Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Nerd Girl





Title: Nerd Girl
Author: Sue Lee
Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance
Tour Organized by: Indie Sage, LLC
Purchase Links:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dKk4xW
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/LCNQKX

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1e4ucOs

Synopsis:

Everyone knows that office romances can be risky, but how much are you willing to sacrifice for love?

Julia Hayes is beautiful, successful, sometimes nerdy, and perpetually single. She lives in Seattle and just landed her dream job at one of the most iconic technology companies in the world.

When Julia embarks on a new career opportunity, a serendipitous event literally throws her in the path of Ryan McGraw, the hot and charming VP. As the attraction grows between them, it’s not long before Julia realizes that things are more complicated than they appear.

Nerd Girl is a heartwarming love story about a woman at the crossroads between true love and her career. It’s about deciding what’s most important in life and taking chances to get it. But most of all, it’s about not letting your mind prevent you from following your heart.

About the Author:

I live in Seattle, in my favorite neighborhood, Queen Anne, with my husband and twin seven year old daughters.

After more than a decade of running the corporate rat race, I left Microsoft and finally found time to pursue my dream of doing something truly inspiring. I wrote Nerd Girl. I’m a voracious reader and thought it would be a fun adventure to merge my unique history and knowledge of Microsoft with a heartfelt love story.

Apart from reading, writing, and spending time with my family, I enjoy strong coffee, weekend getaways in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, running, Husky football, and cooking gourmet meals.

Contact:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SueLeeAuthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/SueHLee
Website: http://sueleeauthor.blogspot.com/

Giveaway:

Prizes: 2 Print Copies (US ONLY) and 3 Ebook Copies of Nerd Girl by Sue Lee.

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Excerpt 1: I chose this excerpt because it demonstrates Julia’s OCD and classic Type A personality. She is successful in her career, but unlucky in love. According to Julia, if she could manage her love life like a corporate project, things would be so much easier for her.

I couldn’t seem to get anything right relationship-wise. Like everything in my life, I wanted to put love and relationships into a predictable project plan. I’d feel so much more in control if I could do that, but love and work are two very different things, and relationships didn’t behave how I intended.

I always saw myself becoming that woman in her mid-to-late thirties with two kids and a career she loved, sharing everything with the man of her dreams. We would go on vacations twice a year, and, if we could afford it, we would send our kids to private school. I would become a soccer mom and consider quitting my job and starting my own consulting company. Eventually, I’d have enough people on staff that I would be able to dictate my own schedule and still have time to volunteer for the school auction.

For the vision to become a reality, I needed to have my first child no later than thirty-five. That annoying biological clock really started ticking loudly this year. Soon I’ll be saying goodbye to my twenties and the idea of turning thirty with no man or even any potential prospects was freaking me out. It would take nine months to carry a baby. Even before that, everyone knew it took six to twelve months to allow your body’s hormones to regulate after getting off the pill so you could get pregnant. Of course, you also wanted a year, minimum, to be just you and your husband as newlyweds before adding the stress of a new baby. Now this assumed you had someone, preferably your husband, to get pregnant with. This meant that I would need to get married before I was thirty-three. If a wedding were going to be everything I dreamed it would be, it required at least a one year engagement. And, if fate should have it and I found the right man, the average dating period prior to engagement was usually a couple of years. That meant if I had any hope of keeping to my schedule, I needed to meet someone before I turned thirty and that someone needed to be “the one.”

It was all so exhausting to think about.

Authors that inspire me:

My favorite authors are Emily Giffin, Tracy Garvis Graves, and Diana Gabaldon.

Emily Giffin wrote Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Love the One You’re With, and a few notable others. I love her books because she does such a great job with character development. Her heroines are usually intelligent and strong career women, but they’re also vulnerable, fun, and very likable. Each of her books center on a personal moral dilemma that is very relatable. For example, would you ever cheat with your best friend’s fiancĂ© and under what circumstances would that actually be ok? Or what would you do when you’ve found the love of your life, but then that “one” that got away comes back? I love that Ms. Giffin can develop her characters well enough that as the reader, you can actually relate and understand the heroine’s choices. When I started writing Nerd Girl, I knew that was the level of character development I wanted with Julia and Ryan.

I love Tracy Garvis Graves writing because her books have such “real” characters. I love how she can just take every day regular people and turn it into a really great story through their experiences. I especially loved her book, Covet, and considered it one of my top ten reads of 2013. I think the reason that Covet resonated so well with me is because it was a story rooted in reality. Claire, the heroine, could easily have been me or any of one of my friends. The story was very organic and relatable. I’ve noticed a trend in contemporary romance novels, where the characters are completely off the top -- billionaires, rock stars, and alpha males. Each would literally carry a woman over his shoulder before seducing her. Don’t get me wrong because I love these off the top characters and stories too. However, I also appreciate a story that feels so real and genuine and where the hero is just a “nice guy”. Remember him? Many readers have told me that Nerd Girl felt very real - everything from the characters, to the dialogue, to the situations experienced in the book. That is the best compliment ever.

Lastly Diana Gabaldon is just an amazing story teller. She is the queen of the historical fiction romance genre. The Outlander series has such rich characters. Jamie is my dream man. He is an old fashioned gentleman, courageous and strong, beautiful and sensitive, intelligent, respectful and dominating all in one. The actress playing her in the upcoming Starz series described Claire as a “bad ass” and I couldn’t agree more. Claire is smarty, witty, feisty, classically beautiful and wild, strong and brave. When I read Diana Gabaldon’s stories, I’m completely transported into another world and relish ever delicious word.

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