I’m pleased to feature Victoria Bernadine, author of A Life Less Ordinary on my blog today. Her new novel is about a woman traveling through her mid-life crisis. The story line reminded me of Under the Tuscan Sun, so I wanted to learn more about this book.
For the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good girl. Now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit her job, sold her house, cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving town on a six month road trip.
After placing an ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most read – and most controversial – blogger for the e-zine, What Women Want. Zeke’s true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the same time.
Now, armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.
I asked Victoria how she chose the stops on her character’s road trip. Were they places she’s been and has memories about, good or bad? Did she pull out a travel guide to plan the road trip? Or was there another method at work in planning the places her main character visited?
Here’s what she told me:
Thanks for hosting me today! The short answer to your questions above is: yes. To all of them – LOL.
I’ve been to some of the places mentioned in the book: Drumheller and Frank Slide in Alberta, Canada; San Francisco; Las Vegas; the Grand Canyon; Disney World. Some of the touristy things that Manny does are things I’ve done (the Victorian house tour in San Francisco, for example). I’ve also included places I want to see (Tennessee, for example) and things I’d like to do (e.g., attend a red carpet film premiere) but I just haven’t made managed them yet.
I also looked at travel guides, maps and a very old guide to bed and breakfasts in the States. The book doesn’t really delve into great detail about the locations they visit as they’re really just backdrops to the relationship between Manny and Zeke. If I could have travelled to each location at the time I was writing the book, that might have been different…or not. LOL I also spent some time plotting estimated times to travel between each location so I could have a relatively accurate timeline for the storyline. Please don’t plot it yourself, though, because I’m sure I made some adjustments for the sake of the timing of events across the multiple storylines (*facepalm*).
The book include elements of true events that are exaggerated or adjusted for the story as well as events that are completely from my imagination. For example, I’ve been stranded on the side of a road with my brothers and sister and have had to walk for help. But there’s nothing in the book that’s an accurate description of a true event in my or anybody else’s life (although people who know me were definitely concerned! 
).
Now that you know a bit about the story behind the story, here’s an excerpt from A Life Less Ordinary.
“All I ever wanted was a life less ordinary.”
Manny lay flat on her back, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling while she waited for her clock to hit 6:00. Another day of work, she thought. Another day older and deeper in debt.
She had the alarm timed to the millisecond. The jarring noise had barely begun when she clicked it off. She sighed then threw back the covers and got out of bed.
She padded into the bathroom, glanced without interest in the full-length mirror that doubled as her shower doors and took her morning inventory.
Plain face? Check.
Looking tired? Check.
Thirty pounds overweight? Check.
Dark circles under deer-caught-in-headlights eyes? Check and check.
She shook her head at her limp, mousy hair and wondered when she’d gotten so old.
She sighed in resignation then conjured up her Perfect Fantasy Man–or Harvey, as she liked to call him–to give her a morning lift. She cocked her head to one side as she stared into the mirror and imagined him standing behind her. She smiled at the handsome man, and he smiled back, putting his hands on her shoulders. Everything about him was warm, in stark contrast to the cold shades of grey in which she lived her life. He had warm brown eyes, warm brown skin, and a warm smooth voice that always reminded her of golden honey. Today his hair was black with greying temples, and yes, even that seemed warm to her.
He was perfect, everything she considered ideal in a man–and extra-perfect, of course, because he was a fantasy. Just the thought of trying to establish a relationship with an actual man felt too much like work.
She sighed and Harvey disappeared.
“Instead I ended up in a rut–everything planned and executed to the minute.”
Click the banner to follow all the stops on this virtual book tour!
AUTHOR INFORMATION:
Victoria Bernadine (a pseudonym) is, as the saying goes, a “woman of a certain age”. After twenty-something years of writer’s block, she began writing again in 2008. She began with fanfiction about a (now-cancelled) TV show called Jericho and particularly about the characters of Heather Lisinski and Edward Beck. From there, she expanded into writing original fic and she hasn’t stopped since.
Victoria enjoys reading all genres and particularly loves writing romantic comedy and post-apocalyptic science fiction. What those two have in common is anybody’s guess.
She lives in Edmonton with her two cats (The Grunt and The Runt). A Life Less Ordinary is the first novel she felt was good enough to be released into the wild.
Victoria can be contacted through Love of Words Publishing Inc. or through her brand new blog at
http://victoriabernadine.wordpress.com/
.
A Life Less Ordinary is available for sale on Amazon in both Kindle and hard copy formats.
Like this:
Like Loading...
