BooksChatter: ☀ℚ 2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly The Coop [1]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for 2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly The Coop, a Non-fiction Memoir about Motherhood and travel by Deborah Serra and Nancy Serra Greene (21 September 2015, Library Tales Publishing, 199 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt , as well as our promotional Q&A below. Read the first three chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly The Coop is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Author Deborah Serra and Nancy Serra Greene will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

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

Synopsis

When sisters, Deborah & Nancy, discovered that motherhood was a temp job they decided to run away from home. After packing up that last kid for college, and facing the sad stillness of their suddenly quiet homes, they decided to leave the country. 2 BROADS ABROAD: MOMS FLY THE COOP is a funny, irreverent, occasionally poignant travel tale of their impulsive road trip around Ireland.

In this witty warm-hearted adventure, they experienced some of Ireland’s quirkier history while sharing universally relatable stories of maniacal school coaches, neurotic neighbors, and tiger moms. Having kicked that empty nest into their rearview mirror, the sisters took off careening down the wrong side of the road, making questionable choices, getting trapped in a medieval tower, sneaking Chinese take-out into a famous cooking school, drinking way too much, and gaining a changed perspective on their lives ahead.

Teaser: Excerpt

     As Nancy and I attended to the final decisions of our trip we bumped into Nancy’s neighbor Susan again. Evidently, Vicki had had enough since Susan was out trolling unsuspecting neighbors on her own.
     “You realize that they have no Americans With Disabilities Act in the UK,” Susan said as she leaned in toward me.
     Susan stood too close and never blinked. Have you ever tried to have a reasonable conversation with someone who doesn’t blink? You look at one eye, then become uncomfortable and look at the other eye, then you think, “Maybe I’ll look down.” I spent more time strategizing about where to put my gaze than listening to her babble. Susan was nosy and toxic, not that I’m judging or anything. I exchanged a look with Nancy who raised her eyebrows at me as a warning. I knew she was concerned about what I might say because she thinks that sometimes I’m blunt or impatient, which is absolutely untrue, or at least only modestly true. Gossipy negative women are a flash point for me. (Nancy claims I have several flash points, but…naw…what do little sisters know anyway?)
     Trying very hard to keep the scorn out of my tone I explained, “The UK stands for United Kingdom and not United States, so the laws are actually different, Susie,” I said.
     “It’s Susan,” she replied with a little edge.
     Go ahead, I thought, get edgy – I’ll meet you there.
     “I mean to say,” she continued, “that the European airports have tons of stairs and don’t you think it will be so difficult physically for you both to lug suitcases up and down all those stairs?”
     “I do usually like to bring my husband, who doubles as a personal Sherpa, but since we are only taking one rolling bag and one personal item it’s not going to be an issue.”
     “We are?” asked Nancy wide-eyed.
     “And, Susie…”
     “Susan.”
     “Sure. The rolling bag we’re taking is by REI and it can turn into a backpack should we encounter a long staircase so we actually have it all figured out. But thank you for helping us to identify yet another possible negative.”
     “Oh,” she said with a fake grin and squinty eyes. “Certainly.”
     As we walked away, I saw Nancy looked a little pale.
     “Hey, I’m sorry. There is just something almost hyena-like about that that woman. You know, sitting in the weeds, hoping for a kill she can live off of?”
     “Deborah, that’s a little dramatic.”
     “The only analogy that came to me.”
     “But about the carry-on thing, you’re just annoying her, right? You don’t really think we can go away for a couple of weeks with one small suitcase?”
     So maybe I have a reputation as a woman who is still wearing the jeans she bought in 1975, but that’s not true. Those jeans fell apart last year. I cremated them and they sit in an urn on the mantle — sometimes I light a candle.
     “Nancy, I am serious. We need practical and comfortable. It’s only the two of us. I’m thinking two pair of jeans, a pair of stretch sweats, several shirts, raincoat, done.”
     “I’m thinking I am traveling to a foreign country and I want clean clothing and options. I want to be prepared.”
     “For what?”
     “For whatever?”
     “Won’t it be awesome to travel light and not worry about those things?”
     “Won’t it be awesome to have something clean and appropriate to wear no matter what we encounter?”
     “But if we check luggage, you know the airlines will probably lose our luggage, and we’ll be moving around so much it might be hard to catch up with us. We won’t be tied down by anything this way. And there will be extra baggage fees. Let’s do this like we expect to plan a lot of future trips. I really want to travel light. We need to be flexible, not fashionable.”
     “What if we need something nice?”
     “For what? It’s only you and me. We’ve watched each other give birth, really, we’ve already seen the worst.”

2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly The Coop
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Author Q&A

Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?

"I’ve always been secretly obsessed with Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124 CE). Eleanor was the most impressive woman who has ever lived (yes, I just said that and stand by it). At fifteen-years-old, she inherited all of Aquitaine. She was educated in the arts and languages, in music, power, war strategy, falconry, horsemanship, and was an astute and powerful politician.

She was married to Louis VII, the King of France, and brought napkins, poetry, and cleanliness to Paris. Then, she left him to marry Henry [II] the King of England. She ruled during Henry's absences brilliantly, until he imprisoned her (long love story - great story).

She was the mother of King Richard the Lion Heart. She outlived both husbands and eight of her ten children, died in Loire at about 80 years old. I am interested in the Middle Ages and I would love to walk in her shoes for a little while – then I’ll need a really hot shower and some ice cream"

What did you do on your last birthday?

"My birthday is in January, so I love going to the snow. It doesn’t snow where I live in Southern California. I get a palpable feeling of peaceful calm when I’m surrounded by all that clean cold white, especially first thing in the morning, before the world has began to churn. So quiet. So lovely."

What part of the writing process do you dread?

"For this project 2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly the Coop the hardest part was editing ourselves. There were so many interesting facts about Ireland, and fun memories of raising our children that we wanted to share. We had to make critical choices."

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?

"I think all writers have moments when they feel stuck. I’ve always believed this is a normal part of the process. Your unconscious is still working even when you’re frozen and staring at your office wall. The benefit of writing as a team is that there’s the hope you both won’t be stuck at the same time."

Tell us about your latest release.

"When my sister and I realized motherhood was a temp job and our last kid moved out, we decided to run away from home.

2 Broads Abroad: Moms Fly the Coop is a funny, irreverent, occasionally poignant travel tale of our impulsive and ill-planned road trip around Ireland. We had traveled together as little girls with our parents, and we traveled as adults with our husbands, but we had not traveled as middle-aged women together.

Dunguaire Castle, Galway, Ireland

We are very close sisters, but very different women, with competing interests, and who raised our kids quite differently. I suppose if the trip had been better planned it wouldn’t have been half as funny. We juxtaposed universal stories of raising kids with our rowdy trip and the story turned out really funny.

This is the kind of book you should pick up in the middle of the night if you can’t sleep, or if you’re on an airplane, or if you’re looking for an entertaining couple of hours as a break from life."

About the Author

Deborah Serra has been a sought-after screenwriter for twenty-five years having written for NBC, CBS, Sony, Lifetime, Fox, and others. She was a recipient of the 2012 Hawthornden Literary Fellowship. Her first novel was a semi-finalist for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Award given by the Faulkner Society in New Orleans, LA.

Nancy Serra Greene is a graduate of San Diego State University. She worked in medical sales before stepping away to raise her two children, at which point she became: Team Mom, Snack Mom, PTA member, Assistance League Volunteer, and the list is never-ending. Nancy was the editor and publisher of the Buffalo Hills Echo newsletter with a circulation of 1400. She also designed and managed her community website.