Permanent Spring Showers by Scott D. Southard
Professor Rebecca Stanley-Wilson is having a very bad season. The ramifications of one torrid evening with one of the great upcoming painters of his generation, will not only be felt across her life but over the entire art world. Sexy, funny, and very surprising, Permanent Spring Showers is the tale of one very memorable springtime and how it impacts a group of unique artists and dreamers. From the the hopeful Olympian with the failing marriage to the writer who is creating a new literary movement (through outright manipulation) to the romantic wondering what he did wrong to drive away the love of his life, each tale walks the line between reality and fantasy. And waiting at the end of the line is a very important painting… and possibly the revolver used in the Lincoln Assassination.
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read an excerpt from the book:
“What are you thinking? She’s an escort!”
“I’m in love, Steve. After sitting through the first twenty minutes of this lunch, it’s obvious you certainly still remember what that feeling is like.” He pushed his plate forward.
“But Clark…” I began.
He interrupted, “And it’s not like she wants to do that her entire life, Steve, if that is what is troubling you. She is doing it to pay for college.”
I stopped, the car of my mind shifting gears again. “Wait, did you say ‘is’? Do you mean she is still doing it?”
“Well, times are tough all over,” Clark replied far too calmly for my taste. “Have you seen college tuition rates this year?”
“And she’s really in college?” I asked, shocked. I began to wonder if I was on one of those TV shows and a camera was hidden in a bush nearby me.
My shock was perfectly mirrored by the opposite reflection of the casualness of my brother.
“You didn’t think I would marry an idiot did you, Steve? I need to be mentally challenged, you know that. She is studying education; her dream’s to teach third graders.”
“You’re engaged to a hooker…”
“Escort,” he corrected quickly for a third time.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said sarcastically. “You are engaged to an active escort who wants to be an elementary school teacher?”
“Yes,” Clark said with a dramatic point across the table at me. “And Steve, this is where you come in. You need to help me introduce her to mom and dad.”
The Beauty of Eccentrics: The Characters in Permanent Spring Showers
Scott D. Southard
To begin with, I’ve been known to hear voices.
I blame old time radio shows for this. When I was a young teenager, I was strangely addicted to them. The repeats used to play on this AM station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Who knows? I may have been the only person in the whole listening area sitting by the radio with a ready tape deck, but I collected as many as I could. Jack Benny, Sherlock Holmes, Charlie McCarthy (a ventriloquist on the radio? How does that work?), I soon had a collection of shows filling up three tape cases.
I admit this is not something I readily told my friends then (like all awkward teenagers I did want to seem cool), but listening to those shows were almost more than just entertainment for me. In many ways they were each little lessons on finding original voices.
When I finally began to dare to dream of being a novelist, I know this time snuck its way into my own writing style. See, dialogue is always key for me in creation (sometimes it will be the foundation for an outline at the start of the writing process); and my characters, much like the ones on the old shows, speak to me.
I can hear their meter when I read sections back to myself (almost like poetry in a way). Their word usage and how they construct and present a thought all come together to separate their distinct voices for me. Every voice is unique in my mind and I think it also can be felt in the reading by others.
Also like in those shows, my characters are out of the ordinary, and wonderfully eccentric. Let me give you some examples from my latest novel Permanent Spring Showers.
While Permanent Spring Showers is in many ways a work of literary fiction, it has a lot of different elements to it. It’s funny, surprising, and even sexy (usually for the wrong reasons). One of the characters that make up the heart of the novel is Vince, an up-and-coming painter.
Vince is never what he may seem. At the beginning of the book, he may seem like a romantic, smooth and seductive. But Vince is so much more. He is a man in flux, deciding who he wants to be and become. For example, even though he speaks with a British accent, he is not British. (The choice to change nationality actually came about because another character told him that women adore Mr. Darcy from the classic mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice.) One passionate evening in Chicago will change Vince’s life, inspiring him to create one of the greatest works of American art.
The person who Vince shares the evening with is Professor Rebecca Stanley-Wilson. Vince finds Rebecca speaking at a literary convention, discussing her new book The Death of Love (an academic work about romance in post-modern literature). After an evening of too many drinks, Rebecca makes a decision that she may regret, but will impact the lives of all of the different characters that make up this novel.
Other than these two, there are also Olympic hopefuls, a romantic architect, a gossiping poet, a silent football coach and an author with highly questionable motives. These are only a few of the wonderful characters to discover in this new work.
One of the things I love to do in my books is surprise my readers. And having such an eccentric cast in my book makes it so much easier to do. I think it is a lot of fun to discover how I draw these characters together and how I bring each of their plots to a close.
So maybe it is okay to hear voices? It almost makes me want to track down all those old tapes.
I hope you enjoy my new novel, Permanent Spring Showers.
Scott D. Southard is the author of A Jane Austen Daydream, Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare, My Problem With Doors, Megan, 3 Days in Rome and Me Stuff in addition to his latest release, Permanent Spring Showers. His eclectic writing has also found its way into radio, as Scott was the creator of the radio comedy series The Dante Experience. The production was honored with the Golden Headset Award for Best MultiCast Audio and the Silver Ogle Award for Best Fantasy Audio Production. Scott received his Master’s in writing from the University of Southern California. Scott can be found on the internet via his writing blog “The Musings & Artful Blunders of Scott D. Southard” where he writes on topics ranging from writing, art, books, TV, writing, parenting, life, movies, and writing. He even shares original fiction on the site. His blog can be found at http://sdsouthard.com. Scott is also the fiction book reviewer for WKAR’s daily radio show Current State.
http://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Spring-Showers-Scott-Southard-ebook/dp/B00T74HH0Q
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/permanent-spring-showers/id964243135?mt=11
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/512831
Scott D. Southard will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a signed copy of his previous title: A Jane Austen Daydream (US ONLY) to a randomly drawn host. Follow the tour for more chances to win: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/04/vbt-permanent-spring-showers-by-scott-d.html
Thanks for hosting!
When did you first, without hesitation, call yourself a writer?
Honestly, I never really thought of that.
It’s not a title anyone really earns. Anyone can call themselves a writer or an author in our world. As I once wrote on a writing post on my site, writing is the only occupation where you could have a professor, a successful author and a young self-published author on the same stage and each would feel the equal of the other and that they know more than the others. it’s a hodgepodge, a beautiful mess that kind of works for the literary world. .
That’s not to say the title doesn’t have meaning. It does in a classic sense, and maybe if I find more success or find more readers I can in later years look back and say I was an author or a writer. Right now (and this is going to sound corny, I know), I kind of just consider myself a dreamer.
I dream of creating stories, and I dream of making an impact in the artform I love.
I hope that answered your question.
Congratulations Scott on the new release. Wishing you all the best and much success
Thanks Sandy! I hope you will consider checking the work out. I’m pretty proud of it.
Cheers!
Thanks for having my book on your site! Cheers.
Sounds like a great read.
Thanks! I hope you will check it out. Cheers!
I have enjoyed learning about the book. Thanks for sharing it.
This book sounds terrific~very well written based on the excerpt! Thank you so much for sharing!
sounds interesting!
I loved learning more about the author! thank you for sharing!