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Monday 9 March 2015

SWEET MUSE Guest Post & Giveaway


The Story Behind Sweet Muse
A lot of people ask if Sweet Muse is an autobiography and if I’m Anna Starr. What I can say is that Sweet Muse might have been inspired by experiences I’ve had and people I’ve met and that Anna and I do share some personality traits. But it is purely a work of fiction.

I can also say that when The Devil Wears Prada was published, I was working at one of the world’s biggest fashion magazines, and I had the same idea to use my wild magazine stories as a backdrop for a novel. A decade later, I was still thinking about writing that novel, setting it in the late nineties—the last hurrah of publishing, before the web changed content and magazine editors still had cache and control over the industries they covered.

At the same time, I’ve always loved romance novels. I adore a happily ever after and would tear through everything from historical to contemporary. I dreamed of becoming a romance novelist while editing the dating advice column. The advice we offered was so spunky and all about female empowerment, and I thought it would be fun to reinvent the category, taking a page from that approach.

When 50 Shades of Grey came out and became a phenomenon, I had an a-ha and decided to put the two ideas together—a big, yummy romance with NYC magazine publishing as the setting. I set Sweet Muse in a celebrity magazine. I worked at some of the biggest celebrity magazines in the country, and the tabloid news business is such a rich place of extremes. The personalities are intense and sometimes the tactics used are…questionable. When I worked in the business, people would constantly ask how it works and if the news is real. I felt that in this book, I could spill some of the inner machinations of how the cult of celebrity was built.

At the same time, I wanted to mix up the romance formula. I was tired of the same romance plot line, where the innocent assistant falls for the young, dashing billionaire CEO. I took a page from Girls and made my main female character independent, edgy, and honest. She doesn’t have everything figured out, and she’s experiencing the full spectrum of the agony of figuring yourself out in your twenties.

She represents the little bit of bad girl we all have in us. On her own for the first time, unencumbered by her past and who she had to be growing up, Anna wants to discover herself and reinvent herself. She feels free for the first time to rebel and break out of the good girl she had to be growing up. Finally, she feels the freedom to let herself go, go a little wild—and test the boundaries to discover where she fits in in the world and to create her own happily ever after.

The Book

Sweet Muse by Ava Cummings
Genre: Contemporary Fiction / Erotic Romance


About Sweet Muse:
Determined to overcome her difficult past, Anna Starr lands a coveted job at the nation's biggest celebrity magazine in the center of the New York City power scene. She learns early on to make it on her own, and through sheer force of will she does. But frustration sets in when the dark side of tabloid journalism starts to poke through, and she gets duped while dating slicker-than-thou city boys.

Amidst a sea of cocktail parties, Anna meets rising art star Damien Wolfe. Their connection is dangerous, intense, and passionate beyond her imagination. He sees her in a way that she has never seen herself, setting her on a journey toward self-discovery—understanding what it means to be truly loved for the first time in her life. But she may lose it all when her blind ambition and his dark past lead to a crisis that changes everything.
Source: Info in the About Sweet Muse was from the press kit from the publicity team.

Buy Link(s):


What Readers are Saying:
"It's like Fifty Shades of Grey meets Devil wears Prada meets Girls!" —Carrie Adel

"I couldn’t put it down! Sweet Muse has it all—celebrities, scandal, and steamy romance. Ava Cummings’ writing invites the reader into Anna’s world, sharing her journey as she discovers the dark side of her dream job at a celebrity magazine and finds a love so powerful it will change everything. Totally captivating!" —Sarah Bagwell


Meet The Author

About Ava Cummings:
Ava Cummings spent more than 10 years as an editor at some of the biggest and best-known magazines in the world. She fetched coffee, fell in love with fashion, and eventually became a full-fledged editor, covering Hollywood and bringing in stories about bold women that were making a difference in the world. She has spun together the sweep-you-off-your-feet happy endings of fairy tales, the unbelievable headlines she reads in the news, and the quirky personalities that she’s encountered in both the real world and on reality TV in her first novel, Sweet Muse. Ava lives in the leafy suburbs of Boston with her husband and two children.

Follow the Tour:
March 2nd Bookish - Debbie – Guest Post
March 2nd Chosen One – Review
March 3rd Forbidden Reviews – Playlist
March 4th Beauty and the Armageddon – This or That
March 5th Karin's Fantasy World – Review
March 5th Unconventional Librarian – Guest Post
March 6th Carolyn's World – Review
March 6th Reads All The Books – Review
March 9th Babs Book Bistro  – Author Interview
March 9th Cherry Mischievous  – Spotlight/Guest Post
March 10th Nicole Alamillo –Review
March 10th Shell Williams  – Review
March 11th Heather Ann's Book Reviews  – Review
March 11th All About Books  – Review
March 12th Anna's Blog – Review
March 12th The Reader and The Chef – Review
March 13th Lara's Reviews – Review 
March 13th Pixie Vixen Book Reviews – Review 


Giveaway

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

thanks for having me guest post! xx

Cherry said...

Ava Cummings - Thank you for visiting us! :)

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