Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Today's Special -- Carrie Lofty



We are happy to welcome multi-talented author Carrie Lofty back to the blog! When she was here a couple months ago, she was talking about her latest Christie family book, Starlight. This time she is dishing about her new digital historical novel from Pocket Star, His Very Own Girl. It's out NOW! From Carrie's website: it’s a WWII romance featuring a female British civilian pilot and the American paratrooper medic who opens her heart. Sounds wonderful! Welcome, Carrie!



 
 
Swingin' Tunes
By Carrie Lofty 

Except for Bing Crosy at Christmastime, I didn't know very much about 1940s music until I started research His Very Own Girl. Then… Well, I love music! I started listening to it all the time. Music from the 40s became the best, most enjoyable way of tapping into the era. 

Bing Crosby
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
Bing Crosby was huge. During the war, one out of every four songs played on the wireless was one of Bing's tunes. Can you even imagine?? Until the arrival of a young Frank Sinatra on the scene very late in the war years, Bing was the crooner. He ran the gamut between love songs and rousing songs about supporting the troops. Some were even cheekier, such as "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin", which he sang with the Andrews Sisters. 

There's never been a jauntier tune about overtaking a city. The 40s…they were strange times. 

The other facet of WWII-era music was swing. Bandleaders were like producers and DJs today. No matter the guest singers and musicians, top billing went to the bandleader. Benny Goodman, Harry James and the ever-popular Glenn Miller were the superstars of swing. "In the Mood" was probably Miller's most famous tune, which has transcended the decades. 

Here Lulu Davies, a British civilian pilot, and Joe Weber, an American paratrooper and medic, share a dance. Everyone was living on borrowed time, which meant grabbing a partner right quick!
 

Stuff in Joe held a pilot named Lulu Davies. He held her and he danced with her.

Their bodies moved in time to the orchestra's fair version of "As Time Goes By." Her easy, graceful rhythm offset her crisp posture. Everything about her was ladylike and proper—everything except her slacks and that wild glint in her eye. But she wore even the slacks with feminine bravado.

He wanted to dance for a year. Dance . . . and take her to bed. She was going to his head like 180-proof alcohol.

"Private?" Lulu was looking up at him.

"Call me Joe," he said. "'Private' makes me think I've done something wrong."

"Well, that won't suit. Joe it is, then."

They only touched with arms and hands—their bodies still a frustrating, respectful distance apart—but Joe absorbed the contact like sunshine on a lazy summer afternoon. "I never would've taken you for a pilot," he heard himself saying.

She smiled so deeply that a dimple appeared on her left cheek. "And I never would've taken you for a medic."

A couple bumped Joe from behind. He tightened a protective hand along Lulu's upper back. Her breasts brushed his chest. Joe's muscles snapped to attention. Their eyes caught and held as an electrical current did the jitterbug up his spine.

Lulu giggled. "Crowded in here."

"Sorry," he muttered.

"I wouldn't be dancing with you if I didn't want to be close."

Her smile, her body, her bold demeanor . . . she wanted to be with him. A sudden surge of confidence walled his doubts behind a brick wall.

Slow it down, Web. Pull it together.

"So why don't I seem like a medic?"

Lulu blushed and lowered her eyes. This wild woman was capable of something as girlish as blushing? "Forget I mentioned it."

The orchestra wound down and he prayed for another slow song. C'mon, boys. One more. They were under some sort of spell, which might be broken if they left the dance floor. Lulu seemed to hold her breath as well. When the slow, clean clarinet and swaying rhythm of "Moonlight Serenade" started, they both exhaled.

Lulu threw back her head, laughing. "It won't end unless we want it to, Joe."

"I like the sound of that." He touched her chin. "Now spill it."

Shrugging, she rested her gaze on the hollow at the base of his throat. "It's just that when I think medic, I think doctor. And when I think doctor, I think spectacles and books and studying—not, well, not . . . muscles."

 
Glenn Miller
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
The hope these entertainers provided trickled down to everyone with access to a radio or a dance hall. As Glenn Miller said, "America means freedom and there's no expression of freedom quite so sincere as music." 

Summer has been a blast! Available now from Pocket Books are three Christie Family romances. FLAWLESS kicked it off with a tale of an estranged couple's search for love. The 99¢ tie-in novella, "A LITTLE MORE SCANDAL" follows two aspiring lovers to London. And the Scottish-set second novel, STARLIGHT, was an RT BookReviews 4½ Star Top Pick. "Richly nuanced characters and a superbly realized Victorian setting come together brilliantly." ~ The Chicago Tribune 

I've also launched a co-written pseudonym, Katie Porter, with my long-time friend and critique partner, Lorelie Brown. Our "Vegas Top Guns" series of contemporary erotic romances launched from Samhain with DOUBLE DOWN and INSIDE BET, both of which were RT BookReviews 4½ Star Top Picks: "This racy, raunchy, hella good read…will move Fifty Shades of Grey to the children's section of the bookstore."  

Where to find me: 


Twitter: @carrielofty


I'd like to give away a digital copy of HIS VERY OWN GIRL in any format. Just answer: Do you have a favorite musician from the 1940s, or a favorite crooner from today—Harry Connick, Jr. or Michael Boublé, for example?

 
Thanks again to The Romance Dish for featuring His Very Own Girl!

21 comments:

  1. I am a big Andrew Sisters fan. My mom would play there music while cleaning the house. I would also watched them on old Abbott and Costello movies that my dad watched all of the time. I do like Michael Bouble and don't usually like that type of music.

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    1. Hi, Rebekah! Oh, I love Abbott and Costello!!

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    2. I've been teaching myself three-part harmony by listening to the Andrews Sisters. Someday I'll get it right! Thanks for being here today, Rebekah.

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  2. Glenn Miller's music will definitely remain with us forever. The songs and music of the war were so uplifting to people back then. He will never be forgotten.

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    1. Yes, ma'am, Connie, you are so right. Very uplifting!

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  3. My parents and aunts and uncles all loved big band music, and so I grew up listening to it--lots of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, etc. I love Nat King Cole. "Unforgettable," "Mona Lisa," "I Love You for Sentimental Reasons" are all wonderful, and "Autumn Leaves" is the most melancholy song I know, although I think it may be later than WW II.

    I've read and enjoyed Flawless and "A Little More Scandal," and Starlight is waiting on my Kindle. I've been wishing for more romances set in the WW I and WW II eras. I'm looking forward to reading His Very Own Girl.

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    1. Janga, those songs remind me of summers spent with my grandparents. Those are some of my fondest memories. :)

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    2. Thank you so much, Janga! I love hearing that you've appreciated my books. Such a treat. Hopefully you'll love STARLIGHT and HIS VERY OWN GIRL just as much. Best to you!

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  4. Thanks for a great post! Congrats on the new release!

    I'd have to Say Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra :)

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    1. Funny thing about Bing and Frank...they were kind of rivals. Bing was the crooner of the 30s and the war years. Frank showed up at the tail end of the war and carried on through the Rat Pack era. So there's this period of overlap where Bing is the elder statesman and Frankie was just stating out...but that dynamic didn't last long. Bing was outshone almost as soon as the war was over and the girls started swooning :)

      Thanks for stopping by, Erin!

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  5. I love music from the 1940s...Glenn Miller's String of Pearls, Harry James's I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Frank Sinata's This Love of Mine(and a whole lot more Frank!), Bunny Berrigan's I Can't Get Started...I could go on and on. Today's crooners? I'd have to vote for Harry Connick, Jr.

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    1. My favorite Frankie tune is "Oh, What it Seemed to Me." The official single is a little over-produced. He performed it live on Bing's Kraft Music Hall and it thumped me on the head WHY he was so popular. He was such an amazing performer. As for Glenn Miller, I like a more obscure one called "Sun Valley Jump." Can't NOT swing to that one. And yes, Harry Connick Jr. fit right into my WWII soundtrack. His covers are modernized productions, but he captures so much of that old flavor. I'm so glad you stopped by today!

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  6. Congrats on your new release, sounds like a great book.

    I guess I will have to go with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, not real big on the 40's music!

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    1. It's an acquired taste, believe me. Took me a few months to appreciate the variances. I really approached it as research. I guess I could equate it to the classical music I learned when writing SONG OF SEDUCTION, about a composer in Napoleonic Europe. I gave it enough time to be more than research, but music I actively wanted to listen to. Not a lot of people have that inclination! Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate it!

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  7. Both my husband and I enjoy the music from the 40's. There were many good singers and bands. One of my favorites is Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy by the Andrewa Sisters. I like Bette Midler's version. She is close to the style of the singers of the 40's bringing personality and energy to whatever she sings.

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    1. Yes, I agree about Bette. Harry Connick Jr is in that same category, I think. Not copying, per se, but capturing the feeling. That was important to me when I wrote HIS VERY OWN GIRL. Good to see you here!

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  8. Hi Carrie, thank you for sharing HIS VERY OWN GIRL with us today. My parents came of age and married during the 1940's in Europe. Not a great place to be at the time; they married in 1947 and immigrated to the USA in 1951. Music from the 40's was always a staple at our house while we were growing up and we loved it. One of the other things I enjoyed as a child was the movie musicals of that era. Films with Betty Grable, Don Ameche, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby as well as the hilarious slap stick of the Three Stooges, and Abbot and Costello were great favorites in our family.
    These days I still enjoy watching these films on Turner Movie Classics and other cable stations. I even have a 40's music station on cable radio that I listen to while driving!
    My husband's parents left their homes in Vienna in the late 1930's to live and work in England and thereby escape Hitler and the Holocaust. His father joined the RAF and we still have his war medals. His mother got out of Vienna on a domestic visa and worked as a maid. They met and married there, and eventually made their way to the United states as well.

    HIS VERY OWN GIRL sounds like something I would very much enjoy reading. What made you decide to write a novel set in that era?

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    1. Thank you for sharing this! My husband's grandparents married in a church near Dover during an air raid, where the ceremony had to be quickly relocated to the basement! So many incredible stories out there. My dad was a huge history buff, so I grew up watching documentaries and movies about the era. "BAND OF BROTHERS" and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN amplified my fascination, to the point where I needed to write my own version of the past...with a happy ending, of course!!

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  9. The era of my parents... and I remember learning that my dad [who couldn't carry a tune if you gave him a bucket] was just entranced by Rosemary Clooney's singing...

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