Guest Blog: Liz Crowe

Staying Legit
By: Liz Crowe

Sometimes, during the hours I spend trolling the social nets and interwebs seeking more and better and creative ways to shove my books under more readers’ noses, I come across things that disturb me, make me professionally jealous, or inspire me (all of these are at times mutually exclusive). Sometimes, it is very difficult to keep things in perspective, and by “these things” I mean my value to the general reading public and my relative importance to the greater literary canon (i.e. how soon I’ll join all those folks on the NYT and USA Today Best Seller lists). I mean, I have a bunch of books out, have a decent following that grows daily, mainly thanks to the popularity of the Stewart Realty series. But I am hard to pin down, to categorize, to stuff onto a genre-specific bookshelf.

So, I flounder a little. Sure, the Stewart Realty books have their very hot (read: sexually explicit) moments. Yes, there are elements of the Ever Popular BDSM Sub-genre That Was Apparently Just Invented. Most of the time my characters find a degree of happiness thanks to the love and caring of another. But other than that, it’s a sort of free-for-all, emotionally speaking. And, as one of my fans has noted: “It’s a Liz Crowe Book. Don’t get too attached to any one character.”

I write what I enjoy reading. And I like an author to take me on a bit of roller coaster ride. I don’t go in for merry-go-rounds or anything that seems like it’s going in a circle back to an obvious conclusion. I want to know the inner workings of a character’s motivation, what hurts them as much as what heals them. And so, that is what I write. I’ve been excoriated by traditional “romance” venues so much I am going out on a limb here and stating: I Do Not Write Romance Books.

I write fiction. About people in relationships, be they sexual, familial, or otherwise. I explore how people interact with each other and, at times, if it feels natural, I describe it, in detail.

I hope you get a chance to join the small but rapidly-picking-up-speed Stewart Realty bandwagon. It’s quite a ride. But if you seek predictability, with pretty, tied-up-with-a-bow conclusions or formulaic answers, look elsewhere.

Cheers
Liz

Please click HERE to enter the Stewart Realty series contest.

Author Bio

Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger and beer marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse. While working as a successful Realtor, Liz made the leap into writing novels about the same time she agreed to take on marketing and sales for the Wolverine State Brewing Company.

Most days find her sweating inventory and sales figures for the brewery, unless she’s writing, editing or sweating promotional efforts for her latest publications.

Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”

With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and many times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate, and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.

If you are in the Ann Arbor area, be sure and stop into the Wolverine State Brewing Co. Tap Room—but don’t ask her for anything “like” a Bud Light, or risk serious injury.

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