New Release feature 6-5
One Good Friend Deserves Another
Q&A with Lisa Verge Higgins
Q&A with Lisa Verge Higgins
Debbie - Lisa is not a stranger to the B&N.com General Fiction
board, she very generously gave us much of her time in March when we featured
and read The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship so please welcome back
Lisa as we help celebrate the release of her brand new novel One Good Friend
Deserves Another.
I also want to congratulate you on your winning the New
England Romance Writers of American Bean Pot contest.
Lisa - Thanks so much! It was a real thrill to get my Bean Pot
for The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship, which you so generously
featured in March. I was born and
raised in New England, so this award is particularly special.
So Lisa tell us a little about your new novel
Well, I have three teenage
daughters, and as I’m sure you can all imagine, they give me LOTS of material. In fact, while I was dreaming up the
premise for One Good Friend Deserves Another, those daughters of mine were
starting to bring home boyfriends (Ack!) As I eyeballed one of those burly
young men, I remember thinking how very nice it would be to simply arrange my
daughter’s marriages to polite and wealthy college boys (of course) from solid
and familiar families. ;) That sparked the inevitable “What if . .
..”
What if an Indian-American woman
suddenly decided, after a break-up with a long-term boyfriend, to let her
traditional parents arrange a marriage for her? At the age of thirty-seven? What if her friends converged on her during the engagement
party to try to talk her out of it?
What if those friends have their own relationship issues that are far
from worked out . . .? Thus One
Good Friend Deserves Another was born.
By the way, if you’d like to
hear more about “My Life with Three Teenage Daughters,” feel free to laugh (and
cry) with me at www.facebook.com/lisavergehiggins
This book is about friends too, do I see a theme for what’s
coming next
Yes, it’s most definitely a
theme! I love writing about
women’s lives and women’s friendships.
I have another book coming out in March 2013 called Friendship Makes the
Heart Grow Fonder that plays with the idea of how far women will go to take
care of each other.
After all, sometimes the only
thing that holds a woman up is the girlfriend standing beside her.
What kind of books do you like to read
I read soooooo many books! Women’s fiction, young adult (to keep
up with my kids), an occasional classic, non-fiction research books, and also I
adore historical fiction. I review
for the New York Journal of Books so the lovely editors there help feed my
addiction. Right now I’m reading
Lisa Dale’s books (A Promise of Safekeeping and Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier,
up for a RITA award) and I’m looking forward to Shelley Noble’s first women’s
fiction, Beach Colors, coming out June 12th.
Do you belong to a writer’s group
I belong to lots of professional
writer’s groups like RWA, Novelist’s Inc., The Author’s Guild, the Liberty
State Fiction Writers, but my favorite “writer’s group” is my critique
group. I dedicated The Proper Care
and Maintenance of Friendship to the “Sunday Night Ladies,” the three other
women who read my manuscripts before they are submitted to my publisher. Three are already published, and the
fourth is well on her way. They
make me laugh, they make me cry, and they always make my books better.
We have become, over the years,
the best of friends.
What’s the most challenging thing in your opinion for an
author today, not just aspiring but established as well.
I think it’s very, very hard to
break into traditional publishing these days, but I believe it’s harder to stay traditionally published. I’m a huge admirer of authors like
Thea Devine who’ve written steadily for twenty-five years or more.
On that note what advice would you give if one of your
daughters told you she wanted to be an author
Marry well. I’d be happy to arrange it! ;)
Kidding aside, I’d tell her to
write the book that’s in her heart.
I’d tell her to never stop honing her craft. I’d tell her not to think about getting it published until
after she’s completely finished.
I’d tell her to keep striving for better.
Do you see yourself always writing women’s fiction or is
there something else on your bucket list.
Oooooh so much on the bucket
list! I do have a story half-done
in the drawer, a big historical novel about a certain fascinating 19th
century dancer and courtesan. If
there were only 30 hours in a day….
I’m sure fans here would love to meet you in person, is
there a tour listing and especially will you be stopping in at any Barnes &
Nobles for an event.
I absolutely love meeting
readers, either at public events or through book club Skype or phone
call-ins. Come on over to www.lisavergehiggins.com to sign up for a call-in and/or check out my schedule
for the next few months.
Briefly, I’ll be at Book Expo in
New York City on June 7th signing copies of One Good Friend Deserves
Another, I’ll be at the Baltimore Book Festival at the end of September, and
I’ll be speaking at various local conferences and workshops. Right now I’m planning a Barnes &
Noble event in New Jersey, in a store with a great group of dedicated
readers. [The Barnes & Noble
stores are such a hub of reader activity!] Once the date and time are firmed up, I’ll post the event on
my website and my Amazon.com pages.
Thank you Lisa for sharing a little more of yourself with
us, good luck with the new novel and you never know we may just find you back
with us next year J
Thanks so much! See you on the forum!
My Review is courtesy
of RT Reviews
BOOK REVIEW
|
Genre: Mainstream, General
Mainstream Fiction
4.5 Stars RT Rating TOP PICK
Higgins doesn’t use
flowery verse; she presents hard realities, dysfunction and, best of all,
possibilities and hope. Her research shines through with brilliant factual
narrative in a novel that you won’t soon forget.
A
weekend 15 years ago cemented the friendship of four women who are as
different as night and day, women now on another precipice of the heart. Now,
Dhara the doctor, Kelly the tech wiz, Wendy the socialite and Marta the
attorney need each other more than they know: They’re all about to break the
rules they set during that fateful weekend. They’ve been there for each other
many times before, and faced the ugly truths and circumstances both past and
present, but now payment’s come due for some of their choices and the pay the
piper requires is great. (5 SPOT, Jun., 352 pp., $13.99)
Reviewed By: Debbie Haupt
Publisher: 5 SPOT
|
And here’s the picture that made us (in) famous
Here are
the lovely ladies of the March Barnes & Noble General Fiction Discussion
Group, styling with Proper Care hats!
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