Guest Post: Love, Hate, and Why I Write by Deirdre Riordan Hall

I'm thrilled to have Deirdre Riordan Hall on the blog today to talk about why she writes what she writes. Until recently, I was most familiar with her YA books, so I was interested to know why she decided to make the leap to women's contemporary fiction (especially since I've done the same in the span of my own 5-year writing career). Deirdre was kind enough to write a post for my readers, and I love her reasons for wanting to branch out and try her hand at all kinds of stories. 

Love, Hate, and Why I Write

By Deirdre Riordan Hall

I'm nothing if not unconventional. I tend to do things backwards, inside out, sideways… When given the traditional path or something else, guess which way I'll go? I don't know if it's a quirk in my biochemistry or that I prefer to eat my pie from the crust to the middle, but that's how I roll—or bite as the case may be. And it's no different with my writing life.
Years and years ago, I started with screenplays and picture books then dove into young adult fantasy fiction, took a new adult detour, returned to young adult fiction—paranormal, then contemporary, then fantasy, then back to contemporary… In between the writing and publication of YA contemporary my novel Sugar (and then Pearl) I also tried my hand at middle grade and then back to young adult (I always return to my home in YA). To date have written about thirty manuscripts. Do you see a pattern here? 

No? 

That's because there isn't one. 

So why do I write what I write? 

I write what I want to read and to answer the inspiration and story ideas given to me. But more concretely, I write because I feel the need to connect the dots between what I'm feeling and the big picture—the universal, the you and me. To bridge the feeling of loneliness with the knowledge that we're linked. To bring a world beyond what is at our doorstep or in our kitchen or on the screen to inky life. To remind myself and everyone else that we're not the sum of who we've been told we are. 

We get to define ourselves. We're bigger and bolder and brighter than we could ever imagine. It's through fiction that I find courage and strength and possibility. I uncover magic and love and light. I discover that it's you and me not us and them. In Sugar, a young adult contemporary novel, I told the story of the heroine who was told she was too much yet not enough. She found her more than enough and set the world alight with her courage. Pearl was dealt a crappy hand, had a grim home life, but was given a way out. Even though she proved human and made mistakes, she forged her own way forward, breaking the abusive and addiction riddled cycles of the past. 

In my new adult series, Follow your Bliss, each of the main characters takes a long look in the mirror and decides to define life on her terms and have fun while doing it. In Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told, my latest and a romantic comedy, Navy is lost, but finds herself—and love—in books, romantic fiction with book boyfriends to be exact. Her best friend urges her to come out from the pages and live more by daring her to go on a series of dates leading up to Valentine's Day. Navy ultimately goes along with the plan and experiences a series of sexy, unfortunate, exhausting, and bizarre encounters that she documents on her blog. Not the least of which is with her nemesis, Carrick, who she successfully avoided for years. But he's like an itch, one she resists scratching until he reveals the truth about who he is and what he's been doing for the last decade. But Navy has secrets of her own and it's not until she learns to trust again that she lets the people who care most about her into her life and steps out of her box (aka her tiny studio apartment in Manhattan). 

I think the beating heart of this book is that despite the main character feeling betrayed and alone, there's an underpinning of interconnectedness she discovers when she reaches out, stretches past her comfort zone, and turns up the volume on her life. 

This storyline came to me in the form of the main character going on a series of dates that aren't Instagram worthy. Well, Bash's dinners are 😉 but the rest, well, they're certainly blog worthy disasters. I wanted to integrate the dating aspect and the quest for love in a more mature way than I felt I could portray in YA, while leading the story with humor and heart. The best vehicle, one I hadn't yet attempted, was women's romantic comedy. 

I'm a big fan of Alice Clayton, Emily Giffin, and more recently Sally Thorne. The books by these authors have depth, but also feel like a little escape into someone else's drama and reliably have a happy ending, which I'm all for! So I took a chance. More than anything, after the second half of 2016 that I had personally and what we experienced here in the US (where I live), I felt like we could all use some more love in our lives as well as comic relief and an escape, at least for the space of 300-plus pages. 

As a hybrid author, both traditionally published and self-pubbed, I have a list of books I'm hoping to see in print this coming year while I co-write an exciting YA with Cheyanne Young. Available on Valentine's Day is the follow up novella to Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told following Kat's story: How Not to Fall in Love.

After that, I'll be back at it with young adult contemporary, paranormal, fantasy, and then some middle grade to finish the year. It's a big year! My motto for 2017 is: go big or go back to work. I have a lot of exciting things in store and hope you'll join me for the twisting, turning, plot-twisting ride. 

 ~*~*~*~*~*~

Thank you so much for being here today, Deirdre! As someone who writes the stories in her heart and mind, regardless of genre or age category, I enjoyed reading about your own writing journey. 


Be sure to check out my reviews for her two latest releases, Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told and How Not to Fall in Love. 

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Review: How Not to Fall in Love by Deirdre Riordan Hall

How Not to Fall in Love by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Series: Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told 1.5
Published: February 14th, 2017
Publisher: Self-published
146 pages (ebook)
Genre: Contemporary women’s fiction
Acquired this book: Gift
Warning: May contain spoilers
{GoodReads || Buy this book: Amazon US || Amazon CAN} 

Katya's middle name may be Aphrodite, but she has no interest in relationships. In fact, she has three rules she lives by:

1. Never spend the night.

2. Never sleep with the same guy twice.

3. Never fall in love.

Oh, and number 3.1 is never order the same coffee two days in a row.

That's a lot of nevers, but when she breaks every single one of them, repeatedly (her undoing was a vanilla latte with a heart in the foam, BTW), she begins to wonder…

Actually, it was a batch of chocolate chip cookies that started her downward spiral. Never mind, scratch that, it was Spencer—her neighbor. He's also a banker, a player, and seems to know just what Kat wants, which isn't love.

Until they start to spend a lot of time together…

Until she finds one of his socks at her place...

Until they go to a ski resort for a long weekend…

Until he has a snowboarding injury…

As Kat struggles with the part of her that wants to be strong, single, and on the scene and the mushy, melty, romantic within, she tries desperately not to fall in love. But what's wrong with falling if you have someone with dark tousled hair, refined yet ruggedly handsome features, and chiseled abs to catch you?

Nothing. Nothing at all.
 

When I read Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told, I found myself as interested in Katya as I was in Navy. She seemed to lead an interesting life, and she clearly had some issues in her past that caused her to be the way she was. I was happy to hear she was getting her own story with How Not to Fall in Love.

I liked Katya a lot. She was an interesting mixture - on the one hand, she seemed to have it together, but underneath she was damaged by things that happened in her past and was struggling. She seemed happy with her life of no commitments and didn’t have plans to change, but deep down she was a romantic who needed to learn a few lessons about life and love in order to open up her heart. I enjoyed watching her growth and found myself cheering her on. Of course, it didn't hurt that Spencer was hot and swoony and ended up being really good for Katya in a lot of ways. Their romance was believable and enjoyable.

How Not to Fall in Love is a sweet, funny, romantic novella that can be read as a standalone. If you’re looking for a something light and feel-good, be sure to give this one a try!

 

{Read my review of Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told}

 

 

{My review of Sugar || My review of Pearl} 

 

Have you read How Not to Fall in Love or Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told? What did you think? If you haven't read them, do you plan to? Have you read any women's fiction lately that you'd recommend?

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Review: Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told by Deirdre Riordan Hall

Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Series: Standalone
Published: January 17th, 2017
Publisher: Self-published
300 pages (eARC)
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Acquired this book: From the author in exchange for honest consideration
Warning: May contain spoilers
{GoodReads || Buy this book: Amazon US || Amazon CAN}

Let go from her job and feeling lost, Navy Carrington takes a position as coffee-girl at a publicity firm. Their newest client is Carrick Kennely, the former love of her life and her fiercest adversary. She thought she'd let go of the past by playing it safe with book boyfriends—and avoiding frustratingly sexy guys like Carrick.

When Navy's roommate finds the Boyfriend Book, a silly relic leftover from Navy's teens, it prompts a dare; Navy is to go on five dates and pick one to be her Valentine. Despite her reservations, she can't say no, especially if it means proving to herself and Carrick that she can move on.

Navy chronicles her brief romantic entanglements with the Hottie in 7G, the Man-Bun-Barista, the Gym Stud, and the Book Boyfriend who turns out to be a toad—not the kind that when kissed turns into a prince—on The Boyfriend Book Blog. She doesn't want to let her readers or herself down, but as Valentine's Day nears, none of the guys comes close to being her one true love.

Except Carrick. He’s infuriating, attractive, confusing, catnip…and it turns out he has a secret.

With a love letter and a plane ticket in hand, Navy leaves her baggage behind and must decide between love, hate, and the lies she told to protect her fragile heart.

Having read and loved Dierdre Riordan Hall’s Young Adult novels Sugar and Pearl, I was excited to read her debut women’s fiction novel, Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told. For that reason, and because the author is a truly lovely person, I wanted to love the book, but...it hurts my heart to say this...I didn’t. I’ve been reading a lot of women’s fiction lately, and rom-coms are totally my jam, both in book and movie form, so I had high hopes for this one. While the story had good elements and a fun premise, what kept me from ever fully connecting to it was Navy herself. There were things I sympathized with - mostly her feelings of being lost and unsure - but for the most part, I just couldn’t connect with her. She frustrated me from the beginning with how she constantly compared herself to Kat and laid out all the things she wasn’t - beautiful, fun, able to trust, successful, etc. She focused so much on negative things and on the past, and refused to move on. Every time she took one step forward, she ended up taking two or three steps back, and she was constantly going over how she’d been hurt, how she couldn’t trust men, especially Carrick, how she kept herself guarded, etc. I did appreciate her ultimate growth and how she really came into her own, but the journey was rocky.

All that being said, my issues with Navy could totally be ‘me things’ that might not bother other people. There were things I enjoyed about the book, such as Navy and Kat’s friendship. I’m a sucker for strong female friendships that have their ups and down, but where the characters ultimately love each other unconditionally. Navy’s dates were also fun and often had me smiling...and glad I’m not part of the dating scene!

I enjoyed the overall premise of Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told. Navy was an avid reader and had far more book boyfriends than real boyfriends - both of which I can relate to. I think many of us live inside fictional worlds for various reasons, and sometimes forget there’s a whole real world out there waiting to be discovered and lived in. It was nice to see Navy maintaining her love of books and book boyfriends while realizing she can still have a real and fulfilling life outside the pages.

Despite my issues, Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told was a book with a fun premise, interesting characters, and a lot of real-life emotion. If you’re a fan of women’s fiction, I’d encourage you to give this one a shot!
 

 

{My review of Sugar || My review of Pearl}

Have you read Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told? What did you think? If you haven't read it, do you plan to? Have you read any women's fiction lately that you'd recommend?

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Review: Pearl by Deirdre Riordan Hall

Pearl by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Series: Standalone
Published: March 1st, 2016
Publisher: Skyscape
338 pages (ARC)
Genre: Contemporary Young Adult
Acquired this book: From the author in exchange for honest consideration
Warning: May contain spoilers
{GoodReads || Buy this book: Amazon || Chapters/Indigo}

Run fast and run far, unless you’re fearless. Unless you’re courageous. I’m not, but I’d like to be.

Pearl Jaeger is seventeen and homeless after drugs, poverty, and addiction unraveled the life she shared with JJ, her formerly glamorous rock star mother.

This moment of happiness is fleeting; someone will take it from me.

When tragedy brings a chance to start over at an elite boarding school, she doesn’t hesitate. Yet the only salvation comes from an art teacher as troubled as Pearl, and she faces the stark reality that what she thought she wanted isn’t straightforward.

I trace the outline of my reflection in a window. I am no more than a replica of my mother. This is not the self-portrait I want to paint.

Through the friendships she forms at school—especially with Grant, a boy who shows Pearl what it means to trust and forgive—she begins to see a path not defined by her past. But when confronted with the decision to be courageous or to take the easy way forged by her mother’s failures, which direction will Pearl choose?

After reading and loving Deirdre Riordan Hall’s Sugar, I was excited to read Pearl. This was a book that was full of heartache and tough subjects, but it was also beautiful, hopeful, and inspiring.

Pearl hasn’t had an easy life. As the daughter of a has-been rock star who’s more worried about her next fix than about her own daughter, Pearl has been left to fend for herself for a long time. The streets of New York City and her love of fashion are her only escapes. When she and her mother end up homeless, Pearl’s uncle steps in to deal with his sister and send Pearl to boarding school. This is the first opportunity she’s ever had to experience a somewhat normal life, and she’s determined not to mess it up.

This was a very character-driven novel, and Pearl had a great voice. She was smart, creative, observant, and she wanted so badly to find a place she belonged. She absolutely broke my heart at times. It can be hard enough to fit in and have a normal life, but when your past is as rough as hers and you’re worried that’s all you’ll ever be, or worse, that you’ll turn into the very person who made life so difficult, it can seem like a hopeless situation. She was a very real character - she made mistakes, she wanted to be loved, she had varied interests and big dreams, she was sexually active (I appreciated that, and how it was handled - it wasn’t some huge, life-changing thing, it was just a natural part of the story). I connected with her easily, and rooted for her from beginning to end, whether I wanted to give her a big hug or smack her upside the head.

The side characters in the book were equally interesting. Pearl’s new boarding school friend, Sorel, was incredibly volatile. She was like a teenage version of Pearl’s mother, which I suppose is why Pearl didn’t just write her off entirely, even though she should have because she was so toxic and treated Pearl like crap. Despite disliking Sorel and wishing Pearl would stay away from her, I understood why she didn’t, or couldn’t. On the other hand, Pearl’s roommate, Charmindy, ended up being a really great friend. They had little in common and came from completely different backgrounds, but Charmindy taught Pearl a lot about friendship, and it was a truly beautiful thing to watch. I also loved Shale, Pearl’s art teacher, and the lessons he taught her, not just about art, but about life. And then there was Grant...I didn’t think I was going to like him at first, but he grew on me and I ended up loving him. He was exactly the type of guy Pearl needed, and I enjoyed watching their relationship unfold. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t perfect, but it was realistic, which made their relationship easy to root for.

If you enjoy realistic, character-driven novels with beautiful prose and an overall hopeful message about life, love, forgiveness, and self-discovery, Pearl should be on your to-be-read list. While it deals with tough, often painful subjects, it does so in an open and honest way, and is ultimately a lovely and important coming-of-age story.

 *All quotes taken from the ARC version of Pearl by Deirdre Riordan Spark*

“My uncle doesn’t know Janet hasn’t touched a guitar for years, practically since I was born. She had me around the time when her band left the charts, when junkies traded CDs for cash, and when the sonic landscape as she’d known it became a digital blur. I was like a punctuation mark, the end.” ~ page 7

“Every day, over holiday, make sure you have a brush, a pen, or some implement in your hand, creating, without fail. The only way to get better is to do the work, daily. There are no shortcuts. Not many people realize that.” ~ page 92

“I want to cry, but I’m not sure how that will show him that I’m the rogue to all his sweetness and excellence. I want to rip open my chest and show him everything ugly and beautiful that lives there. All the hurt. All the loneliness. All my desires and dreams. I lack one thing, and that is courage.” ~ page 157

“My body strains to keep up with my mind and my mind with my body. I teeter to the edge of the roof and look down...I feel alone. I am a girl on the edge, on the edge of the past, present, and future, on the edge of love and lust, on the edge of truth and deceit. I tilt forward and back, wavering on heels and inebriation. I look down and then up. Falling is terrifying, but so is flying. A shooting star races through the sky. Just before it disappears, I make a wish and step away.” ~ page 282

“To Pearl, who, like her sisters in the ocean, is beginning to emerge as a beautiful treasure, a gift to herself and a gift to us all.” ~ page 334

Have you read Pearl? What did you think? If you haven't read it, do you plan to? Have you read any of Deirdre Riordan Hall's other books?

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Review: Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall

Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Series: Standalone
Published: June 1st, 2015
Publisher: Skyscape
291 pages (ARC)
Genre: Contemporary young adult
Acquired this book: From the author as a gift, with no expectation of a review
Warning: May contain spoilers
{GoodReads || Buy this book: Amazon || Chapters/Indigo}
 

I’m the fat Puerto Rican–Polish girl who doesn’t feel like she belongs in her skin, or anywhere else for that matter. I’ve always been too much and yet not enough.
Sugar Legowski-Gracia wasn’t always fat, but fat is what she is now at age seventeen. Not as fat as her mama, who is so big she hasn’t gotten out of bed in months. Not as heavy as her brother, Skunk, who has more meanness in him than fat, which is saying something. But she’s large enough to be the object of ridicule wherever she is: at the grocery store, walking down the street, at school. Sugar’s life is dictated by taking care of Mama in their run-down home—cooking, shopping, and, well, eating. A lot of eating, which Sugar hates as much as she loves.

When Sugar meets Even (not Evan—his nearly illiterate father misspelled his name on the birth certificate), she has the new experience of someone seeing her and not her body. As their unlikely friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about the future for the first time, a future not weighed down by her body or her mother.

Soon Sugar will have to decide whether to become the girl that Even helps her see within herself or to sink into the darkness of the skin-deep role her family and her life have created for her.

Sugar isn’t an easy book to read. It’s heartbreaking and bittersweet and painful, but it’s also powerful and ultimately full of hope. Besides breaking my heart, it made me angry, it made me uncomfortable, but it also reminded me that with faith, belief in yourself, and strength, anything is possible.

Sugar eats her feelings. Food, especially sweets, calm her down and help feed an insatiable need in her. Her weight, her mama, her brother, and her schoolmates are all part of the problem, and so she continues to eat to feel better, to fill that hole in her life, the ache that can only be satisfied by the one constant in her life: food. Her mother is so morbidly obese she’s bed-bound, her brother is a nasty piece of work with a hair-trigger temper, and the kids at school make sure she never forgets how fat she is, along with how stupid, ugly, and unwanted. Everyone makes her feel like she’s worthless, in the way, and will never amount to anything...until Even comes along. Sweet, gentle, kind Even, who doesn't seem to care that Sugar is an outcast or that she weighs hundreds of pounds. For the first time in her life, Sugar has someone who sees beyond her exterior and likes what they see.

The things Sugar’s mom and brother, along with the kids at school, say and do to her are absolutely disgusting, rage-inducing, and heartbreaking. There were so many times where I just wanted to take Sugar in my arms, hold her tight, and tell her that everything they said was wrong. She was so sweet and tried so hard to please everyone, but she got nothing but grief in return. She was such a good girl - she went to church every week (and not out of obligation), she took care of her horrible, cruel mother, did all the shopping and cleaning and cooking, and tried to do well in school. It’s rare to see a character who’s as good as Sugar without being a goody goody - she was just genuinely good, kind, and had a huge heart, and I loved that about her. 

One thing I really appreciated about this book is that Sugar didn’t lose weight because of or ‘for’ Even. In so many books, a big girl gets attention for the first time and suddenly she wants to lose weight because there’s no possible way she could be beautiful or what a guy wants or needs or deserves if she’s fat. Or a girl does it for revenge against an ex, a bully, or whoever. But with Sugar, she didn’t even realize she was losing weight at first, it just happened because her life was changing - she was walking to school, she didn’t need to ‘eat her feelings’ as much, and she found the satisfaction she used to find in food from Even instead. It eventually became a conscious decision to become healthy, but it was through things she learned and through personal growth rather than for or because of someone specific.

While I did have a couple small issues with Sugar - namely the believability of some things, and the fact that the painful, awful things that happened to Sugar seemed like overkill at times - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It deals with a lot of serious issues in a mostly realistic way that has the ability to touch you deeply. Despite being heartbreaking, Sugar is ultimately a story of triumph, strength, and hope. 

~Favourite Quote~

“Sugar, I see a beautiful, creative, and intelligent girl. Yes, I see what you look like on the outside and it isn’t what little girls growing up see in magazines and movies or what girls like Hillary and Allie look like either, but if we all looked just alike or worse, acted alike, this world would be a boring place. You’ve got curves. But all of you makes you who you are, and I like that girl. In fact, you’re my favorite person in the world. You have confidence in there, but sometimes I think you just misplace it” ~ page 177
   

    

Want to win an ARC of Sugar, plus a swag pack? Deirdre stopped by The Authorteers, the blog I co-run with a group of author friends, and generously donated an awesome prize pack. You can enter to win here. 

 

 Have you read Sugar? What did you think? If you haven't read it, do you plan to? Have you read any other books with plus-sized main characters? Let's talk here or on Twitter!

  
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