Gale Martin's Grace Unexpected (Guest Post/Giveaway)

Please give a warm welcome to author Gale Martin and Grace Savage from her book, Grace Unexpected!

Grace Savage’s Fave Five Fictitious Sexpots
by Gale Martin

Have you ever known a woman who keeps meeting up with the wrong kind of guy, guys you shouldn’t take home to Mother, who would rather go bald or broke than say “I do”?  Grace Savage, the heroine of my newest novel GRACE UNEXPECTED (Booktrope 2102),  has had crummy if not bleedin’ tragic taste in men throughout her adult life.  Not to mention that she makes  it too easy for guys to dive right into her drawers. (And we’re not talking about her armoire.) 

Once she decides to mend her promiscuous ways and go sexless like the Shakers, men keep popping into her love life like zucchini in season. After she gets propositioned by four men in a single day at the university where she works, Grace’s frustration with men reaches a fever pitch: 

“There’s no way any single person can handle all that zucchini,” she says. “Not even if you’re smart and resourceful and have accumulated dozens of good recipes.”

Why is Grace Savage the way she is? She read a lot of fiction growing up. Blame it on these sexy heroines in classic and contemporary literature, with whom she must have identified:

5. Mary Crawford (Mansfield Park by Jane Austen)—Mary is thoroughly charming and first seeks to win the hand of the elder son Thomas Bertram, heir of a baronet but eventually succumbs to her true feelings for Edmund, the younger untitled brother. As Mary once said, “But what I am keen to know is which gentleman among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to?" (Now THAT’s putting it right out there!)

4. Meredith Johnson (Disclosure by Michael Crichton)—Another anti-heroine, Meredith takes full advantage of her new subordinate a former boyfriend, now married. For Meredith seduction is a means to disarm and then dismember (figuratively speaking.) She knows how to play a room (or an ex-boyfriend). She invites this former boyfriend into the office and does the following:  She leaned on one arm and crossed her legs. She saw that he noticed, she said, “In the summer, I’d rather not wear stockings. I like the bare feeling. So much cooler on a hot day.”

3. Judith Singer (Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs) — Long Island housewife Judith Singer is smart funny, and very bored with her comfy white bread suburban life. She is drawn deeper into the case-of a local dentist found murdered and even closer to the sexy police detective in charge. “This guy was the Don Juan of dentists,” Judith say.  (And she should know.)

2. Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray)—The smart, cynical Becky is the famous anti-heroine of this classic novel.  She’s a pretty social climber who uses her feminine wiles to intrigue and seduce men with money and social standing. As the scheming Becky famously said, "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. "

1. Emma Bovary (Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert) — To escape the emptiness of provincial married life, the young and beautiful  Emma has numerous adulterous affairs while living beyond her means, cavorting behind her husband’s back with the objects of her infatuation. Here’s an excerpt about what really motivated Emma Bovary. [She] tried hard to discover what, precisely, it was in life that was denoted by the words 'joy, passion, intoxication', which had always looked so fine to her in books.
* * *

About Gale Martin

Gale Martin is an award-winning writer of contemporary fiction who plied her childhood penchant for lying into a legitimate literary pursuit during midlife. She began writing her first novel at age eleven, finally finishing her first book three decades later. 
Her debut novel, DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, published in 2011, is a humorous backstage novel inspired by Don Giovanni, Mozart’s famous tragicomic opera about the last two days of Don Juan’s life. It was named a Finalist in the 2012 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Fiction. 
Her second novel GRACE UNEXPECTED is wryly witty women's fiction that features a protagonist who can hear her ovaries ticking, who has a heart of pure gold, wrapped in lead. But a string of crummy boyfriends would do that to any lovable woman while waiting for Mr. Right.
She has a master of arts in creative writing from Wilkes University. She lives in Eastern Pennsylvania because she has to.

Website - Twitter - Facebook Fan Page - Goodreads

~*GIVEAWAY*~

Gale is giving away one eBook of Grace Unexpected (Kindle or Nook) to one reader today. To enter, just leave a meaningful comment or question for the author on this post and then fill out the rafflecopter below. Additional entries are available but not required. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway