This book promotional event is through my collaboration as a tour host for Goddess Fish Book Promotions.
Scenes From a Song virtual book tour includes a guest post and a giveaway. Enter below, share with a friend, drop us a comment, follow Sarandipity’s.
Book Details
GENRE: Drama
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BLURB:
On Halloween Eve, 1961, in his dingy Bronx walkup apartment, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Welton hears the opening notes of a song in his head. Jimmy’s still mourning his firefighter father, who taught him to play the guitar but recently died in a house fire, leaving his family destitute. Jimmy takes this song, about all he misses from his life now, to the New York amusement park where he works after school. There, he meets Mark Morgan, a rebellious teen with his own band, who eventually invites Jimmy to join them. And the rest is rock’n roll history…
Their band, The GooseBumps, become a worldwide phenomenon, and the songs they write and sing together become the backbone of rock musical history. And the song Jimmy first heard on Halloween, “Wrapped in Gauze”, becomes the song that not only comforts him in that terrible time but also comforts others: Victoria, recently divorced and dealing with an out-of-nowhere family tragedy; Carolyn, whose final flippant words to someone in pain can’t be taken back; and Jack, battling back from unimaginable loss with the help of his cheeky therapist and a song he thinks he hates.
SCENES FROM A SONG is the story of a song that makes us smile, that breaks our hearts, that stays with us forever, and the very special band that started it all.
Excerpt One:
“Jimmy Welton, meet my good friend, Mark Morgan.”
“Hi,” Jimmy said, extending his hand to the newcomer.
Mark looked at his hand as though he didn’t know what to do with it, then reached out and pumped it with his own. Jimmy noticed his own hand felt bruised when he let it drop.
Mark looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “So what’s your job here—you’re the handsome prince at the park? So all the girls can swoon over you?” His voice, a normal baritone, escalated suddenly almost to falsetto. He batted his eyelashes girlishly at Jimmy.
Jimmy grimaced. He hated being teased about his costume, and now he liked this guy even less.
Luke went on eagerly. “Mark goes to high school downtown, Jimmy. He came out tonight to scout the park.”
“What for?” Jimmy asked, not really interested in the answer. The guy struck him as a bad imitation of James Dean. Jimmy had met plenty like him, and they were all bad news.
“For my band to play here,” Mark answered, his voice cutting through the windy evening.
Jimmy, who had been ready to walk away, stopped dead. “You have a band?”
“Sure as hell do. I play guitar and sing.”
Jimmy had never met anyone, boy or girl, who was in a band. Suddenly he wasn’t mad about being teased anymore; he was starting to get excited. He tried to seem nonchalant as he asked, “Is it a dance band or country-western, or—”
Mark looked amused. “No, Pretty Boy. It’s rock `n roll. Ever hear of it?”
Rock ‘n roll! Jimmy would kill to hear a live rock ‘n roll band.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
SUSAN SLOATE is the author or co-author of more than 25 published books. This includes 3 editions of Forward to Camelot, a time-travel thriller about the JFK assassination that became a #6 Amazon bestseller, was honored in 3 literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production. She also wrote the autobiographical Broadway novel Stealing Fire, which became a #2 Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release, and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel.
Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest for The History Channel. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, edited the popular Kyle & Corey young-adult book series, man-aged two political campaigns and founded an author’s festival to promote student literacy in her hometown outside Charleston, SC. She has appeared in multiple volumes of WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA, WHO’S WHO IN ENTERTAINMENT and WHO’S WHO AMONG AMERICAN WOMEN.
Visit her online at https://susansloate.com.
Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SusanSloateAuthor
X.com: @Susan_Sloate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susan_sloate/
Website: www.susansloate.com
The book will be $0.99 during the tour: https://amzn.to/47h0eKR
Guest Post: The Character Who Surprised Me
By Susan Sloate
In my latest novel, SCENES FROM A SONG, I thought I knew most of the characters
going in. I’d have the four young band members (none of whom was yet 21 when the
story started); I’d have the people who hired and helped them in their first gigs; I’d have
the girlfriend who became the wife of one of the band members; and I’d have the
manager.
The manager was a generic person who got excited about them and became a driving
force in getting them in front of the public.
Only that’s not how it turned out.
SCENES FROM A SONG is about a famous band, yes. What I didn’t realize was that it
was about a band whose downfall would come from within, and about a man who
represented himself one way and turned out to be something entirely different.
The band manager in SCENES is Dary Dover, a mysterious figure who appears as the
band is becoming well known in their neighborhood and works to make them
internationally famous. He succeeds brilliantly, but what I didn’t realize is that Dary
always would be a completely unknown quantity… even his name.
I got it from Wikipedia, of all places, when I looked up Tiny Tim one day. Tiny Tim, if
you’re too young to remember him, was the ukelele player on the fringe of show
business for decades, who finally went on ROWAN & MARTIN’S LAUGH-IN TV show in
the 1960’s, sang “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” in a high falsetto and for a brief moment
became a huge star… fitting for a guy with an ordinary face and minimal talent who just
wanted to be in show business. He was so famous that when he married a young girl he
called Miss Vicki, he got married on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON!
You don’t get a lot more famous than that.
Anyway, his Wikipedia entry noted that he’d used a number of different stage names,
among them Dary Dover—and as soon as I read that, that was the band manager’s
name. It carried with it a hint of the con man, which I didn’t know then I would use. But I
did. You’ll have to read the novel to see where things go with the band, but I promise the
answer to the Dary Dover mystery is worth it!
Tour Schedule
October 13: Sandra’s Book Club
October 14: Aubrey Wynne: Timeless Love
October 14: Author C.A.Milson
October 15: Read Your Writes Book Reviews
October 16: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
October 17: Maggie Blackbird
October 20: A Wonderful World of Words
October 20: Sarandipity’s
October 21: Sarcastically Yours, Jen
October 22: The Avid Reader
October 22: The Pen and Muse Book Reviews
October 23: Long and Short Reviews
October 24: It’s Raining Books
Giveaway
Susan Sloate will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.
Thank you so much for featuring SCENES FROM A SONG.