(Blog)Tour of Marsden, Stop 1
Welcome to the Tour!
Hello everyone! It’s time for the great and glorious (blog) tour of Marsden, NY, the small town at the heart of my rom com series! Please have your ticket ready as you get on the bus, and make sure your (virtual) sticker in view at all times. We’ll be making a lot of stops over the next two weeks, so please stay with the group!
Let’s start with some basics as we hit the road. How about a little backstory? Sound good? Okay, then!
Once upon a time, I signed a three-book deal with Kensington Publishers, which made me very happy. My agent had gotten me the book deal based on my first rom com that we shopped around. Luckily I had a second half-written, so once my first, By Design, was published, I quickly completed the second, Unscripted.
And then I had to write my third book. Yeah, funny thing about that. I, er, didn’t have one. So I scrambled to come up with something, sweating bullets the entire time. Then, one day, a bunch of words appeared in my addled cranium: down on love. Nifty, I thought. What did it mean? I had no idea. But the universe do provide, and pretty soon I “knew” (don’t ask me how) that “down on love” was the name of a blog. An anti-relationship blog, and the blogger was a bitter, unlucky-in-love sort, but in spite of it all (because of it all?), she was also really strong. Like, “middle finger to the world” strong.
Down, I soon realized, was her last name. Pretty neat. Plus I had the title to the book right away—something I always struggle with. Score!
Thus Georgiana Down, or George, was born. She lives in Boston, but her hometown is that little place called Marsden in the heart of the Catskills in the middle of New York State. I love the Catskills. I went to college there for undergrad (and Boston for grad school—“write what you know!”)
I’ll cover the Catskills in depth later on in the tour, but for nowthe pertinent info is George doesn’t like Marsden. Or, rather, she doesn’t like the people who populate it. Because Marsden is full of busybodies. Everyone knows your business, and everyone has an opinion about your business, whether you ask for it or not. Privacy is just a suggestion, not a right. And that suggestion is usually ignored.
George is pulled back to Marsden for the first time in around fifteen years to help her sister, Sera, take care of her 7-month-old niece, Amelia. Needless to say, George has a hard time acclimating...and not just to the town. She’s also face to face with her hottie high school crush, Casey Bowen, who had also moved away, but is now back in town for good (and still hot).
I had so much fun writing Down on Love, not only because of George, who always commandeered my laptop and forced me to write her story the way she wanted, and not because of the cute love story at the center of the book. Nope, I’d have to say I had the most fun creating—or, rather, discovering—the town of Marsden. Because it seemed to simply exist, and I got to visit.
It’s cute, it’s quaint, it’s artsy. It’s pretty much a character itself, to tell you the truth! It’s also filled with quite an interesting slate of characters. And yes, they can be annoying and nosy, but they can also be caring and thoughtful and loyal (except when they’re not). And they protect their own, as George finds out.
DOWN ON LOVE:
I’ll be sharing more about Marsden and Down on Love over the next two weeks. I hope you enjoy the tour! Feel free to ask any questions you like, on any stop, and I will be sure to answer them.
In the meantime, if this bus isn’t traveling fast enough for you (it does take a while to drive into the heart of the Catskills, but it’s definitely worth it), you can visit Marsden anytime you like, and the ticket is only 99 cents!
Yep, Down on Love is on sale for only 99 cents for the entire month of October, all e-formats.
If you like it, you can pick up the second in the series, Picture This, for only a few bucks. The third Marsden book, Lucky for You, is in the works right now, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to that while you sit back and enjoy the ride through New York’s truly picturesque landscape. Aren’t the colors gorgeous? Take lots of pictures!
Yep, Down on Love is on sale for only 99 cents for the entire month of October, all e-formats.
If you like it, you can pick up the second in the series, Picture This, for only a few bucks. The third Marsden book, Lucky for You, is in the works right now, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to that while you sit back and enjoy the ride through New York’s truly picturesque landscape. Aren’t the colors gorgeous? Take lots of pictures!
Next stop, tomorrow (Tuesday, October 14):
Theresa Marie’s blog,
Thanks for coming along on the tour!
Jayne Denker divides her time between working hard to bring the funny in her romantic comedies and raising a young son who's way too clever for his own good. She lives in a small village in western New York that is in no way, shape, or form related to the small village in her Marsden novels Down on Love and Picture This. When she's not hard at work on another novel, the social media addict can usually be found frittering away startling amounts of time on Facebook (Jayne Denker Author) and Twitter (@JDenkerAuthor). She’d like to say she updates her Web site, http://jaynedenker.com, quite often, but most of the time when it crosses her mind, she shouts “Can’t you see I’m writing?!” and puts it off till another day.
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