research. I had had the privilege of working on groundbreaking shows that had systematically dismantled stereotypes, but in this case “the revolution (would) not be televised.” I knew in that moment that to do justice to the Original Divas, I would eventually have to turn to another medium.
I wish I could tell you, dear reader, that I stood up then and there, cast my pencil down before these benighted bores and declared “Enough is enough, I’m done with T.V.” In the first place, the discussion was taking place via phone, in a time before Skype, so the drama of my standing up and tossing said pencil to the ground would have been lost on them. In the second, I’m nothing if not practical and security oriented. It took a couple of more years to loose myself from television’s golden handcuffs. That same year, I sold a show to Showtime with Tim Reid that starred the incredible Pam Grier. For two seasons, we enjoyed much greater creative freedom . But I realized I still had not told my story. It was my husband who asked me one night over dinner: “Other than the money, what keeps you in TV?” I stared at him dumbly and looked down at my designer purse. I had to admit to myself that woman does not live by luxury accessories alone. It was time to take a chance. An article I wrote about growing up bi-racial in the 60’s and 70’s and not ending up in an asylum led me to immortalize my mother in a memoir, “Always Wear Joy,” published two years after her passing and the year my daughter was born.
All I can say, dear reader is, “once you go hardback, you never go back.” The work of writing books is far lonelier. I can no longer bounce ideas ofF an entire staff, but am reduced to talking to myself (hopefully not in public) until my editor weighs in on the first draft. And there is no one to fetch me cappuccinos at will. That said, the freedom to depict the world as I know it, big, messy, multicultural, and not be told that a character is too old (because she’s all of thirty two), too unlikeable, too exotic, too badly behaved, too too much is well worth the “sacrifices.”
My debut novel, “One Flight Up,” the first multicultural chick lit novel, is dedicated to the notion that we don’t pick our friends like Garanimal pajamas, (i.e.they don’t all match. ) Tired of books that end with an “I Do,” I wanted to explore the choices women face between marrying sexy Mario in the Mazerati, who rocks your world but won’t be there to change diapers, and Murray the Mortician who will, but between the sheets may make you feel like you’ re being embalmed. I’m now on book three and counting.
With each tome, I learn, grow, and hopefully improve. My television training served me well. I don’t treat deadlines as mere suggestions and I’m the first to edit myself. I don’t treat any part of my books like the stone tablets of Moses. Writing is re-writing. And so, I suppose I should thank the two executives whose whining incomprehension drove me to seek out new territory. And should book writing not pan out, I can always return to my first job out of high school and before college: peddling designer purses behind the counter at Gucci. Anyone for a calf-skin clutch?

susanfales-hill.com

Debut Author and Novels- August and September 2011

Debut Authors & Novels- August/September 2011   Title: The Last Page Author: Lacy Camey Available: August 3, 2011 Synopsis: Norah Johnson is at a crossroads…

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Riversong by Tess Hardwick

Lee Tucker is in disbelief after her husband commits suicide. The disbelief doesn’t just come from his death, but also what comes after the funeral. Turns out her husband had made a few deals, worth one million dollars in loans, and now the loan shark is after Lee to pay that money back. After Lee discovers she is pregnant, and in no way able to repay her husband’s debts right away, she flees to her mother’s house in a small Oregon town. Her hometown is filled with ugly memories, including an alcoholic mother who never seemed to care for Lee. Since her mother succumbed to the alcoholism, and her house was left Lee, she decides to fix it up and sell it to pay the remaining debt. After a wonderful neighbor helps Lee get settled back into her childhood home, she finds a job as a business consultant at a struggling restaurant. While there, she is met with cold shoulders and hostility by the owner’s son, but pushes on with determination to make the restaurant succeed- and hoping her life will finally turn around.
The heroine in Riversong by Tess Hardwick can be described as resilient and determined. You learn right away about her horrible childhood with a sad excuse for a mother, and understand why she sometimes carries a chip on her shoulder. I was rooting for Lee the entire way throughout the book, and she is someone you want to see catch a break in life. This is Hardwick’s debut novel, and I feel she is an author to watch for. I enjoyed all the restaurant scenes and how hard Lee worked to make it a success, and the stories of other residents among the small town will make you smile while pulling at your heart. There were a few grammatical errors in there that I caught, and sometimes I wondered why the loan shark didn’t think to first look at her hometown for her, but overall, I really enjoyed a beautiful story with a smart heroine to connect with.
[Rating: 4]

Jessica Alba Welcomes Baby Girl

It’s another girl for Jessica Alba and Cash Warren! The couple welcomed daughter Haven Garner Warren on Saturday, and Alba shared the good news on her Facebook page. “She was born on Saturday, weighed 7 lbs and was 19 inches long. Healthy and happy! Big sister Honor couldn’t be more excited about the new addition to our family.” Haven joins Honor Marie, 3.