Playing the Player
Author: Lisa Brown Roberts
Publication Date: September 14, 2015
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Summary from Goodreads: The Good Girl Vs. The Player
Round one begins…
Trina Clemons needed the money. Why else would she – the most organized, prepared student in school – spend the summer as a nanny and partner with the biggest slacker ever? Now she’s ready to tackle nannyhood with her big binder of research and schedules. Just don’t ask her about the secret job of “fixing” the bad habits of a certain high school player…
Slade Edmunds prefers easy hook-ups, and Trina is definitely not his type. She’s all structure and rules, while Slade wants to just have fun. Fortunately, Trina has no idea about the bet Slade made with his best friend that he can totally get her to unwind by the end of summer…
Then the weirdest thing happens. There’s chemistry. A lot of it.
But nothing gets between a boy and a girl like a big, fat secret…
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About the Author and Interview!
Lisa Brown Roberts still hasn’t recovered from the teenage trauma of nearly tweezing off her eyebrows and penciling them in for an entire school year. This and other painful memories inspire her to write books in which girls big on wit and heart earn happy endings with swoony guys…eventually.
Her almost forever home is Colorado, though she occasionally pines for the days when she lived within walking distance of the Pacific Ocean. Her house is full of books, boys, four-legged prima donnas, and lots of laughter.
Author Links:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
• Interview with Lisa Brown Roberts •
Q. What do you like to do in your free time when you aren’t writing?
A. Honestly, I don’t have much free time. In addition to writing, I have a full-time day job and a family, and life’s pretty hectic. Reading is my number one downtime choice, and I do love knitting and crocheting. And bingeing on Netflix shows.
Q. Where did you come up with the idea for Playing the Player?
A. It’s kind of strange, but this book really started with a phrase, “slacker nanny falls in love” that just came to me one day. I knew right away the “slacker nanny” was a guy, and the last thing he wanted to do was babysit a couple of crazy kids. Of course he needed a bossy partner who he couldn’t stand…at first.
Q. What was the most enjoyable part of writing the book?
A. I really, really loved writing this book. I had so much fun doing an “enemies to lovers, opposites attract” story. I loved making the golden party boy fall for the serious, do-gooder, probably because I always wanted this to happen to me when I was a teenager, but of course it never did.
Q. The kids in your book are absolutely adorable! Are they based on children in your life?
A. I’m glad you liked them! They are loosely based on my son and his preschool BF. My son and his friend weren’t exactly like Max and Gilly, but there are definite similarities. My son is now a teenager, so he will die of embarrassment if he ever reads this interview.
Q. In the book, Trina carries around a large binder full of all kinds of information, such as schedules, activities for the kids, etc. Is this based on something from your real life?
A. She is definitely hyper-organized, isn’t she? I like to be organized, but not to that extreme. I have a paper calendar planner that I like, but I’d never go to Trina’s extremes of an index and table of contents.
Q. Did you ever work as a nanny?
A. Not as a nanny, but I did babysit when I was a teenager. I wasn’t very good at it. Kids didn’t listen to me, and honestly I couldn’t wait until they went to bed so I could scour the fridge.
Q. Who is your favorite character in the book?
A. That’s really tough, because I love all of them. But if I had to pick…probably Slade.
Q. What is the most difficult part of writing a novel? The most enjoyable?
A. The most enjoyable part for me is writing the first draft. That’s when all the raw emotion comes out and I totally lose myself in the story, not worrying about sequence of events or character motivation, or all the stuff I work on in subsequent revisions. The first draft is when I fall in love with the characters, and hopefully make it so readers do, too.
The most difficult part is cutting, yet I’m getting better at. Playing the Player was originally about 90,000 words, and I cut it down to about 70,000 to fit Entangled’s Crush imprint. That’s a lot of deleted words! Yet I think the story is much stronger now, with much tighter pacing. I learned a lot through the process.
Q. Are you currently working on any other books?
A. My next book coming from Entangled Teen (tentatively titled The Replacement Crush) is about Vivian, a romance book blogger who works in her mom’s bookstore in a California beach town. To recover from a recent heartbreak, Vivian decides to be logical about her next crush, and makes a list of guys who don’t trip her “zing meter.” But there’s a new guy in town, a hot nerd named Dallas who has plenty of zing. He challenges Viv’s approach to love and logic every chance he gets. And he won’t take no for an answer.
Q. What is your favorite book, and why?
A. This question is so hard for me to answer because I have so many favorites. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was a childhood favorite that inspired me to be an author. I probably read it a dozen times. Then, after years of writing meandering short stories that no one wanted to read, my love for brilliant storytelling was reignited by J.K. Rowling’s magnificent imagination. And once I started reading romances and reveling in the happy endings, I found my own writing passion.
Thank you for having me on your blog!
Giveaway!
Nanny Survival Kit (nail polish, lip balm, journal, summer scrapbook stickers, love scrapbook stickers, love quote bookmark)for US winner or a $20 Amazon Gift Card if international.
Nice interview!
Thanks for participating 🙂
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