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Title: Sweet Muse
Author: Ava Cummings
Publisher: Merrimack Media
Tour Organizer: Lady Reader's Bookstuff Blog Tours
Release Date: January 22, 2015
Determined to overcome her difficult past, Anna Starr lands a coveted job at the nation's biggest celebrity magazine in the center of the New York City power scene. She learns early on to make it on her own, and through sheer force of will she does. But frustration sets in when the dark side of tabloid journalism starts to poke through, and she gets duped while dating slicker-than-thou city boys.
Amidst a sea of cocktail parties, Anna meets rising art star Damien Wolfe. Their connection is dangerous, intense, and passionate beyond her imagination. He sees her in a way that she has never seen herself, setting her on a journey toward self-discovery—understanding what it means to be truly loved for the first time in her life. But she may lose it all when her blind ambition and his dark past lead to a crisis that changes everything.
Interview
Let us start with the Basics of Ava...
Who are you?
I’m Ava Cummings.
Tell us about yourself.
I spent more than 10 years as a magazine editor at some of the biggest and best-known magazines in the world. She began my career at ELLE, where I fetched coffee, fell in love with fashion, and, eventually, became a full-fledged editor, covering Hollywood and bringing in stories about bold, complicated women that were making a difference in the world.
Soon enough, though, the rise of celebrity culture in the early 2000s lured my to Us Weekly and then In Touch, where I helped create the raging celebrity news category that exists today. I saw a parallel between soap operas and celebrity magazines and built storylines that drew readers back each week to get the next installment in the lives of the stars that they loved and idolized. A knack and a passion for dramatic storytelling had been solidified.
I’ve always been a storyteller, whether weaving celebrity tales together or crafting complex, emotional plotlines for her characters. Inspired by the sweep-you-off-your-feet happy endings of fairy tales, the unbelievable headlines she reads in the news, and the quirky personalities that I’ve encountered in both the real world and on reality TV, I use it all to create fast moving, entertaining, passionate stories. It has been my dream to become a romance novelist since my early days editing love advice columns in women’s magazines.
To balance the frenetic pace of weekly magazines, I found Yoga and became a trained instructor. I’ve always been committed to health and wellness. I still practice daily and revel in its centering and balancing effects, as I juggle a career as a marketing director, raising two children, and my role as a budding romance novelist. I live with my family in the suburbs of Boston. Sweet Muse is my first novel.
A bit about what you have written...