Two Like Me and You by Chad Alan Gibbs ***Guest Post -- Giveaway***
Two Like Me and You
by Chad Alan Gibbs
Publication date: May 20th 2019
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Edwin Green’s ex-girlfriend is famous. We’re talking cover-of-every-tabloid-in-the-grocery-store-line famous. She dumped Edwin one year ago on what he refers to as Black Saturday, and in hopes of winning her back, he’s spent the last twelve months trying to become famous himself. It hasn’t gone well.
But when a history class assignment pairs Edwin with Parker Haddaway, the mysterious new girl at school, she introduces him to Garland Lenox, a nursing-home-bound World War II veteran who will change Edwin’s life forever.
The three escape to France, in search of the old man’s long-lost love, and as word of their adventure spreads, they become media darlings. But when things fall apart, they also become the focus of French authorities. In a race against time, who will find love, and who will only find more heartache?
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Guest Post
The top 10 things that have inspired my work.
1. My wife – I wasn’t much of a reader before we met in college. She gave me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and the first Harry Potter book for my birthday, and strongly hinted that she didn’t date guys who didn’t read. That was nearly twenty years ago, and I’ve read at least forty books a year ever since.2. The Great Gatsby – My favorite novel. I read it every December and am blown away by Fitzgerald every time.
3. Music – I listen to music while I’m writing, while I’m not writing, and anytime in between. Songs inspire me in ways nothing else can, and with the right tune in my ears, I often watch scenes in my head like a movie before I even write them.
4. Coffee – What’s the old saying? Write caffeinated, edit sober.
5. The Empire Strikes Back – My favorite film and the reason I shoehorn a Lando Calrissian reference into everything I write.
6. Anne Lamott, particularly her advice on shitty first drafts. There are parts of Two Like Me and You that I am proud of, but they’d have never happened had I not put my head down and pushed through writing my bad first draft.
7. “Go Places” by the New Pornographers – I know I already mentioned music, but this song deserves some of the credit for Two Like Me and You. Sometimes while writing it I’d just put this song on repeat and listen to it twenty times in a row.
8. American Idol – This is a weird one, but part of Two Like Me and You deals with a famous ex-girlfriend, and that storyline came from an early season of Idol when a contestant mentioned she’d broken up with her boyfriend. The idea of this guy back home watching his ex on television every week stuck with me and became part of this story.
9. Frequent Flyer Miles – After my first draft I told my wife I’d love to go to France and travel to the places visited in the book. Fortunately, we had a stash of frequent flyer miles and grandparents willing to keep our boys for a couple of days, so we took a crazy quick five day trip to France which I think helped me write later drafts. And even if it didn’t, we got to go to France!
10. Friends – Writing is a lonely job, and when you’ve been working on a novel for a long time and no one has read any of it you start to question your sanity. I mean, it’s entirely possible that you’ve lost your mind and have been typing gibberish for months. How would you know, right? But when friends read an early draft, they gave me some very encouraging feedback, which pushed me on to finish the book.
Author Bio
Chad Alan Gibbs lives in Alabama with his wife, two sons, two dogs, and an embarrassingly large collection of Star Wars action figures. Two Like Me and You is his first novel.
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