Spotlight & Giveaway: Adventures in Online Dating by Julie Particka

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Julie Particka to HJ!

Hi Julie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Adventures in Online Dating!

Tell us about the book with this fun little challenge using the title of the book:

My title is so long that I’m cheating and just doing the first word (because you didn’t say I couldn’t, and I’m a rebel like that.)

A is for Alexa (our intrepid heroine)
D is for dating
V is for vulnerability
E is for evening wear
N is for neighbor (Alexa’s BFF is also her neighbor)
T is for T-shirts (Marshall, the hero, loves his graphic tees)
U is for undies
R is for romance
E is for ex-husband
S is for sons (Alexa has three of them)
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Alexa twisted the martini glass in her hand, not even bothering to take a sip. She needed to be sober to have this conversation, but it would probably go better if she waited until Peyton had a couple of drinks in her. But if she waited too long, Peyton might be too drunk to give good parenting advice and then…
“I think Brendan’s been surfing porn,” Alexa blurted out.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Several of the bad dates were fictionalized (some more than others) accounts of my own online dating days.
• The basic idea of this book (speed dating under the nose of the hero who owned the coffee shop) had been floating around in my head for a couple years before I actually got to write the book.
• The car in the book is actual based on a car one of my dearest friends inherited from her father.
• Even though I’m Michigan born and bred, I chose to highlight the Colorado Rockies in the book as a tribute to the four years of my life I spent living in Colorado.
• I had roughly an hour-long conversation with a guy on Twitter regarding how to say “no” in Kllingon. And I had to keep correcting spelling on it up until the final round of edits because people kept changing it.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

I mentioned above that several of the dating scenes were from my own experiences. There was one that had me shaking as I wrote it due to the memories it brought back. This is one of the more fictionalized ones in that I wish the real story had gone like Alexa’s had (and that I’d recognized the bad as quickly as she had). Mine situation was…worse. Worse is a nice word. This is loosely based on the date that made me stop dating in 2016.

“What?” He glared at her as if she’d suggested he take a long walk off a short pier.
She shrugged and gave a gentle shake of her head. As proud as she was of her ability to figure people out quickly, she hated when an initial negative assessment proved as spot-on as hers had when he walked through the door. “Clearly, you don’t think I’m worth your time, and you really don’t seem to want to be here. Feel free to get back to your workday.”
He slammed his to-go cup down on the table hard enough that the bottom of the paper cup crinkled and coffee splashed out the top, landing on her tablet and fingers. She winced and snatched her hand away. He shoved to his feet and loomed over her, his hands planted firmly on the table. “Are you kidding me?”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

That love and romance isn’t a single, limited time offer. You can find it more than once, and it doesn’t matter your age or situation. Even though I’m still not ready to dive back into the dating pool, it was a message that I needed when I wrote it (and still need, to be completely honest).
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Digital copy of Adventures in Online Dating by Julie Particka

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Book Info:

For Alexa McIntyre, the answer to everything comes down to numbers. Three sons. One divorce. One great life…except her boys are getting older and they really need a man around. Enter the number twenty, as in after twenty minutes with someone she knows whether or not she wants them in her life. So, she hatches a plan to meet any man who remotely strikes her interest—for a twenty-minute date at her favorite coffee shop. It’s the perfect way to find her perfect match in the most efficient way possible.

Too bad coffee shop owner Marshall Calloway isn’t keen on her using his shop as her speed-dating zone, especially since she’s made it clear he’s too young to be a contender. But against her better judgement, Alexa finds herself drawn to Marshall in ways she can’t quantify. There’s no easy answer, and once the kids become involved, her well-ordered world threatens to fall apart—twenty minutes at a time.

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Julie Particka was told to get serious about her future in Junior High. Several years after getting a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, she realized being serious was over-rated and went back to her first love–writing. Now rather than spending her days in the drudgery of the lab or teaching science to high school students, she disappears into worlds of her own creation where monsters sometimes roam, but true love still conquers all. She can most often be located in the Detroit area with her favorite minions (the ones who know her as Mom) where she is currently hatching a plot for world domination. It involves cookies for everyone, so she’s pretty sure there’s no way it can fail…except the minions keep eating the cookies.
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