Who is your favorite supporting character in this book?

My instinct is to say Eric Warner, but because he can kind of count as a main character I’ll go with Rhett Smyth, known simply as Smyth. He’s one of Elliot’s longtime friends, and he adds plenty of humor and heart to her world. If I ever met Smyth in a bar or at a party, I have zero doubt we’d be besties for life.

What was the biggest lesson you learned between writing your first book and this one?

This is a lesson every author has to learn, and it is maybe the toughest, but I realized that not every person is going to like my book or me. No matter how many times I write and re-write a scene, I will never please everyone. That doesn’t mean I write entirely for myself, but I do try to make myself happy with the results. And I think of my target audience member and wonder if she or he will like it. I should mention that while I’ve come to realize this is the truth, and I sound super Zen about it, I’m still working on accepting this. I still have first day of school moments where I panic about whether or not the other kids will like my book.

When do you find yourself most inspired as a writer?

This is going to sound gross, but I do a lot of thinking in the bathroom. In the shower, yes, but also during bathroom breaks. When I’m deeply engrossed in a project, I find that I can resolve just about any issue or moment of writer’s block during the one or two minutes I spend in the restroom. It’s a good thing I tend to drink a ton of coffee and water while I’m writing so I have a reason to take those breaks.

Where do you do most of your writing?

I’m a nomadic writer by nature, but I try to spend at least an hour or two of every writing day at my desk. I use the Pomodoro Technique at my desk, which forces me to be organized and essentially GSD (get sh*t done). In November, I followed a funny little nomadic writing pattern on Saturdays. I’d spend the first 90 minutes of my day at Starbucks, then I’d spend the next 90 minutes at Barnes & Noble, followed by 90 minutes at Panera, finishing with 90 minutes at the library. I did this about four times, and these were huge production days for me and a lot of fun. And because Caroline shared a photo of her office with me, here’s one of mine.

Why should everyone drop what they're doing and pick up a copy of the book this second?

Short answer: Because I love this book. Longer answer: I love this book, because it’s the story about someone getting her groove back after being knocked down repeatedly. Inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, it’s a story about a young woman growing confidence and getting a second chance at her first great love. And with the wedding and reality TV show moments, it also lends itself to plenty of humor. I hope people will enjoy cheering for Elliot Lynch as much as I had fun telling her story.

Thank you so much to Caroline for featuring me on your blog. If you pick up a copy of The Marrying Type, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

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About the Book

Always the wedding planner, never a bride, Elliot Lynch is famous for orchestrating the splashiest weddings in Charleston, South Carolina. When her father’s sloppy management practices leave them on the brink of bankruptcy, Elliot will do whatever it takes to save the family business. When asked to appear on “The Marrying Type,” a reality TV show about the people behind the scenes as couples exchange I dos, she says yes to the invasion of privacy (and the hefty paycheck that comes with it).

With a camera crew capturing every detail of her life, Elliot faces her most challenging contract yet: planning a wedding where her ex is involved in every part of the process. Add in a lazy assistant, liquor-loving bridesmaid, and rival planner encroaching on her turf, and Elliot’s wedding season goes from high-end to high-stress.

Forced to confront her past, Elliot must live out her troubled present on national TV if she has any hope of saving her future.

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About the Author

Laura Chapman is the author of The Marrying Type, Hard Hats and Doormats, and the Autumn and Tuck series, which appear in Merry & Bright and A Kind of Mad Courage. A native Nebraskan, she loves football, Netflix marathons, and her cats, Jane and Bingley. Until she fulfills her dream of landing a British husband or becoming a Disney princess, you can find her in a bar penning her next novel.

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Between unending housework and thankless efforts to appease a loutish husband and acid-tongue teens, Ginny Cooper’s to-do list never seems to get done. Her guilty pleasure—fantasizing about her husband’s demise—her weakness—the drive-thru at Arby’s. On the job as head librarian at the county’s obsolete library, tedium reigns. One afternoon Ginny innocently stumbles upon a dating website, where the rabbit hole awaits.

Who is Ginny Cooper? She is every woman who knows the exact number of calories in a Snickers bar, every woman who has ever struggled with her weight. She is every woman who has grappled with the gray areas, every woman who has wanted to escape her own life. At times the reader will want to reach between the pages, shake her, and talk some sense into her. But Ginny will have to navigate her own road. And through it all, we root for her.

Ginny’s childhood memories of her fading hometown provide a bittersweet backdrop for The To-Do List.

Excerpt

She is attuned to Cal’s last-minute routine, his footfalls in the hallway, the clatter of the garage door opening, closing. Just to be certain, she pulls back the curtain, peers out the window and watches his car pull away.

Once he is gone, the air is lighter; the muscles of her jaw relax. She glances at the tabletop and spies her to-do list, carelessly left in plain sight—thankfully unread. Ginny folds it and slips it into her pocketbook for safekeeping. Her thoughts return to the pink box, repulsive and compelling.

No. She is not that desperate. She will not dig through the trash.

But Ginny is prepossessed. She takes a stealthy glance, finding the doughnut intact, unsullied by coffee grounds or leaks from last night’s takeout boxes. Her teeth sink into the supple, yielding surface, and there is a moment of bliss, a moment of relief—a moment of vengeance.

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Lizzie Hart hoped her first day back at work after nearly being killed would be uneventful.  No such luck.  Before she can finish her morning coffee, Lizzie and her co-workers find a dead body on the rooftop of their office.  Media vultures that they are, the Liberty Chronicle employees are psyched to have first-hand news to report.  Lizzie, however, is devastated when she realizes that the victim is her ex-boyfriend’s brother.

When evidence begins piling up against one of Lizzie’s friends, she reluctantly dons her detective hat once again, determined to find the real killer.  She’s not thrilled about chasing another psychopath around, but she’ll do anything for a friend.  Lizzie’s love life is rapidly becoming a hot mess, too.  Her latest attempt at sleuthing isn’t leaving much time for her budding romance with town hunk Blake Morgan.  Add that to the fact she’s hiding a secret so big it could rock the very core of their relationship, it’s no wonder that Lizzie’s in a tizzy. 

Poor Lizzie ends up juggling a murder investigation, a wacky Wiccan coven, and two men vying for her attention—all while nursing injuries left over from the last time she decided to play Nancy Drew.  It’s a good thing she always has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Lizzie Hart hoped her first day back at work after nearly being killed would be uneventful.  No such luck.  Before she can finish her morning coffee, Lizzie and her co-workers find a dead body on the rooftop of their office.  Media vultures that they are, the Liberty Chronicle employees are psyched to have first-hand news to report.  Lizzie, however, is devastated when she realizes that the victim is her ex-boyfriend’s brother.

When evidence begins piling up against one of Lizzie’s friends, she reluctantly dons her detective hat once again, determined to find the real killer.  She’s not thrilled about chasing another psychopath around, but she’ll do anything for a friend.  Lizzie’s love life is rapidly becoming a hot mess, too.  Her latest attempt at sleuthing isn’t leaving much time for her budding romance with town hunk Blake Morgan.  Add that to the fact she’s hiding a secret so big it could rock the very core of their relationship, it’s no wonder that Lizzie’s in a tizzy. 

Poor Lizzie ends up juggling a murder investigation, a wacky Wiccan coven, and two men vying for her attention—all while nursing injuries left over from the last time she decided to play Nancy Drew.  It’s a good thing she always has a few tricks up her sleeve.

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I hate to call this movie “stupid”, because I love it so much.  But, for an almost-40 soccer mom to sit and be enthralled by a movie about a high school musical, I admit, is kind of stupid.  Anyway, I considered using “Her” as my stupid movie, because let’s face it, Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with Siri is a stupid plot (my husband had honestly thought it was supposed to be a comedy until about 30 minutes in), but I’m sure I’d get all kinds of backlash about calling an Oscar flick “stupid”.  So, my pick is GET OVER IT.

Stupid hijinks aside (such as Martin Short singing “Camptown Races” dressed as a hobo and Carmen Electra cast as a stripper—a stretch, I know), GET OVER IT has a lot of really good actors in it.  Ben Foster is the lead, and even though he’s best at playing creepy sociopaths, he is lovable as the jilted boy next door.  Kirsten Dunst, while not the best actress, is a staple of feel-good high school movies.  Martin Short is hilarious, no surprise, and Colin Hanks steals several scenes as the laid-back best friend.  Ben Foster’s parents are played by Swoosie Kurtz and Ed Begley, Jr., who play perfectly off of each other.  Sisqo (remember “The Thong Song”?) can’t act worth a crap, but he is adorable.

It’s fun to watch the many meltdowns Ben Foster’s character Berke goes through during the movie.  At the beginning his soul mate, Allison, dumps him, and as he is angrily trudging home, the nonsense starts with an impromptu parade following him down the street, complete with singer Vitamin C lip-synching “Love Will Keep Us Together”.  

Allison of course finds a new boyfriend, Stryker (Shane West), who is everything Berke is not, including being the lead singer of a boy band and being British.  (“Striker, I'd be careful with that accent if I were you. Because you're beginning to sound a lot like Mary Poppins.”)  It’s hilarious to watch Ben Foster’s trademark anger simmer the entire movie as he watches these two together.  The plot centers around the fact that he joins the school musical in order to be around Allison in order to win her back.

Enter Martin Short, Dr. Desmond Forest Oates the drama teacher.  

He’s written a musical based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, because “Bill Shakespeare was a wonderful poet. But Burt Bacharach he ain't.”  He’s egotistical, he’s delusional, he’s mean, he’s a failure, he’s…absolutely the best thing about this movie.  He wrangles a bunch of high schoolers into a troupe of actors (sort of) by opening night through his unusual teaching style:  “It's just not very good. I could lie to you, but I would do you a disservice, because it's—it's just bad.”

The problem with most high school movies where they have to train for some big event, once they get closer to the event, they start learning how to be better people and acting right.  They pull together and somehow become stars in their particular field.  And frankly, the movie gets boring because there’s little conflict.  Well, not in this movie.  Nobody learns anything, and the musical is horrendous.  

Unlike a lot of other movies, the final scene is one of the funniest.  I won’t spoil it for you—find a copy and watch it for yourself.  And if you’re worried about being made fun of for watching a stupid movie—GET OVER IT!

Oh, and if it couldn't get better, then this happens:

It isn’t often that a Saturday Night Live skit premise is solid enough to carry an entire movie, but when it is, the results can be glorious.  Or stupid.  Or both, but mostly stupid, which was probably the point in the first place.  SNL exists to find the silly in everyday life, point it out, and make us laugh about it.  A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY is nothing if not silly and funny.  They weren’t going for an Oscar nod here, people.  They were going for crazy, stupid fun.  Nailed it.

Thanks to the Butabi brothers, every time I hear the song “What Is Love” by Haddaway, my head automatically starts nodding to the beat.

So, to make the leap from five-minute skit to 82-minute feature length film, we need a plot, other than two guys going around annoying women.  We find out that the Butabis aren’t jerks (like they’ve been portrayed in the SNL skits), they’re just horribly bad with women and have absolutely no game whatsoever.  Steve’s best lines seems to be “’Sup?” and “Hey, hot lady”.  They think once they’re able to get into the Roxbury, their luck will change.  Now we have our plot (sort of)—the brothers decide to do whatever they have to do to get into that Holy Grail of nightclubs. 

They try several different tactics to get in.  They try to schmooze and joke with the bouncer (Michael Clark Duncan).  “You two are brothers?”  “No…YES!”  No luck.

They try to follow “The King of ’21 Jump Street’” Richard Grieco in without being noticed.  No luck.  They try to make themselves appear cool in the line by telling their Emilio Estevez sighting story.   No luck.

Finally, they resort to bribery, although they’d probably have better luck if they didn’t try to give him a bunch of dollar bills and coins.  “George Washington and…George Washington.  Roosevelt…”  Again, no luck.

Enter Richard Grieco.  (Best.  Cameo.  EVER!)  Grieco runs into the back of their van with his unlicensed racing car, and in order to avoid getting the cops involved, he offers them a favor.  What do they choose?  VIP access to the Roxbury, of course!