Spotlight & Giveaway: WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT by Lynn Cullen

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lynn Cullen to HJ!

Hi Lynn Cullen and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Defying their bosses and all expectations, Marilyn Monroe and photographer Eve Arnold team up to show the world who they really are.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“Your gaze trailed back to the reflection of the plain, pudgy girl, the gritty orphan fixing her hair. There was no pretense here, no game; there was just trust. This was you, Norma Jeane, making a present to your inner self for my camera.” –Eve Arnold, page 186, When We Were Brilliant

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

Eve Arnold took hundreds of photos of Marilyn Monroe that showed a side of the star that was different from those of all other photographers. But when Marilyn died, Eve withdrew the images from the public eye, furious that other photographers were selling unflattering photos of Marilyn. There was even one of Marilyn in the morgue! Eve refused to take part in making a buck at Marilyn’s expense and planned to never show her photos of Marilyn. Then, nearly twenty-five years later, she heard the Elton John song, “A Candle in the Wind” on the radio. Two lines in the song infuriated her. They had Marilyn all wrong! To set the record straight, Eve published the photos in her book, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation. It is around this book that I wrote When We Were Brilliant.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I sobbed after I wrote the final scene. I mean, I sat there and wept. Even thinking about it now makes me tear up.

Readers should read this book….

…to get to that final scene! But seriously, I hope that readers will come away from the book with a whole different view of Marilyn Monroe, one that I discovered through the photos and words of her close friend, Eve Arnold. The real Marilyn—Norma Jeane, that is—is far more impressive than commonly believed. I’m excited, too, for readers to get to know Eve Arnold, who exquisitely documented not just the era of this book, the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, but the world up to the turn of the twentieth-first century. Her work will blow you away.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

As my motto is “Setting Herstory Straight since 2008,” I’m working on a novel about another woman who changed the world in defiance of the odds.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 copy of WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT by Lynn Cullen

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What do you know about Marilyn Monroe? (Prepare for your expectations to be smashed.)

Book Info:

They were an unlikely pair—a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously—but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives in this dazzling new novel from the national bestselling author of Mrs. Poe and The Woman with the Cure.

In 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at revealing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant.

Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She’s looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn’s orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other—something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn’s star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same.

A lavish and transporting novel, When We Were Brilliant captures the halcyon days of an icon and the grit of women determining their own futures as it explores the exceptional and complicated friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Lynn Cullen’s bestselling novels, including The Woman with the Cure, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Mrs. Poe, Twain’s End, The Creation of Eve, and Reign of Madness, have been translated into seventeen languages and are the recipients of various honors, including NPR Great Read, Oprah.com Book of the Week, People magazine Book of the Week, Indie Next List selection, and Atlanta magazine Best Books of the Year. She lives in Atlanta.