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This week Girlfriend Karen Neches joins us to talk about her new book, Earthly Pleasures.

About the Book:

In Earthly Pleasures (Simon and Schuster, February 2008, $14) great love can transcend the dimensions, narrowing the vast difference between Heaven and Earth.

Welcome to Heaven. Use your Wishberry to hustle up whatever you want. Have an online chat with God. Visit the attractions such as Retail Rapture, Wrath of God miniature golf and Nocturnal Theater, where nightly dreams are translated to film.

Your greeter might just be Skye Sebring who will advises her newly dead clients on what to expect now that they’re expired. Unfortunately for Skye, she’s been chosen to live her first life. She’s required to attend Earth 101 classes, which teach all of the world’s greatest philosophies through five Beatle songs.

Skye has no interest in Earthly pursuits, until lawyer Ryan Blaine briefly becomes her client after a motorcycle accident. Just as they are getting to know each other, he is revived and sent back to Earth.

She follows his life via the TV channel “Earthly Pleasures” but discovers he has a wife as well as a big secret. Why then does he call a show for the lovelorn to talk about the lost love of his life?

The Cover:

About the Author:

Karen Neches was single for over twenty years. She used to tell people she was in the “hospice stage” of being single as she never expected to recover. Then at the age of forty-three she finally met her soul mate. Earthly Pleasures is dedicated to him. She maintains a web site at www.karenneches.com

Neches also writes under the name Karin Gillespie and is the nationally bestselling author of The Sweet Potato Queen’s First Big-Ass Novel with Jill Conner Browne and three novels in the critically acclaimed Bottom Dollar Girl series. She’s founder of the virtual tour The Girlfriend Circuit as well as the grog for Southern authors A Good Blog is Hard to Find. She is a former lifestyle columnist for the Augusta Chronicle.

 Karin’s Take on the RosettWrites Q & A:

Dream vacation destination?  Barcelona for the tapas and the vino. For me vacation is all about the food.

You’ve just won the lottery. What’s the first thing you do/buy? I’d hire a personal assistant. Time is my most valuable commodity and I don’t have enough of it.

Favorite mystery/thriller movie? I loved The Illusionist. It had a great twist in the end that I didn’t see coming.

Favorite junk food? Cheeze Nips.

What’s one food you absolutely can’t stand? Liver

Paper or plastic? Paper

What’s one talent you wish you had? I’d love to have a musical talent.  

M&Ms or Godiva? Godiva. I’m a freak for dark chocolate.

Favorite time of Day? Morning. I love the idea of the whole day stretching ahead.

Tell us a little about your book. Did an event or idea inspire the book? EARTHLY PLEASURES is about a greeter in Heaven named Skye Sebring who falls in love with a mortal on Earth.  She follows him back to Earth—a strange world she knows nothing about—until she learns that all life’s lessons can be learned from the lyrics of five Beatle songs.

I like world building so that’s why I wrote the novel. I wanted to create a fabulous Heaven.

What’s your writing style? Outline or no outline? No outline. Which means tons and tons of re-writes.

What do you wish you’d known about either the craft of writing or the business of publishing when you first started writing? Nothing really. I’ve enjoyed learning about the biz (which I think is fascinating) and although I’ve made hundreds of mistakes, I wouldn’t take them back. 

 What’s up next for you? What are you working on now? I’m finished with a novel about some 40-something women who revive their 80s girl band.

Thanks, Karin!