{Exclusive Q & A and Giveaway} Everyday History by Alice Archer (@ByAliceArcher @ANovelTakePR)

Everyday History by Alice Archer
 Publisher: Shine Even If
 Release Date (Print & Ebook/Audio): January 30th, 2020
 Length (Print & Ebook/Audio): 318 pages 
 Subgenre: Contemporary gay romance
 Tropes: Age gap romance
 
If you woo, win, and walk away, a second chance is going to cost you.
 
Headstrong Ruben Harper has yet to meet an obstacle he can't convert to a speed bump. He's used to getting what he wants from girls, but when he develops a fascination for a man, his wooing skills require an upgrade. After months of persuasion, he scores a dinner date with Henry Normand that morphs into an intense weekend. The unexpected depth of their connection scares Ruben into fleeing.
 
Shy, cautious Henry, Ruben's former high school history teacher, suspects he needs a wake-up call, and Ruben appears to be his siren. When Ruben bolts, Henry is left struggling to find closure. Inspired by his conversations with Ruben, Henry begins to write articles about the memories stored in everyday objects. The articles seduce Ruben, even as Henry’s snowballing fame takes him out of town and farther out of reach.
 
Everyday History, a romance told with Alice Archer’s unique style and lush prose, was named a Top Book of 2016 in the HEA USA Today column Rainbow Trends.
 
Standalone romance HEA.
 
Originally published in 2106 by Dreamspinner Press

Our Exclusive Q & A With Alice!

On January 30th, I am rereleasing my novel Everyday History, a contemporary gay romance about a young man growing up enough to capture a man who’s all but given up on love. With this book back on the shelves, I’m so happy to be able to sit down with Agents of Romance to chat a bit about my process, my book Everyday History, and myself. 
 
What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?
 
Does this happen to you? You’re reading along in a book you really love, and you realize the end is near, so you start to guard your experience. Maybe you excuse yourself from the noisy living room and retreat to the bedroom, or you put on your headphones at the coffee shop. You know the author of the book you’re reading is about to throw some stuff at you, but you can’t guess what, and you want to be fully inside the story for those climactic scenes.
 
You want to stay inside the story, without interruption, until it’s done. You want to forget you’re reading. You want to be the story.
 
I’ve spent decades questing for the qualities that keep us glued to a story. As an editor and writing coach, I’ve had many experiences of trying to explain to a writer why their writing works or doesn’t work, and how to improve. As a writer, I’ve played with paragraphs and single sentences and individual word choices to sometimes comical extremes, trying to find the glue that sticks the reader to the page, using my body’s reactions as a meter, following my desire to open the reader’s heart and soul, counting on the reader’s desire to be entertained.
 
When I’m writing and editing, I try to remove as many words as possible. If I remove a word and the sentence falls apart, I’ve gone too far. But if I can remove a word and nothing dies, I feel closer to my reader. I give myself time to do this type of review and editing on my own work. It takes me a while.
 
Years sometimes.
 
I’m okay with this. This is the story I want to be.
 
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
 
When I was fifteen, with a naiveté rating off the charts, my parents parked me at my grandmother’s house in the next state for a few weeks of summer. My best friend in that small town had a new best friend and they didn’t want me hanging around. No matter. I’d poke through the big box in the corner of Granny’s guest room and find... an enormous collection of Harlequin romances and Perry Mason detective fiction.
 
Yep, that summer turned into The Case of the Awakening Libido, with Perry Mason sometimes co-starring, and led to wondering how my own romantic life might play out. A few twisty turns later and I’m writing romantic stories, though not the ones my grandmother or I would have predicted back then.
 
I was writing stories long before I was fifteen. In an early photo of me, I stand in the hallway in my nightgown at about age three, holding a pencil to write on a paper laid atop an overturned laundry basket. The look on my face says it all: “Well, excuse me. Can’t you see I’m trying to write here.”
 
Not much has changed.
 
Five fun facts about Everyday History.
 
1) Henry was not always bald. I’d already written quite a bit of Everyday History, and had circled back and revised a time or two, before I discovered Henry’s baldness. While in line at the checkout counter in a bookstore one day, a postcard of a bald man holding a stack of books accosted me. Henry all but winked at me from the postcard and the story shifted.
 
2) The doorway museum in one of Henry’s articles exists in reality. When I lived in Germany, I sometimes took day trips to Basel, Switzerland, where I found by happenstance the Hoosesagg Museum (Pants Pocket Museum). In Everyday History, I moved the museum to Freiburg, Germany, where I used to live and where Henry studied at university.
 
3) I wrote about Ruben’s family, their groundedness and long residence in one place, because I’ve never experienced that type of rootedness and never will. Except I felt like I got a taste of it by writing his family.
 
4) Despite all the baking in Everyday History, I’m not a baker. When readers ask for the recipe for the pie in the story, I must confess I don’t have one. I raise a glass to the notion that an ambitious reader will make an attempt at a recipe and succeed.
 
5) I didn’t consciously set out to write a story in which the characters pine for each other across physical distance. When I realized I’d done that, I stood at the metaphorical fork in the road with my head bowed in dismay and a “dang it” on my lips, then decided to continue down the fork of writing a pining-from-a-distance romance, instead of starting over. I enjoy a challenge. I learned a lot. I’m glad Henry and Ruben aren't pissed off at me anymore for taking that fork.

About The Author ~

​Alice Archer has questions. Lots of questions. Scheming to put fictional characters through the muck so they can get to a better place helps her heal and find answers. She shares her stories with the hope that others might find some healing too. For decades, Alice has messed about with words professionally, as an editor and writing coach. She also travels a bunch. Her home base is Eugene, Oregon.

Visit With Alice ~
​Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram

Get The Book!

Enter The Giveaway ~

a Rafflecopter giveaway