BooksChatter: ☀☄ How to Talk to Rockstars

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for How to Talk to Rockstars (1 May 2015, Logosophia), a literary fiction début novel by Alli Marshal, which was inspired by her years of interviewing musicians. Think "Almost Famous" meets "The History of Love".

“This bright, fleet novel is a true delight—an engaging, perceptive, precisely observed and slyly funny meditation on fame and love, in particular the love of music.” — Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain and Nightwoods

"How to Talk to Rockstars" is available as a paperback.

Check out the trailer, the book's synopsis and the teaser below, and then find out more from our Q&A with the author.

As part of this tour, Alli Marshall will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts, and features; also the more comments you leave the higher your chances of being a winner.

Trailer | Synopsis | Teaser | Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

Wallflower-turned-journalist Bryn Thompson. She has a dream job: she interviews rock stars. Bryn’s professionalism keeps her on track, but also emotionally removed from the gritty world of back stage, bars and drugs that she writes about. That is, until she meets musician Jude Archer, whose songs haunt her. As an unlikely friendship grows out of Bryn’s obsession with Jude’s album, Bryn begins to rethink all of the carefully-contrived rules that until now have helped her maintain a professional distance. How to Talk to Rockstars is an exploration of love, loneliness and rock 'n' roll.

Teaser: Excerpt

At the edge of the stage, in the limbo between darkness and spotlights, between anonymity and fame, Jude Archer knows two things: That he is a rare genius. And that he is a complete fraud.

Sometimes he turns these dual realizations over and over like a penny in his fingers. Sometimes he lets them alternately punish and soothe his soul, these words. One a barb and one a balm. The devil and the angel on his shoulders, but which is which?

Sometimes he lets the needles of knowing fill him with doubt, with hope. With fear, with excitement. And sometimes he just turns away from the knowing, tucks the coin away into a pocket for later.

Or for never.

Just off stage, Jude Archer is no one. It’s the moment of the day he hates most, those few seconds of not being. And then he hears his name.

For one night only —

And he’s already in the light, bathed in it, blinded by it. Soaking it in and becoming. Not just someone, but the one.

All eyes are on him, and he’s reflected back in their fevered glow. The one he’s become. But which one? The genius or the fraud?

Fame, fame. Remember my name.

How to Talk to Rockstars - available NOW!

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US:

About the Author

Alli Marshall grew up in Western New York and has called the mountains of North Carolina home for more than 20 years. She's a Warren Wilson College graduate and completed her MFA in creative writing at Goddard College. She's been named the best arts reporter in Western North Carolina in the annual Best of WNC reader's poll, 2011-2014. She received awards in editorial reporting from the North Carolina Press Association in 2005 and 2014, and from the International Festivals & Events Association in 2004. She also took home top honours in the Cupcakes for the Cure bake-off (local ingredient category) — but that’s another story. And though Alli doesn't like to brag or anything, over the course of her career she's interviewed Yoko Ono, Cyndi Lauper, Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes), Aimee Mann, Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys), Britt Daniel (Spoon), Michael Franti, Neko Case, Daniel Lanois, Ziggy Marley, Peter Murphy, Grace Potter, Jamie Lidell, Kishi Bashi and many, many others.