SNARK AND CIRCUMSTANCE by Stephanie Wardrop
Release Date: February 5, 2013
Publisher: Swoon Romance
About the book: One superior smirk from
Michael Endicott convinces sixteen-year-old Georgia Barrett that the
Devil wears Polo. His family may have founded the postcard-perfect New
England town they live in, but Georgia’s not impressed. Even if he is
smart, good looking, and can return Georgia’s barbs as deftly as he
returns serves on his family’s tennis courts. After all, if Michael
actually thinks she refuses to participate in lab dissections just to
mess with his grade, he’s a little too sure that he’s the center of the
universe. Could there be more to Michael Endicott than smirks and
sarcasm? If Georgia can cut the snark long enough, she just might find
out.
Snark and Circumstance is the first title in the Snark and Circumstance series of young adult romance novellas from Stephanie Wardrop.
Snark and Circumstance is the first title in the Snark and Circumstance series of young adult romance novellas from Stephanie Wardrop.
About the Author: Stephanie Wardrop grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania where she
started writing stories when she ran out of books to read. She’s always
wanted to be a writer, except during the brief period of her childhood
in which piracy seemed like the most enticing career option -- and if
she had known then that there actually were “girl” pirates way back
when, things might have turned out very differently. She currently
teaches writing and literature at Western New England University and
lives in a town not unlike the setting of Snark and Circumstance with her husband, two kids, and five cats. With a book out – finally – she might be hitting the high seas any day now.
BOOK BOYFRIENDS AND
LITERARY CRUSHES
Sometimes the purely fictional status of a partner is not a
negative but a plus. They’re available
when you want them and otherwise occupied when you don’t, they always want to
do what you want to do, and they will never ask if you were really planning to
wear that out of the house.
And part of the fun of writing a romance like Snark and Circumstance was in making Mr.
Right.
So here are a few of the literary crushes I’ve enjoyed over
many years of reading.
My
first literary crush was probably Nat from
Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond. He was smart, unconventional, tolerant of
Quakers and suspected witches, and he rescues the heroine from prison and takes
her away on his ship to someplace warmer and more exotic than Puritan New
England. I’d still jump on that ship today.
I hesitate to admit it since Snark is an homage to Pride
and Prejudice, but I was never a huge fan of Mr. Darcy myself (until he was
played by Colin Firth. Then I was
onboard that ship, too). And I am no fan
of Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff, the Byronic prototype for the angry, violent guy
who just can’t express his feelings except by choking puppies. (Though I love the book).
My nineteenth-century man was Will Ladislaw from Middlemarch He was artistic, rebellious, supportive of Dorothea’s
right to personhood and passion, and he had great hair (or at least I imagined
he did).
Of the Modernists I had a
soft spot for poor doomed Quentin
Compson, because nobody who loves his sister that much can be anything but
good, and if you think that is creepy,
I
assure you that every time I have taught The Sound and the Fury, I have uncovered
a large number of sophomore, junior, and senior college women who would love to
take Quentin’s hand and talk him off of that bridge. But a better bet for lasting happiness would
be George from EM Forster’s A
Room with a View. He was
playful, caring,
and
wonderfully open. You could have a good
time with George and not feel bad about it the next day. And if he looked like Julian Sands, who
played him in the Merchant Ivory film, you could do a lot worse.
Finally, lest we maintain a heterosexist bias here, and
assume that all romance occurs solely between men and women, I present Rita Mae
Brown’s Molly Bolt as my number
one girl crush. In Rubyfruit
Jungle, Molly made even the most homophobic woman in her life succumb
to the power of her charms. This makes
her not just crushable but also my favorite superhero of sorts.
So there you have it.
Are there any literary characters you’re crushin’ on? Tell me at my Facebook page, Stephanie Wardrop, YA Author, or tweet
me at s_wardrop.
Nat was my first book crush, too! I loved him! (And I think it was before I'd started having crushes on real people.) :)
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