BLAST, BLITZ, PROMOS, REVEALS, & TOURS . . . : SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - WOMEN'S FICTION

Babe in the Woods

by Jude Hopkins

Date of Publication: June 7th 2023

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Inc.

Cover Artist: Tina Lynn Stout

Genre: Women’s Fiction

ISBN 978-1-5092-4843-8

ISBN 978-1-5092-4844-5

Number of pages: 294

Word Count: 72,321

Tagline: Timber! She’s Falling in Love

BLURB

It’s September 1995, the first year of the rest of Hadley Todd's life. After living in Los Angeles, Hadley returns to her hometown in rural New York to write and be near her father.

In addition to looking after him and teaching high school malcontents, Hadley hopes to channel her recent L.A. heartbreak into a play about the last moment of a woman’s innocence. But she seeks inspiration.

Enter Trey Harding, a young, handsome reporter who covers sports at the high school. Trey reminds Hadley of her L.A. ex and is the perfect spark to fire up her imagination. The fact that Trey is an aspiring rock star and she has L.A. record biz connections makes the alliance perfect. She dangles promises of music biz glory while watching his moves.

But the surprising twist that transpires when the two of them go to Hollywood is not something Hadley prepared for.

Amazon BN

Excerpt:

There was a knock on the door as Hadley sat down with a bowl of chocolate-chip ice cream. She glanced at the clock: 8 p.m. Sunday night. She’d shot the whole weekend, mostly grading papers and sleeping the day before.

“My God,” she said aloud, remembering Trey’s promise to make good on a date. How could he possibly show up after she’d been so deliberately elusive? She had forgotten the resiliency of some guys.

“Who is it?” she trilled, bouncing a mound of the frozen dessert on her tongue. She cleared her throat and repeated the question, all the while picking up the detritus from the weekend—the pizza box, the ice cream container, the National Enquirer.

“ ‘Tis I, Old Dog Trey,” he yelled through the door. “Ever faithful. We have a meeting, remember?”

She used her fingers to comb her hair and moaned when the mirror reflected a wan, puffy face staring back at her.

“I never confirmed any meeting,” she said through the door. She hurried to straighten the cushions on the couch. “I’ll take a rain check.” Her heart was doing double time.

“C’mon. Please open the door. It’s getting chilly out here.” His voice was deeper than usual.

She brushed the lint off her sweatshirt and zipped up her jeans before opening the door.

Trey was twirling the end of a white stick in his mouth. With a loud slurping sound, he pulled from his mouth a bright red lollipop before sticking out his tongue, which now matched the color of his shirt.

“Fire your secretary,” he said, tapping his watch. “May I come in?”

She let him in, the shame of her unkempt apartment equaled only by the shame of her own disheveled appearance.

He stood close to her. “I have to say, you are much more attractive without all that make-up.” He talked with the lollipop stuck in his cheek. “Definitely younger.”

It was an approach she remembered from her time with Derek. First you surprise them, then compliment them when they’re at their most vulnerable. She made a mental note.

He walked toward the nearest chair, sat down, but quickly jumped up again, fishing in his pockets. “Where are my manners? Here.” He extended a lollipop, grape flavor, her favorite.

“No thanks.” It wasn’t even on the level of the apple Neil had given her on the first day of school. Besides, what was with men and their semiotics anyway? Perhaps it beat communicating with words. And how in the world would he have known grape was her favorite flavor? Was she that transparent? Was there a grape “type” as opposed to an orange or cherry type? The grape type would be moody and dark. The orange type would be young, perky, sassy. The cherry type? Passionate, desirable. Like him.

Lollipops aside, he was lusciousness itself, the blood-red shirt adding to his angel-faced carnality. His skin glowed, no doubt from a day spent in the autumn sun with a frisky faun.

Author Info

Jude Hopkins has published essays in The Los Angeles Times, Medium, the belladonna—and poetry in various journals including Gyroscope Review, Timber Creek Review and California Quarterly. Her first novel, Babe in the Woods, will be published June 7, 2023. She has also taught English and news writing at various universities, including the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Arizona State University and St. Bonaventure University in Olean, N.Y. She also worked at Capitol Records in Hollywood for a few halcyon and unforgettable years.

The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with . . . Jude Hopkins . . .

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
I deliberately aimed for an accessible, but eclectic, style that reflects some of my protagonist’s qualities. Hadley is an English teacher (as I was), but she loves pop culture (as I do), so plenty of references to books as well as contemporary society (the book is set in the 1990s) will be found within my novel’s pages and in Hadley’s thoughts. I had a very influential professor who taught rhetoric at my graduate school; thus, I always had a few of his precepts going through my mind during editing, especially, “Vary your sentences, as well as how you begin your sentences as well as their length.” I also worked for a newspaper and taught news writing for a bit, so the value of concision was always on my mind, whether or not I always achieved it.

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
Back to my influential rhetoric professor—one of the things he drilled in my head as a prospective teacher (and writer) was this: Tell your students they have choices to make in their writing. So although I agree to a certain extent that writers might be born with some proclivity toward effective writing, I will add that it is definitely made more polished and engaging with reading and consciously studying language, looking at what other writers have done that have made me pause to re-read and figuring out how they did what they did. I read with a pen in my hand, always.

What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?
Good question. Once again, I go back to my rhetoric professor who taught me those canons of classical rhetoric that apply to the written word: invention, arrangement, style. Even though these are geared toward writing argument, I found them to be helpful in any writing situation. Invention is the brainstorming part of writing. What are you going to write about? What ideas are going through your head? Can any of them be developed?

Arrangement is the form your writing will take—are you writing a scene? A chapter? How much dialogue will take place and between which characters? How will it end?

Style comprises the words and sentences used in your writing. Hemingway is credited with saying, “The first draft of anything is s@#*,” so style must encompass the many drafts of editing that any writer must do. I work better with some kind of structure, some idea in my head before I sit down to write. But only when I begin to write do I know what I want to say. I always think of how long it took Hemingway to get the right words for the last line of The Sun Also Rises, a line Jake delivers to Brett when she suggests they could have had “such a damn good time together.” Jake, rendered impotent by a war wound, replies, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”—a line that had gone through several edits before landing on perfection, especially the adjective “pretty.” What a word.

Have you found yourself bonding with any particular character(s)? If so, which one(s)?
Sure. My protagonist Hadley is a lot like me. But unlike me, she had a journey to undergo, whereas I was writing from already having taken that journey. Not that I don’t still have much to learn! But she is experiencing things that I’ve thought about when I was younger, e.g., the desperate yearning to find the “perfect man” (that includes, someone who can cook and do dishes, too), the compulsion to write something, in her case, a play about a woman’s last moment of innocence, and a craving for more balance in her life. But, yes, I relate to her impulsiveness, her willfulness, and her passion. I would just say we sought each of the above in varying degrees at different times in our lives.

Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character during story creation?
I once wrote an essay about my life in Los Angeles that I submitted to an editor who told me to unlock the emotion therein. “It’s so tightly packed,” she said. “Open it up.” What she meant was, write how you truly felt at the time, even when it made you appear vulnerable. When I did that, my essay became more honest, more authentic. And it was an emotional undertaking, too, causing me to sob my eyes out when I re-lived some of the moments of such a trying time in my life—being chased by a guy on the mean streets of L.A. after teaching night school, dealing with a painful break-up, celebrating a “big” birthday by myself in a Malibu oceanside hotel.

So when I wrote characters for my book Babe in the Woods, I remembered that advice—open up your characters. I had a terrific editor, Michelle Rascon, whose editing sheets really detailed how the characters appeared and helped me to see them from the “outside.” She suggested that my protagonist, Hadley, already loaded with acute self-awareness, use some of her knowledge to become more open minded about change; she was stagnant for too long. Let her use her self-awareness to consider other directions. That helped enormously in character development. Editor Rascon also thought readers should get to know Hadley a bit better at the outset, to gain some insight into her, so she suggested a scene change without Hadley being surrounded by too many other characters. This also was a great idea. I wanted readers to understand Hadley’s sensibility, her hopes as a woman and a writer, and her compassion for others. So, yes, Hadley definitely did go through changes and learn from her mistakes. With subsequent edits, I wrote those changes in the storyline, hoping that readers could see Hadley’s reflection on events and her transformations, some misguided, some revelatory. For example, Hadley knows that her involving the young man Trey as research for her play without telling him what she was doing was wrong, something that will bother her until her conscience finally gives out. She also takes a second look at a man who has been in her life since childhood, ready to weigh his appreciable assets against those less solid. But life doesn’t always work out the way we think we want it to, so Hadley must deal with those consequences, too. I think her resolve to live with less hurt—to herself and others—is a major change, one that she undergoes. And I certainly wrote the story so that readers could experience her insights and life changes with her.

Website: https://www.judehopkinswriting.net/

Blog: https://www.judehopkinswriting.net/my-blog

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeyJudeNotJudy