The Story Behind the Book, Bestseller

I suppose there’s always a story, isn’t there? Best Seller is my fifth novel. When I’d written my first novel, Chocolate for Breakfast, I had high hopes and very naïve aspirations about its success. I connected with favorite authors online and sent personal messages when I read and enjoyed their books. I posted reviews, and suggested to my online friends that they read this particular book. I did what I was supposed to do in order to build a platform.
So, when my first book was released, I went to two or three of these favorite authors and asked if they’d be willing to read and review it. And imagine my surprise when they declined! They were always polite about it, or indicated they didn’t have the time, but it hurt. 

I took that tiny piece of reality and created a novel (Best Seller) from it. One where a young woman who doesn’t even realize how talented a writer she is pins all her hopes on the possibility that her favorite author will read her manuscript and love it so much that she’ll open doors for her. Doesn’t every aspiring author (actor, musician) hope for a similar stroke of good fortune?

So that’s where the story originated. That’s the small kernel of truth that blossomed into a novel. But the real story isn’t so much about Robin and her book as it is about Robin’s journey into adulthood, her reconciliation with people she’d pushed away.

AMAZON

ABOUT THE BOOK:  Set in New England at the time of the American Bicentennial, BEST SELLER is the poignant story of a displaced young woman struggling to figure out who she is within the context of her hometown and the carefully masked dysfunction of her family.

"Everything can be fixed by writing a check." Words to live by for Robin Fortune's wealthy father, until he can't buy her way back into college after she's expelled for dealing pot. Now he chooses not to speak to her anymore, but that's just one of the out-of-whack situations Robin's facing. At nineteen, she feels rudderless, working in a diner by day and sleeping with a buddy from high school by night - all so strange for her because she was always the one with the plan. While her college friends plotted how to ensnare husbands, she plotted a novel, which she scratched out into a series of spiral-bound notebooks she hides in the closet. But now, there's nothing. No vision, no future, no point. In fact, the only thing she feels she has to look forward to is that her favorite author, Maryana Capture, is paying a visit to the local Thousand Words bookstore. Robin surmises that if she can convince Maryana to help her get her novel published, she'll finally get herself back on track. Except that life never takes a straight path in this intensely satisfying coming-of-age novel.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Martha Reynolds ended an accomplished career as a fraud investigator and began writing full time in 2011. She is the author of five novels, including the award-winning Chocolate for Breakfast (her debut novel), Chocolate Fondue, Bittersweet Chocolate, and the Amazon #1 bestseller Bits of Broken Glass. Best Seller is her latest release. Her essays have appeared in Magnificat magazine.

She and her husband live in Rhode Island, never far from the ocean.