10.1.06 :: "A delightful humorous look at the modern day Dating Game." ~ Harriet Klausner, The Best Reviews

10.1.06 :: "In Dating Game author Beverly Brandt offers readers a riotous look at how we see ourselves. You will relate to Lainie’s angst and her low self-esteem and then both cringe and laugh at where her schemes to keep her successful façade in place take her. Jack is everyone’s hero, literally. But can he get Lainie to see him as anything but her boss? His deception to make her believe her job is anything more than illusion while he tries to woo her lands them in hilarious situations and misunderstandings. For a fun but poignant read, you must investigate Dating Game." ~ Robin Lee, Romance Reviews Today

10.1.06 :: "Are you ready to be entertained? Spend a few hours laughing and smiling? Then Dating Game is the book for you. Brandt sure knows how to pen a humorous, light and thoroughly enjoyable story full of witty dialogue and characters who really click together. You'll spend hundreds of pages laughing. Laughter is good for the soul and this story is chock full of it." ~ Sabrina Marino, Fresh Fiction

10.1.06 :: "Filled with moments of hilarity." ~ Monica Solomon, The Romance Readers Connection

Here's an interview where I talk about what inspires me and what was going on Between the Lines while I was writing Dating Game!

1) What went on behind the scenes of this book? That is, either what was happening in your life when you wrote it, or what was happening with the book as you wrote it.

Like all of my books, I had only a brief idea of what Dating Game was going to be about before I started writing it. I knew it was going to be about a woman going back to her high school reunion and wanting the wrong guy only because she thought that being with the former prom king would make her feel like she was somebody, too. I didn’t know that the heroine of the book was going to be crawling home on nothing but gasoline fumes and desperation. I didn’t know she had a half-sister waiting for her there. And I sure didn’t know that—through a series of chuckle-inducing misunderstandings—everyone would think she had a peculiar addiction! I learned all of that as I wrote the book.

2) Where did you find the idea to write this novel?

Not surprisingly, the idea to write a book about a character going back for her high school reunion was inspired by my own life. My own twenty-year reunion got me thinking about how we all want to go back and show these strangers who all seemed to be better off during high school how successful we’ve become over the years. Of course, being a writer who loves to make her characters suffer, I got to thinking about how awful it would be to have a character who wants so badly to prove that she’s made something of herself, but who is actually going through one of the worst times in her life when her reunion rolls around.

I guess I really like to explore how people react when the worst thing that can happen does.

3) How long did it take to develop your characters for this book?

For this particular book, it took about three months. Initially, I was going to start the book in a completely different place. I tried over and over again to get the first few chapters done, but it just wasn’t working. Finally, I threw out all my preconceived notions about where the book was heading and started over from scratch. That’s when the story finally took off. I guess I was trying to tell the wrong story for these characters!

4) Are you a visual writer? Do you see scenes and characters in your head? Or do you hear the characters voices?

Yes, I suppose I am a visual writer. When I get into the “zone” (which isn’t easy to do, hence writers who threaten to kill husbands when they interrupt them to ask where the ketchup is), I see the scene like a movie in my head. I am not part of their world, by the way. I’m just writing down what they say and do. The characters start out as something I’ve created, but as the book progresses, they take on a life of their own.

5) What are your thoughts on First Person verses Third Person? Which is your preference?

I prefer third person just because I like to be able to give the point of view of more than one character in a story. But there’s no right or wrong answer to that question. A writer should write her story in whatever way works best for her. For me, third person is more comfortable because the heroines I’ve created—while I can always identify with them—are not me. Thus, writing “I did such-and-such” would feel awkward to me.

6) Who or what influenced you to write and what inspires your imagination?

I have to be honest and say that no one influenced my to write. It was just part of me, as much a choice as my left-handedness or my brown eyes. I stopped writing when I was about sixteen because I started working (at McDonald’s) and it never occurred to me that people actually wrote for a living. Which is fine. I wouldn’t have had the maturity to write commercial fiction back then anyway!

I’m fortunate in that everything inspires my imagination. Sometimes, it’s an article in a newspaper or an interesting person I meet. Sometimes I get inspiration through the writing itself—a secondary character will show up on the page and say or do something that makes me want to write her story. I have found over the years that writing begets writing. I get more ideas when I’m in the creative mode than at any other time.

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CHAPTER ONE of Dating Game

Lainie Ames’s return to Naples was supposed to be the sort of local-girl-makes-good story that would make viewers of Oxygen or the Hallmark channel wish they’d bought stock in Kleenex.

She had choreographed her arrival in her mind, watching it over and over again like a favorite episode of an old TV show.

Scene one: The chauffeured black limousine drives slowly from the airport to her dad’s crumbling old house in her crumbling old neighborhood. Raggedly dressed children playing in the street stop to gape as her long, slim legs swing out of the car. Four-inch-high red stilettos hit the sidewalk. The driver reaches out and offers his hand to the lone occupant. The camera focuses on her French-manicured nails. Her five-carat sapphire ring glistens in the sunshine. The director refers to this scene as “Lainie’s Triumphant Return.”

Cut to reality.

Lainie flicked the gas gauge of her seven-year-old convertible with her index finger, but the needle didn’t budge off the E. Everything she’d managed to salvage from her life in Seattle was stuffed into the tiny trunk of her car, and the car itself was on borrowed time. She was three months late on her payments. It wouldn’t be long before the repo man caught up with her and took even that.

As she slunk past the McDonald’s on the corner of Sunshine Parkway and Main Street, she prayed she wouldn’t run out of gas. If she could just make it to her dad’s house, no one would ever have to know how low she had sunk.

Lainie curled her hands into fists so she wouldn’t have to look at the ragged nails. Her last manicure had been a month ago, and she didn’t have the money to have the acrylic tips she loved so much professionally removed. Instead, she’d used nail clippers and a pair of tweezers to yank them off herself, exposing the thin, abraded nails beneath.

“It’ll get better with time,” she muttered to herself, acknowledging on some level that she wasn’t just talking about the sad state of her fingernails.

When she decided to come back for her fifteen-year high school reunion, Lainie had not envisioned that she’d be limping home on broken pride and gasoline fumes.

She pulled her hair back with one hand as she turned left—away from the Gulf of Mexico and the multimillion-dollar mansions of west Naples—and headed for her dad’s house. Without the setting sun glaring into her eyes, Lainie stopped squinting. She’d forgotten how intense the rays could be down here in southwest Florida; how even sunglasses weren’t enough to block the sun.

That had never been much of a problem in Seattle.

She could count on her fingers the number of days a year she’d actually been able to keep the top down on her convertible without also activating the heated seats. The car was impractical. She’d known that from the day she bought it. But she’d signed the contract anyway.

Lainie tapped the gas gauge again as the weathered sign at the entrance of her old neighborhood came into view. Someone had named the housing development with its row after row of identical homes Willow Run. Lainie had no idea why. There wasn’t a willow tree within five miles of the place.

But there was the sign. Sitting right where it always sat. A handful of white rocks had been tossed down around it, and scraggly bushes were planted at either side. Lainie couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the sight. It was so pitiful. The upscale housing developments in Naples had grand entrances—brick walls with the names of the neighborhoods written out on tile backsplashes and strategically placed accent lighting that brought the surrounding hibiscus and bougainvillea to life. Some even had trickling fountains with brass egrets gracefully drinking from them.

Not Willow Run.

Of course, this development wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider upscale.

Lainie blew out a disgusted breath and turned onto the neighborhood’s main street.

There it was. Third on the left. The one with the peeling seafoam green paint on the front door and the weeds threatening to take over the flowerbeds. It had the unkempt look of a once well-loved pet that no one cared for anymore. Like an old cat left at home when its owner went off to college.

Lainie’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, and she squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still see the house, as though its image had been burned onto her retinas.

She opened her eyes and was surprised to find herself silently praying for another gallon of gas. Anything to not be here. Not yet.

In answer, the convertible’s engine sputtered a warning.

Figures , Lainie snorted. She had long ago realized that someone up there had it in for her. Why should her luck change now, when her life was at its worst?

She winced and tapped the brake when the curb reached up to scrape the bottom of her car as she pulled into the driveway, then winced again as the door to her father’s house was flung open even before she had a chance to put the transmission in park.

Ready or not . . .

“Lainie! You made it!” her older sister Trish exclaimed, as if there had been some doubt in her mind that Lainie could make it across the country by herself. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery to get on I-5 South, take I-10 East, and then hook up with 75 outside of Tallahassee all the way to Naples. Two turns. One left. One right. That’s all it had taken to get from there to here.

“Yep. Here I am.” Lainie tried fake enthusiasm, but the words sounded as hollow as she felt inside.

She put a hand over the key in the ignition and hesitated. It wasn’t too late. She could put the car in reverse and be back on the interstate in ten minutes.

If she didn’t run out of gas and end up stranded on the side of the road.

With a sigh, Lainie killed the engine. This was it. The end of the line.

“It’s so good to see you,” Trish was saying as Lainie came to terms with her fate. Over the years her once-hip older sister—half sister, Lainie corrected—had morphed into the plump, motherly type. When Lainie and her dad had moved down to Naples in the middle of Lainie’s junior year of high school, twenty-six-year-old Trish had seemed so cool. She was a teacher at Golden Gulf High, had her own apartment, and drove a vintage Mustang convertible. The cherry on top was that Trish could buy beer. Even better, she did buy beer for Lainie on the infrequent occasions her little sister asked her to, which increased Lainie’s stock with the few friends she made before heading off to Seattle after graduation.

Now, fifteen years later, Trish was the mother of a fourteen-year-old son and an eleven-year-old daughter. She lived on the same street as their father, still taught at the high school, and was married to a second-grade teacher that she’d married the summer Lainie had left town.

Nice, but definitely not cool anymore.

“Is this all you brought?” Trish asked, frowning into Lainie’s backseat.

“The rest of my stuff is in storage back home. I figured I might as well leave it until I decide where I’m moving next,” Lainie lied smoothly. No need to let Trish know that she’d had to sell everything she owned to raise the money to get back to Naples. Better to let her believe Lainie’s story that coming here was simply a prologue to the next chapter in her little sister’s life.

“I’m coming home to figure out what to do with the rest of my life” was the story she’d told her family. They hadn’t yet guessed that this was a euphemism for “I lost my job, the bank foreclosed on my house, and my husband left me with a mountain of debt I can’t pay.”

“Well, that’s fine. You can borrow anything you need from me. Plus, that means it won’t take you long to unpack. I thought we could go out to dinner at the Ritz tonight. You always loved that. Dad asked me to tell you that he’s sorry he had to work tonight. I know he’s looking forward to seeing you.”

Uh-huh. Dad looked forward to work and that was about it.

It must be nice to live in Trishville, where children were more than just obligations to their parents.

Lainie popped open the minuscule trunk of her car and pushed open the driver’s-side door. She swung her feet out of the car and felt the warmth of the pavement through the thin soles of her worn tennis shoes.

She sighed as the last image from her make-believe TV episode disappeared in the face of ugly reality.

There would be no chauffeurs, no red stilettos, no street urchins stopping to gape at the glamorous vision alighting from a long black car. There were no slender legs—Lainie had been too caught up in losing everything she had to even think about an exercise program—no French manicures, and no sapphire ring, since it had been pawned in a desperate attempt to keep Lainie out of bankruptcy court.

Most important, there would be no high school reunion. Not for her.

Lainie slammed the door of her convertible and turned, squinting as the sun’s rays got caught in her rearview mirror, blocking out the image of the weary woman she had become.

No, there was no way she’d face her former classmates like this: as big a loser now as she had been fifteen years ago.

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