Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Novel by Shelley Blanton-Stroud | Audiobook & Book Tour Spotlight | #HistoricalFiction #Thriller
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me with the information for this tour. 
Book Details
Tomboy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Series: Jane Benjamin #2
Published by She Writes Press on 06/28/2022
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Format: Audiobook, eBook, Paperback
Pages: 312
It’s 1939. On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie.
Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. She plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is thrown off track.
While sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death, which she now knows was a murder, and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war?
Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.
Read my review of Copy Boy, Jane Benjamin #1
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Purchase Links for Tomboy
Amazon-OneLink for all countries BookShop/IndieBound
Blackwell’s Waterstones TheBookDepository Kobo
BN Capitol Books Libro Scribd Chirp
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Book Trailer
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Guest Post from Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Writing rituals that change over time
Where do you write?
My writing rituals change over time. With Copy Boy, I did a lot of coffee house writing. I would use the white noise app on my phone, set to coffee house noise—lots of clinking cups and steaming milk and background chatter but no discernible words.
Then came the pandemic, and so I wrote Tomboy at home. A reading couch in my office became my go-to spot, with a coffee table on my left side, needed books on the right, and my beagle, Ernie (now sadly passed), snoring on my feet.
For the book I’m writing now, I’ve moved to a little cottage in our backyard. Our neighbors are remodeling, and the daily noise is making me very cranky. I found that if I set up out in the cottage, I can’t hear construction noise, and I’m also away from domestic tasks like laundry and such, which I sometimes unbelievably prefer over dealing with plot problems.
Do you write every day? What is your writing schedule?
Because I’m working on a deadline for Flyboy, I’m writing every day with a 2,000-word-a-day goal. I’ve gotten better at saying no to invitations that get in the way of doing that, but I haven’t gotten perfect at it. It’s very easy for me to get pulled toward family and friends and their activities and needs, which sometimes makes it hard to meet my goal.
Is there a specific ritualistic thing you do during your writing time?
This isn’t exactly a ritual, more like a helpful tic I have as I sit down to write a scene. The first thing I type is this list: Ordinary world, Inciting incident, Rising action, Crisis, Climax, Denouement.
I let this list serve as a starting point structure for a scene. Sometimes I’ll not use one of those elements. Sometimes they will be far from dramatic. An inciting incident could be as small as someone giving someone else a dirty look. But when I am roughly guided by that list, I know things will move and change and happen in each scene and that removes some of my writing anxiety.
In today’s tech-savvy world, most writers use a computer or laptop. Have you ever written parts of your book on paper?
Brief portions of my books were originally written by hand in my journal. Usually, those came from generative writing workshops. When I was given a prompt, I would direct it toward my novel characters and scenes. Those bits that wound up in my novels tend to be more descriptive or literary because that’s what comes out of me with a good pen and notepaper. When I want a scene to move, I’m better off typing. Sometimes I write the whole thing on my laptop and then peruse my notebooks for those short passages to interweave within scenes.
If you’re a mom writer, how do you balance your time?
I am a mom writer, but my kids have flown the nest. Their launching is what provoked me to start writing in earnest—because I finally had the time and focus to do so. It has caught me off guard, though, to find myself as a sandwich caregiver. I struggle to balance my time between my need to write and my obligations to my parents. My mother’s death and my father’s decline in health really remind me how difficult it is for everyone who is a caregiver of one sort or another to sustain their obligations to their own writing.
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I love to read books through my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.
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About Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field.
She recently retired from teaching writing at Sacramento State University and still consults with writers in the energy industry. She co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and serves on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, as well as on the board of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.
Copy Boy is her first Jane Benjamin Novel. Tomboy is her second. The third, Working Girl, will come out in November 2023. Her writing has been a finalist in the Sarton Book Awards, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award, the American Fiction Awards, and the National Indie Excellence Awards.
She and her husband live in Sacramento with many photos of their out-of-town sons and their wonderful partners.
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Purchase Tomboy online from a local bookstore.
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Easy Amazon Links
Amazon-OneLink for all countries
Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Nov...Shop on Amazon 
Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Nov...Shop on Amazon
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Meet the Narrator
April Doty is a classically trained actress with a BFA from Syracuse University. She is a voice actor and the narrator of 26 books. Born in Virginia, educated in New York, seasoned in London, and settled in Spain, April Doty brings the sound of a rich and varied life experience to her narration. The character of Jane came to life in her home studio on the Costa del Sol.
connect with the narrator: Website ~ Twitter ~ LinkedIn ~ SoundCloud ~ Amazon
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Giveaway!
Win signed copies of COPY BOY and TOMBOY, audible download codes for each, a $20 Starbucks card, a woman’s fedora, moleskin notebook, and Sarasa pen. (one winner) (USA only) (ends Oct 28)
Please visit more stops on the tour for extra chances to win!
TOMBOY (a Jane Benjamin novel) Book Tour Giveaway
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