Guest Post and Hachette Giveaway: Live a Little by Kim Green

Live a Little by Kim Green is a new book coming out on August 15th. Hachette Book Group is offering 3 copies to my readers at Books on the Brain!  

It’s about an under-appreciated woman, with two bratty kids and a distracted husband, who is diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer.  Suddenly she’s treated like a queen by her family and friends.  But just as suddenly she finds out that there’s been a mistake and she is, in fact, perfectly healthy.  However, she’s not ready to relinquish the spotlight.  Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  I haven’t read the book but you can read an excerpt HERE.  

I asked Kim to tell us a little bit about how she came up with the idea for Live a Little, and here’s what she wrote:

Live a Little, or rather, Raquel Rose, the book’s fortysomething, frustrated heroine, emerged out of my own experience as a harried mom of two. Sometime around the thousand-odd days of parenthood mark, I started to realize that not only is parenting not about your (the grown-up’s) fulfillment, it’s actually about the complete abnegation of self. Kid needs a toy while you’re in the first shower you’ve had in six days? No problem; hygiene is overrated. Sleep deprivation got you feeling paranoid or homicidal? Read an attachment parenting book; it’ll explain that you’re just being selfish.

What, I thought one day as I stuffed my writhing offspring into my raisin-littered sedan while yet another writing deadline came and went unmet, would a terminally unappreciated mother do to feel good again? How far would she go?

That’s where Live a Little came from. Now, maybe I’m a cynic, but I tend to think most of us are liars in one way or another. Maybe we just string together small fibs, or perhaps we’re more inclined toward the occasional whopper or self-aggrandizing feint. I think it is very possible for an otherwise ethical, normal person to spin a web of lies she can’t extricate herself from easily. This precept was the baseline for Raquel’s misadventure, and I demanded a lot from it (and, probably, my readers). I wanted to see how far I could take this idea and still make Raquel relatable (according to Publisher’s Weekly, not as far as I thought). What? Demanding a lot from a mom?  Good thing I’m writing fiction, no one would ever believe that….

Kim Green is the author of several romantic comic novels, including Is That a Moose in Your Pocket?,  Paging Aphrodite and Live a Little. Her writing has appeared in Los Angeles Magazine, Mother Jones, and the San Francisco Business Times, among other publications. Her requisite stint in dotcom included editing and managing projects for Women.com and other Silicon Valley companies. Kim earned an MA in International Relations from the University of Amsterdam, which qualifies her to create exotic settings for her books and little else. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

Leave a comment here by August 22nd for a chance to win a copy of Live a Little by Kim Green!