Ute Carbone's Blog, page 47

The P-Town Queen has arrived!

Here's the blurb

Nikki Silva feels like she’s blown up her life even as her brothers tease her about blowing up a boat called the Mona Lisa. Divorced, funding for her shark research cut off, she’s moved back to Provincetown to live with her father in her childhood home. Nikki hopes to regain herself. She’s written a grant proposal for the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Commission to fund a study that will get her back to the sort of research she loves. The commission is run by her ex-husband Ned, who would rather have a migraine than give money to his ex-wife.

            Marco Tornetti wants to turn a hole-in-the-wall Newark spaghetti joint into a trendy bistro. His silent partner, Fat Phil Lagosa, wants to use the place to meet questionable people for questionable business deals.  When Fat Phil accuses Marco of a double cross and has him taken for a ride by one of his hit men, Marco knows he’s in too deep.

            Marco escapes the hit man and takes the first bus out of the Tri-state area, a bus chartered by the Greater Teaneck Gay Men’s Choir and headed for Provincetown. Marco figures that Phil would never look for him in Provincetown‘s gay community. But when he meets Nikki and falls hard for her, he finds that pretending to be gay isn’t as easy as it would seem.


And here's where you can buy the book:
Champagne Book Group
 

Double Trouble at Roses of Prose

I'm at Roses of Prose today blogging about openings. Come say hello!

Meet me in the Vineyard and we'll blow up a whale

I'm at The Writer's Vineyard today, blogging about the whale blow up in P-Town Queen. Come on over and say hello. Just don't forget your hard hat.

#SweetSat Meet Nikki

For more Sweet Saturday Samples, Click on image.I introduced P-Town's hero, Marco, last week. This week, meet the heroine, Nikki. Here's how she opens the book:


I did not blow up the Mona Lisa. Not only did I not blow up the Mona Lisa--an old leaker  of a boat whose blowing up could be construed as a favor to the aptly named Rusty Cook--I did not blow up any part of Rusty’s marina. My brothers will, of course, say otherwise. They had quite the laugh at my expense over coffee at Ella’s Place. Rusty had been on the lookout for a boat for me. It had taken a lot of gumption and crow-eating to get to a place where I could consider buying a boat. I needed a cheap one, because God only knew how much money I’d be able to squeeze out of the Massachusetts Bay Commission via the research grant proposal I’d spent three long months laboring to produce. The head of the commission was Ned Anderson. Ned, a brilliant shark researcher in his own right, had tumbled a long way: to full time administrator of a bullshit state commission. Though to hear Ned say it, it wasn’t a tumble but a reward for all the years he’d spent roughing it on a California channel island-- an island that only had electricity every other day-- in order to unlock the mystery of white shark feeding behavior. I had spent five years on that island with Ned. We were married at the time.
The P-Town Queen docks on June 4!

Today's Stop: Dawn's Reading Nook

The P-Town Queen docks at Dawn's Reading Nook today!
P-town is in the spotlight. Come say hello!













This is Race Point Beach in Provincetown. Beautiful isn't it?

P-Town: The Blog Tour!

Here's a list of some of the places I'll be visiting for the release of The P-Town Queen.




The P-Town Queen arrives at the dock on June 4!
Dawn’s Reading Nook: May 23
Writer’s Vineyard: May 27
Roses of Prose:  May 28
Brinda Berry: June 8
Elin Gregory: June 11
Raine Delight: June 12
Eveli Acosti: June 14
Katie O’Connor:  June 15
Writer’s Vineyard:  June 24



More Stops to be announced!  

#SweetSat: Meet Marco

Hi Sweet Saturday readers and welcome!
Today, I'd like to introduce you to Marco, the sweet hero in my upcoming romantic comedy.


These are Marco's "opening lines":

 
I’ll never make gnocchi again. Don’t get me wrong, I like a nice gnocchi and I do it up pretty good, if I do say so myself. With just the right balance of cream and garlic, it’s food for the angels as my Nona would have said. But some foods, they have memories attached, and gnocchi, that’s a memory I’d just as soon forget.It was me and Angelo Del Rossi in the kitchen at Roma’s. Angie, he’s this big slow thug of a guy. Jesus and Mary, he didn’t know a paring knife from a carving knife and was not likely to learn anytime soon. I was cooking for my silent partner, Fat Phil Lazario. Fat Phil would have owned the place outright if he didn’t need somebody who knew what was what in the kitchen. Fat Phil was also my father-in-law, being as I had been married to his daughter, Lark, for a few months. Only, by then, things with Lark and me weren’t so good and the week before all this happened, I’d moved out of the apartment. Lark wasn’t about to tell her old man that I was living in the storage room on account of the fact that she had lied and cheated. But I got to thinking that if I came clean, Phil would recognize my value and see that Roma’s could be a real jewel in downtown Newark, an up and coming area, and he’d keep his end of the bargain we’d struck and finance the place until I could buy it outright. Truth was that he’d probably keep up his end because then he could continue meeting with questionable people about questionable business propositions about which I would plead ignorance. Which was my end of the bargain. I just hoped, that after hearing my side of the story about what happened between me and Lark, Phil would think twice about meeting with some questionable guy about ending our partnership on a permanent basis.


Get more Sweet Fixes at : Sweet Saturday Samples
Happy Reading!

#SweetSat: Thar she blows

For more sweet treats, click on the image!
It's been a while since I've done a Sweet Saturday Sample. Welcome, all you samplers!

The P-Town Queen is coming June 4!
To celebrate, I wanted to share a little excerpt from the book.


In my lifetime I have learned, among other things, not to overcook veal and never to forget a woman’s name the morning after. On that day I added another little ditty to my list: never blow up a dead whale with dynamite.Max Groper had figured it for a horror show and so had washed his hands of the whole mess and stormed off to his van. Nikki, too, must have figured what would happen, but that woman likes trouble, I swear to God. “We’d better stand back,” she said, with the same amused mischief in her eyes that she’d had at Good Vibrations. The cops had, in fact, already pushed the entire crowd back, so Nik and I went to stand in the front line, so to speak, right where the lot meets the beach in front of the first row of cars. “I wish I’d brought the video camera,” Nik said. “I hope someone is recording this for posterity.”  I looked around and noticed at least three video cams trained on the whale, which was now being wired for a trip to kingdom come. “YouTube bonanza,” said Nikki, “I’m surprised that the folks from Channel Four aren’t here.”“Maybe we should go wait in the truck,” I said. I had this bad feeling that flying whale parts wasn’t going to be like the fountain light show at the Bellagio in Vegas.

Reflections: The A-Z Challlenge 2012

For more Reflections, click on image
Today, those of us who participated in the A-Z challenge have been asked to reflect on the experience.
Reflection is interesting. Things done in the past, even the recent past, take on a rosy glow in hindsight. You forget the sweat and tears and remember the good stuff. But it can also give insight, so here's hoping for a little insight.

I decided rather late in the remaining days of March to participate. I'm often like this (insight #1: I'm often a last minute participant, the train has to be about to leave the station for me to get on it). The challenge struck me, at first blush, as daunting. I am not a great blogger. I'd much rather write a poem or a bit of fiction than an essay, and blogging is a form of essaying.

While I have far too many ideas for fictional stories to ever finish writing them, when it comes to ideas for blogs, I find myself straining my brain to try and think of something to write about. In truth, my life isn't all that interesting. I doubt that anyone wants to hear about how I forgot to pick up the pizza after a run to the store yesterday. Heck, my own family, who were deeply invested in said pizza, didn't want to hear about it.  So the idea of writing twenty six blogs in thirty days boggled my mind. What would I say? Who would care?

Then, in late March, as I was on my usual walk at the local park, I had a revelation (insight #2: for better or worse, ideas seem to float into my head unannounced while I'm walking in the park).  I have several hundred, maybe several thousand, poems in various stages of development, most of them on little pieces of paper stuffed into the back of a supply closet. What if I took those poems, or twenty six of them, and posted them on my blog? It seemed a terrific idea. And since April is National Poetry Month,  a timely idea as well.

So I signed on to the challenge and made an alphabet of poems. To my great delight and relief,  I had at least one poem for every letter except X. Some letters had so many that it was hard to decide. I dusted off my old work, rewrote and revised a bit and added pictures where appropriate.

It was good, having a blog post for nearly every day of the month. And it was overwhelming. (Insight #3: sometimes those terrific ideas I have when walking turn out to be bigger than I bargained for).  And I didn't even start from scratch. Frankly, I'm in awe of all of the participants who sat and wrote a post nearly every day. Even with having something to start with, I found that it took up a good deal of my writing time. My work in progress was slow to move forward. I'd hoped to finish a novella by the end of May, now I'm looking to the end of June or July. Such, I suppose, are the pros and cons of keeping up a blog.

I don't think I'll do the challenge next year. Then again, late next March I might be walking in the park and--

Colors of my Soul

I'm visiting with Lena Toporikova at Colors of my Soul today. Stop by and say hello!