I have such a fun show and tell for you today.
I’ll be reviewing Bob at the Lake and will also give you a glimpse inside the book.
There’s also an awesome giveaway, so don’t forget to enter!
But first let’s get to the interview!
Hey, Laura, before we get started with our interview, I just have to tell you how much Bob and I enjoyed our brief visit with you and your great readers in February. I’m so glad we’re able to spend a bit more time here today. Thanks so much for inviting us back! Roz
Thank you Roz. I’m thrilled to have ya’ll back again. So let’s not keep everyone waiting.
1) I’ve never read anything quite like Bob at the Lake. Very refreshing. Are either of your characters derived from someone you know and, if not, where do they come from?
Thanks so much for your compliment, Laura! There is SO MUCH formulaic, cookie-cutter writing out there right now that the fact that you think my writing is a little off the beaten path is about the highest praise you could send my way. You’ve made my day! As for the characters… I wanted to spend my writing time with a single woman trying to survive the Great Recession, on her own with only a handful of assets. How do single people–who have no soft place to land if they fail–survive? I wish I could tell you where my characters came from; I’m kind of curious myself!
2) What was the easiest part to write in the book?
My descriptions of the beautiful Finger Lakes scenery were the easiest things to write in this book. Even after living on this lake for years, my breath still catches with wonder sometimes when I look out the window. And our local wines? OMG, so amazing…
3) What was the hardest part to write in the book?
It took me several tries before I came up with Roz’s ‘voice.’ Once I could articulate that, everything else started to come together.
4) If your book was made into a movie, who would you cast for your characters?
I know David would be some blissfully yummy combination of Tom Selleck and Colin Firth, and I always picture Kelsey Grammer (when he played Frasier) as Bob. As for Roz, that’s a little tougher. Sandra Bullock’s comic timing would be great, but she’d have to bulk up a bit and not look so dismayingly perfect all the time.
5) Are you working on anything now, and would you like to tell us a little about it?
In my next Bob book, Roz goes toe-to-toe in a competition with the ghostly members of the Algonquin Round Table. I can’t quite decide if the scene is terrifying or hysterical; probably a little bit of both, as usually seems to be the case in Roz’s world.
6) What do you do to relax?
In the summer I reinforce the stone wall that theoretically prevents the lake from joining me in my living room during the April floods. If you’re ever out on Crooked Lake, I’ll be the idiot standing knee-deep in water shoveling shale and piling rocks into a wall. I also love music of all sorts, ballroom dancing, opera, and financial planning (yup, sorry about that last one, but it’s true…)
7) What makes you laugh?
The pitch-perfect timing and ensemble playing in The Big Bang Theory. My sisters. The antics of my extended family. Reader’s Digest jokes. Thurber. Benchley.
8) Is there anything you’d like to share with other authors about your experiences in publishing?
The constant message to new writers from my wonderful and supportive fellow authors at Soul Mate Publishing is the need to enhance your social media presence. While I completely agree with them, I’d also add that you need to drive yourself to create the best book you can possibly write. Rewrite, polish, rewrite…and then polish some more…
Now I like to do 5 fun shorts.
1) Swimming pool or beach? Ex-Jersey Girl here. Beach, beach, BEACH!!!
2) Sandals or high heels? Sandals.
3) Salty or sweet snacks? Dove Solid Dark Chocolate Easter Eggs. I buy POUNDS of them during Lent and stash them in the depths of my freezer for year-round snacking. (Why do people eat chocolate with corners? I could never figure that out.)
4) Favorite beverage? Coffee. Couldn’t live without it. (I could live without a good Riesling wine–but I wouldn’t be very happy about it.)
5) Eat out or cook? Eat out. ABSOLUTELY!
Really creative and fun interview questions, Laura. Thanks so much for sending them my way! R.
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Bob at the Lake
By R. Murphy
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BLURB
Take a crabby woman of a certain age, move her to the wintry shores of a New York lake, and then throw in a martini-loving ghost from 1920s Manhattan. Last, stir in the good-looking grape grower who lives up the hill. Now there’s a recipe for a potent screwball cocktail!
MY REVIEW
Having gone through the Great Recession, I felt so many connections in this book.
Roz purchased a second house on the shores of Crooked Lake in West New York and then everything fell apart. She got a divorce and the recession hit and her job went elsewhere leaving her with no choice but to live at the lake house and make a go of it with her freelance writing.
It wasn’t long before she met Bob, a ghost with a taste for martinis. Finding out why he was there and what it would take to make him go away was a rip tearing good time for me.
How do you take your ghost? Shaken or stirred?
I thought Bob, being a ghost, would be my favorite character. Not so. While I loved Bob and his humor, which was as dry as his martinis, Roz was the one I felt most connected to.
Being a woman ‘of a certain age’ myself, it was nice to have the protagonist portrayed by one also. It made it easy to connect with Roz and her thoughts and actions were that much more believable. She felt familiar, so like me.
I too have a tradition of spending the week between Christmas and New Years holed up at home, eating the goodies I got, drinking lots of tea, and reading, reading, reading. I too love Irish Breakfast Tea and white wines. But I don’t live in a lake house and I don’t have a Bob.
Roz took me along on her new journey of the Finger Lakes, introducing me to her strange next door neighbors, taking me wine tasting at the local wineries, and keeping me up all night to meet her writing deadlines.
“…it’s hard to describe a good wine; it’s as hard as describing a kiss.”
As the author places her in predicament after predicament I was waiting for her to call for help. And who’s she gonna call? Bob, that’s who. Granted he wasn’t always helpful, and could get her in even bigger pickles, like the time the display got broken in the store and she was kicked out, but sometimes he had good ideas. Roz just had to weed them out.
He can also be tender and quite debonair. Also light on his feet, and no, not from his martinis. Wait until you go to the ball on the lake.
What you get in Bob at the Lake is a story that reads like real life. There’s a character with some years and experience, a ghost who mixes delicious martinis, some local color, a slow blooming romance with a sexy grape grower, and laughs that keep on coming.
4 STARS
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And now a peek inside Bob at the Lake
“At this point, it might be appropriate to interject a few words about me, your narrator. Decades ago, people used to have a phrase for me: a woman of a certain age. Back then, everyone knew what that phrase meant: ‘Young enough to want to (fill in the name of your favorite venial sin here); old enough to know better.’ The phrase implies a certain amount of polish, a certain amount of experience. A woman who’s been knocked down by life, still has the energy to get off the floor, and has learned lessons from her fall. Back then, women of a certain age were hard-bitten newspaperwomen, or glamorous, mysterious divorce co-respondents in courtroom dramas, who wore elegant hats with veils down to their chins. I associate them with words like peplum, and negligee, and I know they were all blondes who wore daring designer suits and genuine silk stockings.
I wish I could afford to wear daring designer suits. Instead my everyday clothes typically involve some form of denim. And, although my short, wavy brunette hair usually has some highlights of blond, the quantity of highlights tends to vary proportionally to my bank balance. The more money I have, the blonder I get.
I don’t know how to assign a specific age to a woman of a certain age in the twenty-first century. It’s especially confusing these days, when forty is the new twenty and fifty is the new thirty. I think it’s mostly a matter of mind and experience.
Anyway, back to our story…
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Roz Murphy is the pseudonym of a shy, retiring writer who doesn’t want her neighbors to know how nutty she really is. Brooklyn-born and Jersey-bred, Roz now lives on the misty shore of one of New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes. Prior to that, her business writing career took her to many locations, including Manhattan, where she worked for a number of years. As a freelance and corporate writer, Roz won several national and international writing and communications awards.
Now Roz is pursuing her first love—fiction. She’s writing the ‘Bob’ books, the humorous chronicle of a crabby ‘woman of a certain age’ who moves to the wintry shores of a New York lake—and gets a ghost. And not just any ghost, mind you. Bob’s a plump, middle-aged ghost from 1920s Manhattan who swans around in a silk smoking jacket and drinks far too many martinis. Stir the good-looking grape grower who lives up the hill into this mix and you get a pretty potent screwball cocktail!
When she’s not reading, writing, hill-walking, staring mindlessly out the window at the lake or piling rocks onto her ever-diminishing lakefront, you can usually find Roz hanging out with her family, travelling, or exploring the amazing wines and wineries of the Finger Lakes.
‘Bob at the Lake’ is exclusively available as a Kindle download from Amazon. Please join Roz Murphy Author on FaceBook for updates on the many adventures of Roz, David—and Bob.
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The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.
Click on the Rafflecopter below to enter.
So be sure to show some comment love!
Click on the banner below to follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning.
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