Spotlight & Interview: Love on the Boardwalk by Christi Barth

Kathy: I am thrilled to welcome Christi Barth to Book Reviews & More by Kathy. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us today.

I always have to begin by asking what motivated you to become a writer? How long have you been writing, and was it a long process to become a published author?

I always wanted to be an author. Of course, I also wanted to be a princess for the tiaras and floofy skirts. Neither dream seemed particularly possible. As a bookworm and a speed reader, I’ve had a deep and undying love for writing forever. To stave off boredom during the summer between 8th & 9th grade (I was 12), I wrote a 60 page historical opus entitled Alyssa’s Last Look. Then I discovered I couldn’t stop – the ideas just kept swirling around in my head. Six years ago I finally mustered the motivation to finish my book, and now I’m writing my fifteenth.

 Kathy: You have an impressive amount of published works. What is a typical day in the life as author Christi Barth? Do you write every day? How long does it take you to complete your novels?

Unfortunately, a typical day entails getting up and going to my day job at a college. Yes-the ugly secret of writers is revealed-many of us still keep our noses to the office grindstone (although I do get four weeks paid vacation, so I don’t complain too loudly).

After years as an actress, my creative juices kick into high gear after 6 pm. I do my plotting during the day – well, whenever the ideas strike, which is often either when I’m at the gym or the symphony, oddly enough. But the bulk of my writing takes place between sunset and midnight. Every day. A full length single title (100,000 words) takes about four months to finish. A novella—unsurprisingly, if you do the math—takes about a month.

Kathy: I have to confess that I am a huge fan of series & sequels and I am delighted that Love on the Boardwalk is a sequel to Love at High Tide. Do you know ahead of time you are going to write a sequel?   What influences your decision to continue the series?

I have crazy love for series – love to binge. Often, such as when I start a new trilogy, I’m aware there will be multiple books. It is imperative to know the full series goal when inserting characters and their interactions (especially the ones who end up together by the final book!).

When I wrote Love at High Tide there was not even a hint of an idea for a sequel percolating in my brain. As I started ramping up for its release last year, I thought about how much I loved the secondary heroine. It seemed a pity not to give her a happy ending. Especially since it meant getting to vicariously visit the beach in my imagination for another few months!

 Kathy: Now for a few nosy get to know you questions. Do you have a favorite book or author you like to recommend? Do you have a comfort read?

Nora Roberts. Hands down. She is the undisputed master of the romance craft. Her books make you feel like you are in them, standing right next to the characters. But I also just started Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampire series and am absolutely infatuated with it – can’t read them fast enough. And as far as an official recommendation, I have to turn people on to my friend Laura Kaye’s Hard Ink series. Hot, angsty, sexy, suspenseful…did I mention hot?

Kathy: What is your guilty pleasure?

I feel zero guilt about things that make me happy. But I’m guessing the rest of the world would slot my addiction to Real Housewives and 19 Kids & Counting under guilty pleasures……

Kathy: Favorite meal?

I’ve got three: pasta, submarine sandwiches, and sushi (not necessarily in that order).

Kathy: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

Easy to answer, since I already capped off one career! I’ve got a masters in vocal performance, and spent years doing opera and musical theatre.

Kathy: If you could time travel, what time period would you visit?

Any time that involves petticoats. The more, the better (see previous question for a little backstory about how much I love wearing petticoats). But I’d only want to visit for about a week. Then I’d come home and take a very long shower and turn on the television with a blissful sigh of contentment.

Kathy: Could you tell us a little about Love on the Boardwalk?

It is a madcap romantic caper set in Atlantic City. Here’s the official blurb: Atlantic City is the perfect place for detective Bradley Hudson to nurse his broken heart. A week of beer and strippers is sure to erase his former fiancée from his memory for good. What he didn’t count on was running into a sassy redhead from his past. Maybe a rebound romp is an even better plan…

Trina Trimble, private eye in training, is thrilled to be reunited with the hottie she almost hooked up with last summer. She’s undercover on her first solo case, but there’s always time to lock lips with a sexy cop. Besides, a fun fling with Brad doesn’t have to last beyond his week in town.

Brad and Trina are supposed to be just flirting, not forging a new forever. Brad’s still healing, and although Trina changes careers the way other women change shoes, she has finally found her calling in her new life of disguises and stakeouts. But when an irresistible job offer threatens to lure her away, Brad will need to decide to let her go or bet it all on love and risk his heart again.

 Kathy: Thank you again for chatting with us today. Congratulations on the release of Love on the Boardwalk.

Thanks for having me!!!!


boardwalkTitle: Love on the Boardwalk by Christi Barth
Publisher: Carina Press
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Word Count: 51,000

Summary:

Atlantic City is the perfect place for detective Bradley Hudson to nurse his broken heart. A week of beer and strippers is sure to erase his former fiancée from his memory for good. What he didn’t count on was running into a sassy redhead from his past. Maybe a rebound romp is an even better plan…

Trina Trimble, private eye in training, is thrilled to be reunited with the hottie she almost hooked up with last summer. She’s undercover on her first solo case, but there’s always time to lock lips with a sexy cop. Besides, a fun fling with Brad doesn’t have to last beyond his week in town.

Brad and Trina are supposed to be just flirting, not forging a new forever. Brad’s still healing, and although Trina changes careers the way other women change shoes, she has finally found her calling in her new life of disguises and stakeouts. But when an irresistible job offer threatens to lure her away, Brad will need to decide to let her go or bet it all on love and risk his heart again.

Read my review HERE.

Purchase Links: Carina Press * Amazon * B&N * iBooks * Google Play


Excerpt

Worst honeymoon ever. Not that Bradley Hudson had experienced much in way of comparison. But he knew it was missing some key ingredients. First clue? He was not sitting on a sunny Caribbean beach, sucking on a rum punch. Second clue? No sex. And the third, most telling piece of evidence?

No wife.

He took a sip of something brown and tasteless that was as weak as it was pricey. Oh, well. Not as if he’d come here to get blitzed. Brad could drink for free when he hit the casinos. At a strip club, the draw was the eye candy. What he could see of it past all the fake greenery.

The strip clubs here weren’t just your basic stage and a pole like the ones he’d raided as a beat cop back home in Baltimore. No, in Atlantic City everything had to have a theme. Here at Club Eden, each of the stools at the edge of the stage was shaped like the ass end of a different animal, complete with tails hanging from the back. A spiky green plant poked at the top of Brad’s head. More surrounded him, giving his fake grass-covered banquette in the corner the feeling of a private cabana. A very green, very tacky cabana.

So his view was limited to straight ahead. Only about a third of the stage. Since Brad only gave a third of a rat’s ass about seeing the gravity-defying racks on the dancers, it didn’t matter. After all, he hadn’t even wanted to come. But his dad—of all people—made him promise to engage in the age-old custom of staring at fake boobs at least once, just to stick it to the memory of his ex-fiancée. And everyone at his Maryland State Police barracks had pitched in to give him a wad of singles to stuff…somewhere.

What he did enjoy was the view of the waitress who was to-and-fro-ing it in front of him. She wore a green bikini top with a few strategically placed twining vines. A grass skirt was too long by the width of a single blade of grass for him to arrest her for indecent exposure. Her butt twitched the grass with every step in a hypnotic swish that pulled him far more than the gyrations on stage. As did the cascade of deep red curls that skimmed the top of it.

Not that it mattered. Not that Brad intended to do anything more than just look. ’Cause if you dug a hole straight through to the opposite side of the earth, you still wouldn’t get low enough to rank women on his priority list. Right now, for him, they just made good scenery. Like the backdrops he’d painted the summer he pitched in with the school musical to catch the eye of Kerri…no, Cammie? Some hot blonde a year ahead of him who’d kissed him across an enormous canvas covered with wheat fields and haystacks. The night the backdrop got stuck up in the fly system, the show still rolled on. The music and story came out just as well without the backdrop. And for now Brad’s life rolled on, better than ever without the complication, heartache and headache of a woman in it.

The music switched from Eurotrash pop to a technobeat that buzzed in his molars. Brad shifted to pull his phone out of his pocket. He wanted to take a picture of his cheesy fake grass-covered seat and shoot it to Coop. Chances were his cousin wouldn’t believe the description without photographic evidence. Distrust for what he couldn’t see was part of what made Coop such a good detective. Not quite as good as Brad, of course, but close.

As soon as the flash went off, little Miss Grass Skirt barreled over, long hair almost covering her face. “No photos in here, hon. You’re lucky the bouncer didn’t see you, or you’d be losing an arm along with your phone.” She held out a hand.

“Sorry. I didn’t think.” Brad passed over the phone. “Look for yourself—there aren’t any people in this photo.”

She took it. Snorted. “Talk about pointless. Did your butt form a deep, sentimental attachment with the fake grass beneath it? Wanna remember it forever?”

Wow. Bet she didn’t get many tips with that kind of an attitude in this place. But it did tease a grin out of him. “I don’t have to explain my spank bank to you.”


Author Bio

Christi Barth earned a Masters degree in vocal performance and embarked upon a career on the stage. A love of romance then drew her to wedding planning. Ultimately she succumbed to her lifelong love of books and now writes award-winning contemporary romance. Christi is President of the Maryland Romance Writers and lives in Maryland with her husband.

Author Links: Website *Blog * Pinterest * Twitter * Goodreads * Amazon Author Page *Facebook

4 Comments

Filed under Interview, Spotlight

4 Responses to Spotlight & Interview: Love on the Boardwalk by Christi Barth

  1. Eileen

    I am looking forward to reading this story.

  2. Timitra

    Great interview I especially loved the bit about you having a Masters in vocal performance

  3. Cindy DeGraaff

    Thanks for the interview and the excerpt!