Go-To-Gay: "Fairy Tales Can Come True, It Can Happen to You … "

Introduction by Tracey Meyers

Despite the fact that I do enjoy chick flicks and Disney movies, in my day-to-day life, I'm a person who isn't big on fairy tales.  Sure, I have hopes and dreams that drive me towards my goals, however I find I have a tendency to keep myself "grounded in reality." (Or at least that is what I call it.)

Okay, so maybe this all sounds a bit "Negative Nancy" of me, but that is one of the reasons I keep those that do believe that "fairy tales can come true" in my life.  One of those "believers" is CLC's own Go-To-Gay, Wade Rouse, who is here today to tell you why he feels fairy tales can come true... and why they can happen to you!

"Fairy Tales Can Come True, It Can Happen to You . . . "

Admission: I've never been to Disney.

DisneyLand. Disney World. Any Disney.

Admission: I've never actually wanted to go.

I grew up going to theme and amusement parks: Silver Dollar City, Six Flags, Dogpatch USA.

But I was one of those strange kids who didn't relish roller coasters or enjoy having my picture taken with costumed characters.

Still, I tried it all again as an adult, just to make sure, largely because my partner, Gary, loves theme parks, adores roller coasters, dreams of dancing with Cinderella.

Perhaps, I thought, I am simply scarred from the time I got sick on a spinning teacup ride and had to watch my breakfast circle in the air in front of my face.
So off we went.

But I liked it even less as adult. I still didn't enjoy the rides or the characters. And I hated waiting in the long lines and being jostled for a funnel cake even more.

"I'm so sorry," I told Gary. "It's just not my thing."
Gary looked crestfallen.

A few days later, as our weekly "Friday date night" approached, I had a revelation: While theme parks may not be my thing, fairy tales and happy endings are.
Growing up, I never believed I would meet the man of my dreams.

I never dreamed I would be an author.

I never believed a happy-ever-after was possible.

So, I ordered a pizza, sat Gary on the couch and popped in "Snow White."

When she began to sing "Someday My Prince Will Come", I smiled and reached for Gary's hand.

"Does this mean you might want to try a theme park again?" he asked hopefully.

"No way," I replied, before adding, "But I will watch 'Cinderella' next."

He laughed, and then, just as quickly, began to tear up.
"I never thought …" he started.

"Me either," I said, squeezing his hand even more tightly.

Which is why we all must believe – whether we're three, 13, 35, or 98 – in the power of fairly tales, because the everlasting power of them is that they can come true.

And you don't even have to visit a theme park to make it so. 


The writings of bestselling humorist Wade Rouse – called “wise, witty and wicked” by USA Today and the lovechild of Erma Bombeck and David Sedaris – have been featured multiple times on NBC’s Today Show as well as on Chelsea Lately on E! and People.com. His latest memoir, It’s All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine (reviewed here) launched in paperback February 1st from Broadway, and he is creator and editor of the humorous dog anthology, I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales about Man’s Best from America’s Favorite Humorists (NAL). The book features a Foreword by Chelsea Handler’s dog, Chunk, essays by such beloved chick lit authors as Jane Green, and 50 percent of the book’s net royalties go to the Humane Society of the United States. His first memoir, America's Boy, has been re-published by Magnus Books for paperback and Kindle. For more, visit his website, or friend him on Facebook or Twitter.

Jamie Shupak takes us for a wild ride...plus a book giveaway

Today we have the pleasure of introducing debut author Jamie Shupak. Her novel, Transit Girl, came out on November 19th as an ebook. Jamie Shupak is the morning traffic anchor on NY1, Time Warner Cable's popular 24/7 news channel in New York City. Shupak, a news Emmy nominee, can be seen every weekday morning from 5:00 a.m. until Noon. She has been the subject of profiles in The New York Times and The New York Post, the latter of which dubbed her the "Trans-It Girl." The New York Observer named her one of the media's top 50 "power bachelorettes" while she was the dating columnist for Complex magazine, penning her advice for single men and women everywhere on a weekly basis. But the Philadelphia native and University of Maryland graduate now chronicles her romantic home life and the delicious, healthy meals she cooks on her food blog, TV Dinner. Featured on Mashable and in New York Magazine's Grub Street, Shupak showcases her culinary talents, tailored to her meat- and dairy-free diet. She currently resides in Manhattan with her fiancé, senior media correspondent for CNN and host of "Reliable Sources," BrianStelter.

Thanks to Polis Books we have THREE e-copies of Transit Girl to give away to some lucky readers anywhere in the world.

Learn more about Jamie by visiting her on Twitter and at her website. You can find Transit Girl at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iBooks.

I have always loved to write, but I never had a specific interest in writing a novel. "Transit Girl" came about very organically a few years ago. I had just gotten out of a decade-long relationship and engagement so I was single for the first time in my adult life. This was, as you can imagine, a whole new world to me.

Each morning after a date, I'd tell all the fun (and funny) details of stories to a friend on Gchat – about the guy, our conversations, our texts, our makeouts, everything – and he'd sometimes reply and say that the stories belonged in a book. When I told my TV agent about the suggestion, almost as an aside, he said something to the effect of "If you want to write a book, you should start writing for other publications first – get some bylines, get your name out there as a writer." A few months later, an opportunity arose (through Twitter, of all places!) to write a weekly dating column for Complex. I jumped at the chance, but it wasn't until a literary agent got in touch with me (about nine months into the column, and a year after that initial conversation with my TV agent) that I started to think seriously about a novel.

The literary agent found me through The New York Times, which had published a profile of me and my traffic-reporting job (at NY1 in NYC). And I'm so glad she did! She gave me some crucial tips about story arcs and characters and sent me on my way with the best advice: just start writing. And now here I am.

The novel is loosely based on that year of my life and so it very naturally includes my career as a traffic reporter. The schedule and the shenanigans (both good and bad) that come with being on morning television are part of what defines me as a person, and by proxy, what leads to a lot of Guiliana's escapades in the book. I used a lot of traffic metaphors in it because not only do they keep it light and fast-paced, but I also think they poke a little bit of fun at the job. It's important to not take who you are or what you do too seriously. In part that's my hope for the book, too -- that readers just relax, escape and enjoy it.


Thanks to Jamie for sharing how her novel came about and Polis Books for sharing it with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

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Worldwide. Giveaway ends January 14th at midnight EST.

Guest Book Review: Hard Hats and Doormats

By Sara Steven

When you’re in love, it’s hard to play by the rules. A definite conundrum for Lexi Burke, human resources manager for a leading Gulf Coast chemical company. In her line of work, you follow procedures and proper protocol. When it comes to matters of the heart, however, procedures and proper protocol don’t apply.

In Hard Hats and Doormats, Laura Chapman takes us on a journey of self-discovery through Lexi’s point of view. After being passed over for a promotion (it’s a man’s world, baby, and Lexi is too much of a pushover, or so says her hard-headed, chauvinist boss) Lexi decides to stop playing by the rules. Where has that gotten her, anyway? She’s had a secret crush on Jason Beumont for quite some time, and he’s someone she considered off-limits due to office politics. But she’s done with office politics. It’s time to throw caution to the wind, and let her heart make all the decisions.

This is a love story, with a twist. Lexi pursues the man of her dreams, but she also takes charge of her life, and won’t be anyone’s pushover. Not anymore. It’s empowering, and the characters are so cleverly written, it’s impossible not to identify with a woman who wants and deserves to have what she’s worked so hard for. You can really feel the internal struggle Lexi has when it comes to doing what is “right”, even though her heart tells an entirely different story.

If you are looking for a book that will give you the motivation to pursue your own dreams in life, and give you the kick in the pants needed to follow through on those New Year’s resolutions, give "Hard Hats" a read. It’s time you embarked on your own journey of self-discovery.

Thanks to Laura Chapman for the book in exchange for an honest review.

Sara Steven is a wife and stay-at-home mother of two rambunctious boys in Bellevue, NE. When she’s not running marathons, or working on her novel, she takes a break and opens up a good book (or turns on her Nook). Find her at her blog.

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Never smile at a crocodile...unless they're in a book that we're giving away!

**Giveaway is now closed**

When I first heard the title of Katherine Pancol's novel, The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, I thought of this song from Disney's version of Peter Pan. How fitting, with it being Fairy Tale and Disney month! Here to talk about the fairy tale aspects of Katherine's novel is William Rodarmor, her translator. And thanks to Penguin, we have one copy of The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles for a lucky US reader.

Katherine Pancol is one of France’s best-known contemporary authors, with millions of copies of her books in print in thirty-one languages. She lives in Paris, France. You can find her at her website and on Facebook.

Transformation, but with Crocodiles

It wasn't until I was halfway through translating it that I realized The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles is a modern fairy tale, with a distinctly French twist. Oh, it has the usual soaring loves and bitter heartbreaks we all experience in our daily life. But in Katherine Pancol's writing, fantasy lurks just below the realistic surface, like the crocodiles of the title, their eyes gleaming on the smooth waters. And being French, the novel also has Paris, sex, great food, and flashes of comic wit.
Crocodiles -- the first volume in Pancol's best-selling trilogy -- begins as middle-aged medieval scholar Joséphine Cortès learns that her perpetually unemployed husband is leaving her for a younger woman who works as a manicurist at a local salon. Joséphine is like many of us: she regularly asks the mirror who is the fairest of them all, and is never surprised but always disappointed with the answer, "Someone else, du'h."
Like Cinderella, Joséphine has a kindly parent married to a harridan. In this case, it's a gender reversal. Her widowed mother Henriette is as mean a woman as ever nursed on venom. Her kind but hapless stepfather Marcel is the one whose good-heartedness will eventually turn the tables.
More classic characters abound. Joséphine has two daughters, who are the twin sides of the little girl with the curl: one is very, very good, and the other one is horrid. And there's Iris, her beautiful but duplicitous sister with demanding tastes (see the Princess and the Pea). I could go on, but I don't want to strain to make parallels that aren't apparent. I'll leave that to future grad candidates desperately looking for a thesis topic.
Oh, okay, just one more: The book even has a Neverland! In this case it's Kenya, and it comes with not one but many crocodiles.
Katherine Pancol is a gifted stylist, but more than anything, she's a terrific storyteller. The tale at the heart of Crocodiles involves a huge fraud. Joséphine, our scholarly historian, is desperate to earn enough money to support herself and her children in their modest suburb. On the other side of the Seine, sister Iris has beauty, wealth, a handsome husband, and a chic Parisian lifestyle. But Iris is bored, and is haunted by a serious misstep in her past involving a stolen movie script.
Iris would love to be known as a writer, but she has writer's block (in French: "the horror of the blank page"). So she hatches a plan she thinks will benefit everyone: Joséphine will use her knowledge to write a historical romance and pocket the advance and royalties, but the novel will be published under Iris’ name and she’ll take all the credit. This unlikely scheme works surprisingly well. In fact, too well: the sisters' deceit runs the greatest risk of exposure when the novel becomes a runaway success. (Cue another modern fairy tale: The Producers, and the unexpected success of its musical "Springtime for Hitler.")

The more I think of "Crocodiles," the more I see that all the characters in the book undergo changes that have a fairy-tale quality while being completely believable and realistic. Easygoing Marcel grows a backbone, the manicurist displays character, and even the horrid daughter (a stone bitch whom even Mother Teresa would throttle) winds up surprising us.
Not all the heroes and heroines are rewarded, or all the villains punished, but The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles makes us glad we've taken the journey with them. And we can look forward to their further adventures. Katherine Pancol has written two sequels to The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles: in English, their titles would be The Slow Waltz of Turtles and The Central Park Squirrels are Sad on Monday.
Like a classic tale, the telling continues.

William Rodarmor
Berkeley, California

William Rodarmor (1942 –) is a veteran French literary translator in Berkeley, California. His translation of Tamata and the Alliance, by Bernard Moitessier, won the 1996 Lewis Galantière Award from the American Translators Association. In addition to The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, by Katherine Pancol (Penguin, 2014), he recently translated The Last King of the Jews, by Jean-Claude Lattès (Open Road, 2014) and was a fellow at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.

Thanks to William for an insightful post and to Penguin for sharing The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles with our readers.

~Introduction by Melissa Amster

How to win:
Please tell us what your favorite animal is from any Disney movie.

One entry per person.

Please include your e-mail address or another way to reach you if you win. Entries without contact information will NOT be counted.

US only, no P.O. Boxes. Giveaway ends January 13th at midnight EST.

Celebrating a pub day with a giveaway

"Marriage is the institution that brings us together today." (Sorry, had to quote from a favorite fairy tale during Fairy Tale month. Anyone care to guess what this is from?) Anyway, I have a marriage milestone coming up in a little over two months....my 10 year anniversary! Three kids, two interstate moves, and four houses later, I'm proud to share that I'm still incredibly happy in my marriage. My husband and I manage to always make each other laugh and smile, even on the most stressful of days. That's so important to me. We even finish each other's...sandwiches! (Thanks for that one, Disney!) Yes, we've faced hurdles, but we've weathered through them and our bond has strengthened as a result. Therefore, I look forward to reading this new book about marriage that just came out today!

Happy pub day to Cindy Chupack for The Longest Date: Life as a Wife! To help celebrate, Penguin has TWO copies for some lucky US readers!

About The Longest Date:
After two decades of relationship wreckage—enough to fill a book (the bestselling The Between Boyfriends Book), a sex column for O, the Oprah Magazine, and five seasons as a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning writer for Sex and the City—Cindy Chupack finally found The One…and a wealth of new material. It turns out “happily ever after” is really only the beginning of the adventure and in her new memoir, The Longest Date: Life as a Wife, Chupack takes a hilarious, honest and heartbreaking look at the early years of marriage and the reality of life as a wife.

Published in time for Valentine’s Day, The Longest Date is one of the funniest—and ultimately deeply moving—books about marriage we’ve encountered, and a book that anyone who has ever negotiated a relationship will recognize.

About the Author
Cindy Chupack has won three Golden Globes and an Emmy for her work as a writer/executive producer of HBO’s Sex and the City. Her writing credits also include Modern Family, Everybody Loves Raymond, Coach, and a bunch of series only her parents would watch. She has written about dating and relationships for many magazines and had her own column in Glamour and O, The Oprah Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, her St. Bernard, and . . . you’ll just have to read the book.

You can find Cindy at her website and on Facebook.

~Introduction by Melissa Amster

Thanks to Penguin for sharing this book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

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US only. Giveaway ends January 12th at midnight EST.

Book Review: The Pieces We Keep

By Melissa Amster

While this seemed to be the year of reading books about widows (I'm even reading one currently), something about The Pieces We Keep, by Kristina McMorris, stood out to me and I am definitely glad I picked it up!

Two years have done little to ease veterinarian Audra Hughes’s grief over her husband’s untimely death. Eager for a fresh start, Audra plans to leave Portland for a new job in Philadelphia. Her seven-year-old son, Jack, seems apprehensive about flying—but it’s just the beginning of an anxiety that grows to consume him.

As Jack’s fears continue to surface in recurring and violent nightmares, Audra hardly recognizes the introverted boy he has become. Desperate, she traces snippets of information unearthed in Jack’s dreams, leading her to Sean Malloy, a struggling US Army veteran wounded in Afghanistan. Together they unravel a mystery dating back to World War II, and uncover old family secrets that still have the strength to wound—and perhaps, at last, to heal. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.)

Right from the beginning, The Pieces We Keep was engaging. It starts out with Audra and Jack going on a cross-country flight that ends up being emotionally disastrous. Then, we're suddenly taken back to the 1940s, where we meet Vivian James, who is at the movies with her boyfriend, Isaak. She's upset that he's not paying attention to her and storms off. Through alternating chapters, we get a full picture of each woman's life. While Audra's story takes place over a couple of months, Vivian's is spread over many years.

The Pieces We Keep was very well written. The dialogue and descriptions were genuine. It was very easy to visualize people and places. I found myself getting lost in the story, like I was sitting to watch a really good movie and forgetting anyone else was in the room with me. The story was suspenseful. Sometimes I thought I knew the answers, but then things would change course and I'd be surprised again. There was a strong emotional impact, as both Audra and Vivian were sympathetic characters and I felt myself truly caring for them and riding along the waves of their feelings at different times.

The only thing that didn't work for me so well was quite minor, but I found some of the World War II background confusing to follow. Kristina did her best to simplify things, but some of it still went over my head. I'm not good with history and especially anything related to wars, so maybe someone with more interest in those topics would have understood it right away.  This didn't take away from my enjoyment by any means, as the characters and story lines were very compelling.

I definitely would recommend The Pieces We Keep and hope Kristina will write another book in this style. (I already recommended it to my mom and she loved it as much as I did!) Fans of Sarah Jio's novels will enjoy this book, and perhaps people who haven't read her novels will want to read them after finishing it. It is similar in style with alternating voices and time periods, as well as a mystery from history. I would love to see these two authors combine forces to write a novel together, as I feel it would be twice as incredible!

Of course, I had this book cast in my head as a movie from the moment I started reading it....

Vivian: AnnaLynne McCord (She played Naomi on 90210 and is beautiful and dramatic enough to play this role to perfection.)
Audra: Thandie Newton (I don't know why, but I immediately pictured her when I started reading and that was the image that stuck. I definitely think she could play Audra in terms of her acting talent.)
Isaak: Aaron Tveit (He played an attractive war leader in Les Miz, so why not?)
Gene: Channing Tatum (Again, I just immediately pictured him as this character as soon as he was introduced in the story.)
Sean: James Snyder (He is in the musical, If/Then, and plays a military guy. I had just seen it before starting this novel, so that's what brought him to mind. It works!)
Tess: Maria Bello (She's the first actress I pictured to play Audra's sassy, no-nonsense boss and best friend.)

Thanks to Kristina McMorris for the book in exchange for an honest review.

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Lu Ann Cahn is part of our world...plus a book giveaway

After seeing Lu Ann Cahn and her fabulous sounding memoir, I Dare Me, at Chick Lit is Not Dead, we knew she'd be a great fit at CLC! 

I Dare Me is about Lu Ann's inspirational and humorous year-long journey in 2010 to get her life “unstuck” by doing something new every single day. The 53-year-old author discovered that simply taking daily risks—some large, some small—had a cumulative effect, a sort of “refresh” button when she felt angry and stuck.

She challenged herself to literally dive in, starting with the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day, then filled out her year with adventures like planting an herb garden, learning how to soul line dance and eating a scorpion. It wasn’t long before she found herself waking up excited, ready to take on new challenges each and every day. The world was her oyster. She chronicled the journey in this entertaining, page-turning book of self-discovery—and hopes that in reading it, you too will learn to dare yourself to live life to its fullest!

Learning how to hula hoop

Now that we're at the beginning of a brand new year, we hope I Dare Me will be an inspiration for trying something new, at least once. She's even doing something new here....helping us kick off our Fairy Tales and Disney theme! From the looks of it, she hasn't been asked some of these questions before (at least not by a book blog). Thanks to Matthew Vlahos Public Relations, we have TWO signed books for some lucky US readers!

Visit Lu Ann at her website, Facebook and Twitter.



What is the most unusual fairy tale you've ever heard/read?
Oh boy. Not up on my fairy tales lately. Maybe it would be a good First to go back and revisit them. I would say Rumpelstiltskin always terrified me though. That's a freaky fairy tale.

What is your favorite non-Disney movie based on a fairy tale?
Does Anastasia count? I guess that's really based on a true story/ legend. Not exactly a fairy tale. Another female character with lots of chutzpah.

What is your favorite line from The Princess Bride?
I think I'm failing this test. Can't remember a single one. Back to fairy tale school.

Which fairy tale should Disney adapt into an animated film next?
The Pied Piper. Did they do that one yet? I can see lots of little evil rat characters. Of course they'd have to create a smart female character. Maybe the Pied Piper was really a woman in disguise....there's a twist.

Which Disney princess could you see yourself becoming best friends with?
Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I love her spirit and heart and the songs are gorgeous.

What is your favorite song from a Disney movie?
From The Little Mermaid...."Part of Your World."  My daughter and I used to sing that song around the house at the top of our lungs.

Thanks to Lu Ann for helping us kick off a new year AND our theme month and to Matthew Vlahos PR for sharing her book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

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US only. Giveaway ends January 7th at midnight EST.