Thanks to Deb Tobias of Joan Schulhafer Publishing & Media Consulting, I am giving away one copy of Flash and Dazzle.
Book Description:
What happens when everything you thought was true changes all at once? What happens when each relationship that means anything to you suddenly becomes far more real than you ever thought it would be? What happens when every moment becomes invaluable as all of them pass far too quickly?
Flash and Dazzle is the story of two friends who have known the best of times who develop a true taste for life during the worst of times. It is the story of the friends and lovers who enter their orbit, some for a long time and some only for a moment. It is the story of legacies, burdens, and the kinds of secrets that are only revealed when there’s nothing left to tell.
It is a funny, moving, deeply honest novel that will inspire you to call everyone you care about and thank everyone you know for what they’ve given you.
Read an Excerpt:
It wouldn’t be fair to call Daz a slug. After all, he had been a third team all-conference striker in college, and he was still slim and fleet. However, getting him out of his apartment in the morning had always been a considerable task. There was the ringing the doorbell seven times before going in with my key part. There was the don’t you remember we have that meeting at 9:30 part. There was the I really don’t give a shit what your hair looks like part. Then there were the inevitable battles with toothpaste choices (Daz was the only person I ever met who kept multiple flavors of toothpaste in his bathroom), Cap’n Crunch (the only thing he deigned to eat for breakfast), and Power Rangers (which appeared on ABC Family at 8:30 every morning and from which Daz took surprising delight for someone his age.)
On most days, by the time I got to his place to pick him up, I’d already read the relevant sections of the Times and the Journal and surfed three or four entertainment, media and business sites on the web. About a year ago, it finally dawned on me that I could sleep fifteen minutes later in the morning if I brought my bagel and coffee with me so I could have breakfast while I waited for Daz to get ready. On certain days I thought it might be smart to bring a lunch as well.
It was this way from our first days in the City. The only difference at the beginning was that we were in the same apartment and Daz sometimes dragged himself out of bed earlier if I made enough noise or if I did something like flick water on his face after my shower. . .
“Who do we have a meeting with this morning? He said, coming out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. He had different colored toothbrushes for the different flavors. The gray brush meant fennel.
“It’s just us.”
“Us? Like you and me?” He returned to the bathroom to spit.
“And Michelle and Carnie and Brad and Chess.”
“Sounds like the meeting we had at Terminal 5 last night.”
We’d all gone there to see Beam, an incredible British trance rock band.
“Except this time we’re going to have a serious business conversation and it won’t look as cool if your head lolls back and forth.”
“And what will we be talking about again?” He asked this question from his bedroom, where he was almost certainly trying to decide if it was a red flannel shirt day or a blue flannel shirt day.
“The Koreans.”
“Motorcycles, right?” he said, sticking his face out the door.
“Cars. Affordable luxury for twenty-somethings.”
“Twenty-somethings want luxury?”
“They do if it’s affordable.”
“That’s why you’re the word guy and I’m the picture guy. I wouldn’t have a clue how to pitch this.”
“Good thing I’m around then, huh?”
He disappeared back into the bathroom, meaning we were somewhere between eight and fifteen minutes of departure time, assuming I kept him away from the Power Rangers . . .
“I mentioned that the meeting was today and not in August, right?” I said, my voice vibrating from the thumping my back was receiving.
“I’m done,” he said, walking over to stand in front of me in blue flannel. “Just a quick one-on-one with the Cap’n and we’ll be out of here.”
I turned off the chair and got up. Daz opened the box of cereal and poured it directly into his mouth. “Let’s go,” he said, taking a swig from a milk carton and grabbing his keys.
I gathered my stuff and we made our way out the door. Daz locked the two deadbolts and my eye fell on his keychain – a plastic hot dog that he’d burned with a cigarette lighter in honor of our first (and only) camping trip. He’d toted that thing around for the last ten years.
“I think Michelle and I had a little thing last night,” he said as we walked out onto Broadway to begin our search for a cab.
I laughed. “I was with the two of you the entire time. You didn’t have a thing.”
“No, I think we might have. It was an eye thing.”
“An eye thing as in she saw you and said hi?”
“Don’t be a schmuck. I can tell the difference, you know. I think she kinda likes me.”
“Daz, everyone kinda likes you. See that woman who just stepped in front of us to steal our cab? I’ll bet she likes you. You’re a likable guy. I just wouldn’t get my hopes up about Michelle if I were you.”
“She came to my office just to see my drawings the other day. She’s never done that before.”
“Daz, reachable goals, remember? Reachable goals.”
“I think you might be surprised here.”
“Surprised wouldn’t begin to describe it. Stunned speechless maybe. Or shocked to the point where I needed a defibrillator.”
He regarded me sternly. “Why do you think I couldn’t get a woman like Michelle?”
“Did I say that?”
“Pretty much exactly that.”
“You’re misunderstanding me. I’m speaking specifically about Michelle. A woman like Michelle – you know, gorgeous, smart, clever, burgeoning career – you could get a woman like that. Anytime you wanted, probably.”
“But not Michelle specifically. Translation, please.”
“A translation isn’t necessary. Right now, the only thing that’s important is that we find some way to get the hell downtown.”
Eventually we took a gypsy cab, one of those out-of-town car services that roamed around the City skimming off fares from Yellow cabs during rush hours. I hated doing this – I was very loyal to my city – but at 9:05 on a weekday, it really was the best we could do.
“If we left earlier, we wouldn’t be riding in a fifteen-year-old Impala right now, you know,” I said.
“If we left later, we wouldn’t be doing this either.”
“You know, it’s a good thing you’re an artistic genius. Otherwise you’d be working at Burger King. No, you’d lose your job at Burger King because you’d always be showing up late. Then you’d be out on the street collecting bottles to exchange for cheap liquor.”
“Never happen.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Nope. Cause you’d be around to drag my ass out of bed so I could keep my job making French fries.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Of course you would,”
Yeah, of course I would. If I could be relied upon for anything, it would be making sure that Daz got to work at a reasonable hour. Beyond that, as it turns out, I was lacking in an entire suite of skills best friends were supposed to have. However, he would never be homeless as long as I was around.
We rode in silence for a couple of minutes, bucking and stopping every eight seconds or so as traffic dictated. Then something caught Daz’s eye and he pulled out the sketch-pad he always carried in his backpack and started drawing.
“What are you doing?”
“That jogger we passed gave me an idea.”
I hadn’t even noticed a jogger. “An idea for what?”
“For the Space Available campaign.”
Space Available was a custom-built closet company whose account we recently acquired. How a jogger related to this escaped me.
“Let me see,” I said, leaning toward him in the seat.
He pulled the sketchpad back. “Not yet.” He smiles over at me. “I want to show it to Michelle first.”
“She’ll never love you like I love you, Daz.”
“There’s another thing we can all be thankful for.”
He drew for a big longer, and while I knew there was a very good chance this brainstorm of his wouldn’t produce anything – so many of our ideas didn’t – I was curious. I tried to angle my eyes over without appearing too obvious, but Daz was doing a great job of blocking my view. Finally, he closed the sketchbook and returned it to his backpack, glancing out at the street as though there was nothing to this.
“Traffic’s a bitch today,” he said. “We really should have left earlier. You gotta get on the beam, Flaccid.”
© Lou Aronica
About Lou Aronica:
Author, editor and publisher, Lou Aronica has been involved with book publishing his entire adult life. He is the author of the novels Flash and Dazzle, the USA Today and Nook bestseller, The Forever Year, and the national bestseller, Blue, which was a top twenty title on Amazon’s general fiction bestseller list. His nonfiction collaborations include The New York Times bestseller The Element and Finding Your Element, both co-authored with Ken Robinson, and The Culture Code, written with Dr. Clotaire Rappaille. Though he spent several years focusing exclusively on writing, he stayed in touch with publishing colleagues and never lost his passion for the industry.
In 2007, he stepped back into that side of the business by founding The Story Plant with literary manager Peter Miller, to publish commercial fiction, specifically suspense and contemporary women’s fiction. Later, he broadened his focus with a second, author-driven imprint, Fiction Studio Books, originally created to launch his novel, Blue. Fiction Studio eventually merged with The Story Plant, which was acquired in 2013 by Studio Digital CT, LLC, a limited liability company headed by Aronica.
Aronica began as an assistant in the Managing Editor’s office at Bantam Books. That start led to a thirty-plus year publishing career and positions as Deputy Publisher of Bantam, and Publisher of both Berkley Books and Avon Books. He started his first imprint, Bantam Spectra, at age 27 and, within a year, the imprint published its first New York Times bestseller. It was the start of a long list of national bestsellers and award-winning books to flourish under his stewardship.
Aronica went on to receive a prestigious World Fantasy Award as editor of the Full Spectrum anthology series, acquired and designed the Star Wars publishing program, and in 1990 was named Mass Market Publisher for Bantam. As such, he launched multiple imprints focusing on author and bestseller development.
Named Senior Vice President and Publisher of the Berkley Publishing Group, he began two imprints, both of which had New York Times bestsellers in their first year, and acquired and edited Nora Roberts’ bestselling futuristic mysteries written as J.D. Robb.
Appointed Senior Vice President and Publisher of Avon Books in 1995, he oversaw significant changes in the company’s industry-leading romance program leading to the largest growth period in the program’s history at that time. While there he also launched Avon’s first hardcover publishing program and created imprints focused on dedicated readers of science fiction, literary fiction, mystery, popular culture, health, history and teen literature.
The authors Aronica worked with throughout his career are a veritable Who’s Who of legendary, groundbreaking and bestselling writers. Among them are Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth George, Robert Crais, Amanda Quick, Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Bruce Feiler, Peter Robinson, J.A. Jance, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Stephanie Laurens, Lisa Kleypas and Dennis Lehane.
Aronica now splits his time between writing, publishing and editing. In addition to his role as Publisher of The Story Plant, he is currently at work on a book about education, his third collaboration with Sir Ken Robinson, and beginning work on his next novel.
He lives in southern Connecticut with his family.
This giveaway is open to the U.S. and Canada and ends on December 4, 2013. Please use Rafflecopter to enter.
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