Spotlight & Giveaway: The Summer Set by Aimee Agresti

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Aimee Agresti to HJ!

Hi Aimee and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Summer Set!

 
Hi! Thanks so much for having me! I’m so excited!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

THE SUMMER SET is about a former Hollywood It Girl—Charlie Savoy–who flamed out and left the film world and now she’s starting over. When the book opens she’s pushing 40 and running an art house movie theater in Boston but after a little legal…incident… she’s forced to do her community service at a summer Shakespeare theater in the Berkshires. It happens to be the same place where she got her start as a teen. And her ex, Nick, is now the artistic director there. #drama! 😉
The book is about old flames, old friends, and old rivals, but even more, it’s about second acts and how gutsy it is to make a change in your life.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

At least Charlie wore her sunglasses in the grainy photo, but they could only do so much. She slammed her laptop shut, as though a cobra might slither out from it. Only to open it again, take a deep breath and lean in to the full horror.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

Great question!

• Fun Fact #1: I spent some time hanging around the AMAZING Williamstown Theatre Festival as research: I saw plays, toured backstage, went to readings, it was a blast!
• Fun Fact #2: Before novels, I wrote for magazines like Us Weekly—I love the entertainment world!
• Fun Fact #3: I love making playlists for my novels! Check out my playlist for THE SUMMER SET here!: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3B6DGlUCR76p9kZyrjI67d?si=YE1QoE-sSMa0reQIC-K8KQ

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

On the outside, Charlie Savoy seems totally strong, tough, not bothered by anything or anyone, but it’s actually a façade. On the inside she’s much more vulnerable than anyone would guess. All the characters in this book are playing a part in real life. They’re acting as much offstage as they are onstage.

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

Oooh, excellent question! I would use the scene when Charlie has just arrived at the theater, it’s her first conversation with Nick and they’re already fighting—they’re both standoffish, they’re both angry, but they still have this banter and spark:

“Listen,” he said, stopping her. “I’ve got a pack of wild baby thespians to tend to—” he checked his watch “—so go now, but we’re not…finished here.” He said it with an ease he was proud of. It was obviously an epic understatement. “Dinner, later this week or something?”
“Fine,” she said, like it was another sentencing. She started to pull the door shut behind her, but tossed out, “We can talk about how incredibly boring it is that you’re doing Romeo and Juliet.” The door closed.
“Hey!” he called out. “People love Romeo and Juliet!” She opened the door, and he continued. “You’re the only person in the history of the theater who thinks Romeo and Juliet is boring.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, closing the door as she left, again.
“Don’t start with me!” he called out.
She opened the door again and said, “I don’t mean boring— Shakespeare was revolutionary in his day, I get it, I’m down. I just mean that I suspect what you, specifically, have planned is excruciatingly boring—”
“Charlie,” he cut her off with an exasperated sigh.

“I’m going now.” She closed the door yet again.
“Goodbye,” he said.
She opened it fast. “We’re gonna have to talk about those casting choices.” And shut it once more.

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

It’s a really universal story at its heart: Don’t be afraid to change course, reinvent yourself, take a chance and go after what you want!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 Finished copy of THE SUMMER SET, US entrants only.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Since this book is about acting, fame, celebrity: Who would play you in the movie of your life and why?!

 
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Excerpt from The Summer Set:

5, No Spoilers

June came too soon, as Charlie knew it would. Though sleep remained elusive, she remained unmedicated but busy enough to avoid thinking about her Chamberlain sentence: so much work to do in order to leave her precious art house behind for two months. She had hired extra staff for the summer to aid Miles—though he seemed more concerned with her. How do you and Nick Blunt plan to coexist for sixty days without murdering each other? he’d asked her daily. No spoilers, she’d always reply, since she didn’t actually know. Her relationship with Nick predated her friendship with Miles, but Miles had attended the infamous premiere so Charlie imagined he had filled in the blanks with a cocktail of tasty gossip and fuzzy facts.

By the time Miles saw Charlie off at South Station though, he had settled into a forced optimism. (There’s no reason you can’t enjoy the theater part of this. It’s like going back to your roots, he had encouraged, adding completely unsarcastically, You have a lot to give.)

As the bus pulled away, Charlie paged through her tattered copy of Romeo and Juliet. Nick had emailed, all business: Charlie, first up is Romeo and Juliet. I trust you’re familiar. And then, Your accommodations… followed by an address. He signed it simply, Nicholas, which she found mildly obnoxious. He had worked hard to get Nicholas to stick. It was how he had introduced himself all those years ago, as a directing fellow at Chamberlain: Nicholas. She had looked him in the eye as she shook his hand firmly. Really? I think you’re a ‘Nick,’ she had told him. You’ll figure it out soon enough. She was nineteen, he was twenty-five and speechless. From then on, she called him Nick.

It would be another four years until they made the film that would make them both. (It had been her idea to include his name in the title—Who do I think I am? he had asked.) Their actual romantic relationship would take up such a small sliver of her life—just about a year—a little longer if she counted the months he drifted away, lost in his work, distant in miles and in emotion just before their breakup, on a film set of all places. Still, their time together would leave a disproportionately deep mark. She stopped short of calling it a scar because too much of it had been…good.
~
When she finished reading, the bus had just reached those steep, curvy mountain roads she recalled from so long ago. Her thoughts took similar twists and turns to arrive at a place she didn’t want to be: on the edge of fear. She had done enough Shakespeare to know what it required of a person. But she hadn’t acted, at all, in years: What if it just wasn’t there? What if it had atrophied like any muscle left unchallenged for too long?

Her breathing too rapid now, she closed her eyes, refocusing. She had played Juliet a thousand times all over London the West End, the Globe. And on Broadway, and off Broadway and off-off Broadway. She exhaled.

Just as fast a more horrific thought shook her: What if Nick didn’t want her for Juliet, but for… Juliet’s mother? She could technically be Juliet’s mother. But it’s not like Juliet was ever really played by a thirteen-year-old, she told herself. This was theater, you just had to act young enough. Plus, she looked far younger than her thirty-nine years. She could do wide-eyed when necessary. But, no, even worse: What if she was supposed to be Juliet’s nurse? How humiliating was this community service exercise supposed to be? She pulled her Red Sox cap down farther and closed her eyes, tried to will herself to sleep. She had been up all night. Again. Packing. Reading. Sketching. Streaming the latest season of the only show she binged, Terminal Earth ICU. Distracting herself. Trying to.

On-screen you give the impression of this work being effortless, like something you could accomplish in your sleep. Or perhaps more akin to breathing: something vital and natural. Most of us drama students, I can safely say, will never ascend to that level. Which is why I have to ask: Please return to acting? Could you look past what reasons you might have had for leaving it? You’re needed.

That letter, from a drama student named Robert, drifted into her thoughts. Somehow asking the same questions that had kept her up at night for years. Her eyes flickered open again.

They were nearing their destination, anyway. She could tell by her favorite sign at the end of a gravel pit on the side of the road: RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMP. She had asked her mother back then, two decades ago, seated beside her in the back of the sedan that had been sent to collect them from the airport, what the sign meant. That’s a device to aid trucks if they’re having difficulty braking as they descend from the mountain, her mother had said in her perfectly posh inflection, eyes not leaving her newspaper. Then added, If only we had something like that for you.

Another turn and the bus rattled into the town at last, home of Chamberlain College and the Chamberlain Shakespeare Summer Theater. It was all there still, nestled in this pocket surrounded by mountains: the gothic ivy-covered buildings, the charming Victorian houses, the lively main street, even that sweet little historic log cabin harkening back to the town’s first settlers. The one she had broken into with Nick…

This had been a bad idea. On so many levels.

Sixty days. She just had to get through sixty days.

The bus slowed to a stop in front of the old inn. She pulled up her email from Nick, checking the unfamiliar address of her accommodations again. Mapping it on her phone, she followed the route past the inn, along Stratford Road onward through the campus’ main quad, still not sure where she was being led.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

The Interestings meets When Life Gives you Lululemons. The best drama happens offstage in this undeniably charming novel about a former A-list actress who must spend the summer at the idyllic theater where she got her start. But with a first love and celebrity rivals present, will this be the second chance she imagined or her last act?

Charlie Savoy was once Hollywood’s hottest A-lister. Now, ten years later, she’s pushing forty, exiled from the film world and back at the summer Shakespeare theater in the Berkshires that launched her career—and where her old flame, Nick, is the artistic director.
It’s not exactly her first choice. But as parts are cast and rehearsals begin, Charlie is surprised to find herself getting her groove back, bonding with celebrity actors, forging unexpected new friendships and even reigniting her spark with Nick, who still seems to bring out the best in her despite their complicated history.
Until Charlie’s old rival, Hollywood’s current It Girl, is brought on set, threatening to undo everything she’s built. As the drama amps up both on the stage and behind the curtains, Charlie must put on the show of a lifetime to fight for the second chance she deserves in career and in love.

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Meet the Author:

AIMEE AGRESTI is the author of Campaign Widows and The Gilded Wings trilogy for young adults. A former staff writer for Us Weekly, she penned the magazine’s coffeetable book Inside Hollywood. Aimee’s work has also appeared in People, Premiere, DC magazine, Capitol File, the Washington Post, Washingtonian, the Washington City Paper, Boston magazine, Women’s Health and the New York Observer, and she has made countless TV and radio appearances, dishing about celebrities on the likes of Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, E!, The Insider, Extra, VH1, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and HLN. Aimee graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and lives with her husband and two sons in the Washington, DC, area.
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