Guest Blog & Giveaway with Grace Coopersmith

I'm exciting to introduce and welcome Grace Coopersmith. Who some of you may know as Marta Acosta, author of the Casa Dracula series. Grace is here today to talk about her debut novel Nancy's Theory of Style. Welcome Grace!!


I’m thrilled that my new romantic comedy, Nancy’s Theory of Style, is coming out on May 18. I’m writing this book under my pen name, Grace Coopersmith, and I have a funny paranormal series, Casa Dracula, under my own name, Marta Acosta. Nancy Carrington-Chambers first appears in my Casa Dracula books as a pretty, wealthy, style-conscious society girl with an eccentric way of speaking and a stubborn streak.

When my editor suggested that I write a book featuring Nancy, I jumped at the chance. Some characters come to me whole, and Nancy is one of those. I can see her in my mind’s eye: she’s petite, chic, with blonde curly hair and she looks like “a grown-up version of the cutest kid in kindergarten.” She says things like, “Good taste is not style,” and “Leopard print is a timeless classic.”

Nancy married her equally privileged college boyfriend, Todd, and they’ve built a house together far out in the suburbs. She thought it would be her dream house, but Todd’s gone behind her back with the contractor and turned it into what Nancy calls the House of Horrors. When she can’t take anymore, she separates temporarily from Todd and returns to her bachelorette apartment in posh Pacific Heights.

She hires a gorgeous, impeccably dressed, British assistant, Derek, to help her resurrect the city’s most exclusive and dreariest fundraiser. She thinks Derek’s perfect and, because he’s gay, she is more honest with him than she’s been with any man before. Things are going wonderfully when Nancy’s irresponsible cousin abandons her four-year-old in Nancy’s care. But the socialite, the assistant, and the child manage to a family of sorts.

Nancy’s snobbery and desire to preserve appearances cause her to make terrible mistakes, and her world comes crashing down. Does she have the strength to lose everything she’s believed is important in order to protect those she’s come to love?

Readers have said that Nancy’s the girl you love to hate. She’s had all the advantages in life and thinks she deserves them. I thought she seemed tremendously fun, the sort of girl you’d like despite yourself. You’d begin to see that she’s not as lucky as you first assumed. Eventually you’d come to fall for her and root for her to make the right decisions, to take the chance because, as Nancy says, real style takes risks.

I hope you’ll give Nancy and my new novel a chance! Please add it to your summer reads.

www.gracecoopersmith.com
grace AT gracecoopersmith DOT com

Giveaway

Thanks to Simon and Schuster I have a copy of Nancy's Theory of Style to giveaway. To enter leave a comment along with your email address. Open to U.S. and Canada. The Winner will be announced on May 18th. Good Luck!


Nancy's Theory of Style
By: Grace Coopersmith
Release date: May 18, 2010

Book Summary:

Lively young socialite Nancy Carrington-Chambers has always believed an excellent sense of style and strict attention to detail are what it takes to succeed, but her own husband Todd is showing symptoms of incurable tackiness, so Nancy flees their McMansion for her posh San Francisco apartment. She knows her event planning company, Froth, is a real winner, but she must prove herself by reinventing the turgid Barbary Coast Historical Museum fundraiser. Luckily, Nancy now has the perfect assistant. Derek Cathcart is British, impeccably dressed, gorgeous, and clearly gay—so why does Nancy find him so attractive?

Before Nancy can unravel her feelings, her irresponsible cousin Birdie abandons her little daughter with Nancy and takes off. Nancy, Derek, and Eugenia make an unlikely “family,” but strangely it seems incredibly right. Now Nancy’s parents are pressuring her to return to Todd, and she still has to pull off a spectacular party. For someone who’s always known exactly where she’s going, Nancy is in dangerously uncharted waters.